Anna

by Amanda Prowse

  On days when Joe was relatively with it, he would shrug off the stinky sleeping bag in which he was permanently draped, ruffle her hair, light a cigarette and shuffle into the kitchen. A morning smell lingered on him no matter what the time of day – Anna much preferred it when his teeth had been cleaned and he had showered. With his bare feet sticking to the floor, eyes half closed and gripping the countertop for support, he would heat up a tin of soup and pour it into a mug for her. Anna would take the soup into her bedroom and sip at it from under the duvet, screwing her eyes shut and imagining she was hiding from her mum, who was humming a tune in the kitchen or chasing a spider across the lounge ceiling.

  On the bad days, Joe would lie immobile on the sagging sofa, letting out a strange half hum, half groan, his eyes flickering behind their lids, showing that he had heard but was unable to respond. Once or twice he didn’t acknowledge her at all and it was at these times that her fear threatened to suffocate her. With her heart beating in her throat, and picturing the large blue towel that she now kept under her bed, she’d creep into the dark room with its sour air smelling of all things adult and she’d slowly reach out her hand and cup it over his nose and mouth. Relief at feeling his breath against her palm was always sweet and instant. Moving slowly backwards, she would coo, just as her mum had done, ‘It’s okay, baby, go back to sleep...’ before closing the sitting-room door. Supper on those nights would be anything she could forage from the back of the cupboard: a couple of soft crackers, a handful of stale cereal, spoonfuls of cake mix and in one instance the hard sticks of spaghetti that she didn’t yet know how to cook.

  At least there was a hot school meal waiting for her each lunchtime and for this she was extremely grateful, wolfing it down under the snickering gaze of Natasha Collins, Tracy Fitchett and their crew. She’d overheard them commenting on her once-white blouse, now grey, and now they laughed at her urgency to get the food inside her.

  ‘Don’t worry, Anna, no one is going to take it away from you!’

  She looked up only briefly, with her loaded fork poised, noting their expressions of disgust.

  ‘Fucking weirdo!’

  It was strange how she felt only the vaguest flicker of shame, where once she’d have been overly concerned with fitting in. Now their taunts bounced off her. She was hungry and she was sad. That was it. The fact that she couldn’t join in with their high-pitched chats about Grange Hill and who they currently fancied was just not important. Anna’s needs were more immediate. She had lost her mum, and on top of this she carried the secrets of her home life. She was wise enough to know that if the truth about Joe came to the attention of the wrong person, her life might be further turned upside down. All that mattered was staying with Joe, keeping him close.

  Anna continued to adore her big brother and she soon learnt how to take care of the two of them. She managed to keep the kitchen in slightly better order and she found out how to boil spaghetti. This, with a squirt of tomato ketchup – both ingredients picked up from the Spar shop – kept their tums full on many a cold night.

  Joe occasionally went missing and those were the scariest times of all. She would lie there in the flat, alone and awake, too frightened to sleep, twitching at every sound that crept beneath the door or floated through the window. Even an immobile, unconscious Joe on the sofa was better than no Joe at all.

  Peeking her head into the sitting room after two days on her own, her stomach bunched in anger when her eyes fell on the gap where the TV used to live. Worse still was the bare mantelpiece, once chockfull of her mum’s favourite ornaments like the china robin perched on a gold-painted branch, and the ceramic red rose inside a glass cloche, which had been her mum’s small way of having a garden inside. She’d loved finding quirky little objects in charity shops, but now they were all gone. Joe had even sold the pictures on the walls; in their place sat sooty rectangles that seemed to taunt her. Saddest of all, though, was the sight of the shrivelled brown trunk of her once thriving lemon tree. For Anna this was too much: another beautiful, living thing now turned to dust.

  And then, not long after she turned thirteen, it happened. The very thing she’d been dreading most of all, the fear that had been gnawing at her ever since that most horrible of history lessons. In April 1981 Joe didn’t come home at all.

  *

  E... echoey.

  F... Father Patrick.

  G... God. God. God, help me! God, please help me. I’m scared and I miss my mum and my brother so much it hurts.

  H... hymn book.

