‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ Dad says. He has absolutely no idea what he is talking about. Being part of a group of three is fantastic most of the time, but there’s always a bit of a worry that the other two might be best friends with each other and I’m just the hanger-on. If Nat and Lauren spend the whole summer together without me then I’ll be doomed to be the add-on friend FOREVER.
‘And anyway,’ he adds, ‘you should have thought about that before you stole my money.’
‘You can make me go but you can’t make me talk to any of the oldies!’ I scream at him, stamping towards the kitchen door. I don’t care any more – there’s nothing he can do to me that would be worse than this.
‘No, I can’t,’ agrees Dad, sounding incredibly calm in the face of my raging anger. He probably feels really smug and proud of himself – he thinks he’s found the perfect way to punish me and turn me into the sort of daughter that he really wants; the sort of daughter who will chat to old-age pensioners and make them cups of tea and learn to knit while all of her friends are having the summer of their lives.
I will not talk to one single person in that stupid place, I vow to myself as I stamp upstairs. There is nothing that any lame old person could tell me that would be even a little bit interesting. They won’t understand anything about my life – they were twelve about a million years ago. I bet they don’t even remember anything except being old.
Martha
There is nothing I hate more than old people. Constantly going on about their bad backs and their gammy hips and other medical problems that I have no desire to hear about. It never ceases to amaze me that the rest of society expects us to enjoy each other’s company, based purely on the commonality of us all being over the age of seventy-five. Pensioners are no different to teenagers in that respect. Some old people are nice; some of us are foul. Some are good-natured and are happy to spend their days knitting and chatting while others of us are grouchy and angry and would rather stab ourselves in the foot with a knitting needle than suffer the indignities of attempting to knit one, purl one.
And no. You do not get a prize for working out which group I belong to.
I would like to say that I haven’t always been bad-tempered and troublesome but it wouldn’t be the truth. As a girl I was a constant source of worry and disappointment to my parents. I just didn’t understand why there had to be so many rules. Rules about who I could be friends with; rules about what I could wear. Rules about what time I had to be home.
I found the last rule particularly difficult to abide by. I remember one evening having far too much fun to be home in time for my curfew. When I eventually returned my parents were furious. They said I wasn’t allowed to see my friends for three whole weeks, which frankly I thought was a bit much. Not that it spoilt my fun. I would send a note to Tommy telling him to meet me outside our garden at certain times and then I’d pretend to be going to bed. As soon as the bedroom door was closed I was out of the window, climbing down the roof of the outhouse and into the back garden. I wasn’t caught once.
It’s just a shame that my climbing days are over. Life at Oak Hill would be a whole lot easier if I could sneak out of my window. At least I’d stand a fighting chance of that awful care worker not catching me in the act.
If you ask me, it’s a total disgrace. I was born in 1929 and I believe I have enough years behind me to know what I want. And if, in my final months on this earth, I choose to smoke the occasional cigarette now and again then that is only my business. Oh, I’m not saying that smoking is a nice habit. I actually find it fairly unpleasant and there’s nothing worse than the sight of yellowed fingers and foul teeth. And apparently, it does something quite disgusting to your insides.
No, it’s not that I think smoking is a particularly good idea. I just don’t like being told that I can’t do it. It’s the same with alcohol. In all honesty I’d prefer a nice cup of tea, but laying down ridiculous laws about what we can and cannot do just makes me cross. I’m too old to be told.
So apparently, I am now officially on strike one. I am ‘upsetting the other residents’ with my militant behaviour. They have suggested that I may be happier elsewhere. That made me laugh. As if happiness is a necessary emotion. Three strikes and Oak Hill will no longer be prepared to provide for my complex medical and behavioural needs.
Let the games commence.
