Savages

40: Screens

"No, Faro. You're not listening to me. I said no!"

Sannah shrank into the sofa and closed her eyes, trying to un-hear her friends' altercation in the other room.

Wrapping the blanket that covered her around her head muffled sound a little, but the walls were thin, and Dierdra's voice was loud. Faro's was quieter. She couldn't make out the words, just the tone, desperate, pleading. Barely more than a murmur.

Yet Dierdra's words bit back in response, snarling like a chained dog.

"You don't know what the skit you're talking about, Faro."

This was followed by an angry growl of invective, the meaning dulled beyond recognition by the thin screen of the wall.

Faro, pleading murmurs in response.

Dierdra, with the force of a bark. "They're full of dag. I don't give a skit, it's bull."

Her speech rumbled on, angrily, certain words as sharp as projectiles ringing up.

"...dangerous! ...murderers! ...our! son!..."

Faro's voice rose too now in response, just enough for Sannah to hear the end of his sentence: "...our only option, can't you see?"

Sannah didn't want to know what they were talking about. She shouldn't be witnessing any of this, eavesdropping on their darkest intimacies. She was intruding. They needed to be alone. Their lives were an open wound, and they needed the scab of solitude, a screen from the world, to give them space to heal.

But she'd invaded. Taken away their safe space.

She shouldn't be here.

"No, Faro! Let it skitting go!" Dierdra shouted, and this time it wasn't just Sannah that heard.

A low wail came through the opposite wall. Their argument had woken Stokeley.

Or perhaps he hadn't been asleep—it was 9am, after all.

Perhaps he had been sitting in his silent bedroom, a small child, alone. Perhaps that was better than facing the big bad world, no matter his world extended no further than the boundaries of this flat. This world was still big, and bad. There was new danger here, now. Danger in the change in his parents, the confusion and unpredictability of their adult pain.

Sannah remembered that feeling well.

Faro and Dierdra's bedroom door opened, and Sannah closed her eyes tightly, pretending to be asleep as Faro passed quickly into Stokeley's room.

When he came out again, alone, after a period so silent Sannah wasn't sure if he'd spoken to his son at all, Sannah sat up, uncomfortably, unsure of what to say.

"Gave him my screen," Faro said, his voice dull. "Never used to let him, all the kidverts and that. Messes with their minds. But we need the space. You know."

It didn't sound like a question, but yes, she knew.

"I watched them," Sannah said, thinking of the fast moving bright colours, the cartoon violence, the expensive toys flashing across the screen. "When I was a kid."

"Yeah," Faro said. He sat down. "Me too."

Sannah bit her lip.

Her original plan had been to talk to Dierdra about going back to the Metropol, but how could she, after what happened? What was she supposed to say?

"So Sannah," Faro said flatly, hands on his knees. "What's your plans? What you going to do?"

It wasn't you need to go, but it certainly sounded like you shouldn't be here.