A fortnight after he had come to Birmingham to live it had got no easier. The loss of his mother was like a constant ache inside. Everyone was very kind to him, tiptoeing around him as gently as if they were circling an unexploded bomb. Even his father was like that with him and sometimes it made Ben want to scream.He knew he had made the right decision, that was the annoying thing. He knew he couldn’t have borne it if he had gone off with his mother and left his father all alone in Ireland, but he resented the fact that he had been forced to make that decision. Or any decision at all. He blamed his mother for that. She was the one who had left, but she wasn’t there and so it was usually his father who bore the brunt of his ill humour. And he bore it all without complaint. He didn’t get angry and tell him off as he would once have done, and that unnerved Ben too. He viewed starting a new school with no enthusiasm at all.Joe knew how Ben felt and understood his anger. He too grieved for Gloria, but alone in his bed at night.