Landscape from a Dream*
‘Erin!’ Dad is calling up the stairs and I wonder if I can get away with ignoring him. I wonder what he’d do if I burrowed down under my duvet like a little rabbit and refused to come out. Then I sigh and sit up. He’s already mad with me – not that I care, but I know him when he’s like this and the only chance I have of convincing him to let me stay at home is to go along with what he wants for a few days. Maybe if he thinks I’ve taken my punishment without too much fuss then he’ll relent and let me have at least a few weeks hanging out with Lauren and Nat.
I get dressed in an old pair of shorts and a T-shirt and then grab my school bag and empty out all my schoolbooks and pencil case. I won’t be needing them for a while. I fill my bag with the essentials needed for a long, boring day – my iPod Shuffle, a book, my sketchpad and a box of pencils. And then, even though it makes my bag super-heavy, I add a couple of Dad’s art books that I took from the shelf in the living room. I’m getting quite into my art project so I may as well use the time to carry on with it while I’m hiding from old people. Then I trudge downstairs, deliberately stamping on each stair with a heavy foot so that Dad knows how miserable he is making me.
He meets me in the hall.
‘Here you go. Drink this and I’ll meet you in the car,’ he says, handing me a glass of juice.
‘What about my breakfast?’ I am utterly aghast. I’d get better treatment if I were in prison.
‘I called you to get up at least half an hour ago,’ Dad tells me. ‘If you’d wanted breakfast I assumed you’d get out of bed. You can eat a banana and a yoghurt on the way.’
I sink further into complete and total misery. The only motivation for getting out of bed these days is the thought of a hot piece of toast, slathered with strawberry jam and eaten sitting on the floor, with Picasso leaning against me. It’s how I’ve eaten nearly all my breakfasts since she left, and as it’s now Fifty-three Days Without Mum it has become quite a habit.
Dad pulls on his work boots and opens the front door.
‘I need to get some tools from the garage – I’ll expect to see you in the car in two minutes.’
He walks outside and I pull a face at the back of his head. But there’s no point in standing here sulking. If I want breakfast I’m going to have to sort it fast, so I head into the kitchen and grab a banana. I ignore Dad’s suggestion of yoghurt – I really would have thought he knew me better by now. Yoghurt has always tasted sour to me – it reminds me of sick and there’s no way I’d ever eat it for breakfast.
There’s just time to check that Dad’s fed Picasso, give him a quick hug and tell him that he can get out through the dog-flap if he needs a wee. Then I put my bag on my shoulder and leave the comfort of my peaceful, quiet home. Old people and endless boring days, here I come.
My first impression of Oak Hill Care Home is not good. We go through a sinister pair of iron gates and turn down a drive. I want to ask Dad how he could possibly have brought me here, to this freaky, remote place. It’s probably haunted. This is my summer holiday!, I want to shout at him, but then I remember that I’m not talking, as a protest that nobody ever listens to me, so I stay silent and look out of the window.
We drive through what feels like miles of dark, crowded trees and then we’re suddenly here. Yeah, Oak Hill is a definite contender for housing things that go bump in the night. Dad parks the car and I get out, standing on the gravel and looking up at the huge house that seems to loom over me. Despite myself I am starting to feel a tiny bit excited. Maybe hanging out in a spine-tingling, ghost-infested mansion could be quite a cool thing to ta
lk about when I go back to school in September.
We walk into the reception area and the spooky, Gothic vibe instantly disappears. Straight away I can tell I’m going to hate it here. It reminds me of school – everything seems fake. It doesn’t feel like a proper home at all. Before Granny Edna died I used to visit her all the time with Mum and her house was crammed full of trinkets and knick-knacks. Stuff she’d collected over a lifetime that used to remind her of all the places she’d visited and all the things she’d done. I’d pick up some tacky little ornament and she’d go off on some long story about a holiday in Devon or a boy she once courted. I’d laugh when she said stuff like that and tell her that nobody says ‘courted’ these days – but, secretly, I quite liked hearing her stories and she’d always look so happy when she was remembering the old days.
