Too Close to Home

by Aoife Walsh

  ‘Darling,’ she said. ‘Oh, come here to me, pet.’ She pulled Minny in as well. ‘Selena, lovey.’ They all got squeezed to mush. It was dark in the corridor. She seized Nita’s elbows, around the baby. ‘Nita, he rang me, the fool.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘First time he’s rung me in months, not a whisper of this girl the last time, though Kevin had dropped a few hints … Anyway, come in, come in.’

  Nita shepherded them all into the sitting room, dumping Raymond in Minny’s arms, then followed Granny into the kitchen with loud comments about how delicious it all smelled and shut the door. When Minny was properly in the room she discovered Selena standing in a corner chewing her finger, and Ash sitting beside Franklin on the sofa, kicking her heels against it.

  ‘Hi,’ she said.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘I don’t think Mum wanted us to hear what Granny’s saying about Dad,’ she explained.

  ‘What’s she saying?’ Selena asked instantly.

  ‘Well, I don’t know because I’m in here. Sel, this is Franklin. You won’t remember him.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And this is Raymond.’

  ‘Hello,’ Franklin said to Raymond.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Minny asked him politely as she plunked down in the next chair with the baby.

  ‘Yeah. You?’

  ‘Yeah. Well, you know. Sunday.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he agreed.

  ‘What’s wrong with Sunday?’ Aisling asked.

  ‘It’s the Lord’s Day,’ Selena put in.

  Minny ignored her. ‘Well, you should know, Ash. You’re the one who falls into the gloom of school straight after breakfast.’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ Ash sank back into the sofa, though she was still pounding her knees together. ‘Don’t you like school either?’ she asked Franklin.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Makes all of us,’ Minny said. She had let Raymond go and he was busy trying to turn the TV on. ‘Except Selena.’

  ‘I don’t like school!’

  It was easier once their mother came to get them, looking like a sea wall after a storm – she found Granny hard to deal with – and they could mill around a bit more, getting lemonade or Coke and laying the table. At dinner Nita was nice to Franklin. She was good at making people talk. She got them all to swap what GCSEs they were doing, which was lame and embarrassing but not uninteresting, and when Minny didn’t feel like giving Franklin a lecture on Raleigh School Nita told him a bit about it, as if she knew anything – ‘It’s got a good music department. Drama, not so much. Stay away from the locker room near the gym, it’s nasty.’ Her mother viewed all schools, including the ones she worked in, through the lens of: where would bullies hang out? It was a good thing she didn’t actually know more, Minny thought, since the answer could be: anywhere. ‘Have you talked to any of the other kids yet?’

  He shrugged with one shoulder. ‘I met a girl who’s meant to be in some of my classes. They got her to show me round. She seemed all right.’

  ‘Who?’ Aisling asked.

  ‘She was called Veronica.’

  ‘Veronica Sedgwick?’

  ‘I think so.’

  Minny didn’t know Veronica Sedgwick at all, except that she was sort of arty and had curly hair and a nose ring. She thought about that for a while, but of course their mother couldn’t keep Granny entirely off sensitive subjects, and soon the conversation became more intense. ‘I just can’t believe a son of mine came up this way. Ringing me, bold as …! “I’m back in London, Ma.” No warning.’

  ‘But aren’t you glad he’s back, Granny?’ Selena asked.

  ‘Well, of course I am, pet. Of course I am. I just wish he’d seen fit to go back to his actual family, to his wife and children—’

  ‘We don’t,’ Minny said.

  ‘– that he should never have left in the first place. He’s just a fool. I brought up a fool.’

  ‘I do.’ Selena glared across the table at Minny.

  ‘Well, that’s because you’re an idiot.’ Minny put a hand on Raymond’s foot; he was sitting next to her on Nita’s lap, eating only Yorkshire pudding. On the other side Aisling was putting more and more beef into her mouth.

