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By Root 520 0

a piece of news about people digging in a forest for the body of a woman who has gone missing. This had put him into the bad mood. He kept saying the word Entertainment, like the word made him feel sick. Then he said again, like he is always saying, how he felt the Milo Masses were here because TV and the internet were full of nothing but humiliation. God, her mother said, one cheers up then the other goes down in the dumps. I can’t win. All those people, her father said. It’s terrible. They’re here because they feel so disenfranchised. What is disenfranchised, again? Brooke said. It means you don’t have a vote, her mother said. So all the people outside the house outside Mr. Garth’s window feel like they are not allowed to vote in the election? Brooke said. I kind of mean it more metaphorically than that, her father said. As if metaphorically they are not allowed to vote in the election? Brooke said. Exactly, her father said. Mum, Brooke said. Uh huh? her mother said. What is metaphorically, again? Brooke said. An Alps of feeling, her mother said, that’s metaphorical. To describe something indescribable you sometimes translate it directly into something else, or join it with something else so the two things become a new thing, so an Alps of feeling lets you know the size, the huge amount, as big as a range of mountains, of the feeling. But it doesn’t mean it isn’t a real feeling? Brooke said. Sometimes, her mother said, it’s the only way to describe what’s real, I mean because sometimes what’s real is very difficult to put into words. Brooke memorized the word. Metaphorically: another way of describing what’s real.)

The fact is, today the crowd outside Mr. Garth’s room was so big that it was the kind you can get carried along by in a direction you don’t really want to go in. Roll up! Come And See What Can’t Be Seen! The people sitting and standing and playing the guitars and eating their lunches on the big plastic mats that stop the grass becoming mud are back. The foodstalls are back. The Milo Merchandise stall that Mrs. Lee organized is back, with the T-shirts and badges and flags saying MILO-HIGH CLUB and SMILE-O FOR MILO ;-), and the Milo Little Ponies for if people bring children. There have been flashing cameras at night for the last few nights, but the crowd has been being good because the police always move in if the crowd is too rowdy. There were TV cameras there this morning because there are two more women who are claiming to be Mr. Garth’s wives, though there are always people pretending to be Mr. Garth’s wives, and after they’d been filmed having a fight about who was the real wife the two wives went walking round the crowd arm in arm. There are TV cameras most days now. There are cameras from America, and there were some French TV people who came for the debate they had before the last time the police moved everybody on, when France was saying that France had a person who had shut himself in first, before Mr. Garth did, so Mr. Garth wasn’t the real original. Also the Psychic who wears the hat and gives people the Milo Messages is back. The people who light the candles and tie ribbons and teddy bears and other things to the fences at the bottom of the gardens under Mr. Garth’s window are back. The people with the banners that say Milo For Palestine and Milo For Israel’s Endangered Children and Milo For Peace and Not In Milo’s Name and Milo For Troops Out Of Afghanistan are back, and probably the man dressed as Batman will be back too who tries to get up on to the flat roof and put his banner up under Mr. Garth’s window. The lady will probably definitely be back who goes round asking everybody how much of Jesus do you need to see to believe in him and who gives out the leaflet with a picture of lambs and the rainbow and the children holding hands. She is always telling people they will die and go to hell unless they do as she and Jesus say. She is always asking Brooke will Brooke help her give the leaflets out.

(Be polite but demur, Brooke’s mother said. Mum, Brooke said, if you can demur. Uh huh? her mother