by Fiona Neill
While I’m waiting for the alarm to go off I decide to distract myself by checking out the cupboard on the left of the fireplace where we used to store our clothes. Yoga mats in pastel colours fill the lower shelves but those above waist level are stacked with boxes containing our old toys and books. All our childhood holiday memories are bundled into this cupboard. I decide to do a forensic inventory of the contents – in case there’s something I want to take back to London with me – and start removing boxes and lining them up on the floor.
I find Max’s dinosaur figures; my entire collection of Sylvanian badgers; a box of books by Dr Seuss that Max and I read obsessively; and even the containers with the dead ladybirds from last time we were here. I pull out Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?, smiling as I remember how I used to make Max copy out the words of this story, over and over again, and the expression of nervous intent on his face as he desperately tried to get it right. He always pressed so hard with his pencil that he broke the lead. I skim-read the story again and it occurs to me that the Hawtch-Hawtcher watching the Watch-Watcher watching the bee probably has OCD. I recall other childhood preoccupations: the way I couldn’t get into bed until I had flattened the sheets; how I forced Mum to say ‘I love you as wide as the biggest ocean and as tall as the tallest tree’ before I went to sleep; and how I had to have three cuddly toys in bed with me at all times. I have always been a worrywart. This is a breakthrough, but I don’t have time to process its ramifications because someone bursts through the door without knocking.
‘Small!’
I jump and the book slips through my fingers. It’s years since anyone has called me that. Rex strides towards me open-armed, dressed in an oversized stripy hand-knitted jumper and threadbare jeans. I stand up to greet him but he stops in his tracks.
‘Fish in a tree,’ he says in mock alarm, using a phrase poached from Dr Seuss. ‘You’re the same height as me.’ He has filled out so he properly inhabits his once rangy body and his curly hair is thicker and wilder than ever, but he’s unmistakably Rex. ‘It would be difficult to do a crocodile roll with you now.’
I’m surprised he remembers. That summer seems like ancient history. We meet in the middle of the room and hug clumsily. I quickly disentangle and step backwards a couple of paces.
‘Do you speak?’ he asks.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘It’s been almost eight years.’
‘Since you last spoke?’ he teases. ‘I’ve never had that effect on a girl. I’ll take it as a compliment.’
The heat rises in my face and I feel like the shy girl who used to do exercises to get rid of my fat knees and stomach wrinkles in the hope that Rex would notice me. I even find myself sucking in my tummy.
He smiles, as if he understands everything, but of course he knows nothing.
‘How was your journey?’ I ask, fumbling for a question that gives me more time to scan his face. It’s disconcertingly familiar, apart from a long scar across the top of his left cheekbone. I try not to stare but then worry that I’ve spent too much time looking at his lips, which are the same shape as his mother’s, reminding me of what I saw in the dunes, so I look away. I try to imagine what Max would say. He always has a good selection of facts to fill a vacuum.
‘It involved a boat, four different trains and a bus. It would have taken me less time to go and see Ava in the States.’
‘Boat?’
‘Ferry, to be precise. I’m living on an island off the coast of Scotland trying to work out what to do with my life. It’s a longer project than anticipated. I’ve already been there for three years and there hasn’t been much progress.’ He gives a quick smile.
He’s much less sure of himself than I remember. But I can’t work out if that’s because his dreams have shrunk or because I’m less in awe of him.
‘What do you do?’
‘During the day I’m a part-time tree surgeon who suffers from vertigo, and in the evening I work in a local pub – even though I don’t drink. Not after what happened to Dad.’
‘That’s a lot of contradictions.’
‘They say it’s best to confront your fears.’
‘They do.’ My responses are getting more and more inadequate.
‘That’s why we’re all here, isn’t it?’ He gives a wicked grin.
‘I guess,’ I reply, although I hadn’t thought of it this way and can’t tell if he’s being serious. It was always difficult to tell when Rex was joking.
‘Aren’t you going to ask what happened?’ He reaches out for my hand and presses my fingertips to the scar on his cheekbone.
