Lifesaving for Beginners

by Ciara Geraghty

  If Mam was here, she’d say, ‘Mind your manners,’ and Adrian would say, ‘I’m eighteen, Ma,’ and she’d say, ‘You’re never too old for a clip round the ear,’ even though she never gave anyone a clip round the ear. She just said you were never too old for one.

  I say, ‘I don’t need anyone to bring me to bed. I’m not a little kid.’

  Adrian grins and puts up his fists like a boxer, which means that he wants to mess fight me but I’m not in the mood for a mess fight. I know that’s weird but I’m not.

  I walk past Faith, who is sitting on the floor in the hall. She doesn’t notice me when I walk past. She must be gripping the phone really hard cos her knuckles are dead white. It’s dark at the top of the stairs but when I flick the light switch, nothing happens. Someone needs to put in a new bulb. I can’t do it. I can’t reach. I sit on the top step.

  Faith says, ‘Why did you never tell me?’ She’s not crying any more. She sounds mad now, like the time I went to the Funky Banana after school without telling her. I love the smell of the café. It smells like coffee beans and banana and peanut-butter muffins. I always used to go there after school. I just forgot that day. I forgot I wasn’t supposed to go there anymore.

  She sounds like that now. Really mad. ‘Last week. Sunday. I was looking for her grandmother’s rosary beads. I found the papers in the bloody attic.’

  She doesn’t say anything for a while so I suppose Dad must be talking. Probably saying, ‘How’s tricks?’ and, ‘What are you up to?’ and, ‘How’s school?’ Faith doesn’t even go to school anymore. She goes to music college. She started there two years ago, after she was finished travelling round the world. And she’s in a band. Damo said, ‘So?’ when I told him that but I could tell he was impressed.

  ‘No, no, that’s bullshit,’ says Faith. ‘You could have told me. I mean, Jason Bond was adopted and everyone knew about that. I came home from school and told you all about it. You could have told me then. Why didn’t you tell me then?’

  Another silence. I put my thumb in my mouth. I’m not supposed to do that anymore. Mam brought me to Legoland after I gave up.

  ‘I remember Mam being pregnant with Ant and Adrian and Milo. So it was just me, right? I’m the only one. Why?’

  Jessica in year seven in my school is adopted. When I was a little kid, I used to think babies came out of their mam’s bellybutton. How stupid is that?

  ‘In an orphanage? Jesus, what? Did you pick me out of a line of cots? Was I the cutest baby there? Christ almighty, Dad, you should have told me. I had a right to know.’

  Another silence. I lean my head against the railings and close my eyes. It’s weird how tired you can get, doing nothing.

  ‘So let me get this straight. You thought you couldn’t have kids so you adopted me. And then, BAM! Along comes Ant, Adrian and Milo, and you decide maybe you’d better not tell me cos I might feel a bit . . . what? Left out? Jesus!’

  Another silence so I guess Dad is saying something about Faith feeling left out or not feeling left out. Something like that.

  ‘So where does that leave me, then? You know nothing about where I come from and I’m here in Brighton, looking after a nine-year-old boy, studying, doing the odd shift at the café when Jack needs time off. While you’re swanning round Edinburgh with that slip of a girl, talking about colours for the bloody nursery.’

  Ant comes into the hall and sees me at the top of the stairs. He nods towards me and Faith turns round, and that’s when she sees me and she says, ‘Christ,’ and then she hangs up.

  She looks at me again. ‘What are you doing, Milo? I told you to go to bed.’

  I say, ‘We need a new light bulb.’ I know I’m too old to be afraid of the dark. I’m not afraid of the dark, exactly. I’m just not mad about it, y’know?

  Faith sighs and says nothing. Ant goes and gets a new bulb. He walks up the stairs and goes into Mam’s room so he can get the stool. She keeps her library books on the stool. The ones she’s read. So she won’t have to go looking for them when it’s time to take them back. Ant lifts the books off the stool. Someone should have taken them back ages ago. The fine is going to be gigantic.

  When Ant has finished putting the bulb in, he puts the stool back and puts the library books on the stool again. Then he walks over to me and holds out his hand. I take it and he pulls me up and then he ducks down and puts me across his back like a sack of potatoes.