  ‘All right,’ Nita said loudly. ‘That’s enough, girls. We really don’t need to get into all of this again, especially not in front of Franklin. Judy, I know you’re sad about it – we all are, or we all have been.’ She raised her eyebrows at Minny. ‘Des hasn’t come back to live with us, but he is going to be around and gradually we’ll all get used to the situation as we have to previous situations, and frankly I expect we’ll all be glad he’s so close. In the end.’

  ‘I hope so,’ Granny muttered. ‘Yes, I suppose some boats were burned a good while ago, it’s true.’

  Minny squeezed Raymond’s foot again, and he dropped a Yorkshire pudding crust on her hand.

  She had felt sensitive about eating much with a virtual stranger looking at her, but she managed the apple crumble and custard. ‘Mmm,’ Sel said appreciatively. ‘Doughy.’ It stuck to the roof of your mouth, but in a good way. Then the three of them got left in the kitchen to stack the dishwasher and make tea, while Nita gave Raymond his milk and Granny found the book of paper dolls she’d bought for Selena. She always had slightly old-fashioned things for Sel, which Sel adored.

  Minny was putting the ketchup away when she saw the guitar leaning against the wall, behind Franklin’s chair. ‘Is that yours?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What sort of stuff do you play?’

  ‘Oh, you know. Guitary stuff.’ They grinned at each other. ‘You play?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Yes, you do,’ Ash said.

  ‘I’m no good.’

  ‘What about you?’ he asked Aisling.

  Aisling had never got close to mastering an instrument. She didn’t have a great relationship with her fingers; her trainers were always Velcro-fastening, although she’d learned good enough knots recently to tie the bathroom light cord inextricably to the string that turned on the hot water. Which was no big deal in June, but meant they’d all be showering in the dark in winter. Minny felt generous right now though. ‘You sing, don’t you, Ash? She used to have lessons,’ she explained to Franklin.

  ‘Yeah? What do you sing?’ He dumped the meat pan by the sink.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Franklin swung his guitar out from behind the table. ‘What about some Guy Clark?’

  ‘Um. Did you know that he’s a luthier, which means that he makes guitars, only here it probably would be specific to lutes but in America they say it for guitar-makers.’

  ‘I did know that.’ He was picking the guitar. Minny couldn’t play like that, she only strummed. She knew the chords but couldn’t have put a name to the song. Aisling came in singing just at the right moment.

  ‘Pack up all your dishes

  Make note of all good wishes

  Say goodbye to the landlord for me …’

  ‘Son’ bitch has always bored me,’ Minny and Franklin both joined in. Ash sang that line as straight as all the others.

  She could really sing, Minny admitted to herself, listening. She’d got Nita’s voice. Silver. You didn’t hear it very often; when you did it was something stupid and annoying she was only singing because she was stressed out. The song filled up the kitchen. Minny watched Ash singing, then she watched Franklin playing. Though she couldn’t see his face much because he leaned over the guitar and his hair flopped down.

  The door was ajar and at the end Nita pushed it fully open. She had Raymond in her arms. ‘Wow, that was beautiful,’ she said. Franklin looked shy as anything and put the guitar down. ‘Ash, I didn’t know you knew that song.’ Ridiculous, as if she didn’t play it all the time and as if Aisling didn’t remember everything. ‘How do you know it, Franklin?’

  ‘I like Guy Clark.’

  ‘Me too. That was really pretty. Minny plays too.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’r />
  ‘Well, you used to. You should come round sometime,’ she said to Franklin. ‘And bring that when you do.’

  ‘OK,’ he mumbled.

  ‘We’ve got to go now, sweetpeas. I promised Babi I’d have the car back by half six, she’s going out somewhere. Good luck with school tomorrow, Franklin. I hope it goes well.’

  It took them a few minutes to drag Selena out. Granny didn’t look very cheerful. ‘If you ever want to talk,’ she whispered in Minny’s ear when she was squeezing her goodbye, ‘about your stupid father, I’m on the end of the phone or I’m nearly always here.’

  ‘I’m fine, Granny.’

