My father, turning the key in the door, hisses a warning after me, ‘Hush, the neighbours are still asleep.’ My feet feel for the treads which I have run up and down confidently hundreds of times a day. I stand still, at a loss for a moment, then I go on down the dark stairs. When I go back into the passage, the floorboards make a grating noise, and I know that every joint and crevice in the staircase will creak. What am I looking for? Everything has been packed. Aimlessly I walk about in the small oblong-shaped space. I vanish into my little room to put on my coat. ‘We’ve got to go.’ The suitcase is standing in the passage by the door, a looming and inescapable presence. Luckily I’m leaving, not a moment too soon. What had she seen? My hairless head, shaved bald? ‘Nit king,’ they’d call after you then and wouldn’t let you come anywhere near them. ‘I’ve seen enough now, children,’ she said, ‘you’ll hear the results next week.’
A little later, sweating, I saw her conferring with the teacher, her eyes fixed on me. I had felt her icy feelers make sudden movements with the total single-mindedness of a hunter in pursuit of prey. Last week at school a nurse had rooted about in my hair with two small glass rods, looking for lice. I see myself in the mirror, a wan smudge. ‘No.’ I find it hard to talk, my throat is tight. He bends over the kitchen table, cuts a piece of bread in half and gives me a searching look. My father walks about in stockinged feet, moving cautiously so as not to wake my little brother. Even the small stream of tap-water seems noisy. A rectangular shape is waiting relentlessly in the semi-darkness of the passage: the suitcase. The alarm clock goes off at five o’clock in the morning.
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