I don’t know how the old people who live here can ever remember anything, because it’s all so bare and clean and impersonal. There can’t be any memories for them here at all.
Dad walks me down a corridor and into a large, sunny room. It’s filled with chairs and sofas. There’s an old man sitting in front of the TV but I don’t think he’s watching it because his eyes are closed. I wonder for a minute if he’s even alive, but then he twitches a bit and shuffles in the chair and I realize he’s just sleeping.
‘You can sit in here if you like,’ says Dad. I look again at the old man and shake my head. He might die while I was sitting next to him. Or even worse, he might wake up and want to talk to me.
‘OK.’ Dad starts walking through the room towards a door on the other side and I scurry to catch up with him. ‘Then you can help me out in the garden.’
This is not what I had planned, but it suddenly seems like the best of the rubbish options available to me. Dad shows me where I can stash my bag and then hands me a trowel. He doesn’t seem in the slightest bit bothered that I haven’t spoken a word to him since we got out of the car. I don’t actually think he’s noticed.
He leads me outside and round the corner of the house. I am not an outdoors kind of person but even I can see how beautiful these gardens are.
Dad points to a flower bed.
‘This needs weeding,’ he tells me.
I must look puzzled because he smiles at me and crouches down on the grass. ‘You see all of these green bits? They need pulling out. Put them in a pile at the side and I’ll be back to check up on you in a while.’
He ruffles my hair and strides off in the opposite direction to the way we came. I kneel down on the grass and look at the flower bed. Everything looks quite green to me. I have totally no idea which ones he said were the weeds.
I spend a few minutes pulling random bits of plant out of the soil and chucking them on the grass. This is so dull and even though it’s still quite early I’m getting pretty hot. Dad will be really mad with me if I’ve been pulling up his prizewinning flowers instead of weeds, so probably the most sensible thing to do is stop before I get it completely wrong. Maybe I should scope out the rest of the gardens – get a feel for the place where I’m going to be spending the majority of my summer.
I stand up and rub the soil off my hands. My knees have got green grass-stains on them and I look like a little kid. The thought makes me angry and without bothering to search for Dad I stomp across the lawn and on to one of the gravel paths that lead away from the house.
As soon as I’m out of sight I feel myself starting to relax. I’m on a little pathway that twists and turns round bushes and under trees. The sunlight can’t get through and the air feels different – full of something interesting, maybe. I keep walking, stepping from shadow to shadow and leaping over the occasional puddles of sun that have managed to slip through the heavy branches above me.
And then I’m out in the open. The brightness makes me blink and it takes me a few seconds to register what I’m seeing. And when I can see properly, my brain can barely make sense of it. Because what I’m looking at is utter perfection.
Hidden among the trees is a clearing. It’s obviously still part of Oak Hill because I haven’t gone over any fences or stiles, but it looks like it’s a forgotten part of the garden. The path has stopped and there’s a strip of grass stretching down to a stream that winds its way through the bottom of the clearing. On the other side of the stream is a steep field that reaches up to the horizon, making it feel a bit like a secret valley. Everything is wild and overgrown, filled with buttercups and weird, random plants that I haven’t ever seen before. I take a few steps forward and when I turn round it’s almost impossible to see the opening where the path begins – it’s hidden from view and I can tell straight away that nobody can see me here.
A sudden feeling of excitement bubbles up inside me and I want to laugh out loud. My own secret hideaway! I can spend the summer here, doing what I want and nobody can make me listen or talk or do any stupid jobs. It’s completely perfect. I want to whoop and run about for no reason, or lie down and roll around on the grass – and I haven’t felt like doing those things since I was little. It’s a shame I’m too old to do them now because this place is crying out for someone to play in it.
I walk around the top end of the clearing, peering through the undergrowth and making sure that I really can’t be seen, that it really is as private as I think it is. Thick trees surround the grassy area and it’s completely impossible to see anything on the other side. As I get towards the middle I can see that there is a bench, hidden under what even I can tell are weeds. Yanking at the long strands I try to free the bench from captivity but the plants have been there for a long time and I can’t budge them. I need serious tools for this job and I know just the man to give them to me.
