‘How did it get broken?’ She thought about falling from her pony and her arm snapping – was that possible with a brain?
Her dad shook his head. ‘We don’t know. But it did and it’s just like breaking a limb…’ She looked up, wondering if he had read her thoughts. ‘Or having a disease of any other kind. But the difficulty with having a broken brain is that other people can’t see what’s wrong and that makes it hard for them to understand it.’
She nodded because she too found it hard to understand. ‘Can’t they just fix it?’ She inadvertently looked at the kink in her wonky arm and flexed her fingers, thinking of all the operations and recuperations at St Bride’s.
‘Well…’ Again his voice was crackly with emotion. ‘She has spoken to a lot of doctors and they’ve given her medicine, and sometimes she feels a bit better, a bit brighter, but most of the time she doesn’t. It’s like someone has switched off her happiness.’
Kitty looked out of the window as it started to rain, and considered the facts. The thought of someone switching off your happiness was one of the saddest things she could imagine. ‘How long will her brain be broken for? How long until they can switch her happiness back on?’ She pictured turning off the video recorder in the TV room and counting to ten in the hope that when she turned it back on it would work just fine.
‘Those are good questions.’ He swallowed and rubbed his beard, she could tell that, like her, he could not wait for that day. ‘It’s like part of Mum has gone away and all we can do is wait for it to come back to us. Hope and pray that it comes back to us.’ He squared his shoulders. ‘But the truth is, we don’t know where it’s gone and therefore we don’t know if it’s a short or long journey. It might have gone round the corner or it might have gone to Timbuktu.’
It was Kitty’s turn to sigh; this was not the answer she’d been hoping for.
‘Her brain might never get fixed, or it might only get a bit fixed or it might get completely better.’ He raised his palms. ‘And that’s another thing about this terrible illness – no one knows. No one can give me certainty, facts or timelines, only what they think.’
‘Like guessing?’
‘Yes. Exactly like guessing.’
‘Can you… can you catch it, Dad?’ Her eyes flickered with the guilt of being concerned for her own health at a time like this.
Her dad tucked in his lips and shook his head vigorously from side to side, seemingly unable to verbalise his response. She saw tears now sitting in little pools in his eyes.
‘I think it’s a proper shit disease,’ she offered.
‘Aye, Kitty, it is. Proper shit.’ He smiled at her warmly. ‘Would you like me to come out with you? I can saddle up Benson and—’
‘No, thanks.’ She stood. ‘I’d rather go out on my own.’
*
Kitty saddled up her horse in silence and rode Flynn hard along the path that ran adjacent to the wide river at the bottom of the glen. ‘Oi, Kitty!’ Ruraigh called out from the bowl of the river as she flew past. She barely glanced in his direction, aware of him standing in the water, waders pulled high, casting his rod back and forth with a flourish that he hoped might tempt supper. She knew Marjorie was hoping for a haul of fat fish. Hamish lay sprawled on the grassy bank with a cigarette held high. She suspected Angus had stayed up at Darraghfield, and who could blame him if it meant not having to spend the day with those two idiots.
‘Good boy, Flynn!’ She spoke into his mane. His ears pricked up and with her head bent low, the two tripped with confidence along the stony path. As they rounded the curve in the river, her breath stuttered in her throat. She discovered that Angus had not stayed up at Darraghfield but was in fact standing all alone in the shallow fringes of the river, kicking up the sediment with his wellington boots and skimming flat stones over the surface of the water. His jeans were tucked into his boots and his jersey and shirtsleeves were pulled low on his wrists to ward off the worst of the cold breeze that was known to gather speed along the riverbed.
In a single action she pulled Flynn to a stop and jumped down, almost running into the water. With her heart pounding, she stood in front of the boy who had invaded her dreams and unsettled her equilibrium from the moment he arrived. This new knowledge about her mum had shaken her, frightened her, and she instinctively thought that contact with Angus might somehow help her.
‘Kitty!’ He looked a little surprised to see her. ‘Hello.’