  I... I... I don’t want to be here.

  J... Joe... Oh Joe! No! No! No! I can’t believe it. What am I going to do now? What am I going to do?

  Standing in the April sunshine, Anna folded her arms around her tiny chest, wrapped in the formal navy sailor dress she’d found at the back of her mum’s wardrobe. Hollow with grief and loneliness, she eyed the strangers who’d come to the service at St Stephen’s. A young woman with severe eye make-up was wailing loudly at the edge of the path. Anna noticed her shiny red T-bar shoes, at odds with the mood of the day; she liked the splash of colour they brought. The woman had very large top teeth that sat proud of her bottom lip. Beside her stood a man with an intricately fashioned beard and sunglasses. He was chewing gum. He pulled down his black leather cap, then patted the young woman’s back. The woman looked up, saw Anna and immediately came over, drawing her into a tight hug.

  ‘You’re Anna!’ she managed.

  Anna nodded from within the woman’s grasp.

  ‘Joe was...’ The woman paused and sniffed. ‘Joe was brilliant and I loved him.’

  Anna stepped backwards and looked into the stranger’s face. A stranger linked to her by their love for Joe. ‘Were you his girlfriend?’ she asked.

  The woman looked briefly in the direction of the man in the leather cap. ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Ruby!’ the leather-capped man called.

  R... Ruby Red Shoes...

  Ruby kissed Anna’s cheek and squeezed the top of her arm before returning to her friend. Anna felt an inexplicable desire to run over to her and stay with her. This stranger in red shoes had loved Joe! Ruby continued crying, more quietly now, and Anna watched as she rammed her knuckles into her mouth, trying to stifle her sadness.

  Anna’s own eyes were dry; her grief was too huge and too private to be shared with these people she didn’t know. But she wondered, not for the first time, if she should be making more noise. As her mum used to say: quiet with a busy head.

  She was surprised how few people were there for Joe. During the service she’d kept her eyes glued to the altar and she’d assumed that the sniffs and whispers from the pews behind her meant there was a large crowd. But now that they were all outside, she could see that there were about fifteen people at most. She didn’t know who they were, but she was glad they’d made the effort. Like Joe, most of them looked a bit down on their luck, a bit grimy, a bit broken. The fact that they had bothered meant a lot. She knew how hard it was for Joe to rouse himself on a bad day, and that Ruby and others had managed it sent a ripple of joy through the churn of her thirteen-year-old gut. She hoped Joe had known how much he was loved.

  Don’t be stupid, Anna, if he’d known how much he was loved, he wouldn’t have jumped.

  She took a deep breath and shook her head, desperate to erase the image that filled her mind.

  I’m sorry, Joe. I know it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have made you give me the music box! I hope you know that I’m sorry, and if I could go back to then...

  She glanced round at the random group of strangers, the last link to her big brother, and knew it was unlikely she’d ever see them again. This brought a new burst of sadness; its tendrils snaked around her gut and pushed deep into her bowels. Within minutes they would all disperse and she would be on her way up the motorway to a city far, far away, one she could only just pinpoint on a map. Her new home.

  Home... It would never be home, just a place to rest her head until... U
ntil what? It was too much to think about.

  ‘Are we all set then?’

  The question, which came from Aunt Lizzie, caught her off guard. It was only the fourth or fifth sentence her aunt had ever spoken to her directly. She remembered her at her mum’s funeral, remembered Joe pointing her out, skulking near the back with a lace handkerchief pressed to her face, seemingly reluctant to engage with them further. Now, as then, disapproval came off her aunt in ripples. Anna noted the impatient twitch to her fingers as she fidgeted with the handles of her Margaret Thatcher handbag. It was hard to imagine anyone more different from her mum.

  Anna stared at her and gave her customary nod.

  *

  The car was a little too warm. Despite the sunshine of the April day, the heating was cranked up high in her uncle’s shiny, pale blue Rover. She saw his hand skirt the pale wood veneer dashboard with something close to affection.