  I don’t laugh.

  Or try to get down.

  I just let him.

  I don’t know why.

  I think it’s because I’m tired.

  Ed says, ‘It’s your turn, Kat.’

  I say, ‘No, it’s your turn.’

  ‘I made it the last time.’

  ‘Yes, but I made the hot chocolates, remember?’

  ‘Yes, but I’m your guest.’

  ‘Fine.’ I drag myself off the couch and haul myself to the kitchen to put more popcorn in the microwave.

  It’s Saturday night. Another bloody Saturday night. Luckily, Sophie – his on-again-off-again girlfriend – has gone to visit her granny in Cork so Ed is free. Mum is at some writing thing and Dad is working late at the lab so Ed is staying over. I’m glad. The apartment is so quiet now. Living with Thomas was like living with a large group of people, in terms of noise and mess.

  Mum rings, which is unusual. I say, ‘Everything all right?’

  She says, ‘I did ask you to look after Edward, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, of course you did. He’s here. He’s fine.’

  ‘Oh good. Sorry, Katherine, I . . . I got a bit distracted and I couldn’t quite remember if . . .’

  ‘It’s all right. Don’t worry.’

  ‘Good. Thank you.’

  I say, ‘How’s the symposium going?’

  She says, ‘It’s a writing retreat.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry.’

  ‘Did you hear from your father?’

  ‘He’s still at work. I invited him over for takeaway, but you know him, he likes being in the lab when it’s quiet.’

  She says, ‘Good. That’s good.’ If I asked her to repeat what I’d just said, she wouldn’t be able to. She’s retreated. I can hear it in her voice.

  Ed and I have assumed what I like to call ‘the Position’. I’ve never liked going out on a Saturday night. If I have to go out, I do it on a weeknight, when there’s no crush. No queues. Less noise. Fewer people.

  The Position is horizontal. You need a couch and a remote control that you can reach without having to move. You need sustenance, for example dark chocolate and red wine. You need Box Sets. Tonight, it’s Planet Earth. Once you have these props, you’re pretty much good to go.

  We’re watching a penguin huddle when the intercom buzzes, which is odd. This is not the kind of place where people arrive at the door and say things like ‘I was in the neighbourhood’. I check my phone. No messages.

  Ed says, ‘It might be Thomas, Kat. Thomas might be at the door.’ I’ve told Ed about me and Thomas. I’ve told him loads of times. He keeps saying we’ll make up. Like him and Sophie.

  There’s no point looking out of the window because you can’t see the gates from the top floor. I pick up the intercom phone.

  I say, ‘Who is it?’ in the voice I reserve for door-to-door salesmen and scientologists.

  For a moment, I think Ed’s right. I think it’s Thomas. This has been happening a bit recently. I think I see him. Or hear him. When I’m in the supermarket or at the pick ’n’ mix in the foyer of the cinema, I think I see him out of the corner of my eye. But when I turn round, it’s someone else. Or nobody at all. Just a shadow. A figment of my imagination.

  ‘Who’s there?’ All I can hear is the crackle of some static on the line. I hang up. There have been some phone calls like that lately. When I answer, no one’s there.

  Ed is behind me, biting his nails. I paste a smile on my face and say, ‘It’s probably just kids messing.’

  Ed says, ‘It could be burg
lars.’

  ‘It’s not burglars. They don’t buzz the apartment before they break in, generally.’

  ‘I wish Thomas was here.’

  ‘I told you, Ed. Thomas isn’t going to be here anymore. Remember?’

  ‘I wouldn’t feel scared if Thomas was here.’

  I didn’t introduce Thomas to Ed for ages. I hate the way some people talk slower when they’re talking to Ed. Or louder. Or they just talk about stuff that they’d never usually talk about. Boring stuff. I hate that. When they finally met, it was by accident, really. It was St Stephen’s Day and Ed and I were in the Position on my couch.

  Ed said, ‘It’s your turn, Kat.’

  I said, ‘No, it’s your turn.’

  ‘I made them the last time.’

  ‘Yes but I made the hot chocolates, remember?’

  ‘Yes, but I’m your guest.’

