Friday Nights [antikvár]

Chapter One Toby's mother said that when Eleanor came he'd have to go down to the ground floor and help her with the lift. Toby said - sulkily, because he was angry with her for something he couldn't quite put his finger on - 'She doesn't need help.' His mother was standing in front of the mirror she had propped on top of a chest in her bedroom. She was arranging her hair in a complicated kind of knot, and she had a hairclip between her teeth. Through it she said without looking at him, 'Toby, this isn't about need. It's about manners.' Toby kicked one foot clumsily against the other. Then he went out of his mother's bedroom and banged the door shut and leaned against it. This door, his mother's bedroom door, was one of only a few doors in the flat. There was just that door, and the front door and the door on the bathroom. The rest was just space. Upwards, outwards, sideways. Just space. 7