Maybe there’s a twitch in my DNA, a switch flicked in my middle, but I look at Mal now, and I think what a child he seems. How puerile can he get? Surely he can do better than that.
I know I can.
‘It’s brilliant,’ I say, deliberately and decisively. ‘I love it.’ And fuck you, Mal.
‘Well,’ you say, turning to me, ‘as far as I’m concerned it’s just something someone thought enough about you to spend a lot of time making. And that’s what I wanted to do for you,’ you say. ‘Happy birthday.’
I’m touched. I’m genuinely touched.
‘Well, here you go anyway, fella,’ says Mal, reaching around inside a plastic bag he’s got with him. ‘Happy birthday, yeah?’ He lands a packet of twenty-four Kit-Kats on the blanket, and a packet of twenty Benson & Hedges on top of that.
I look up, and he’s primed and ready for my laughter.
‘Aw, what’s not to love about that,’ you say, semi-quietly. ‘Perfect for a diabetic.’
‘Cheers anyway, fella,’ says Mal raising his glass, and encouraging others to do the same.
Then, he says: ‘Sorry, Mia, I forgot you weren’t drinking.’
‘I’m not not drinking,’ you say. ‘I just haven’t got a drink.’
‘Oh, right, I thought because of your dad and everything.’
‘What about him?’
‘Being an — sorry, was I not supposed to say? — an alcoholic?’
‘Mal!’ cries Laura.
‘What?’ says Mal, raising his hands in fake innocence.
You look at me, and I shake my head like I don’t know how he found out.
‘What’s this?’ you say.
Ah shit, you’ve found Mal’s fingermark.
You glare up at Mal straight away.
‘This took me eight months. Mind what you’re prodding it with, OK?’
‘I don’t get it,’ you say. Your computer table and all your books are juddering as you stomp up and down the carpet of your room. ‘I don’t understand what kind of special code they want me to crack to gain entrance to their little clique.’
‘Will you sit down?’ I say. I’m lying sideways on your bed, my head propped up on a big cushion. ‘You’re making me tense.’
You sit on the edge of the bed, leaning forward.
‘It’s hard,’ I say, ‘but we’ve all known each other for years. I think they get a bit … I don’t know, a bit lazy when new people come along.’
‘It’s been nine months now we’ve been seeing each other. That’s a bit more deliberate than lazy. I mean, what’s the deal with Mal? He deliberately made that mark on the blanket.’
‘No, it wasn’t deliberate. I saw him do it, it was an accident.’
‘Yeah, well he wasn’t too apologetic about it, was he? He was openly taking the piss. Why do you hang around with such a bunch of piss-takers?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Seriously, they just leech off each other. Anything that doesn’t fall in with their little world view gets stamped on immediately.’
‘I’m not like that.’
You sigh and slump down on your bed. ‘No, I know you’re not. I don’t know how you managed to escape it.’
‘They don’t know anything about you. They don’t know the real you at all. It’ll just take time.’
‘Becca’s supposed to know me, but she’s too busy being fawned over by everyone, all latching on to her.’
‘Ah no, Becca’s all right.’
‘Oh, she’s lovely, but she’d never stand up for you. And what’s the deal with her and Mal, whispering like schoolkids?’
‘No deal, they’ve just known each other a long time.’
‘Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was something there, you know. I don’t know why Laura puts up with him.’
‘I don’t know why you put up with me,’ I say, offering you a Kit-Kat.
Actually: green fingers. It was my mum who said that to me, she said, ‘You’ll have green fingers.’
She was struggling to push the old hooded lawnmower up and down the lawn on a Saturday. Saturdays always made her sad. Sadderdays. It was something Dad should have been doing.
She said to me, ‘We’ll have to set aside a little piece of the garden for you to call your own. You’ll have green fingers like your dad.’
Slight twitch of a frown on my face. It presented a bad image of rotting green fingers deep underground.
Maybe she noticed, I don’t know, but she quickly said, ‘That’s what they say if you love gardening. You’ve got green fingers. Have you never heard that?’
I shook my head.
She set me aside a little patch I could tend and look after all by myself. I grew sunflowers that first year, and the patch was soon allowed to stretch to the size of a full bed, an odd hotchpotch of annuals and perennials, herbs and vegetables. Within a few years the whole lot was mine, and my mum could confine herself to enjoying it around her on warm summer evenings.
It was the least I could do.
Funny what small things it takes to set your life on a particular course.
Face
God, look at my face.
I’ve got a triangle where the oxygen mask has pressed around my nose and mouth.
I steady myself with my hands on either side of the bathroom’s sink, and peer through the bad lighting into the mirror.
My face is yellow. Dark grey under the sunken eyes.
I slowly move my head around, checking out the angles, watch the pupils fixed stock-still, compensating for the rotating of my head.
I’ve always done this, since I was a kid. Always pondered the fact that you can only ever see your face from one place, from your own eyes. I will never see myself looking away.
Not without a camera.
Jesus, though. I look more and more like my dad.
There’s a face that’s imprinted on my memory. Dad. It’s the movement of a face that stays with me. The way he smiled. The way he laughed.
From all those years ago, it’s still as strong, that blueprint.
‘All right there, little man?’
There it is: the familiar face. Familiar old Dad smile.
‘Something up?’
I look at him and twiddle the end of his bed cover. Comb my fingers through the tassels.
‘C’mon,’ he says. ‘Tell your old dad.’
I peer up at him. ‘I’m not allowed to play up.’
He considers me a moment and I can see his face breaking into a little laugh. Not completely his usual laugh.
‘Who said that? Did Mum say that?’
I nod.
‘Ah well, she’s very tired,’ he says. ‘But what you should do is be a good boy for her, OK?’
Nod.
‘But don’t worry about me. You can play me up all you like.’
I look at him, curious.
‘Are you going to die?’
He frowns, and again it’s familiar, that deep groove straight down between his eyebrows. After a brief pause he holds his hand out to me. I take it and roll myself up gratefully in his arm, and end up looking away from him. Away from the frown. I feel him stroke the hair on the top of my head.
His voice comes to me now.
‘It looks like it, little man. I’m really sorry.’
I say: ‘That’s OK.’ I have a strong sense that I don’t want him to worry about me.
‘Will you look after your mum for me?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And your sister.’
‘Yeah.’
‘And then I’ll look after you, OK?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m sorry we haven’t started work on that pond of yours yet.’
‘That’s all right. I don’t mind.’
‘Well, just keep it in mind. And you might be able to start it yourself when you’re old enough. When your mum says it’s OK. OK?’