- •I was starting to lag behind. I hate running. I hated him for not slowing down.
- •I stared at him.
- •I tried to peer round at the screen.
- •In our street ‘posh’ could mean anyone who hadn’t got a family member in possession of an asbo.
- •I helped myself to green beans, trying to look more sanguine than I felt.
- •I wondered briefly how many carers there had been before me.
- •I picked up one of the labels. I wasn’t sure I had ever seen so many drugs outside a pharmacy.
- •I blushed. ‘I’m sorry. I was just –’
- •I slid my legs sideways down the wall and pushed myself up to a seated position.
- •I tried to think. ‘I don’t really have any hobbies. I read a bit. I like clothes.’
- •I filled the log basket, noting that several inches of snow had now settled. I made Will a fresh drink, and then knocked. When I knocked again, I did so loudly.
- •I stared at the books in his bookshelf. Among the novels, the well-thumbed Penguin paperbacks, were business titles: Corporate Law, TakeOver, directories of names I did not recognize.
- •I thought for a bit.
- •I’m not sure I moved for half an hour.
- •It was not, they observed with exquisite understatement, a cry for help.
- •I slowed my pace, pushing my way through the small crowd until I was able to get to our gate, watching as Richard ducked to avoid a dvd player. Next came a pair of shoes.
- •I took a deep breath. ‘I overheard you. You and your daughter. Last night. And I don’t want to … I don’t want to be part of it.’
- •I made to get out of the car. Her hand shot out. It sat there on my arm, strange and radioactive. We both stared at it.
- •I checked the list. ‘Quadriplegic basketball? I’m not even sure if he likes basketball.’
- •I wrinkled my nose. ‘I don’t know, Treen –’
- •I ignored him. ‘Right. We’ve made it. Now for the fun bit.’
- •I felt my eyes suddenly brim with tears. ‘No,’ I said. ‘This is ridiculous. We’ve come all this way. You stay here and I’ll go and get us all Premier Area badges. And then we will have our meal.’
- •I grabbed my bag and thrust it under my arm.
- •I had refused to listen to him. I couldn’t bear the idea that this was how our day was going to end.
- •It seemed to take a minute or two for them to digest what I’d said. But then they looked at each other in amazement.
- •It was about half an hour before I realized the other girls had gone.
- •I was about to say no, and then I realized I didn’t really know why I was refusing. ‘All right. I’ll bring them back as soon as I’ve finished.’
- •I realized he was looking for an excuse not to go. ‘I’ll do it,’ I said. ‘If Will tells me what to do. I don’t mind staying to help.’ I said it almost before I realized what I was agreeing to.
- •I leant over and ran my finger around the inside of it; a nylon tag had been left inside. I pulled at it, hoping to snap it, but it proved stubbornly resistant.
- •I couldn’t help but notice that his leg was becoming weirdly sinewy.
- •It broke the ice. Nathan left with a wave and a wink, and I wheeled Will through to the kitchen. Mum, luckily, was holding a casserole dish, which absolved her of the same anxiety.
- •If it was Dad, I told Will, he would have had an adapted beer cup before he had a wheelchair.
- •I leant back and reached my hand downwards into his bag. I pulled it up again, retrieving a bottle of Laurent-Perrier champagne.
- •I stood up and bowed. I was wearing a 1960s yellow a-line minidress I had got from the charity shop. The woman had thought it might be Biba, although someone had cut the label out.
- •I got up to clear the plates, wanting to escape the table. But Mum scolded me, telling me to sit down.
- •I turned away, pretending to peer into a shop window, unsure if I wanted him to know that I had seen them, and tried very hard not to think about it again.
- •I pulled a tendril from the honeysuckle and began picking off its leaves. ‘I don’t know. I think I’m going to need to up my game.’ I told her what Mrs Traynor had said to me about going abroad.
- •I poured some soup from a flask and held it up to his lips. ‘Tomato.’
- •I put down my peeler. ‘I suspect you’re going to tell me.’
- •I slid off the table. I wasn’t entirely sure how, but I felt, yet again, like I’d somehow been argued into a corner. I reached for the chopping board on the drainer.
- •I glanced down the street, then turned and peeled a little of the dressing down from my hip.
- •I put the last peg back in the peg bag. I rolled it up, and placed it in the empty laundry basket. I turned to him.
- •I began to compile a new list – things you cannot do with a quadriplegic.
- •I could hardly believe what I was hearing. I felt the colour rise to my face, and took a deep breath before I spoke again.
- •I just wanted to make it better.
- •I put Will’s glass in his holder and shook the younger man’s hand.
- •I watched Will drain two glasses of Pimm’s and was secretly glad.
