Neither of them tries to talk to me. Neither of them asks me how I’m feeling; if I’m alright, if there’s anything they can do. Thank god for that. One more apology, one more lie, one more well-meaning sympathetic face and I’m going to smack someone. But Jared and Steffan, they wouldn’t. Not here, not now. They know what I need more than anything.
Beer and the river and my friends.
Maybe not in that order.
So we’re silent, and Steffan gets himself another beer from the collection they’ve wedged in the water with a pile of stones and opens it, and the current hurries on past us like we don’t matter and that’s just how it should be.
When we’ve been there long enough for the sun to have moved all the way round, and for there to be more empty bottles in the plastic bag beside Jared’s rock than there are in the water, Steffan looks up from the label he’s peeling off his bottle and says: “You know what we should do? Road trip.”
Jared raises an eyebrow.
And I’ve had just about enough beer to say yes.
two
Beeping. There’s a beeping sound. Somewhere.
Somewhere in my room.
It’s annoying.
Beep-beep-beep-beep-bloody-beep.
Being the genius that I am, I have forgotten to switch off my alarm clock and it’s now jingling merrily away at me from the other side of the room, telling me it’s funeral o’clock. Which it’s not.
I’m still going to have to get out of bed, just to shut it up. I resent this. A lot.
Seven thirty in the morning is an ungodly time to be out of bed in the summer holidays. Until yesterday, I wasn’t entirely sure there was a seven thirty in the morning in the summer holidays; I just sort of assumed the clocks skipped from somewhere around one a.m. through to nine o’clock or so. To punish my alarm clock for spoiling this illusion, I stick it in my cupboard. That’ll teach it.
Seven thirty. The only way I can possibly cope with this is coffee.
In the kitchen, I find my Aunt Amy. Or most of her, at least: she’s perched on the window sill and has somehow managed to contort most of her upper body out through the open window. When I walk in, she twitches violently enough to almost fall out completely – but she catches her balance and comes back inside…along with a plume of cigarette smoke.
“Subtle,” I say, filling the kettle.
“Don’t.” She shakes her head, looking embarrassed. There are dark circles under her eyes and she looks like she’s aged five years overnight. Well. Maybe not overnight. Maybe over two weeks.
“You could just go out in the garden, you know.”
“It’s too early to be sensible. Are you putting the kettle on?”
I like my aunt. She’s stupidly disorganized and is always late for everything, which makes her a lot like me. I haven’t seen her smoke since I was little – she gave up years ago – but she just lost her big sister, so I guess it’s not exactly shocking. Even so…
There’s a pile of bin bags in the corner of the kitchen which definitely wasn’t there when I went to bed. I shoot a look at Amy – who’s taken the mug I passed her and is apparently trying to inhale her coffee – and she shoots one back.
“What’s that?” I ask, pointing to the pile.
There’s a second’s pause. The look that crosses her face is complicated and I don’t really understand it.
“I thought it might be an idea to…get rid of some old things.” She sets the mug down on the table, and her hands are shaking.
“Mum’s things?” I nudge the bottom bag with my toe. There’s something heavy and solid inside it; lots of heavy, solid things, and they clank as they shift in the bag. I recognize the sound. Bottles. Lots of bottles. Bottles from where? Everywhere. Bottles from under the sink, from under the stairs. From the airing cupboard or the garden shed.
She pretends she didn’t hear the sound. “No, not that. That’s not what I meant. It’s too soon, and I wouldn’t do that without you. Or your dad.” She adds him like he’s an afterthought, which I guess he is, still asleep in the living room with the door closed. His world has shrunk to just that one room. He won’t sleep in their…his…bedroom. It took him a week to even set foot in there afterwards. I changed the bed, picking up all the sheets off the mattress and the floor where they’d fallen and throwing them straight into the outside bin. What else was I supposed to do?
“Listen…” She pulls a chair out from the table and sits down, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “I’m going to ask you something, and I don’t want you to take it the wrong way. So can you, I don’t know, try not to be a teenager for a minute?”
