green tea, green

His sister, Julie, is sitting on a beanbag. The beanbag is the same colour as the green the hill is in Maise's book. It clashes with the red from Julie's corduroy trousers, which are coloured the same as Mark's horrors.

She sits up

Maise

she say

Goo goo whose getting big

she asks

Mark smiles. His sister puts a hand through her thick hair and then moves to her brother and kisses him. She has thick frizzly hair which make her look as if she has just come in from a storm outside. Again Mark feels a pang of envy. Why couldn't he have had his mother's hair, or at least any hair. He shaved his off just before his wife died. Lily always used to say she liked it and hated him with a shaven head as it made him look like all the other stereotyped coppers. He promised her he'd grow the grade 1 crop out but she died before his hair was ready. Now he keeps it shaved.

darling

she says. Honestly, you'd never guess they were sisters or that she was from Gatley.

I was just meditating

she says

You'd never guess you were from Gatley

He says

You'd never guess you were my brother

she retorts and then she adds

would you like a cup of tea?

He follows her across the cheap laminate that is pine coloured and the tropical plants pining for a light more real than the halogen from the spotlights.

Her son Brendon is on the xbox. A line of zombies are queing up and Brendan is blasting them away. It looks great. Mark bought the game for the kid's christmas, mainly to annoy Julie. She treats her son more like a lodger than a son so felt unable to outright forbid him from playing the game, rather she just moralised constantly on the evils of hollywood. (The game was designed in scotland, but Julie doesn't know that and Brendan doesn't care)

How you doing then

she asks

Fine

he says

You know. Same old

She sighs, she sighs to show yes, she does, she knows.

For a moment she stares at the dried green tea leaves as if they are the most profound thing in the world, but only for a moment, and only shallowly sadly.

Maise coos in her pushchair. She wants to get out.

darling

Julie shouts to her son

do you think you could look after your cousin

There's a sigh and Brendan takes her. Thirty seconds later, though, the zombies are forgotten and he slips back into childhood happily

"He's doing nothing with his life" thinks Mark, briefly, but he's not that bothered and the thought is not large enough to dwell upon for long.

Brendan takes her out into the garden space. Its not really a garden. There's some herbs by the back door, as if Julie one day had woken enthused with alternative energy, had started off and then tailed off.

Wasteland leaves a stain and leaves wait to lilt. Mark keeps an eye on Maise through the dirty window. He knows what this estate is like. Paedos and scumbags are crouched behind the broken fences, waiting to pounce. He knows all about what they can do, an autoposy where the saw was longer than the body.

Its OK

Julie says, but she doesn't say it like she means it, or else she says it knowing she won't be heard

Yeah

says Mark. The water in the kettle shrieks as it starts to be boiled.