I run my index finger along its outer edge and it feels cold and gristly like bacon rind. ‘How many stitches?’
‘Nine.’
Good number. The alarm goes off on my phone. The fifteen minutes are up. I pull away from him and walk over to the bed to turn it off.
‘Sorry.’ I apologize.
‘You still say sorry too much, Small. But I find your consistency reassuring.’
I realize that a quarter of an hour has passed without me even thinking about whether I need to thump my shoulders, tap my feet or check the curtains (except I would have to adjust that part of the routine because Lisa has replaced them with a blind). Rex is at my side. I see him eyeing the papers on the bed and I sit down on the futon to gather them up. I don’t want to talk to him about what happened to me. It’s not that I don’t want him to know, it’s more that I’m relishing this small break from the thoughts.
‘So why do you think they’re getting married after all this time, Small?’ Rex asks as he sits down beside me.
The bed is so low and his legs so long that his knees and head are on the same latitude. There’s a pinch of bitterness in his tone. He obviously has no idea that his mother is ill, which makes me feel bad that I do.
‘They don’t exactly epitomize the running brook, singing their melody to the night, do they? They’re pretty tense.’
‘What’s with the poetry?’
‘It’s a quote from the reading we’re meant to be doing,’ he says.
‘I haven’t looked at it.’
‘Me neither.’
‘And what’s with the pigmy hippy and the endless juicing? Mum looks so gaunt.’
He doesn’t wait for an answer. I remember how he always liked to range across subjects, hurtling from one idea to the next before returning to the beginning.
‘I wasn’t going to come. I’m only here because I wanted to see you and Max. I’ve missed you guys. Sometimes I think that holiday in Norfolk was the last time I felt truly free. Ava’s like Mum, she specializes in reinvention. But I was never any good at new beginnings. I almost drowned in all the endings. Although at least it wasn’t at the bottom of a bottle of whisky, like Dad.’ He stares at his feet as he speaks and hooks his arms around his knees.
‘There was too much bad history,’ I say.
‘Not between us.’
Either he’s forgotten or he doesn’t comprehend what he did to me when he didn’t turn up that day. I can’t work out if he’s being provocative or emollient, or simply never realized how painful it was to feel so abandoned by him.
‘You and Ava disappeared into thin air.’
‘After we moved to Haggerston I never went back to school. Someone had to be with Dad all the time. Even when I popped out to buy milk, I didn’t know what I was going to find when I got home.’
‘That must have been so scary.’
‘Off the scale. Eventually he got sober, but it stays with you. Now it’s not so much the fear that he’ll relapse, more that I could end up like him.’
‘We’re not condemned to repeat the mistakes of our parents,’ I smile.
‘Let’s drink to that.’ He raises an imaginary glass in the air and laughs, but it catches in his throat.
I look at him in the mirror. His eyes have a faraway look. It feels shameful to tell him that I probably understand his anxiety better than anyone when his fears were grounded in realit
y, while mine are make-believe, like scary fairy tales you tell children to get them to behave. One of the worst things about OCD is its irrational toddler logic.
He keeps talking.
‘One time I went into the sitting room and found him lying on the sofa in a pool of blood. His eyes were open and he was staring at the television. It was Jools Holland, and The Divine Comedy were playing. Blood was pouring out of his nose like a geyser. I tried to sit him up but he pushed me away and I fell sideways on to the glass coffee table.’ He strokes the scar on his cheek. ‘I held him until the ambulance came. I got it into my head that if I let go he’d die. I couldn’t find the television controls and the music was playing really loud. My blood soaked into his T-shirt, and his into mine, until you couldn’t tell who was hurt. Dad can’t remember any of it. Nothing.’ He shrugs.
I put my arm around him and he leans into me. His wool jumper scratches my arm. We sit there in complete silence, like survivors of a natural disaster. I’ve never felt so close to anyone in my entire life. Not even Max.
‘Where was Ava?’
