I’m sitting on my squashy single bed with its double duvet. There’s nowhere else.
Rolling up the walls around us, the old wallpaper, James Bond-style rockets, carefully rendered. It had never occurred to me how carefully rendered they were. Like someone cared about the engineering. Just for a child’s wallpaper. You wouldn’t get that now. Mum has had no reason to redecorate, so the incongruous match-up remains.
This could be my past looking into my future.
‘So you’ve finished your exams?’ I say.
‘Finally. Don’t ask me how I did, because I don’t want to think about it. I’m heading off back to the Lakes for a month to stay with my mum before I start work.’
‘Oh right? Well, give her my best.’
‘I brought this—’ you say, meekly, holding up the crochet blanket. ‘I don’t really know why. You probably don’t want it.’
‘No, I do. I do.’
I take it from you and hold it, folded in my lap. It too smells of vetiver, and I remember you spritzing it before you went on your last work placement, months ago. You did it so I wouldn’t forget you. Now it means I won’t be able to.
‘Thank you,’ I say.
‘And I dug out some of my notes,’ you say, ‘and there’s a few leaflets and things that explain the basics. Stage 2 kidney disease: look at these sections here — they’re going to want to keep regular tabs on you, make sure there’s no more loss of kidney function. But the main thing is to keep your heart in good health. Cut out the smoking, get some exercise.’
And I can hear myself, my own voice, blundering and naïve. ‘Yeah? Oh, that’s a load off, I tell you—’
‘It’s serious. Please, please don’t go getting complacent.’
You shift a little in your seat. Maybe I was a shade snappy.
‘Anyway,’ you say, ‘it’s nothing that you can’t fold into your life — and hopefully there won’t be any more deterioration.’
I flip through a couple of the leaflets, and try to take it on board, but I’ll have to leave it till I’m on my own.
‘I brought you this, too. A bit of light reading.’ You hand over a hardback coffee-table book: Piet Oudolf, Planting Design.
It’s so easy for you even now to surprise me with kindness.
You smile happily, pleased I’m pleased. ‘It’s only a library book, but I thought it would give you some good ideas, a few things to mull over while you start getting used to where you’re at these days.’
I set the book down on the blanket on my lap and pat it to show gratitude. I allow myself to look at you, and you smile. ‘Thank you so much for making the effort, is all. I really appreciate it.’ I thumb the edge of the blanket.
‘Happy to help,’ you say. ‘Just because we’ve had our problems doesn’t mean I don’t care.’
‘I’m sorry I leaned on you so much,’ I say.
You look down in your lap. ‘It’s my baggage too. It’s — it’s not something I think I can cope with. That whole — trust area.’
‘I wasn’t straight with you, and I’m so sorry.’
‘Maybe it needed to happen. It was just too much hearing you say that, and seeing you not looking after yourself.’
‘That’s not me. That’s not what I want to be.’
I look at you and try to sustain your gaze, but you look away.
‘I can change, Mia,’ I say.
You look back at me, and some self-centred part of me had been imagining tears in your eyes. But they’re dry.
‘There are times when I want to let it all drop, Ivo. I do miss you, you know. But everything’s so up in the air at the moment. I’m going away, and when I come back there’s the new job — you’re coping with all this change with your health, and — it’s not the right time. It’d be better, don’t you think, if we just stayed friends?’
I look up into your eyes, and I see the kindness. And I realize I’d forgotten to tell myself what I should have been telling myself all along: remember never, ever to hope.
Crushed again.
‘Better to be friends — better than to have nothing at all,’ you say.
No.
Not better.
‘Maybe I’ll give you a call from my mum’s? In a week or two?’
Oh God, is it a good idea to string this on if it’s not going to come to a happy ending? Shouldn’t I just sever all ties now?
All I can think of is the photo Mal texted me shortly before you arrived. He’s found a flat.
But I can’t bring myself to tell you.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ I say. ‘That’d be nice.’
P
Palm
SLIP AND SLAP of footsteps on the stairs. Bedroom door cracks open as my mum comes in.
I was awake anyway. I’m here where she left me, in bed, in my best church clothes.
It’s dark now.
She reaches down by my bedside table and squeezes the switch to turn the lamp on. She twists it quickly to the wall. Keeps it low.
The house has been silent since the last of the mourners left, and since Laura slammed her bedroom door in tears.
Mum sits on the side of the mattress, and I slide involuntarily into the dip.
She quietly raises her hand and strokes my hair.
‘How you doing, bab?’
I don’t say anything. I tighten the curl of my body around where she’s sitting, the warmth sealed between us. I know I don’t need to say anything. I know she understands.
‘Brave little soldier, aren’t you?’
I look up at her from where I’m lying. She’s still got her posh earrings in.
‘Are you OK, Mum?’
She looks down at me, but doesn’t answer straight away. She’s exhausted. It’s the first time I’ve ever noticed tiredness in her face, though it can’t be the first time, of course.
‘I’ll be fine, sweetheart. We’ll get through, you and me.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Listen, you don’t have to go back to school until you feel ready. Everyone understands you’ll want to take your time.’
I frown into the low light. ‘I want to go tomorrow.’
‘We’ll take a few days to — to think about your dad.’
‘They’ll think I’m silly.’
‘No one will think that, bab.’
‘I want to go and be like every day.’
Mum falls quiet for a moment, and sighs heavily. ‘OK. We’ll see how you feel in the morning.’
‘OK.’
She smiles down at me. ‘You’re the man of the house now, eh?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Your dad was so proud of you, you know.’
‘He’d want me to go to school,’ I say, and return to looking across the low-lit room. She carries on lightly stroking my hair, before her hand slows, and finally ceases, resting on the back of my head.
‘Palm of calm,’ she says. ‘Can you feel my fingertips taking out all the worry and sadness? And can you feel the palm is pushing in warmth and love and happiness and peace? Can you feel it happening?’
I can feel it. I’m sure I can.
‘Palm of calm,’ she says to me.
I could do with a palm of calm now. The world is beginning to swirl around me. I can’t remember the last time I felt normal. What is normal any more? I imagine my mum’s palm on the back of my head. If I close my eyes, I can almost feel it.
Or your hand.
Your hand in mine.
My hand in yours.
Palms pulsing together.
An anchor — you and me drifting hand-in-hand through the world.
It’s the toxins. Karen said the massage could release toxins into my blood. The last thing I need is more toxins.