“Charming!”
“You know what I mean.”
“What is it?”
“I think you might want to…not be here for a few days. Can you go stay with a friend, maybe?”
“Can’t I stay with you?”
“I’m going to be here.”
“Oh.”
I should have picked up on it when I saw the cigarette. I sit down at the table with her. “You’re going to be here? And you’re asking me not to be? What’s going on?”
“Look, your dad… He needs something. Some help. You know that, don’t you?” She pauses, obviously not sure whether she should wait for me to answer. She decides to hedge her bets.
“He can’t cope and I’m worried that—” I cut across her. “You know what? I can’t hear this right now. I’m sorry. I just…can’t.”
A look of pain crosses her face and I regret it. I regret everything she’s having to deal with and I regret the words that just came out of my mouth, the ones that sound like I don’t care. I do care. That’s the thing. I couldn’t care more, not less. She bites her lip and her face smoothes itself out, the lines and the creases disappearing behind a mask. “There’s someone coming to see him later. A doctor.”
“And?”
“And I don’t know what happens after that. A lot of it will depend on your dad, I suppose. How he wants to take things forward, what he wants to do.”
“Oh.” I stare into the bottom of my mug. The last few drops of coffee have started to dry into rings. Can you read coffee rings like tea leaves? I wonder. Will they tell me the future if I look hard enough? Will I like it?
Amy’s watching me, waiting. She’s treating me like a bomb carved out of crystal: one jolt and it’s over for everyone in a twenty-mile radius. Maybe twenty-five. Her eyes are red. She’s been crying, and I should say something – anything – but I’ve had almost two weeks of everybody else’s feelings, and I don’t think I can handle any more. So I don’t. And when she asks me again whether there’s anyone I can stay with, I say: “There’s Steffan…”
There’s always Steffan. Solid. Dependable. My Steffan. Ever since I fell down the steps on my first day of secondary school, and found myself being picked up again and set back on my feet by a boy with hair that stuck out in fifteen different directions and a school tie that had been cut off so short he could barely even tie it. He was an impossibly confident Year Eight compared to me, lost and bruised and embarrassed on my first day and scrambling to pick everything up and shove it back into my bag. And that was it. He was always around after that; like I say, I was the kid sister he never had.
It was me he called when his mum’s cancer came back two years ago. I spent the whole of that Christmas in the family room at the hospital with him, while, across the hall, drips pumped poison into her in the hope of saving her life. They hit it hard, but it hit back harder and by the next Easter she was gone, and it’s still the only time I’ve ever seen Steffan cry.
I remember sitting in the chapel, looking down from the gallery as he followed his mother’s coffin in his own pair of brand-new shoes – the ones I’ve only seen him wear to funerals now – and I understood that one day it would be me in his place.
I never thought I’d be doing it so soon after him.
Is it better to lose someone slowly, or fast? Is it better to see them fade – knowing
you’re helpless to hold on to them and watching them slide into the darkness – or is it easier to have them torn away from you in the night? Easier to say goodbye a hundred times, never knowing for sure which will be the last, or to say goodnight and never speak again? Which hurts the least? I don’t think either of us could tell you.
That first morning, when the coroner’s officer and the police and the body had gone, when I’d thrown the sheets in the dustbin, when my father was locked in the bathroom with his mobile and a bottle of Scotch, calling what seemed like everyone he’d ever met to tell them his wife had died, and when my aunt was in her car, driving as fast as she could towards us… That first morning I knocked on Steffan’s door and he opened it and took one look at me, and just like that he knew, and he put his arms around me and held me tight. He didn’t know all of it then – there are some things you just can’t say out loud at times like that, not even to your best friend – but he knew enough. He always does.
There’s always Steffan. There always has been, always will be.
There’s always Steffan, and up until this moment, I never realized just how much that means.