But there’s plenty of time for that. For now I’m happy to sit on the grass, hugging my knees up to my chin, and looking down towards the stream. This place is mine.
The Waterfall*
It’s been Sixty Days Without Mum. I saw her yesterday (a walk in the park this time, instead of our usual coffee shop) and all she wanted to talk about was whether I’d changed my mind about going on holiday with them. I could tell by her extra-smiley face that she was confident I’d give in, that I’d much prefer two weeks in Spain to going to Oak Hill every day with Dad.
‘Mark’s happy to pay for an extra ticket,’ she told me. ‘But time’s running out, sweetheart.’
I wanted to tell her that, on the contrary, time is growing, not running out. After all, I’m not counting down the days until I SEE her, am I? Every day is another day marked off on my calendar – the days without her are mounting up and if anything, time seems to be getting faster. It feels like it’ll be no time at all before it’s been Eighty Days Without Mum, and then Ninety-nine Days Without Mum and before I know it, it’ll have been six months or a year and it’ll be normal for everyone except me.
‘I can’t leave Picasso,’ I told her, and then ignored her while she went on and on about how Dad can look after him and how she misses me and really wants to spend some ‘quality time’ with me. I couldn’t help thinking that if she wanted to see me that much then she should have fought to keep me with her. Then she bought me a mint choc-chip ice cream as a treat so I told her that I only eat vanilla now – that mint choc chip was totally yesterday’s flavour. She looked kind of surprised and a little bit sad too but I’m not going to let myself feel bad about that. It’s not my fault.
Last week was kind of OK, in the end. I borrowed a gardening tool from Dad’s shed at Oak Hill – he didn’t know but I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded – and used it to tidy up the bench in my clearing. Dad said that as long as I didn’t leave the grounds then he didn’t really mind where I went – although then he spent half an hour giving me a long lecture on how I should be polite and helpful and friendly to anyone I met. He still hasn’t noticed that I’m not talking when we’re there. I worked really hard with the tool – it was like a massive pair of scissors – and now the bench is weed-free. It’s the perfect place to sit and sketch and the hours passed r
eally quickly every day.
I’m still dreading going back today, though. I’ve been begging Dad every morning to let me take Picasso with me, but he says there is a total no-animals rule at Oak Hill and there’s no way he can come with us. Dad said that he’d lose his job for sure if he brought a dog into the grounds. It’s a shame because if I had him with me then I think this could end up being a good summer after all.
I’m feeling quiet in the car and not really in the mood for conversation. Not that Dad would pick up on that in a million years. He thinks everything is fine between us. And that is just not true. I might have found a cool place to hang out at Oak Hill but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven him for stealing my summer, any more than I’ve forgiven Mum for stealing my happiness.
As we get out of the car Dad is wittering on about a fence that needs repairing at the far end of the garden and I suddenly can’t stand it any more. I feel like I’m just pretending to have a life this summer when really, it’s impossible to be living when all your choices have been taken away from you. I follow Dad silently round the side of the house and watch as he gets his tools and tells me that he’ll be on the north side of the garden if I need him.
Then I sink down on to the floor of the shed next to his bag and wonder if anyone else my age could possibly be feeling as desperate as I’m feeling right now. I can sense the holidays trickling through my fingers and there’s not one single thing I can do to stop them. I’m going to go back to school in September and Lauren and Nat will have a whole summer of shared experiences and I’ll have nothing to say.
I flop my head on to my knees and groan. The opportunities for rebellion are highly limited in this place. I suppose I could steal a wheelchair and take it for a spin? Or trample all over the flower beds? Not exactly dramatic. Nobody’s going to be impressed with that when we go back to school.
Five Things They Never Told Me Page 3