‘Do you want to kiss me then?’ she asked, with her hands on her hips and a tremble to her limbs.
He raised his eyebrows and an amused if slightly confused smile crossed his lips. ‘Do I want to? I’m not sure,’ he answered rhetorically, looking up the river to see if the other boys could see them.
Without giving him a chance to consider her proposition further, Kitty stood on her tiptoes and pressed her closed mouth against his, abandoning herself to the moment. Her worry over her mother’s ill health flew from her mind, to be replaced with a deep, joyous longing that filled her gut and spread along her limbs like fire along kindling. She pulled away and looked at the flushed face of Angus, who smiled and drew her to him once again – into his arms and into his life.
*
When the others were around, Kitty and Angus did their best to be discreet, snatching sweet, chaste kisses on flushed cheeks whenever they could, and joining sweaty palms to hold hands when no one was looking. As the end of the holidays drew near, and with it the time to say goodbye, Kitty was surprised at how sad and listless she felt. She couldn’t concentrate on anything, couldn’t even summon the enthusiasm to go out on Flynn. Tears came at the slightest provocation from Ruraigh or Hamish, and she had an almost continual sinking feeling in her stomach. She and Angus said a private goodbye in the games room the night before he left, swapping notes and promising to write, but as she lay in her bed that night she started to panic. Was what she was feeling the beginning of depression? Supposing her dad was wrong and it was catching after all? She didn’t want her happiness flying off to Timbuktu, didn’t want to float around in her pyjamas with the faraway look of her mum and unwashed hair sticking to her scalp.
Next morning, Patrick swung the Land Rover and its three teenage passengers out of the yard and she and her dad waved until it was out of sight.
‘So, you quite like this Angus fellow?’ her dad asked as they both stared into the distance.
Her embarrassment flared and her mouth went dry. ‘He’s okay, I s’pose,’ she managed, burying images of the two of them entwined, lips locked – the very last thing she wanted to imagine in front of her dad.
‘Well, that’s well and good, but be careful – I know how sixteen-year-old boys think—’
‘Da-ad!’ she interrupted, with a yell and a dig to his ribs with her elbow.
‘Jesus, Kitty, I’m ancient and I still think like a sixteen-year-old boy!’
The two laughed, standing on the gravel until their giggles stopped and the place felt eerily quiet.
‘You’re going to miss them.’ He ruffled her hair and she tutted, angered by such a babyish gesture. She was nearly fifteen, and what’s more, she was a teenager who’d been kissed, actually kissed, by a boy, and that changed everything.
She nodded. Miss them? Yes, I will…
‘Well, don’t fret, Kitty.’ He smiled at her, pulling her close. ‘You might be seeing them sooner than you think.’
She noted the way he shifted on his feet and how his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down in a large swallow. ‘What do you mean?’ She looked up at the big man who didn’t know how to lie to her.
‘I’ve been thinking, maybe you might like Vaizey College?’
Kitty gave a loud snort of laughter. ‘Give over! Don’t be daft, Dad! As if I’d ever leave you and Mum.’ She looked up at the turret that housed her parents’ bedroom. ‘As if I’d ever stay anywhere other than Darraghfield!’
Moving Home
Kitty made her way downstairs and into the narrow kitchen, w
here she flicked the switch on her coffee maker for her second cup of the morning, putting the capsule into the fancy little machine that was now indispensable. She opened the cutlery drawer, now much depleted as she’d already made a start on packing up the kitchen. Two sets of knives, forks and spoons rattled around, the sight of which made her feel a little lonely. She had a flashback to happy evenings hosting dinner parties for up to twenty of their friends squashed around the table, elbows tucked in, plates smeared with gravy, the constantly refilled wine glasses catching the light from the chandelier overhead.