Amy nods and rubs her eyes, and I guess the conversation’s closed. She looks tired. So tired. But I can’t take on any more – not right now. So I push away from the table and slouch back up to my room and wonder whether I’ve actually got any clothes that count as clean enough to be worth putting into a bag.
From downstairs, I can hear snatches of my aunt’s voice: she’s on the phone, and although I’m trying not to listen – because, dear god, I don’t want to hear – I make out the words “doctor”…“treatment”…“Steffan”.
I switch the radio on, and start picking T-shirts up from the floor.
Amy’s too distracted to be worried about my plans for the next few days. I’m a big girl, right? I’m suitably vague – and so is she.
I find my phone and send a hopeful text to Steffan: hopeful because it might occur to him to come and pick me up, him being the one with the car, rather than leaving me to walk all the way across town with a bag full of clothes. I know town’s not exactly big, but that’s not the point, is it? I carry on slinging things into my bag (toothbrush, deodorant, flip-flops, shorts, a jumper that probably needs a wash but which is just going to have to do) until my phone beeps. His reply is typically Steffanesque.
You’ve been watching too many sappy films. It’s two, three nights, tops. How much stuff do you need?!
Right, so no chance of a lift, then. My second text is maybe a touch on the passive-aggressive side.
What time shall I bring all my stuff over to yours, then?
He pings back:
Whenever. We’re set. Just waiting for you.
The sound of something being dropped in the kitchen – and Amy swearing – makes me jump. I’d almost forgotten that she was here. Almost forgotten…but not quite. I shove the last of my clothes into my bag – which is probably twice as full as it needs to be – and make my way downstairs. Amy’s listening intently to someone on the other end of the phone line. She holds up a hand asking me to wait, but I just want to be out. I want to go, to get away from here, this house and everything it means. Tapping my watch, I make the international sign for “I’ve got to go,” and she nods. She smiles and points at me, then at her phone, and mouths the words “Call me.” I nod back. As I pass the closed living room door, I think about knocking. But I don’t.
When I walk out of the door, I can’t stop myself from looking back over my shoulder. I don’t know what I’m expecting, exactly: maybe to see a big black cloud hovering over my house? Whatever. It’s not coming with me. I take a deep breath and set off down the street.
The sun’s not as hot as yesterday – not yet, anyway – and there are birds singing, and the river’s rushing under the bridge and there are cars on the bypass and everything feels obscenely normal. I guess this is normal now, though. The new normal. Everything that’s happened in the last two weeks has been a kind of limbo: shifting from one normal to another. Now the funeral’s done, it’s all over and it’s time to move on.
Steffan’s car is parked in the driveway in front of his house, the bonnet open and a pile of bags on the ground next to the boot. There’s no sign of either Steffan or Jared (who, living a hell of a lot closer than I do, must be here already – I’d recognize the tatty red rucksack with graffiti all over it anywhere) but the front door is open, so I dump my bag with the others and head inside to find them, following the sound of a radio.
They’re in the kitchen and between them on the table is the biggest plate of bacon I’ve ever seen. I’m not kidding: this is Mount Bacon. Explorers could lose themselves on its lower slopes for a month; it must have taken at least fifteen pigs to make this much meat. And Steffan and Jared are cheerfully ploughing their way through it. It’s either impressive or disgusting – I’m not sure which. Could go either way. It’s not exactly a shock, though – I mean these two can eat. Jared’s been banned from the school canteen for repeatedly finishing not only his own lunch but everyone else’s too. In his defence, he did ask first – it’s not like he swiped a handful of fish fingers from some starving Year Nine’s plate – but apparently it’s “inappropriate” from a senior. (If you ask me, I think the flirting with the canteen staff to get a third helping of cake every Friday lunchtime was probably the last straw.) As for Steffan, I’ve seen him put away an eight-egg omelette and still be hungry.
Sticking your arm into the middle of all that is a bit like sticking it into a bowl of cartoon piranhas: you kind of expect it to come back gnawed to the bone. However, I am brave. And I like bacon. I emerge triumphant, clutching two whole rashers and having my hand slapped at only once by Steffan. Feeling mightily pleased with myself, I perch on the closest worktop.