‘On a school trip. I tried to protect her from the worst. We didn’t tell anyone how bad it all was in case they took Dad away from us. That was my biggest fear. He’d lost everything else by that point, so it would have killed him if we’d gone to live with Mum and your dad.’
‘At least you did the right thing.’
‘I did the right thing for Dad, but maybe it wasn’t the right thing for me. But one thing I’ve learnt is that life isn’t about doing the right thing. It’s about not doing the wrong thing.’
He rests his head on his knees as if it is too heavy to hold up. His left hand sits on the bed beside me. I touch it with my finger. It feels dry and calloused like a rocky outcrop.
‘Tree surgeon’s hands,’ he explains.
I leave my hand on top of his and remember how I used to write his name in tiny letters in my homework diary, and stalk him on Facebook, and try to invent sentences in essays where the first three words began with the letters of his name. And even though I would like to stay like this forever, because the sense of connection is so intense, I realize this is more likely the goodbye that we were denied before.
‘Shall we go and join the freak show down in the kitchen?’ Rex suggests when he eventually lifts his head.
This makes me laugh because it’s so true. We’re a motley crew. Apart from our dysfunctional family, and crazy Gregorio, there’s a couple I have never met before called Rowena and Hamish. I felt an immediate bond with Hamish, because I can tell from the way he can’t sit still and paces up and down the kitchen that he’s a fellow worrier. I even saw what Geeta used to call ‘the patron saint of panic attacks’ – a brown paper bag – in his jacket pocket.
‘I can only do short bursts,’ I warn.
‘Me too. Although I’ve finally found something in common with your dad,’ Rex says as we go down the stairs.
The old stair carpet in different shades of mud has disappeared and instead there are painted floorboards, which act as a tannoy, announcing everyone’s comings and goings.
He lowers his voice. ‘I think I want to kill Gregorio.’
‘For a spiritual healer he inspires a lot of hatred,’ I giggle.
‘Ava thinks he’s great but I think he’s full of shit,’ whispers Rex.
‘He can’t be full of shit after all those enemas,’ I say.
‘I have learnt one thing from him,’ says Rex.
I cock my head quizzically as we push open the kitchen door.
‘I would say, as a good rule of thumb, it’s best not to offer someone an enema within the first fifteen minutes of meeting them.’
‘What do you think is an acceptable amount of time?’ I ask.
‘Forty-five years?’ Rex suggests.
I quickly divide the number by three, but there’s no emotion attached to the calculation, even when the result is one of my favourite numbers. It’s more like remembering an old friend. Giggling with Rex, like the person I used to be, I head into the kitchen and see Ava for the first time. I remember how still she was when she was taken away from school in the ambulance and wonder if she is thinking the same thing – except of course she can’t be, because she was unconscious at the time.
She stands cool and poised. She’s wearing a denim miniskirt and crop top but even though she looks like a waitress, and I’m wearing a new dress, she still manages to make me feel immediately frumpy.
I’m embarrassed rather than nervous to see her, because my life has stood so still while hers has expanded so much that she’s moved to the States where she has a job working for a music production company and a live-in boyfriend who apparently looks like Kurt Cobain. At least this is what Dad said. I have no idea what Kurt Cobain looks like. She is gracious, with a haughty manner that could be construed as patronizing.
‘Daisy, how lovely to see you again.’ She kisses me on both cheeks in a friendly godmother doing her annual duty call kind of way. I want to remind her that before she unfriended me from her life we used to practise French kissing on peaches, share Facebook passwords and compete over who knew the most trivia about Justin Bieber.
‘I’m about to make tea, would you like one?’ I offer as I switch on the kettle.
‘Not after what happened last time I accepted a drink from you,’ jokes Ava.
I feel myself blush.
‘So what happened?’ asks Hamish in his nervy staccato voice from the opposite side of the kitchen table. He pulls at the gold trim of his velvet waistcoat with one hand while the other runs through his hair until it stands on end. ‘Would you like to share with the rest of us?’ He speaks like someone pickled in group therapy. He’s probably the oldest person here, but he has an unworldly innocence that makes it impossible to hold anything against him. Rowena slaps his hand to stop him from picking at the trimming but he immediately starts shredding the skin around his nails instead.