- •I blinked.
- •I couldn’t really blame the guy. I wouldn’t have wanted my missus staying out all night with some bloke, even if he was a quad. And he hadn’t seen the way Will looked at her.
- •I hesitated, just a moment too long. ‘That’s not true.’
- •I understood what she was saying. There was no time for anything else.
- •It was a quarter to ten by the time I got back to Patrick’s.
- •I stared at him.
- •I sat down and looked at the table.
- •I sank my face into my hands and let it rest there for a minute. Out in the corridor I heard a fire door swing, and the voices of people swallowed up as a door was unlocked and closed behind them.
- •I would have said to Camilla that she brightened the place up. But I couldn’t make that sort of remark to Camilla any more.
- •I left my bag with Nathan, cleaned my hands with antibacterial lotion, then pushed at the door and entered.
- •I was about to protest, and tell them they should not have moved him. But Will had closed his eyes and lay there with a look of such unexpected contentment that I just closed my mouth and nodded.
- •I felt his fingers tighten a fraction around mine, and it gave me courage.
- •I had begun to cry. ‘Please, Will. Please don’t say this. Just give me a chance. Give us a chance.’
- •I felt frozen, my hand clutching my passport like I was about to go somewhere else. I had to remind myself to breathe.
- •I couldn’t speak. I stared at her, and the most I could manage was a small shake of my head.
- •I am the one in the family who knows everything. I read more than anyone else. I go to university. I am the one who is supposed to have all the answers.
- •I had been hoping it was extra grant money.
- •I gave a tiny shrug. ‘Just okay? They must have given you some idea how you did.’
- •I’m not sure I ever saw Dad look so shocked.
- •I glanced up at Granddad, but he had eyes only for the racing. I think Dad was still putting on a sneaky bet each way for him, even though he denied it to Mum.
- •I turned towards the bed. ‘So,’ I said, my bag over my shoulder, ‘I’m guessing the room service isn’t up to much?’
I am the one in the family who knows everything. I read more than anyone else. I go to university. I am the one who is supposed to have all the answers.
But I looked at my big sister, and I shook my head. ‘I haven’t got a clue,’ I said.
She finally emerged the following day, showered and wearing clean clothes, and I told Mum and Dad not to say a word. I implied it was boyfriend trouble, and Dad raised his eyebrows and made a face as if that explained everything and God only knew what we had been working ourselves into such a fuss over. Mum ran off to ring the Bingo Club and tell them she’d had second thoughts about the risks of air travel.
Lou ate a piece of toast (she didn’t want lunch) and she put on a big floppy sunhat and we walked up to the castle with Thomas to feed the ducks. I don’t think she really wanted to go out, but Mum insisted that we all needed some fresh air. This, in my mother’s vocabulary, meant she was itching to get into the bedroom and air it and change the bedding. Thomas skipped and hopped ahead of us, clutching a plastic bag full of crusts, and we negotiated the meandering tourists with an ease born of years of practice, ducking out of the way of swinging backpacks, separating around posing couples and rejoining on the other side. The castle baked in the high heat of summer, the ground cracked and the grass wispy, like the last hairs on the head of a balding man. The flowers in the tubs looked defeated, as if they were already half preparing for autumn.
Lou and I didn’t say much. What was there to say?
As we walked past the tourist car park I saw her glance under her brim at the Traynors’ house. It stood, elegant and red-brick, its tall blank windows disguising whatever life-changing drama was being played out in there, perhaps even at this moment.
‘You could go and talk to him, you know,’ I said. ‘I’ll wait here for you.’
She looked at the ground, folded her arms across her chest, and we kept walking. ‘There’s no point,’ she said. I knew the other bit, the bit she didn’t say aloud. He’s probably not even there.
We did a slow circuit of the castle, watching Thomas roll down the steep parts of the hill, feeding the ducks that by this stage in the season were so well stuffed they could barely be bothered to come over for mere bread. I watched my sister as we walked, seeing her brown back exposed by her halter-neck top, her stooped shoulders, and I realized that even if she didn’t know it yet, everything had changed for her. She wouldn’t stay here now, no matter what happened with Will Traynor. She had an air about her, a new air of knowledge, of things seen, places she had been. My sister finally had new horizons.
‘Oh,’ I said, as we headed back towards the gates, ‘you got a letter. From the college, while you were away. Sorry – I opened it. I thought it must be for me.’
‘You opened it?’
I had been hoping it was extra grant money.
‘You got an interview.’
She blinked, as if receiving news from some long-distant past.
‘Yeah. And the big news is, it’s tomorrow,’ I said. ‘So I thought maybe we should go over some possible questions tonight.’