She closed the drawer, picked up the small vanity case that Sophie had brought down from the loft earlier and set it on the kitchen table. As she popped the tarnished brass lock, she gazed at the contents, momentarily frozen with the memories they evoked. She hadn’t expected to cry, but the discovery of what lay on top sent a wave of sad recollection coursing through her. She reached in and gently lifted out her mum’s hairbrush, its back beautifully worked in silver and mother-of-pearl. Turning it over in her palm, she ran her fingertips through the fine boar’s-hair bristles, touching the long, dark hairs that still sat entwined about their base.
Part of her mum.
Kitty couldn’t stop the sob that found its way along her throat and left her mouth as a loud cry. She pictured that morning in her childhood when she’d sat on the staircase in Darraghfield as her mum plaited her hair. The day she met Angus for the first time. She allowed herself to dwell briefly on that fourteen-year-old innocence, that momentous Easter holidays when adulthood had loomed so suddenly and from such different directions it left her almost breathless.
Now, nearly forty years on, Kitty wondered how she might do things differently if she had the chance to rewind time. If only her mum had been well that day, if only she had taken up Kitty’s invitation to come and sit by the pool, had counselled her confused, naive, headstrong daughter to take it slowly, to not to be swept off her feet by the first boy who come along and seemed to show an interest…
Too many ifs. Kitty reminded herself sternly of what she’d said to Sophie earlier about not having regrets. The coffee machine gave off its drone to let her know her coffee was ready. Sniffing up her tears, she wiped her eyes on her sleeve and went to grab her little espresso cup.
3
It had been a relatively successful morning or at least one that had passed without major incident. Matron had kicked her out of bed at six thirty sharp, even though she’d insisted she didn’t want breakfast and didn’t need a shower. Rather than protest, she decided to think like a warrior and ‘crack on’, as Marjorie would say. So she painted on a smile and she cracked on. The desire to vomit had all but faded and she’d been pleased to spot Hamish through one of the classroom doors as she wandered the corridors. She managed to get through chemistry without revealing the true extent of the gaps in her knowledge, realising that her education on the subject to date had been rather rudimentary. It turned out Isla was right: Miss Drummond was a bit shit. History had been a blast; the Second World War and its aftermath was a topic that she and her dad had chatted about on numerous occasions in front of the fire, and she was grateful that the lingering memory of those conversations allowed her to bluff her way through the lesson.
Her nerves bit at the oddest moments, like when she was trying to find someone to sit with at lunchtime. It was as she realised she was yet to make a single friend that her sadness threatened to engulf her. It still felt surreal: here she was at Vaizey College, just a couple of weeks after she’d stood in the drive at Darraghfield and waved off Ruraigh, Hamish and Angus. It had all happened very fast, and she’d not really had time to process what it meant and how she felt about it. In fact it hadn’t even felt real until the point when she’d said goodbye to Marjorie.
It was Marjorie who’d accompanied her down on the sleeper train, and Marjorie who’d organised everything before she left, mending and ironing her clothes, packing them into her dad’s old trunk and making sure it was securely stashed in the guard’s van for the journey south. Kitty had understood that her parents couldn’t make the trip to Vaizey with her, but that didn’t make it any better. Her mum had barely left her room for days and her dad never spent a night away from her when she was in that state. Though Kitty wished they could have come and said goodbye and helped get her settled, she was aware of the irony – if her mum had been capable of travelling all the way down to Dorset on the train, then Kitty wouldn’t be coming to the stupid school in the first place. Not that she blamed her mum; she knew Mum wouldn’t have chosen her illness in a million years. Kitty could sense how scary it was for her, and she still couldn’t stop worrying that she might catch it herself. What if Vaizey made her brain broken and sent her happiness to Timbuktu too?
Poor Marjorie. Kitty had held on to her coat as they stood hugging in the corridor and begged her not to leave. Marjorie had cried, patting Kitty on the back with hands that had made her a million sandwiches and washed her clothes a thousand times. Kitty buried her face in her chest and hoped she knew how grateful she was for everything.
She fished out the handkerchief Marjorie had embroidered for her, dabbed at her eyes and dug deep to find a smile, determined to put a brave face on things. She walked into the quadrangle and felt an instant lift to her spirits when she spied her idiot cousins walking towards her. Ruraigh gave her a brief hug for the first time ever and Hamish stood close and with a hand on her shoulder whispered, ‘It’s all going to be okay, you know that, don’t you?’
