PART 1
I turned eighteen on a Tuesday and my family marked it by telling me to leave.
There was no cake. No card propped on the side.
Nothing in that kitchen at all except three people already sitting down at twenty past seven in the morning, waiting for me to come in.
Four places laid. Three of them used.
My name is Jonah Keel.
My father was across the table with his hands round a mug. His wife Lorna was stirring sugar into a coffee she had already stirred.
And my stepbrother Dane was leaned back in his chair looking considerably more comfortable than anybody should look at twenty past seven in the morning, which told me they had discussed it the night before.
“Sit down, Jonah.”
I sat down, because I had been sitting down in that kitchen when told to for eighteen years.
“You’re eighteen now. You’re an adult. Which means we’re done looking after you, and you need to move out.”
For about four seconds I genuinely thought it was a joke. Not a good one. A joke.
I said I had three months of school left.
I said it twice, because the first time nobody reacted at all.
And I asked him where exactly he thought I was going to live until June.
And he shrugged.
An actual shrug. Shoulders, with the mug still in both hands.
“You’ll figure something out.”
Lorna gave me one of those gentle smiles that stops about an inch short of the eyes.
And she told me — kindly, in the voice she uses on the telephone — that my things were already packed.
Three carrier bags, by the front door.
I could see them from where I was sitting. They had been there when I came down and I had walked past them and assumed they were going to a charity shop.
Eighteen years in that house fits into three bags, and somebody had done the packing the evening before while I was at work.
PART 2