‘Just jokes, Daisy,’ says Ava, ignoring him.
This is the phrase she used when the headmaster got both of us in his office to try and get to the bottom of what had happened that evening. It’s an echo of our former life and for a moment the rest of the room recedes. I see Lisa at the end of the table, drinking juice, with Dad on one side and on the other, Gregorio, tiny and shrivelled like a walnut.
I turn my back on everyone to face the kitchen cupboards and switch on the kettle. I am once again the teenager who was abandoned in the park by people I wrongly assumed to be my friends. Although everyone made a fuss about the Facebook page they set up afterwards with pictures of me exploding from my Halloween costume, like a tomato bursting its skin, and the comments about my blubber, I have never felt more alone than that moment when I discovered that I was by myself in the wood. When I stepped out from behind the tree all I had left were the thoughts.
I wonder if Ava has told her boyfriend what she did. Dad always says that everyone re-constructs memories to favour themselves. I’ve even overheard him describing how he saved Lisa from a dysfunctional relationship with an aggressive alcoholic. I am pouring boiling water into the mug. It spills over the edge to form a small steaming pool on the kitchen worktop but my reactions are sluggish. Suddenly Dad is beside me. He prises the kettle out of my hand and, before I have a chance to resist, presses me to him like he used to when I was little. I remember how I used to put my feet on his to dance a slow waltz around the kitchen. As we cling to each other I hope that Dad and Lisa’s happiness outweighs the misery they caused the rest of us.
Max comes into the kitchen. There’s a wild, dark look in his eyes. Connie isn’t with him. He asks for painkillers.
‘Mum is strong and healthy and will live a long and happy life,’ Dad says, patting my back.
I understand he’s trying to be comforting but it’s weird hearing him recite my special words when he’s never done it before.
‘Can we get this show on the road, please?’ barks Max impatiently. ‘Connie’s not feeling gre
at.’
‘Come on, let’s do this, people,’ says Gregorio, getting up from the table and clapping his hands so all our attention turns to him.
Of course Gregorio has won the argument about where the actual ceremony should take place. After spending yesterday scouting for locations he declares the most auspicious setting to be the flat roof of the bunker in the dunes, which is so brilliant in its inappropriateness that I almost have begrudging respect for his flawed intuition. He mistakes the awed silence around the table for reverence and bows his head. I can’t understand how someone as rational as Dad has allowed this man to worm his way into his life.
‘I’m wondering if the garden might be better?’ Dad nervously intervenes. ‘It’s pretty cold out there. What do you think, Lisa? Perhaps beneath the magnolia we planted together?’
‘Actually, Mum planted that tree,’ Max growls.
‘Don’t throw shade on The Big Day, Maxi,’ says Ava. She feeds off tension like those fish on the ocean bed.
‘I think Gregorio knows what he’s doing,’ Lisa says smoothly, sealing the deal. That’s Lisa’s way.
‘The negative ions from the ocean will fill us with positive energy and the six sides of the pillbox represent enlightenment,’ says Gregorio enthusiastically. ‘And I’ve already built a sacred circle from shells. We won’t find anywhere with the same spiritual energy.’
I should show him the research paper that Geeta gave me, proving there’s no scientific evidence that some numbers are luckier than others, but he’s too busy explaining to Lisa how the sacred circle represents eternity. I’m slack-jawed at his capacity to promise immortality to a woman dying of cancer. It makes my warped logic about protecting Mum with my routines seem practically scientific by comparison. For a moment I almost feel sorry for Dad.
‘That’s perfect,’ says Lisa dreamily as she wafts away from the table. She wraps a pale-pink shawl around her long-sleeved cream wedding dress. With her pale skin and wilted gestures she resembles a beautiful faded rose. Dad reaches out to put his arm around her but she slides through his fingers. She’s so thin that the biggest risk on the beach is she might get blown away in the breeze.