  Anna didn’t feel the need to cast a final glance at the school she wouldn’t be going back to. It didn’t occur to her to say goodbye, in fact she barely looked up as the car wove its way through the streets she had lived in her whole life. She hardly dared let her eyes drift to the corner shop, afraid she might see her mum coming out of the green door with her shopping basket on her arm and a smile on her face as she handed her younger self a little white paper bag full of mixed penny sweets. ‘You’re such a good girl.’

  Anna’s heart used to lift with joyful anticipation of the sweets, which would last the rest of the day if she was careful. ‘Did you get Joe some?’ she always asked, blinking, hopeful.

  ‘No,’ her mum would say, running her finger along Anna’s chin. ‘I got him this!’ And she’d hold up one of his favourite music magazines, which always made Anna’s face split with happiness, knowing Joe hadn’t been left out. That was just how she liked it: everything done fairly.

  Not that there’d been much that was fair about her life in the past four years. Anna scooted the tears from her cheeks with her outstretched fingers, hardly able to picture one let alone both of the people she had loved.

  ‘Are you okay in the back there, missy?’ Her uncle’s voice pulled her into the present. His accent would take a bit of getting used to. Birmingham. Berr-minngg-gamm. Even today, on the saddest of days, she took a little warmth from his jolliness. He had crinkles around his eyes that suggested kindness.

  Her aunt answered sharply on her behalf. ‘Of course she’s okay, Alan. It’s not been five minutes since you asked her last!’ This was accompanied by an almost imperceptible tut.

  ‘It’s quiet where we are.’ Her uncle carried on, undeterred by his wife’s rebuke. ‘But there’s a lot of history. Do you like history, Anna?’ he asked gently, as if he understood that today everything needed to be done slowly.

  She was trying to formulate a response when her aunt again interjected. ‘She doesn’t want to hear about that today!’ she said sharply.

  ‘I was only going to tell her about the motor industry, the pride of the Midlands. This very car was manufactured not five miles from its parking spot in our driveway. Isn’t that something?’ He squeezed the steering wheel, making his leather driving gloves squeak, and tilted his head to make eye contact in the rearview mirror.

  ‘Good Lord, Alan, do you think she, or I for that matter, wants to hear your trivia when we’ve just had to sit through that funeral!’

  From the tone of her voice, it was crystal clear to Anna that her aunt hadn’t come to the funeral out of love for Joe, or her mum, or her. She felt a deep flash of dislike for the woman and not for the first time wished Aunt Lizzie hadn’t bothered turning up, wished she hadn’t decided to take Anna into their home, for whatever reason. An image of Ruby Red Shoes floated into her mind. ‘Joe was brilliant and I loved him.’ She heard Ruby’s beautiful words and added her own. I miss you, Joe. I miss you so much. I wish I could tell you that I’m sorry...

  ‘We should talk about something more uplifting,’ her aunt said, looking out of the window as if this was where inspiration for a suitable topic might be lurking. Turning her pink face towards the gap between the seats, she smiled as she asked, ‘What do you think her dress is going to be like? I can see her in a fishtail, with a lace veil and a train that goes on for miles.’

  Anna stared at her. Dress? What dress?

  Her aunt sighed again, whether with impatience or disapproval it was hard to tell. ‘The wedding dress!’ she said. ‘Lady Di’s! Good Lord, the wedding of the century. I would have thought it’s all you young girls could think about. A proper princess marrying her prince – now there’s a fairy tale if ever I’ve heard one, a true love match, it’s so obvious. I bet she’ll make a stunning bride. My friend Shirley and I were going to travel up for the day, camp on the Mall, but to be honest, after today’s shenanigans, it’s more than put me off. I think I’ll just get out the best tea service and wave a flag in front of the telly.’

  Anna sank further down against the upholstery. On top of everything else, she had also apparently managed to spoil the royal wedding for her aunt.

  Turning her head to the left, she pictured her mum sitting next to her on the back seat. She was wearing her favourite white T-shirt with a rose pattern on the front and her faded jeans. Her chestnut-coloured hair was loose about her shoulders. She looked pretty. Anna placed her hand on the grey leather piping and watched as her mum cupped her palm over it. She smiled at her briefly, taking comfort from the contact that flowed between the world in which her mum resided and her own.