“Sure you want to eat that? You know it had a face once, right?” Steffan sniggers at me.
He’s referring to my infamous vegetarian period, which happened when I was thirteen and lasted precisely a week and a half (and ended when I realized that almost everything I like to eat had, at some point, eyes, ears and a tail). You’d think by now he’d be bored of bringing it up. You massively underestimate Steffan’s love of taking the piss.
I pull a face and they chew and the local radio DJ waffles on about the temporary traffic lights on the bypass and, dear god, does he not have anything better to talk about? This is the thing about living in a small town: however small it is, it might as well be the whole world. As far as some of the people who live here are concerned, the universe stops just past the end of the dual carriageway – and it only goes that far because the garden centre’s off the roundabout, and if you lose that, you lose your begonias and your coffee shop with Sunday carvery. Mrs Davies who lives at number 32 in our road? She’s never left town. Not at all. Not even for a holiday. Can you imagine? She’s so comfortable here that she doesn’t want to be anywhere else, to go anywhere else. She’s content to simply be where she is; where she’s always been. What a thought.
The bacon is gone. I know this without even looking at the plate, because Jared’s pushing his chair away from the table and no way does Jared leave a table with food still on it. I don’t know where he puts it all: “hollow legs”, my grandmother used to say. If that’s true, then Jared’s hollow all the way down to his toenails.
“What’s the plan?” he asks, looking from Steffan to me and back again.
“Don’t ask me,” I splutter back at him. They’ve worked their way through the whole pile of bacon, and I’m still chewing my second piece. “This is his party.” I wave my hand in Steffan’s general direction. He responds by stealing the last bite of bacon from between my fingers and eating it, winking at me.
“No plan, is there?” he says. “Just us, in the car. Driving.”
“Driving where, though?” I slip down from the worktop and wipe the bacon grease off my fingers with the kitchen towel. “You can’t just…drive.”
“Why not? That’s the w
hole point of a road trip, isn’t it? It’s all about…” His eyes glaze over as he stares into the distance… “The journey.”
“During which you usually see stuff. Or do stuff. World’s biggest ball of string, Grand Canyon, that kind of thing? Hence it being ‘A Journey’ and not just ‘three of us sitting in a car, listening to your dodgy taste in music’.”
“I resent that. I have excellent taste in music.”
“Yeah, right. Keep telling yourself that.”
“Oi! I— Woah there. No.” Steffan breaks off from insulting me and darts across the kitchen, slamming the fridge door shut. While he was busy Not Having A Plan, Jared’s started poking around the cupboards. Honestly, he’d eat the furniture given half a chance. “Not the fridge,” says Steffan firmly.
“Get in trouble for the beer, did we?” Jared doesn’t sound even the least bit sympathetic.
“Not exactly.” Steffan looks sheepish for a second. “Might do for this, though.” He grins and jerks his head towards a flat, oblong box sitting on a shelf near the door. It looks like it’s made of cardboard, and I haven’t the faintest idea what’s in it. There are what look like flowers and women in flouncy dresses printed on it, and some kind of gold sticker sealing it shut. The seal’s been broken.
“What’s that?” I ask, but neither of them pays me any attention. Of course they wouldn’t: it’s two-plus-one. Two in the know, one not, in this case. Mechanic’s Paradox, remember? Always the bloody way.
Steffan yawns louder than he needs to and stretches, tossing the box into a carrier bag. “Are we going then, or what?”
“Seriously. The plan?” I say. I’m not daft enough to buy this all-about-the-journey bollocks he’s trying to sell me. In fact, I’m vaguely insulted that he thinks I’m thick enough to believe it – wrung out and messed up as I might be. I step between him and the door. “The. Plan.”
He looks shifty. “Just, you know, driving… The usual places. All that. A couple of nights, like we talked about…”
“And the rest of it. Come on.”
The Last Summer of Us Page 2