I stared at him. And, completely unexpectedly, I found I had started to laugh, for the first time in as long as I could remember.
‘So did you decide what you’re going to do? When you’re better?’
I was lying on my bed. Treena was calling from college, while she waited for Thomas to come out of his football club. I stared up at the ceiling, on which Thomas had stuck a whole galaxy of Day-glo stickers, which, apparently, nobody could remove without bringing half the ceiling with them. ‘Not really.’
‘You’ve got to do something. You can’t sit around here on your backside for all eternity.’
‘I won’t sit on my backside. Besides, my hip still hurts. The physio said I’m better off lying down.’
‘Mum and Dad are wondering what you’re going to do. There are no jobs in Stortfold.’
‘I do know that.’
‘But you’re drifting. You don’t seem to be interested in anything.’
‘Treen, I just fell off a building. I’m recuperating.’
‘And before that you were wafting around travelling. And then you were working in a bar until you knew what you wanted to do. You’ll have to sort your head out at some point. If you’re not going back to school, you have to figure out what it is you’re actually going to do with your life.
‘I’m just saying. Anyway, if you’re going to stay in Stortfold, you need to rent out that flat. Mum and Dad can’t support you for ever.’
‘This from the woman who has been supported by the Bank of Mum and Dad for the past eight years.’
‘I’m in full-time education. That’s different. So, anyway, I went through your bank statements while you were in hospital, and after I’d paid all your bills, I worked out you’ve got about fifteen hundred pounds left over, including statutory sick pay. By the way, what the hell were all those transatlantic phone calls? They cost you a fortune.’
‘None of your business.’
‘So, I made you a list of estate agents in the area who do rentals. And then I thought maybe we could take another look at college applications. Someone might have dropped out of that course you wanted.’
‘Treen. You’re making me tired.’
‘No point hanging around. You’ll feel better once you’ve got some focus.’
For all it was annoying, there was something reassuring about my sister nagging at me. Nobody else dared to. It was as if my parents still believed there was something very wrong at the heart of me, and that I must be treated with kid gloves. Mum laid my washing, neatly folded, on the end of my bed and cooked me three meals a day, and when I caught her watching me she would smile, an awkward half-smile, which covered everything we didn’t want to say to each other. Dad took me to my physio appointments, sat beside me on the sofa to watch television and didn’t even take the mickey out of me. Treena was the only one who treated me like she always had.
‘You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?’
I turned onto my side, wincing.
‘I do. And don’t.’
‘Well, you know what Will would have said. You had a deal. You can’t back out of it.’
‘Okay. That’s it, Treen. We’re done with this conversation.’
‘Fine. Thom’s just coming out of the changing rooms. See you Friday!’ she said, as if we had just been talking about music, or where she was going on holiday, or soap.
And I was left staring at the ceiling.
You had a deal.
Yeah. And look how that turned out.
For all Treena moaned at me, in the weeks that had passed since I’d come home I had made some progress. I’d stopped using the cane, which had made me feel around eighty-nine years old, and which I had managed to leave behind in almost every place I’d visited since coming home. Most mornings I took Granddad for a walk around the park, at Mum’s request. The doctor had instructed him to take daily exercise but when she had followed him one day she had found he was simply walking to the corner shop to buy a bumper pack of pork scratchings and eating them on a slow walk home.
We walked slowly, both of us with a limp and neither of us with any real place to be.
Mum kept suggesting we do the grounds of the castle ‘for a change of scene’, but I ignored her, and as the gate shut behind us each morning Granddad nodded firmly in the direction of the park. It wasn’t just because this way was shorter, or closer to the betting shop. I think he knew I didn’t want to go back there. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t sure I would ever be ready.
We did two slow circuits of the duck pond, and sat on a bench in the watery spring sunshine to watch the toddlers and their parents feeding the fat ducks, and the teenagers smoking, yelling and whacking each other; the helpless combat of early courtship. We took a stroll over to the bookie’s so Granddad could lose three pounds on an each-way bet on a horse called Wag The Dog. Then, as he crumpled up his betting slip and threw it into the bin, I said I’d buy him a jam doughnut from the supermarket.
