What We Did on Our Holiday [antikvár]

One Friday'Toilet'I pretend not to hear. Or if I have heard, not to understand. Either is possible. When Dad's voice manages to rise above a whisper, w^hich is rare, it is slurred, as though thick v^ith alcohol, the words staggering out of his mouth and falling over one another, delirious and incoherent, like drunks ejected from a pub at closing time. And here he's up against the whine of the jet engines, too. I turn my face away from him and look out of the window, where, thousands of feet below, I can see mountains still capped by snow even though it's August. The Alps. Still the whole of Italy, and then some, to go.'Toilet!'This time it's too loud and too precise to ignore. When he wants something, really wants something, Dad can summon up near normal volume and clarity. And, of course, toilet is what he most often wants, apart from, perhaps, Cadbury's chocolate eclairs. So it's a word he's had plenty of practice on. In fact, if you just heard him say toilet, you wouldn't know there was anything wrong with him, so long as you closed your eyes, of course.In the seat in front of Dad, Mum's head, a grey11