Half an hour later, the phone rings. It’s Uncle Stu. By now Jesse has nipped out for another of his training sessions with Freya.
‘You guys okay?’
‘Yeah, we’re good,’ I say. ‘I’m watching some children’s telly. It’s amazing the crap collages you can make with a bit of dried pasta. Jesse’s up at the rec with Freya. Any news?’
‘I’m still at the hospital,’ he says. ‘Been here all afternoon.’
‘How is she?’ I ask. ‘Mum said we should come down later.’
I can hear him sigh.
‘Yes, that’s the problem,’ he says. He pauses for a moment. ‘Look, she’s really not well, Luke. She was in a lot of pain so they’ve given her extra-heavy-duty painkillers, and they’ve knocked her out a bit. Now I know you wanted to come down but there’s really no point. She’s far too drowsy.’
‘You coming back?’ I ask.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I’ll be an hour or so, and I’ll pick something up for supper on the way. Unless you’ve eaten already?’
I look over at the sink and see the empty casserole pan. It had indeed turned out to be Mrs McLafferty’s liver special. Boris wolfed it down and almost bit my hand off when I tried to get the dish back.
‘No,’ I tell him truthfully. ‘I’m starving.’
Uncle Stu gets back at about seven, about twenty minutes after Jesse. I’m toying around with some geography homework and Jesse’s lying exhausted on the sofa. Freya’s obviously pushing him hard.
‘So how’s the training going?’ I ask him. Not that I care particularly.
He gives me a very dodgy look.
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Just asking,’ I say. ‘You’re taking it all very seriously. I thought your place on the team was all sewn up after the last match.’
‘We’ve seen him down at the rec,’ says Jesse, conspiratorially. I haven’t a clue what he’s talking about. I lean forward as though I’m in on the plot.
‘Who?’
Jesse rolls his eyes as if to say, Why do I bother? ‘Duane Mulholland.’
‘Oh, him,’ I say. ‘I thought you’d seen him off.’
‘He played well on Saturday,’ says Jesse. ‘He wants my place in the finals, I know he does. Freya reckons she’s seen him after school, running around the track with Shav.’
‘Shav’s sport’s mad,’ I tell him. He’s in my class so I know Shav quite well. ‘He’s gearing up for the athletics. If Duane’s a fast runner, Shav’s probably roped him in to that.’
‘No,’ Jesse shakes his head adamantly. ‘Freya agrees. He’s doing some serious fitness training. Just because I’m the youngest and a bit on the smaller side, he reckons he can bump me off the team. I know what he’s up to.’
‘And what are you going to do about it?’ I ask. ‘If he’s better than you, he deserves to play for Joan of Arc.’
‘Better make sure he’s not better than me then,’ says Jesse. He jumps off the sofa as he heads for the back door.
‘Dinner in ten,’ says Uncle Stu. Twenty seconds later I can hear a thud, thud, thud, Jesse’s unmistakable trademark sound of ball being kicked against wall, ball being kicked against wall.
To be honest, I’m finding it hard to concentrate on rift valleys after yesterday, but I manage to get something down on paper while Uncle Stu knocks together what he calls an instant supper – Spanish omelette and oven chips. Afterwards he just collapses in a chair. Jesse and I clean up the kitchen (we’re still feeling guilty after Friday’s madness) and for once we don’t fight. I wash up, he dries and he only smashes one plate, which is pretty good going for Jesse.
‘Bet Duane Mulholland wouldn’t have dropped that,’ I mutter as he bends down to pick up the pieces off the floor.
In the middle of the night, Uncle Stu’s mobile goes off. He’s got this really annoying ringtone like a hyena cackling, and it’s a very quick call because next thing is, I can hear him clumping around, bumping into furniture and jangling his car keys. I wander on to the landing and he’s pulling on a sweatshirt.
‘Go back to bed,’ he whispers, trying not to wake Jesse. ‘I’ve got to go to the hospital. Your mum’s having a bad night.’
‘Can I come?’ I ask. ‘I want to come.’
‘No, you stay here with Jesse,’ he says. ‘I’ll send her your love. You’ve got my mobile number, haven’t you? I’ll phone you if … if I need to,’ he says. He ruffles my hair, and points at my room.
