It was a dull day, and he could not see very far out into the bay, so could not see whether the buoy was still there or not. Top of the hill or not. Good binoculars or not. He could not wait to visit Tommy, and it was Saturday, so although Fran always made him do some jobs on a Saturday morning, he didn’t have to wait until the end of a school day. He could get there after lunch. The quicker he got washed and dressed, the quicker the day could begin.

He hated cleaning his room, stripping his bedclothes and re-making his bed, along with the shopping he had to do, but he did like receiving his pocket money. He thought he would call on his friend, Dave, on the way to see Tommy, and see whether he was playing in the pool tournament tonight at the youth club.

Dave had been his friend right from his arrival in the village, even when he was being rejected as “a bit weird” by all the other kids. Sinead had been a good friend too, but now she tended to hang around with other girls rather than him. Maybe she would be at the youth club tonight, and if the others weren’t sticking like glue to her, he might even have a chance to talk to her, but probably best not to make his feelings too obvious. Otherwise, he would never hear the end of it from boys and girls alike.

The jobs were tedious and boring, drawn out. He didn’t waste his time on all the tried and tested shortcuts. The problem was that experience had shown them all to be failures. Either Fran or Bill would make him start all over again so it only ended up taking longer. He would still try it on now and again even although he knew what the end result would be. It was his way of sticking his finger up at them.

It was not as if he hated, or even disliked, Fran and Bill. He got on well enough with them most of the time. He just didn’t feel connected. They had tried all sorts to connect with him, but he just didn’t feel it. He had to pretend sometimes. Otherwise, they would start getting angry. It could get pretty confusing sometimes, but he was learning better to read the signs, how to accommodate, placate, superficially show affection and so on and so on.....

They had all settled into some kind of a pattern. Sometimes he wondered why they couldn’t have kids of their own and why they didn’t adopt more. Perhaps he had put them off for life. Heh, that felt a bit serious then. He felt a bit sorry for them like how he knew they had felt a bit sorry for him at first. But it fades, and then there is the forgetting – but not about everything. There were some things he remembered which he wasn’t going to tell anyone that he remembered. He would do something about it one day, but not yet.