‘Oh fat,’ he said, as we stood in the bakery section.
I frowned at him.
‘Oh fat,’ he said, pointing at our doughnuts, and laughed.
‘Oh. Yup. That’s what we’ll tell Mum. Low-fat doughnuts.’
Mum said his new medication made him giggly. I had decided there were worse things that could happen to you.
Granddad was still giggling at his own joke as we queued at the checkout. I kept my head down, digging in my pockets for change. I was thinking about whether I would help Dad with the garden that weekend. So it took me a minute to grasp what was being said in whispers behind me.
‘It’s the guilt. They say she tried to jump off a block of flats.’
‘Well, you would, wouldn’t you? I know I couldn’t live with myself.’
‘I’m surprised she can show her face around here.’
I stood very still.
‘You know, poor Josie Clark is still mortified. She goes to confession every single week, and you know that woman is as blameless as a line of clean laundry.’
Granddad was pointing at the doughnuts and mouthing at the checkout girl: ‘Oh fat.’
She smiled politely. ‘Eighty-six pence, please.’
‘The Traynors have never been the same.’
‘Well, it destroyed them, didn’t it?’
‘Eighty-six pence, please.’
It took me several seconds to register that the checkout girl was looking at me, waiting. I pulled a handful of coins from my pocket. My fingers fumbled as I tried to sort through them.
‘You’d think Josie wouldn’t dare leave her in sole charge of her granddaddy, wouldn’t you?’
‘You don’t think she’d …’
‘Well, you don’t know. She’s done it the once, after all …’
My cheeks were flaming. My money clattered onto the counter. Granddad was still repeating, ‘OH FAT. OH FAT,’ at the bemused checkout girl, waiting for her to get the joke. I pulled at his sleeve. ‘Come on, Granddad, we have to go.’
‘Oh fat,’ he insisted, again.
‘Right,’ she said, and smiled kindly.
‘Please, Granddad.’ I felt hot and dizzy, as if I might faint. They might still have been talking but my ears were ringing so loudly I couldn’t tell.
‘So did you decide what you’re going to do? When you’re better?’
I was lying on my bed. Treena was calling from college, while she waited for Thomas to come out of his football club. I stared up at the ceiling, on which Thomas had stuck a whole galaxy of Day-glo stickers, which, apparently, nobody could remove without bringing half the ceiling with them. ‘Not really.’
‘You’ve got to do something. You can’t sit around here on your backside for all eternity.’
‘I won’t sit on my backside. Besides, my hip still hurts. The physio said I’m better off lying down.’
‘Mum and Dad are wondering what you’re going to do. There are no jobs in Stortfold.’
‘I do know that.’
‘But you’re drifting. You don’t seem to be interested in anything.’
‘Treen, I just fell off a building. I’m recuperating.’
‘And before that you were wafting around travelling. And then you were working in a bar until you knew what you wanted to do. You’ll have to sort your head out at some point. If you’re not going back to school, you have to figure out what it is you’re actually going to do with your life.
‘I’m just saying. Anyway, if you’re going to stay in Stortfold, you need to rent out that flat. Mum and Dad can’t support you for ever.’
‘This from the woman who has been supported by the Bank of Mum and Dad for the past eight years.’
‘I’m in full-time education. That’s different. So, anyway, I went through your bank statements while you were in hospital, and after I’d paid all your bills, I worked out you’ve got about fifteen hundred pounds left over, including statutory sick pay. By the way, what the hell were all those transatlantic phone calls? They cost you a fortune.’
‘None of your business.’
‘So, I made you a list of estate agents in the area who do rentals. And then I thought maybe we could take another look at college applications. Someone might have dropped out of that course you wanted.’
‘Treen. You’re making me tired.’
‘No point hanging around. You’ll feel better once you’ve got some focus.’