  ‘Of course you are. Why wouldn’t you be? Haven’t you all got each other? I cannot believe it though –’ she took hold of Minny’s face – ‘how much you look like him.’

  Minny didn’t say anything.

  ‘However little he did to deserve you. Bye then, lovey.’

  ‘You know we should get Franklin round to ours for dinner or something,’ Nita said as she started the car. ‘It must be terribly lonely for him, and a bit intense for them both – I mean, your granny’s lived on her own for nearly ten years. And we could feed him some proper food.’

  ‘I like Granny’s cooking,’ Selena protested.

  ‘I know you do, darling. And it’s certainly … hearty. I nearly died when you said the crumble was doughy.’

  ‘Why? I meant it as a compliment.’

  ‘Of course you did.’ She steered out of the street onto the main road. ‘The crazy thing is I think that’s how she took it.’

  On Mondays Minny had to pick Selena up from school. It was on the way home, although it was a pain having to show you weren’t a dodgy old man at the reception desk, negotiate a sea of small overtired children and then not go nuts with Selena while she diddled around changing her shoes and trying to find her lunch box.

  That particular Monday was dull. She didn’t catch a glimpse of Franklin all day. Most of her friends, including Penny, were off on a geography field trip, so Minny was even more ready than usual to leave at three fifteen. Ash was waiting by the gates. ‘Can I go home with you?’

  ‘If you want, but I’ve got to get Sel from school.’

  ‘Can I come?’

  They didn’t talk much on the way, or rather Aisling rambled about the Louvin Brothers and Minny daydreamed – it was a sort of steamy day and she was tired – and when they got to St Francis and stepped inside it was like going back to the womb. The place was like all primary schools, apparently made out of plastic glass and by the end of the day it always smelled of Marmite. They met the deputy head, who had taught them both when they were there. She was thrilled to see Ash. Aisling had been famous at primary school. When Minny was little and had just started school, they would walk home with their mother and sometimes bump into kids from Raleigh coming the other way and they always seemed to say hi to Aisling. Of course they had been like giants at the time, though they couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve because they must have only just left primary school themselves. Nita would ask Ash who they were and she never had any idea. Everyone knew who Aisling was, teachers, kids and parents – partly because of what she couldn’t do, like playing normally, but a lot because of the funny things she came out with – like saying, ‘Hello, trouble,’ to the headteacher in the mornings. Then there were the things she could do. She’d been able to read perfectly years before she started school, and in Reception to stave off boredom she used to write out little stories in the Greek alphabet. Minny had been a bit of a disappointment to the teachers. Then when she did learn to read and got quite good at stuff, no one much noticed. She’d missed her window.

  It was funny, in a way, when you thought about it, that Ash had been far more of an oddball in terms of her actual behaviour at primary school than she was now – really uncontrolled tics and shrieks, and meltdowns, and inappropriate squeezing of the other kids and dreaminess and singing. And yet people hadn’t minded really. No one picked on her; most people were fond of her if anything, even the kids in her own class. Minny herself had got the rough end of the stick because, unlike Ash then, she was embarrassable. She used to sit in her classroom and they’d all hear Aisling go past outside singing some made-up version of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’, and her whole class would laugh. But now, when Aisling mostly managed to sit on that kind of thing in school – she kept the odd noises for when school finished, as best she could – people treated her like poison. As far as Minny knew she didn’t have any friends at all. And it started as soon as secondary did. In fact their school now wasn’t even as bad as the private one they’d tried first for Ash – where no one ever spoke to her, literally, for more or less the whole year she was there. No one spoke to her. At their school now she got picked on a certain amount, but she’d learned to take precautions and stay with a crowd, so unless the crowd really went nuts, which of course was possible, she was safe, if not happy.

  They found Selena and most of her stuff in the end, although she’d lost all her hair bobbles and her sun hat, and managed to struggle out of the back gate, which was the quickest way home. There were parents standing around gassing still, and Minny was rummaging in her pockets to see if she could find the money her mother had given her to get ice lollies on the way home, which was why she didn’t notice the man who was leaning on the wall opposite the school and looking all clammy and pale.