‘Bed,’ he says, in a firm but friendly way. ‘I’ll be back in the morning to make your breakfast.’
chapter twenty-one
True to his word, Uncle Stu is there in the morning. I couldn’t get back to sleep once he’d left, but I must have drifted off just before he came home because I wake up when I hear his key rattling in the front door. One look at the alarm clock tells me it’s just gone seven a.m. He heads into the kitchen and I can hear him filling the kettle before he starts calling up the stairs to me and Jesse.
It’s weird what goes through your head when you can’t sleep. I spent the night thinking back over our weekend, re-running it like a favourite old movie, putting it on slo-mo for the best bits and fastforwarding through the rubbish. I wished we’d had time to squeeze more in. I kept wondering what was going on and how bad things really were.
One thing I’ve discovered with adults – you can always rely on them not to tell you the truth when you really want it. They want you to remain kids for ever, in some twisted childhood fantasy. I know Uncle Stu isn’t a fully-paid-up member of the Peter Pan brigade, but I also know that he isn’t really up to giving me blow-by-blow accounts of what Mum is going through. I suppose he thinks that, though I’m more responsible than Jesse, I still need protecting in some way. That I’m still a kid. Maybe he’s right, and I don’t want all the gory details. Maybe he’s just so knackered after a night spent sitting in a chair next to Mum that he only has enough energy left to pour some cornflakes into a bowl and call it breakfast. Maybe there isn’t that much news to share.
So we set off for school together, me and Jesse. It’s a bit of a first because we never walk to school together, but we’re obviously still in that Blitz mentality. Jesse is quite ‘up’ because he’s got footie practice after school and his mind is obviously stuck in a semi-finals victory groove. He’s waffling on about Duane Mulholland again, as if it’s the only thing in the world that matters to him, his place on the team. He kicks everything on the way to school as though his place in the squad depends on it. From discarded fag packets to apple cores to old Coke tins, if it’ll move, he’ll kick it, and in between he’s weighing up his talent against Duane Mulholland’s. Strangely, it’s almost reassuring to hear him twaddling on about something totally unrelated to what’s been going on all weekend, but I can’t honestly say I’m listening. You know how sometimes you can have a radio on in the background, and someone’s talking about the Chancellor and tax rates and you know what it is they’re talking about but you’re not actually listening? Well, that was our conversation on the way to school. I’d tuned out from Radio Jesse.
When I get to school, the first person I see is Freya.
‘Where’s Jack?’ I ask. Jack is never late for school, and as usual, I’ve made it with about thirty seconds to spare.
‘No show.’ She explains. ‘It’s Tuesday, Luke. Week B.’ She looks at me as if I’m daft. ‘Sex education? He won’t be in today.’
‘Oh yeah …’
I’d forgotten about that. Jack has a bit of a thing about sex education. While Ms Riley passes round condoms and points at embarrassing anatomical diagrams and the rest of the class collapses in fits of the giggles, Jack can’t cope. First his ears go red and then it starts to spread round his face like some awful skin disease. Once, it got so bad that Ms Riley asked him if he felt all right, and of course, that made everybody stare at Jack even more and by the time the bell rang at the end of the lesson he was so puce his face was practically the colour of a Barbie accessor
y set. It was a bit of a touchy subject and Freya and I weren’t allowed to mention it again, ever. And every time we have a double sex education lesson – once a fortnight, week B – he no shows.
Just as I’m about to launch into the business of Uncle Stu getting called out in the middle of the night, Ms Riley starts clearing her throat and asks, ‘Now can anyone tell me what they understand by the term “heavy petting”?’ and I start to think that maybe Jack has the right idea after all.
We’re twenty minutes into the lesson and the embarrassment factor is really kicking in when there’s a knock on the classroom door and Ms Riley says, ‘Yes?’ in that teacherly way and James ‘Big Butt’ Butterfield waltzes in and says, ‘Luke Napier, Miss. Head wants him.’