For all it was annoying, there was something reassuring about my sister nagging at me. Nobody else dared to. It was as if my parents still believed there was something very wrong at the heart of me, and that I must be treated with kid gloves. Mum laid my washing, neatly folded, on the end of my bed and cooked me three meals a day, and when I caught her watching me she would smile, an awkward half-smile, which covered everything we didn’t want to say to each other. Dad took me to my physio appointments, sat beside me on the sofa to watch television and didn’t even take the mickey out of me. Treena was the only one who treated me like she always had.
‘You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?’
I turned onto my side, wincing.
‘I do. And don’t.’
‘Well, you know what Will would have said. You had a deal. You can’t back out of it.’
‘Okay. That’s it, Treen. We’re done with this conversation.’
‘Fine. Thom’s just coming out of the changing rooms. See you Friday!’ she said, as if we had just been talking about music, or where she was going on holiday, or soap.
And I was left staring at the ceiling.
You had a deal.
Yeah. And look how that turned out.
For all Treena moaned at me, in the weeks that had passed since I’d come home I had made some progress. I’d stopped using the cane, which had made me feel around eighty-nine years old, and which I had managed to leave behind in almost every place I’d visited since coming home. Most mornings I took Granddad for a walk around the park, at Mum’s request. The doctor had instructed him to take daily exercise but when she had followed him one day she had found he was simply walking to the corner shop to buy a bumper pack of pork scratchings and eating them on a slow walk home.
We walked slowly, both of us with a limp and neither of us with any real place to be.
Mum kept suggesting we do the grounds of the castle ‘for a change of scene’, but I ignored her, and as the gate shut behind us each morning Granddad nodded firmly in the direction of the park. It wasn’t just because this way was shorter, or closer to the betting shop. I think he knew I didn’t want to go back there. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t sure I would ever be ready.
We did two slow circuits of the duck pond, and sat on a bench in the watery spring sunshine to watch the toddlers and their parents feeding the fat ducks, and the teenagers smoking, yelling and whacking each other; the helpless combat of early courtship. We took a stroll over to the bookie’s so Granddad could lose three pounds on an each-way bet on a horse called Wag The Dog. Then, as he crumpled up his betting slip and threw it into the bin, I said I’d buy him a jam doughnut from the supermarket.
‘Oh fat,’ he said, as we stood in the bakery section.
I frowned at him.
‘Oh fat,’ he said, pointing at our doughnuts, and laughed.
‘Oh. Yup. That’s what we’ll tell Mum. Low-fat doughnuts.’
Mum said his new medication made him giggly. I had decided there were worse things that could happen to you.
Granddad was still giggling at his own joke as we queued at the checkout. I kept my head down, digging in my pockets for change. I was thinking about whether I would help Dad with the garden that weekend. So it took me a minute to grasp what was being said in whispers behind me.
‘It’s the guilt. They say she tried to jump off a block of flats.’
‘Well, you would, wouldn’t you? I know I couldn’t live with myself.’
‘I’m surprised she can show her face around here.’
I stood very still.
‘You know, poor Josie Clark is still mortified. She goes to confession every single week, and you know that woman is as blameless as a line of clean laundry.’
Granddad was pointing at the doughnuts and mouthing at the checkout girl: ‘Oh fat.’
She smiled politely. ‘Eighty-six pence, please.’
‘The Traynors have never been the same.’
‘Well, it destroyed them, didn’t it?’
‘Eighty-six pence, please.’
It took me several seconds to register that the checkout girl was looking at me, waiting. I pulled a handful of coins from my pocket. My fingers fumbled as I tried to sort through them.
‘You’d think Josie wouldn’t dare leave her in sole charge of her granddaddy, wouldn’t you?’
‘You don’t think she’d …’
‘Well, you don’t know. She’s done it the once, after all …’
My cheeks were flaming. My money clattered onto the counter. Granddad was still repeating, ‘OH FAT. OH FAT,’ at the bemused checkout girl, waiting for her to get the joke. I pulled at his sleeve. ‘Come on, Granddad, we have to go.’
‘Oh fat,’ he insisted, again.
‘Right,’ she said, and smiled kindly.
‘Please, Granddad.’ I felt hot and dizzy, as if I might faint. They might still have been talking but my ears were ringing so loudly I couldn’t tell.