  ‘Fine.’ I dragged myself off the couch and hauled myself to the kitchen to make another platter of turkey-and-stuffing-and-cranberry-sauce sandwiches.

  That’s when the intercom buzzed, which was strange because I wasn’t expecting anyone. I checked my phone. No messages. I picked up the intercom. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s me.’ I recognised the accent immediately. Riddled with Monaghan. The voice itself, halting and low and reminiscent of Wispa bars.

  I said, ‘I wasn’t expecting you,’ my tone sharp. See what he made of that.

  Thomas said, ‘I know.’ Unperturbed by my sharp tone.

  I said, ‘Well?’ I hated the way I sucked in my belly and ran my fingers through the briars in my hair.

  ‘Are you going to let me in?’

  ‘I . . . I wasn’t expecting you.’

  ‘You already said that.’

  ‘But it’s true.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I’m just saying.’

  ‘Are you going to let me in?’

  Perhaps that was the moment it all began to unravel. Because I did. I let Thomas Cunningham in.

  I pressed the door release. I had sixty seconds. That’s how long it would take him to call the lift, exchange pleasantries with every single person he met and arrive at the top floor.

  Not enough time to do anything with my hair so I just gathered it up in my hands and twisted it round and round and pierced it with a pencil until it sort of looked a bit like a bun.

  Forty-five seconds.

  Not enough time to wash myself but just enough time to tear off the tracksuit bottoms and T-shirt with the cranberry-sauce stain on the front of it and throw them into the laundry basket. I rubbed deodorant under my arms and checked my legs. Stubble. No way he was staying over. I squeezed into jeans and reefed a top over my head, one that very charitably hid my bum, my stomach and a good bit of thigh.

  Thirty seconds.

  Not enough time for foundation. I made do with lipstick and a quick flick of the blusher brush round my face. Thomas had never seen me without make-up and Christmas was definitely not the time to reveal myself. People aren’t themselves at Christmas.

  Six seconds. I glanced in the mirror. Long black hair, trapped in a makeshift bun with bits already falling out of it. White face, in spite of my heavy hand with the blusher brush. Green eyes, strained from all the telly watching. Not great but – with three seconds left – it was the best I could do.

  I positioned myself beside the door. Exhaled. I couldn’t believe it had come to this.

  I opened the door of my apartment and there he was. As always, the hallway seemed to narrow, the ceiling lowered, the walls contracted. From habit, he bent his head when he walked through the door. Years of smacking your forehead on architraves will do that to a man.

  In the end, there was no need to worry about Thomas meeting Ed. I probably should have known that.

  Thomas said, ‘You must be Ed,’ when he strode into the living room.

  Ed stood up and brushed turkey-and-stuffing-and-cranberry-sauce sandwich crumbs off his trousers. He said, ‘Are you Kat’s boyfriend?’

  Thomas said, ‘Kat’s too old to have a boyfriend.’

  Ed said, ‘She’s not that old. She’s only thirty-eight.’

  I said, ‘Ed!’ Thomas and I hadn’t discussed our ages. Well, OK, he’d told me he was forty-five but my age hadn’t come up. Well, maybe it came up once and I might have said I was thirty-five or something like that. I can’t remember every little detail, can I?

  Thomas looked at the telly and said, ‘That’s Miracle on 34th Street, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it? I’m not sure . . . we haven’t really been . . .’ When Ed took it out of his overnight bag I had presumed it was one of those films I’d hate.

  Thomas said, ‘I love that film.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Do you mind if I stay and watch it with ye?’

  ‘Well, I suppose . . .’

  ‘And are there any of those lovely-looking sandwiches going a-beggin’?’

  In the end, we managed to fit on the couch, all three of us. We ate the mince pies that Thomas had brought. ‘The mammy made them,’ he said after Ed gave them – an over-generous, I felt – eleven out of ten. I was sandwiched between them. They talked across me. They talked about football; they both supported Chelsea. They talked about films; Thomas admitted to a passionate interest in all things vampire, which Ed approved of. They talked about their jobs; Ed explained how he made the perfect scrambled eggs in the café where he worked while Thomas countered with a step-by-step account of the best way to milk a goat.