She nodded, even though she didn’t know any such thing. But standing next to them, people who knew her, her kin, who knew about her life away from Vaizey College, well, it made her feel a wee bit better.
It was at the end of lunch that she caught sight of Angus across the dining hall. Her heart raced, but her head buzzed with self-doubt. Would he ignore her now that she was in his world, a world in which he was very much established – captain of the 1st XI, no less – and she was the new girl from way out in the sticks? Maybe he already had a girlfriend at school, one of the cool, sophisticated fifth-formers that were clustering around him. As Kitty listened to the assured way the other girls spoke, she hated the sinking feeling of inadequacy in her gut. Everyone looked and sounded much cleverer than her. They all seemed to know where they were going, and she didn’t have a clue. She felt like a salmon trying to swim against the current. If she’d had the option, she would have curled up and hid, just like her mum in her bedroom in the turret.
But then Angus turned round and smiled at her, and Kitty’s spirits soared. Her stomach bunched with joy, just as it had at Darraghfield, and she was overcome with the desire to kiss him again, everything else forgotten. It was all she could think about.
*
In the afternoon, Mr Reeves, the rather odd, portly tutor with a gravy stain on his shirtfront, chaperoned her to an empty classroom and then abandoned her. He’d appeared most put out by her arrival, reminding her of Marjorie when she got in a tizz, as if she were a late and unexpected arrival for dinner and he was going to have to upset the seating arrangements and lay another place.
‘Come on, Kitty, you’re nearly one day down,’ she whispered to herself as she sat there waiting for something to happen, wiping the nervous sweat from her palms on her school skirt. ‘You can do this.’
She became aware of someone to her left. Turning her head, she saw a boy hovering in the doorway, leaning on the frame. He stared at her until he realised she was returning his stare and looked away. Kitty noted the hunch to his shoulders, which were a little rounded, as if he was trying to hide, trying to fold himself away. She knew how he felt. He had a nice face, handsome, framed by dark curly hair, and yet his manner was that of someone in a semi-permanent state of apology. Very different from the confident swagger she’d seen in other Vaizey College boys. And it was unusual that he was alone; she’d noticed that the boys tended to travel in packs, be it a rugby clique or an academic group. And probably because of this, she felt an
immediate bond with him.
He approached hesitantly, glancing nervously around the room as if he’d been warned that a trap might be sprung at any moment; the fall guy, forced to walk beneath the carefully balanced bucket.
Kitty thought it curious that of all the empty seats in the classroom, he pulled out the one next to hers and took up position alongside her at the two-person desk. It was a little awkward. She saw him swallow and understood that he might be too shy to introduce himself. She took it upon herself to break the ice.
‘Hi there, I’m Kitty.’ She smiled warmly and waved at him, even though they were close enough to speak.
He gave a small, nervy nod. ‘I’m Theo.’ He sat down and stared at her face, apparently having lost some of his earlier reticence.
‘Well, you’re going to have to help me out here, Theo. You know when a girl is a million miles from home and is smiling as though she has it all figured out but is actually just very scared, wondering how to fit in at a new school this late in the term?’ She dipped her eyes, her voice sincere.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Well, I am that girl.’ She laughed softly and leant in closer, laying her fingers briefly on his arm. She felt him flinch beneath her touch.
Don’t be afraid. It’s okay… He reminded her a little of her mum – scared of the world and not sure of his place in it. The boy, Theo, clearly had no idea how attractive he was or how endearing his unassuming nature was.
Kitty continued, whispering now. ‘Actually, that’s not strictly true. I’m a warrior like my mum and that means I can get through just about anything.’ She sat back in the chair and rested her hand on the desktop. ‘Mr Reeves told me to sit here and then left me all alone. He seemed a bit odd.’
How to Fall in Love Again: Kitty's Story Page 4