The Other Son Read Online Free Page A

to dinner. And then she’d pretended, once she got home, that the holiday had been uneventful, boring even. In fact she’d so overcompensated the misery side of things that it became impossible for her to justify going with Dot again the following year.
    Dot’s going again next summer, but to southern Spain this time, to Alicante. It’s even hotter down there, she reckons, and Alice would love to go with her. She thinks a proper holiday in the sun would do her the world of good, reckons it would ease her aches and pains, too. But how to approach it? It’s a bit like Christmas at Tim’s. She can’t work out how to organise it, how to mention it even without sounding like she’s asking Ken for his approval. Because what if Ken says ‘no’? And he’s pretty likely to say that. He’s bound to say that they can’t afford it, or that she didn’t even enjoy it last time or something like that. Even worse would be if he decided he wanted to come along. But that’s unlikely. Ken’s not keen on foreigners.
    “Where’s Matt at the moment?” Alice asks, trying to forge a bridge she can use to move the conversation towards where she’s hoping to go. “Is he in France or Spain?”
    “France,” Ken says. “As far as I know.”
    “He was in Spain though, wasn’t he?”
    “Yeah,” Ken says. “He was in Madrid. But now he’s in France, down south somewhere. He’s been in France for a while.”
    “Dot’s off to Spain next summer.”
    “Dot’s off to Spain every summer.”
    “Maybe I’ll go with her and meet up with Matt somewhere.”
    “Matt’s in France,” Ken says again, starting to sound exasperated.
    “They do share a border, you know: France and Spain.”
    “What, you’re hoping to wave to Matt from over the border?”
    “No... it’s got nothing to do with Matt really, I just...”
    “I’m not the one who brought Matt up.”
    “No. I was just thinking it would be nice to go to Spain again.”
    Ken shoots Alice one of his looks – a mixture of confusion and disdain.
    “So what do you think?” Alice asks. “About Spain?”
    “You know what I think about Spain,” Ken says. “Sweaty Spics and girls with moustaches and greasy food and tap water that gives you the squits. That’s what I think of Spain.”
    “That’s verging on racist,” Alice says.
    “It’s the truth,” Ken says. “And the last time I looked, Spain wasn’t a race. It’s a nationality.”
    “It’s a country, actually. Spain is a country, and Span- ish is the nationality of those who live there.”
    Ken blows out through pursed lips and shakes his head. “I can’t win with you, can I? I don’t know why I still try.”
    Alice doesn’t risk replying. She laughs lightly to defuse the tension.
    She thinks about Matt in France. She wonders what he’s doing. She wonders if he’s OK. She wonders if he’ll ever come home again.
    He’ll be working some dead-end job, cleaning or packaging sausages or waiting in a restaurant – he has done all of these things. It’s such a waste, that’s the thing. Because, like herself, he could have done so much more.
    “Dot says Matt’s just trying to find himself,” Alice says, unsure even as she says it why she has chosen this particular phrase to say out loud. “But I think it’s the opposite. I think he’s trying to lose himself.”
    “Dot should mind her own onions,” Ken replies, misunderstanding entirely the context of Dot’s remark. And that’s Alice’s fault far more than it is Ken’s. She hadn’t, after all, provided any context.
    But Ken doesn’t like Dot much, that’s for sure. Dot is a busy-body. She’s pernickety and sarcastic. She has an over-active thyroid which she claims explains much of her nervous disposition. But whatever the cause, she rubs Ken up the wrong way. Not that he has ever really approved of any of Alice’s friends. Even Lisa, her best friend all those years ago, he hated with a passion. Though that was probably Lisa’s fault,