  It seemed like hours later that the car pulled into a cul-de-sac where lawns were small and neat and children’s bikes were propped against garage doors. A white dog barked from an open porch and two little girls played jump rope on the raised kerb.

  Anna sat up straight. Her heart was beating fast.

  ‘Here we are then, love. I know this must all feel very strange for you today, but it will get easier as you settle in, you’ll see,’ her Uncle Alan spoke softly.

  Her first impression of the house was that it was like a box or a cell. There were no surprising curves or patterns, no porches or fancy windows, no shutters or adornments of any kind. It was almost fully detached, except for the room above the garage, which was connected to a similar room above next-door’s garage. The whole road was like that, with the houses linked together in a row.

  Uncle Alan drove the car onto the narrow concrete driveway and ratcheted the handbrake. Her aunt Lizzie scrambled awkwardly to release her seatbelt as she waved to a man arranging a brown tent on next-door’s front lawn. ‘That’s Mr Dickinson,’ she said eagerly. ‘He takes minutes at council meetings, which is a very important job. He’s party to all sorts of sensitive information – you’ve got to be quite the keeper of secrets to work for the council in that capacity.’

  Anna swallowed her lack of interest and watched her aunt heave herself out of the car.

  ‘Hello, Mr Dickinson!’ Aunt Lizzie waved coyly, reminding Anna of the way girls in her class acted when they talked to a boy they fancied.

  She noted the irritated flicker that passed across Mr Dickinson’s face. He returned the wave nonetheless.

  ‘We’ve just got back from London.’ Her aunt hovered with her wide bottom pushed against the car door, waiting for Mr Dickinson to respond. She continued regardless. ‘We’ve just buried my nephew. A terrible business.’

  Anna felt a trickle of ice in her veins. She didn’t want her life discussed in this way, casually, as if it was just a piece of gossip. A film of sweat formed on her brow.

  ‘Oh.’ The man looked more than a little embarrassed. ‘I’m very sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Well,’ Aunt Lizzie continued, ‘he wasn’t without problems. Drugs. Like his father, I’m afraid. My sister, she...’

  A... Aunt Lizzie.

  B... blue.

  C... car.

  D... died. Joe died.

  Anna listened, her blood pumping loudly in her ears, as her aunt paused and then after a snort of laughter
added, ‘Let’s just say she never made very good choices. We’ve brought our niece back to live with us. But don’t worry...’ Again she let slip a small laugh. ‘She’s a different kettle of fish. Wouldn’t say boo to a goose and is rather bookish.’

  ‘I really must...’ Mr Dickinson resumed unfurling his tent.

  ‘Going somewhere nice?’ her aunt pushed.

  ‘Yes.’ He spoke with his head down, thus ending the awkward conversation.

  Anna looked over her shoulder, squashed her face against the seat leather and peered out of the window of the fancy car, trying to figure if it would be possible to walk back to London and how long it might take. She could sleep in the shed at her old address that belonged to the middle-floor flat. She could sleep in the park in the gap under the slide. She could find Ruby Red Shoes and ask if she could live with her. She could sleep anywhere, anywhere other than here.

  Uncle Alan opened up the hatchback and gave her a little wave. With her mouth hidden by the seat and just her eyes peeping over the upholstery, she felt like a wild creature submerged in a river. She didn’t bother trying to find a smile. Her uncle lowered his hand. He hauled her large suitcase from the boot, across the path and into the hallway.

  ‘Out you pop!’ he called over his shoulder.

  She followed slowly, knowing that once she was inside, that would be it, she’d be there to stay.

  ‘Shoes off!’ her aunt instructed, slipping her own small, chubby feet from the beige, heeled court shoes she’d teetered about on all day.

  Anna stepped out of her navy blue pumps and looked down at her toes. She wiggled them against the biscuit-coloured carpet. She thought about a morning not long before her mum had died when they’d been outside by the little bin store, shoving last night’s potato peelings and an old newspaper into the metal bin. Her mum used to take her time over chores like that, relishing the chance to be outside. Suddenly, caught by a gust of wind, the front door had slammed shut.