The Peacock Cloak

didn’t – but because I couldn’t see what else I could do. It was out of the question to tell him to keep his official secret to himself, though that was what I should have done. I should have told him I didn’t want his miserable secret. I should have told him that, if this secret was so terrible as to be hidden from the entire population, it really wasn’t fair to confide it to a little boy of eleven, and then ask him to keep it. But back then I wasn’t even able to frame the idea of saying such things to him.
    “This is just between you and me Tom, as long as you understand that. This must not get out. But the fact is we’ve got two or three years at most before it all comes apart. The climate science, the really serious climate science, is all classified nowadays – it’s just too sensitive to let out – so you won’t have heard about it, but I can assure you it’s much much worse than we thought possible even a few years ago. We underestimated those positive feedback loops, you see. The arctic methane. The water vapour. All of that. All of those loops which instead of damping down change like normal biological negative feedback loops, actually amplify it. Accelerate it. The curve is already much steeper than ever before. Only a year or two’s time now, and it will really begin to soar – and then…” He gulped more wine. “Well, we have a plan in place, but it won’t be pretty. In fact it’ll make the holocaust look like a picnic. I’ve secured your place in the ark so to speak, yours and Clarrie’s and your mother’s, but most people… Well let’s just say that if they don’t drown and aren’t shot, they’ll starve. Ha! Not a pleasant prospect, not a pleasant prospect at all. Are you sure you don’t want any more of this stuff. Hmm, we seem to have finished the bottle. Let’s open another shall we? Why not? It’s not every day I have you down here.”

    Snap. This is Clarrie, my sweet little sister, fast asleep in her pink pyjamas in the top bunk in Dad’s spare room. I took this picture when I finally went to bed. I suppose I wanted to hold onto something that wasn’t tarnished and spoiled. My dad was on his third bottle by then. He had been telling me what a fine man his father was, and how he hadn’t properly appreciated him until he was gone. The thought had brought tears to his grey mandarin eyes. Finally he had nodded off in his chair.
    A couple of months later he went up onto the roof of an office block where he had been attending some corporate gathering. He laid his briefcase carefully down, climbed up onto the parapet, smoothed down his tie – and jumped.

    Snap, snap. Snap, snap. This is us on the train back north. Here, look, are the green rolling hills of England as we all remember them. Here is Clarrie pulling a silly face…
    Mother’s new boyfriend Pete came to meet us from the station in her car. He was ten years younger than her and wore torn dungarees with smears of paint all over them. Mum greeted us in her beautiful rustic kitchen. She kissed Clarrie, she kissed me and then, more lingeringly, more knowingly, she kissed Pete. I needed badly to be alone. I went up to my room. (Here it is look: my room, with my model planes, my Leeds United posters.) I went up to my room, found the noisiest, bloodiest computer game that I owned, and played it at maximum volume, killing, killing, killing.
    Next day we were back in school. I sat in classes. I opened and closed books when I was asked. I tried to play with the other boys. But I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t even make myself feel present . My body and my speaking voice were like remote-controlled devices that I operated awkwardly from a solitary hiding place far away where I nursed the secret burden that was to drive my dad to suicide.
    Snap. Snap. Snap. I took photos more and more. It helped to detach me from what was going on, taking them and then later downloading them and going through them again and again and again on my computer screen.
    Snap. Here is a boy called Douglas teasing me. He’s calling me dozy. He’s saying I’m mental. I didn’t answer him. I took this picture instead. That angered him. He would have smashed my camera if a teacher hadn’t come by.
    Snap. Snap. This is my father’s funeral. This is the coffin with his body inside it, worst for wear no doubt after its thirty-storey fall. Snap. Snap. This is Clarrie with her eyes red from crying, but still taking it all in, still