Ms Riley corrects him by saying ‘Ms’ very pointedly, but he just raises his eyes to the ceiling and drops them again with a loud ‘duh’. I’m thinking, what is it now, what is it now, as I walk to the front. This is getting a little bit too regular for my liking. Jesse’s not playing footie till later so he can’t have broken anything yet, not unless he tripped on the stairs into class which is always a possibility with Jesse, and then I think, Mum. It just hits me out of nowhere, how can I be so stupid, it’s something to do with Mum, and I start to run along the corridor.
‘Where you going?’ yells Big Butt. ‘We’ve got to get your little brother too, you know.’
I’m running towards Mrs Halloran’s office and thinking, ‘Please don’t let it be that.’ We’ve never been that religious in my family – well, not for years, anyway – but I think this is what most people call praying, and that’s what I’m doing as I run down the corridor. ‘Not that, not that, not yet, please, not yet.’
It becomes a mantra I can’t get out of my mind and then I’m outside Mrs H’s door, out of breath, and I knock on the door but I’m already opening it as Mrs Halloran says, ‘Yes.’
The first thing I see as I open the door is Uncle Stu sitting in the chair opposite Mrs H’s desk.
‘Luke,’ he says, ‘I thought …’
His voice trails off ominously. Mrs H steps round the desk and puts an awkward arm around my shoulder.
‘Your uncle has come to take you and your brother to the hospital, Luke,’ says Mrs Halloran. ‘It seems your mother’s taken a turn for the worse.’
A turn for the worse. What does that mean? It sounds such a bizarre thing to say, as though Mum is some kind of truck veering out of control.
Uncle Stu stands up.
‘Come on, we’d best get you and Jesse over to the hospital. She wants to see you both.’ He turns away and looks at Mrs Halloran. She’s nipped back behind her desk now to protect herself from the real world that’s come crashing into her office this morning.
There’s a knock at the door and Jesse is propelled into the room by Big Butt.
‘What’s going on?’ he asks as we turn him round and push him back out the door. ‘I can’t just leave now. I’ve got football practice this afternoon.’
chapter twenty-two
It’s only about fifteen minutes’ drive from school to Gospel Park, but it seems much longer than that. We don’t say much in the car. It’s hard to know what’s going on in Jesse’s head at the best of times. He may be thinking about missing this afternoon’s training session and the likelihood of Duane Mulholland taking his place. I just sit with my nose pressed up against the side window of the car, the world blurring past, until I shut my eyes really tight, hoping that when I open them again I’ll suddenly find myself in another life, or at least back in my old one, before everything started to go tits up.
As we leave the car park, Jesse says, ‘You’ve forgotten to pay and display, you’ll get a ticket’, but Uncle Stu ignores him. We belt our way up the stairs to Spencer ward, Uncle Stu racing ahead, taking two steps at a time. We’re getting funny looks from everyone inside because you’re not allowed to run in hospitals, but we haven’t got time to explain to anyone. When we get to Spencer ward, we go zooming through the doors and past the place where you’re meant to wash your hands with the special antiseptic lotion, and there’s Mia sitting in a corridor on an orange plastic chair, crying, and Polly is kneeling next to her with her hand around her head. Polly is saying something to Mia very softly, and Mia is dabbing at her eyes with a crumpled-up piece of the blue paper that they use for everything in hospitals.
That’s when everything starts to slow down. Everything’s been on full tilt for the past half an hour or so, and suddenly the brakes have been slammed on. Mia looks up and sees us, then she stands up saying, ‘Luke, Jesse …’ and she starts to come towards us, holding her arms open wide. It reminds me of a picture of Jesus that Mum had in an old prayer book when we were younger, with fire bursting forth from his sacred heart. She’s saying come to me, hold me, I’ll comfort you, and I can see she wants comfort too. So we do, we go to her and as we reach her she crumples down to our level and then I hear this awful noise, it’s a shuddering, thundering, wailing noise and it’s only as she pulls me and Jesse towards her that I realise the noise is coming from me.
Eventually, Mia releases her grip and we come up for air and she says, ‘She’s gone, she’s gone.’ Her cheeks are wet and her eyes are red, and I can see Uncle Stu talking to Polly and she’s squeezing his right hand in both her hands and the nurse, Luiz, is coming over to join them and I’m thinking, what happens now, what do we do now?