  I felt a couple of things. A bit drowsy, from the overeating and the heat of being sandwiched between them. Perhaps a little tired. There may have been some shame. That I ever thought that Thomas would treat Ed differently instead of with his usual gruff charm and curiosity. He was never afraid of Ed’s disability. He just accepted it, like he accepted most things, even me.

  Later, when Ed went to bed, I sat beside Thomas on the couch and, without really planning it, I kissed him. If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. I went all out then and wrapped his arm round me and tucked my head under the massive awning of his shoulder.

  After a while, he said, ‘You’d better be mighty careful, Katherine Kavanagh.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I think you’re falling for me.’ His tone was matter-of-fact, his eyes trained on the telly.

  I said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  He said, ‘It’s worse than I thought.’

  ‘What could be worse than that, you dirty-looking eejit?’

  He said, ‘You love me.’ His voice was dead-pan. He might have been talking about the weather. It was infuriating.

  ‘You’re deluded.’

  ‘I’m right.’

  Despite myself, I was curious. He sounded so . . . certain.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Let’s just suppose – just for a moment – that you’re correct. What would it mean? Hypothetically, I mean.’

  He smiled. Ran his fingers down his face. They made a scratchy sound across his stubble. He said, ‘I would have to admit to harbouring similar feelings.’

  ‘Harbouring?’

  ‘Harbouring.’

  I let that sink in for a while. It felt . . . well, nice, I suppose. Warm and sort of touching, if you’re into that kind of thing.

  ‘But would anything change?’

  ‘No.’ And the strange thing was, I believed him. I did. For a while, anyway. I allowed myself to be lulled by his confidence. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, in spite of the fact that there were things about me that Thomas did not know and never would.

  I believed him.

  That’s where I went wrong.

  Now I put my arm round Ed’s shoulders. I say, ‘There’s nothing to be scared of, Ed. Besides, I’m here. We managed before, didn’t we? When it was just us?’

  Ed nods but a shadow of uncertainty falls across his face. This is what happens when you throw caution to the wind. It’s not as easy as you’d think to get back to the way things were. B
efore.

  Faith takes me with her because Mrs Barber is in the hospital again. I think it’s her other hip this time. I don’t mind. I don’t like going to Mrs Barber’s house after school. It looks the same as our house but it smells funny. Like the cloakroom in school after it’s been raining. And she makes me eat gingerbread men with Smarties stuck on them. Like I’m a little kid. And cups of tea. Even though I don’t drink tea. She still makes tea. She never remembers.

  I’m sorry about Mrs Barber’s other hip but at least I don’t have to go to school. Damo doesn’t think it’s fair that I’m going to London on a school day. ‘You could go to school and then come home with me afterwards,’ he says. Damo is lucky. He has his own key to the front door. And his mam works in the factory where they make the biscuits with the chocolate on the top. There’re always bags of biscuits in Damo’s house. Some of them are broken but they taste just as nice. I don’t tell Damo that I’m not allowed to go to his house anymore when his mam or his big sister, Imelda, aren’t there.

  Me and Faith are on the bus. It takes a long time. I like sitting on the top deck, right at the front. Faith says it makes her feel sick but she comes up with me anyway. She sits beside me, texting. Probably Rob. He plays the guitar in the band and he has long hair. Damo says that Rob thinks he’s so cool, but Rob has shown me how to play a G on the guitar and he says he’ll show me a C next time. He says once you know G, C and D, you can be a guitar player in a band. I don’t want to be a guitar player in a band, on account of the lifesaving. But maybe I could play in a band on my day off. Rob is left-handed like me, so his guitar is easier for me to play. It’s still hard, though. Playing the G. It hurts the tips of my fingers.

  I say, ‘Are you texting Rob?’

  Faith says, ‘Mind your beeswax.’

  She puts loads of XXXXXs at the end of the text. They’re mad about kissing, Rob and Faith. I don’t know how they can breathe when they kiss for that long. French-kissing is when you put your tongue in and lick the other person’s teeth. Damo says he French-kissed Cathy in our class. Cathy has braces. Sometimes bits of her sandwich get caught in the wires. I don’t think you could French-kiss someone who has braces on their teeth.