Like This, for Ever

at 4am, his dad was always back.
    ‘Dad!’ he called from the bathroom doorway. No reply.
    Barney stepped out on to the landing. On the first floor of the house, the doors to his dad’s bedroom and study and to the two spare bedrooms were all shut. Barney had closed them himself on his way to bed as he always did when he was alone, because it was impossible to go to bed with open doors in the house. So there was really no way of knowing whether his dad was home or not.
    Except he knew. Apart from him, this was an empty house.
    ‘Dad!’
    No, don’t say that again.
Too freaky to keep calling out for a parent who wasn’t there.
    Downstairs, in the kitchen, something fell to the tiled floor. Dad was home, after all.
    Except he wasn’t. He couldn’t be. The first floor and the ground floor were in darkness. Barney reached behind and pulled the drawstring that switched off the bathroom light.
    It had to be his dad. Barney had locked both doors before he’d gone to bed. Both had deadlocks, and the back door that led to the garden had bolts top and bottom. The windows were locked – he had a ritual, he checked them every night, running his hand along the aluminium, making sure the lock was in place. And then he always got up to check after his dad’s last phone call. No one could have broken in.
    Except someone was downstairs, he could hear footsteps. The gentle, stealthy footsteps of someone who didn’t want to be heard.
    His dad would have switched lights on. His dad didn’t sneak around. Barney had a sudden flashback of the boy in the garden, the thin, pale boy, who was him and not him, slinking round the back of the house, looking for a way in, groping, feeling, pulling. Finding one.
    OK, he had to stay calm. His dad’s study was the only room with a lock, he just had to get down the first flight of stairs without beingheard and lock himself in. He’d phone Lacey. She could be here in seconds.
    On tiptoe, Barney took the first step and then the second. There was definitely someone in the kitchen, he could hear a distinctive and familiar sound. That made him pause. Why would a burglar, let alone a phantom, open the door of the washing machine?
    He reached the first-floor landing and stopped outside the study door. Lock himself in, or carry on down? Could he phone Lacey and say someone had broken in and was doing their washing? And what if the police did turn up, and found him alone in the house? They wouldn’t like it. They might take him away and put him in a care home like the two brothers who’d recently joined his school. They weren’t quite right, those two. They were way behind the rest of the class and had all sorts of what adults called behaviour issues. The rest of the kids had got the message loud and clear. Care homes were not the sort of places you wanted to be.
    Barney left the door of the study behind and carried on down, knowing from years of practice how to walk at the left edge so that the stairs never creaked. From the hall at the bottom he could see that the kitchen door was open, and he knew it hadn’t been when he went up to bed.
    A hand touched his shoulder and Barney screamed like the kid he hadn’t known he still was.
    ‘Barney, for heaven’s sake, it’s me.’
    His dad, as startled as Barney, had stepped back and raised both hands in the air in a surrender gesture. His dad, looking different somehow. Flushed and excited and nervous. His hair was untidy, there was colour in his cheeks, his clothes looked dishevelled. There was alcohol on his breath, too, not the bitter smell of beer but the sweeter one of red wine. The bottom couple of inches of the left leg of his jeans were wet. He caught Barney’s eye and looked away immediately.
    ‘Why didn’t you put any lights on?’ asked Barney, whose entire body was still trembling with fright.
    ‘I didn’t want to wake you up.’
    His dad’s right hand was tucked behind his back, as though he were holding something he didn’t want Barney to see. Then heshoved his hand into his jacket pocket. Whatever he’d been holding was now tucked inside. He raised his other hand and looked at his watch.
    ‘It’s gone midnight,’ he said. ‘Come on, back to bed.’
    For some reason, his dad seemed to have trouble looking at him.
    ‘You’re wet,’ Barney said.
    His dad looked down, saw the wet trouser leg. ‘Stepped in a puddle,’ he said.
    ‘Where’ve you been?’ Barney asked.
    ‘Working.’ His dad’s eyes drifted up to