They’d be off any minute

DON

knew.

They had a trip ahead of them. In order to strengthen the mother–child bond, the little family was going to London. A bus ride. Dreamed up at some point while the legal guardian was high. It was, as far as Don could remember, the first trip in her life. Nobody she knew went on vacation. The daily life of the people in Rochdale was a never-ending celebration of idleness. Don had for weeks been looking forward to visiting London. She was so excited she could barely sleep. Just the sound of the name of the capital city made her heart beat more quickly. She’d wandered the streets via Google, and what she’d seen was—alive. In contrast to the prevailing sensation that in Rochdale everything that had ever lived had been boiled to death.

Don’s mother laid out a thin dress that she sprinkled with water. Yes, she sprinkled it. In lieu of an iron, it was a good trick for smoothing out cloth. The family slept fitfully the night before the trip. Don woke up far too early, jumped out of bed. While she was in the bathroom trying on muscle shirts, the doorbell rang. It took a while for Don in her excitement to assign a name to the sad little figure at the door. It was her father.

He stood there crying. Bracing himself with his arm on the door frame in order to absorb the trembling of his body. Don’s mother came running immediately in her smoothed dress. Father was having difficulties with his new woman, as his bloodied eyebrow attested. Don’s mother was totally out of her head with happiness at seeing the old bastard again. Like a dog who saw its master again after a long time, she jumped around the idiot, and the children stood mutely behind her in the entryway, a feeling of disappointment welling up in them. In short: a little while later they were all sitting on the bus. Don’s mother sat on her ex-husband’s lap, snogging, while the children sat silently behind them. Don’s brother threw up at some point; it was his first bus ride. It was Don’s first bus ride, too, but she knew how to control herself. Her mother was so woozy from joy and from drinking from the bottle of liquor her father had brought along that she didn’t notice the mishap. Don cleaned the brother up with the stuffed animal he carried with him as a result of infantilism. Don’s brother was no longer a child. He, too, was in the midst of puberty and already had fuzz on his upper lip. Don heard him jerking off in the darkness of the children’s room. About five times per night. Don couldn’t get the noise out of her head when she looked at the moron. Anyway—