She shook her head. ‘I can’t go to an interview tomorrow.’
‘What else are you going to do?’
‘I can’t, Treen,’ she said, sorrowfully. ‘How am I supposed to think about anything at a time like this?’
‘Listen, Lou. They don’t give interviews out like bread for ducks, you eejit. This is a big deal. They know you’re a mature student, you’re applying at the wrong time of year, and they’re still going to see you. You can’t muck them around.’
‘I don’t care. I can’t think about it.’
‘But you –’
‘Just leave me alone, Treen. Okay? I can’t do it.’
‘Hey,’ I said. I stepped in front of her so that she couldn’t keep walking. Thomas was talking to a pigeon, a few paces up ahead. ‘This is exactly the time you have to think about it. This is the time when, like it or not, you finally have to work out what you are going to do with the rest of your life.’
We were blocking the path. Now the tourists had to separate to walk around us – they did so, heads down or eyeing with mild curiosity the arguing sisters.
‘I can’t.’
‘Well, tough. Because, in case you forgot, you have no job any more. No Patrick to pick up the pieces. And if you miss this interview, then in two days’ time you are headed back down the Job Centre to decide whether you want to be a chicken processor or a lap dancer or wipe some other person’s bum for a living. And believe it or not, because you are now headed for thirty, that’s your life pretty well mapped out. And all of this – everything you’ve learnt over the past six months – will have been a waste of time. All of it.’
She stared at me, wearing that look of mute fury she wears when she knows I am right and she can’t say anything back. Thomas appeared beside us now and pulled at my hand.
‘Mum … you said bum.’
My sister was still glaring at me. But I could see her thinking.
I turned to my son. ‘No, sweetheart, I said bun. We’re going to go home for tea now – aren’t we, Lou? – and see if we can have some buns. And then, while Granny gives you a bath, I’m going to help Auntie Lou do her homework.’
I went to the library the next day, and Mum looked after Thomas, so I saw Lou off on the bus and knew I wouldn’t see her again till teatime. I didn’t hold out a lot of hope for the interview, but from the moment I left her I didn’t actually give her another thought.
It might sound a bit selfish, but I don’t like getting behind with my coursework, and it was a bit of a relief to have a break from Lou’s misery. Being around someone that depressed is a bit of a drain. You might feel sorry for them, but you can’t help wanting to tell them to pull themselves together too. I shoved my family, my sister, the epic mess she had got herself into, into a mental file, shut the drawer, and focused my attention on VAT exemptions. I got the second-highest marks in my year for Accountancy 1 and there was no way on earth I was dropping back just because of the vagaries of HMRC’s flat rate system.
I got home around a quarter to six, put my files on the hall chair, and they were all lurking around the kitchen table already, while Mum began to serve up. Thomas jumped on me, winding his legs around my waist, and I kissed him, breathing in his lovely yeasty little-boy smell.
‘Sit down, sit down,’ Mum said. ‘Dad’s only just in.’
‘How’d you get on with your books?’ Dad said, hanging his jacket on the back of the chair. He always referred to them as ‘my books’. Like they had a life of their own and had to be wrangled into order.
‘Good, thanks. I’m three-quarters of the way through my Accountancy 2 module. And then tomorrow I’m on corporate law.’ I peeled Thomas from me and put him down on the chair next to me, one hand resting in his soft hair.
‘Hear that, Josie? Corporate law.’ Dad stole a potato from the dish and stuffed it into his mouth before Mum could see. He said it like he relished the sound of it. I suppose he probably did. We chatted for a bit about the kinds of things my module involved. Then we talked about Dad’s job – mostly about how the tourists broke everything. You wouldn’t believe the maintenance, apparently. Even the wooden posts at the car park gateway needed replacing every few weeks because the eejits couldn’t drive a car through a twelve-foot gap. Personally, I would have put a surcharge on the ticket price to cover it – but that’s just me.
Mum finished serving up, and finally sat down. Thomas ate with his fingers while he thought nobody noticed and said bum under his breath with a secret smile, and Granddad ate with his gaze tilted upwards, as if he were actually thinking about something else entirely. I glanced over at Lou. She was gazing at her plate, pushing the roast chicken around as if trying to disguise it. Uh-oh, I thought.
‘You not hungry, love?’ said Mum, following the line of my gaze.
‘Not very,’ she said.
‘It is very warm for chicken,’ Mum conceded. ‘I just thought you needed perking up a bit.’
‘So … you going to tell us how you got on at this interview?’ Dad’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth.
‘Oh, that.’ She looked distracted, as if he had just dredged up something she did five years ago.
‘Yes, that.’
She speared a tiny piece of chicken. ‘It was okay.’
Dad glanced at me.