We, of course, argued to be allowed to come inside because it was pretty boring in the car in the dark. Mum said we were too badly behaved to be allowed to go inside when they went to dinner, and besides, they needed some time for grown-up talking. Dad put down the seats in the station wagon and laid two quilts on top of each other to make a sort of large bed. It still wasn’t very comfortable though, and after a while my hips started to get sore from the metal underneath. Ruthy said to just sleep on my back then, but I couldn’t seem to do that. I took turns of each of my hips hurting instead. I snatched Caleb’s pillow to put under me, but this made him scream blue murder and I was worried it would bring Dad out to see what was going on, so I gave it back to him by hitting him over the head with it. He coughed a bit and Ruthy stuck his asthma spray in his mouth to keep him quiet, as well as to make sure he didn’t have an attack that would be considered my fault again.

On other nights we’d spent like this in people’s driveways, we weren’t allowed to put the car light on, but we were allowed to use one torch in case we got frightened or Caleb needed his Ventolin, but of course we put it on the whole time we were in the back together. We were meant to lie quietly and go to sleep, but as my Aunt Maisie would say, live like a maggot in bacon, which didn’t seem to mean anything sensible, but fit the situation anyway. We took turns telling stories, or sometimes singing songs.

If we were feeling brave, we would make up a reason we had to go inside, and Ruthy and I used to tell Caleb he would have to be the one to go and knock on the door, because he wouldn’t get into anything like the trouble we would, and he wouldn’t get a smack. We tried to convince him to say there was a robber looking in at us, or a robber looking in the windows of the house we were visiting, or a mad dog with rabies circling the car, or a big spider on the ceiling, or a police car going up and down the street possibly looking for the robbers, or even an escaped prisoner, and even once, that there was a pirate planning to steal the boat we saw in the host’s driveway.

The only time Caleb actually went to the front door was when we were having a big fight, and he would get sooky and go and tell on us. We would have fights over anything really: who was over the invisible line we drew to carve up the space, whose turn it was to tell the story or choose the song, who made up the best swear words, or who had the most friends at school. When Caleb climbed out of the car in a huff, Ruthy and I would hold our breath, half in fear and half in hope. What tended to happen is that Dad would come out to the car, fling the doors open and smack us hard on the legs over and over again. Usually they let Caleb stay in the house after that, which wasn’t fair. We would pretend to be fast asleep when they came out carrying him to go home, in the hope the whole thing would be forgotten in the morning.