Uncle Stu is joined by the ward sister who’s putting her arm round his shoulder and I can see he’s covering his eyes with his hand, and on the other side Polly is stroking his arm.
‘Do you want to come and see your mum?’ says Mia. ‘She just slipped away, really quietly, just a few minutes ago. She was holding on to see you, I could tell, but she didn’t have the strength …’ and then the emotions come bursting through again, like a dam giving way under the strain of it all.
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘I want to see her.’
‘I don’t know if I want to see a dead person,’ says Jesse.
‘It’s not a dead person,’ I say. ‘It’s our Mum. Don’t you want to say goodbye?’
Uncle Stu is standing with us now.
‘Come on, boys,’ he says. ‘Let’s all say goodbye together.’
Mia opens the door to the little room at the side and we all go in. The curtain is drawn so there isn’t much light but there’s a strange perfumed smell. It’s then I notice someone’s lit a scented candle and placed it beside the bed. I think it’s meant to be symbolic, a mark of respect. Mum’s lying in the bed, her hands at her side, and she’s wearing her old nightie, the one she wears so often when she’s sitting at the kitchen table, and I think I’m glad she’s wearing that one and not something new that I don’t recognise, or one of the hospital’s nasty nighties. She looks so quiet and so still and so peaceful. The big furrows on her forehead have all been erased, and I realise of course that’s because the pain has gone, it’s vanished for ever, and it looks as though our old mum is back.
‘She looks beautiful,’ says Uncle Stu.
And I don’t know why, because I think it’s creepy, the idea of touching dead bodies, but she’s still my mum and I reach out for her hand, and it’s still slightly warm. And I hold it for a minute and say a prayer – that’s what she’d have done.
‘Do you two want to have a bit of time in here on your own with your mum?’ asks Uncle Stu.
‘I’d like to go now,’ says Jesse. He’s looking a bit freaked out round the edges, like it’s all been too much for him to take on board in one big gulp.
‘Can I stay a minute longer?’ I ask, and Uncle Stu nods and guides Jesse out. He carefully leaves the door slightly ajar, and I look back at Mum and the room. I notice the paint is peeling round the top of the ceiling and there’s a scuff mark on the wall where someone’s shoved the bed too hard, and it all seems such an imperfect world, and yet it doesn’t really matter any more, none of it.
I think of all the things I want to tell her. Not just now, I mean, bu
t things I’ll want to tell her when I’m older and won’t be able to. Like who am I going to moan to if I mess up my GCSE maths, or who am I going to shout at when Jesse starts winding me up? Who’s going to help me fill in the form if I want to go to university, and who’s going to wash my clothes and match up my socks in pairs in those funny little doughnut shapes, and who’s going to make us roast dinners on a Sunday, and what if I get a girlfriend and she’s not right for me, who’s going to tell me she’s not right for me, and I realise I’m crying again now, and I can’t say those things because they’re all so selfish, they’re just about me, and she is lying here dead, and I’m thinking about ME, and that makes me cry even more. It’s the same for Jesse, I think, in fact it’s worse for him because he’s younger and at least I got a couple more years of Mum in than he did. I hold her hand tighter and squeeze it harder and I can’t stop crying now. It’s all coming down and I just blurt out, ‘Oh Mum, why d’you have to go and die?’
chapter twenty-three
It’s funny, but I had a teacher in Year Three called Miss Tranter and she was one of those wise teachers who said things that got stuck in your brain and you just carry them around with you for ever. She once told us that we should never be afraid to put up our hands if we didn’t understand anything for fear of sounding stupid. What started it all was this girl called Josie Pegg who had thrown her lunch out after Miss Tranter had told us to take everything out of our desks that didn’t come under the category ‘books’ and chuck it in the big plastic bin in the corner. As Josie stood in tears gazing at her ham sandwiches covered in cack, Miss Tranter said it was a shame to do something wrong just because you were afraid to ask. The lesson I learned was, it’s not so dumb to ask if you’re not sure about stuff.
It’s about three days after Mum has gone (people don’t like to use the word ‘died’, I’ve noticed, and it seems to have rubbed off on me) and Polly has come round our house to see how we’re getting on. I suspect this is beyond the call of duty, but that’s Polly for you.
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