  ‘There’s Daddy,’ Selena said. It wasn’t a shout or anything; it sounded more as if she might be sick.

  ‘It’s Des,’ Aisling whispered. Before Minny even had a chance to look up or around, because the street was reeling, there was a man crossing the road towards them. And it was him, they were right. His hair was different – he used to have a big mop of it and now it was cut short, in a way that looked expensive as if he was playing a rich man in a soap opera. It was more silver than Minny remembered. He looked thinner too. Or something.

  It was bad, because none of them knew what to do, including him – or especially him, Minny supposed – and the moment lasted so long she started thinking about it. Sometimes she thought she knew what it must be like to be Aisling and have no instincts about how to deal with other people, so that you had to consider every move and know you were probably going to get it wrong. They just stood in a row, looking. Which must have been difficult for him, because he couldn’t look back at all three of them at once.

  Luckily Selena was young enough and sappy enough just to start bawling. She said, ‘Daddy!’ and threw herself at him.

  ‘Hey, hey,’ he said, and swept her up. Her rucksack flew over her head and bumped him in the face. He didn’t put her down. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said, looking at them and sounding like he was going to cry. ‘You’re so grown-up.’

  Minny felt herself flush. If she did have to see him, she might have liked to change first, and not have her sweaty hair all jumping up around her face the way it was. She’d already been worrying about meeting Franklin, or anyone, on the way home looking like she did and this was miles worse. She hadn’t seen her dad since she was eleven. She felt like asking him what he expected – English time to freeze just because he sodded off to a different continent? He was still holding Selena but he put one arm out towards Minny and Aisling – they both cringed away. Eventually he put Sel down but kept hold of her hand, and kissed them both on the cheek. Minny’s head was burning. Ash was white except for her ears, which always went fluorescent when she was under stress.

  ‘I’ve missed you so much,’ he said, still in his teary voice. Minny supposed he had to lead with that. She scuffed her toes on the gravel and noticed that there was a woman on the other side of the road, where he had been, watching. ‘I suppose you’re wondering what I’m doing here. I know you weren’t all dying to see me, but I couldn’t keep away any longer – I mean, not when I was actually here – I was at my mother’s house for lunch, and then I just had to call round …’

  ‘Does Mum know you’re here?’
Minny asked.

  ‘No. Well, she may do by now. She wasn’t at home.’ He smiled. ‘Your babička shut the door in my face. But I thought Nita would be picking up Selena from school, and when I didn’t see her going in I couldn’t bear not to wait around on the chance of seeing you.’ He ruffled Sel’s hair. ‘I didn’t realise I’d get all three of you at once.’

  ‘Right,’ Minny said, and gazed over his shoulder at the woman across the street.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, in a fake bumbling-Irish way, ‘I haven’t introduced you. Girls, my darlings, this is Harriet.’ She crossed the road like she’d been poised on a spring. ‘She’s dying to meet you.’

  ‘I’ve heard so much about you both,’ she said, with a big wide gappy grin. ‘About you all. You look so much more grown-up than your photographs.’ She wasn’t exactly jolly hockey sticks like Minny had been picturing, but she wasn’t exactly not; and she was bigger than Nita, for instance, though not fat. She looked strong, and had a lot of wild curly dark hair. She could have been a sixth-former.

  ‘You weren’t meant to be here today,’ Aisling said. It was the first time she had spoken. Her father looked crushed.

  ‘I know. Your mother said you weren’t ready to see me yet. But I was in London!’ He laughed, as if he knew they couldn’t resist his charm. ‘Obviously there are things we need to talk about, that you probably want to say. You must be … furious with me.’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Selena, who was still clinging to his hand.

  ‘Well, you’ve got every right to be. And confused, and hurt, and anything else too. But for you to be able to say it, I need to be here, you know. You wouldn’t even talk to me on the phone.’

  ‘Are you coming back to the house with us?’ Minny asked.

  ‘Yes. If that’s OK with you.’