Lilah May's Manic Days

by Vanessa Curtis

  ‘Where’s he going?’ she whispers. All the colour has drained from her already-pale cheeks so that she looks almost see-through.

  We stop talking. The front door clicks shut.

  Dad gets up and runs into the lounge to peer out of the window.

  ‘He’s going down towards the precinct,’ he says. ‘Don’t worry, Rachel. He’s probably gone to get cigarettes.’

  Mum is gripping on to the edge of the kitchen table as if she’s going to fall. Dad tops up her wine and rubs her arm.

  ‘He’ll be back later,’ he says. ‘Honest. Why would he have come home just to run away again? It doesn’t make sense. Eat your pudding.’

  We try to carry on as if nothing has happened but none of us can think of a thing to say.

  There are a lot of clinking noises as our spoons hit the empty bowls and Mum gathers up the dishes and plonks them into the sink.

  I go to bed at eleven and Dad goes up to his study just afterwards.

  Jay still doesn’t come back.

  LILAH’S ANGER DIARY NOVEMBER 27TH

  ANGER LEVELS: 9/10 – RUBBISH!

  I’ve left a gap again. Sorry. So Jay did come back just before midnight on that evening. But by then I’d got so angry I had to come upstairs and knock my head against the wall about one hundred times. Dad was listening to music in his study so he didn’t hear me, thank God. I could so do without Dad trying to ‘tame’ me at the moment. And Mum was too busy waiting and watching the clock to notice that I was nearly knocking myself out on the cold white Artex of my bedroom wall.

  I hate Jay – really hate him. How could he go out and put us through another night of that horrid worry all over again? After we had to go through over two years of hell, wondering where he was and whether we’d ever see him again. I hate him.

  No I don’t. Well – I do today. Maybe I’ll get over it. Dunno. I’m so angry at the moment that I can’t even bear to be in the same room as him. We’ve got into this pattern of mostly ignoring each other.

  I’m back at school, Bindi and Adam are still going around together and it’s getting really cold. Groo.

  (A bit later: I shouldn’t write that I hate Jay. Feel bad about writing that now. I know I don’t exactly hate him. But I don’t love him much at the moment, either).

  Mum drags me out at the weekend to do some early Christmas shopping. None of us have given it much thought what with Jay coming back out of the blue, but now she seems dead keen to fill a huge trolley with mince pies and puddings and a big frozen turkey. She adds two boxes of coloured shiny crackers and one of party poppers.

  ‘Steady on, Mum,’ I say. ‘Are you sure Jay’s going to be in the mood for party poppers?’

  Mum is unloading all this food onto the conveyor belt with a purposeful glint in her eye.

  ‘Well, even if he isn’t, we are going to have the best Christmas ever,’ she says. ‘I’ve had two Christmases without my son. And now he’s back. Get me a box of After Eights from over there, Lilah, will you?’

  I sigh and head off to the chocolate section.

  Something tells me that this Christmas is in some ways going to be even worse than the two we had without Jay. How are we going to do ‘Happy Christmas’ when one member of the family won’t even speak and sucks up all the positive energy in the room until it turns black and foul, almost as though you could reach out and wring a dark, dank liquid out of it?

  Mum loads all our bags into the car and then drags me off to River Island. I kind of like going in there on my own on Saturday mornings but going in there with my mother in the middle of the Christmas rush is a mega nightmare. And she doesn’t want to look at all the good stuff, like the hooped earrings and black leather studded pumps; she wants to drag me into the boys’ section to choose something for Jay.

  ‘I’m not sure he’s into clothes at the moment,’ I say. Jay has been wearing the same stained top and old jeans for the last week.

  ‘Well, we can’t give him anything to do with music,’ says Mum. ‘Dr Cunningham thinks it might awaken painful memories and that we should let him choose when he’s ready to play the guitar again.’

  ‘OK,’ I say. I know when I’m beaten. It’s hot in here and people are starting to get bad-tempered in the queue, muttering about there not being enough staff on.

  Mum settles on a striped, long-sleeved top, a bit like one I’ve already got. She buys a big black jumper and a pair of black jeans. I have to admit that she’s got good taste and that the Jay from our previous life might have liked these things.

  ‘Right,’ she says. ‘And now your father.’

  My heart sinks down into my black Uggs and dies. This can only mean one thing. Department Store Hell.

  By the time we’ve fought our way around an enormous store full of the stench of perfume testers and crowded with anxious shoppers filling their trolleys with more Christmas rubbish, I’ve almost lost the will to live.

  ‘Seagullvians,’ I mutter as a group of people with sharp elbows push past me and nearly knock me flying. What?’ says Mum, but she’s not really listening. She’s got her eye on a V-necked jumper for Dad and starts rifling through a stack of different sizes. Mum has got so used to my ‘Lilah-isms’ that she doesn’t really hear them any longer.

  I hop from one leg to another to try and stop from screaming as Mum pulls out one jumper after another and then stares at them and puts them back, muttering about sizes to herself.

  ‘And what about you?’ she says when we’ve finally paid for the jumper and I’ve burst into the fresh air outside with relief. ‘What would you like for Christmas, Lilah? We could go and choose it now if you like.’

  I turn away from Mum and face an enormous wave of shoppers who are coming towards me with their eyes fixed on the door of the department store.

  There are tears springing up in my eyes. I don’t want her to see because she’s trying to be really nice and is buying everyone expensive presents.

  The thing is there is something I would like for Christmas, only you can’t buy it in a shop. And just thinking about it is making me turn into an emotional wreck.

  ‘A black top would be nice,’ I manage to squeak out in the frosty air.

  Mum looks pleased. ‘Topshop?’ she says. The woman has boundless energy for shopping.

  I stagger along behind her. How can I tell Mum that the only thing I want for Christmas, she can’t provide?

  I go into the changing rooms with Mum and try on some tops and they look nice so we choose a black stretchy one together and she’s happy about that but all the time I’m fighting down this great wave of sadness and all I can think as we head back to the car park and nearly get into a punch-up with another car that tries to get into our space before we’ve left it is one thing.

  I want my brother back. Again.

  The following weekend I wake up to a world of white outside the window.

  It’s perfect.

  The snow looks unbroken and fresh on our back lawn, except for a tiny line of cat footprints left by the chocolate Siamese kitten from next door.

  Our street is dead quiet except for the occasional car grinding its way slowly down the road at about ten miles an hour. I watch out of the lounge window as people walk past in wellington and Ugg boots, placing one foot in front of another with great care.

  ‘Brrr!’ says Mum, clicking the thermostat up in the kitchen. ‘Don’t tell me we’re actually going to have a white Christmas! I hope Dad doesn’t get snowed in at the zoo!’

  She cooks up some scrambled eggs on brown toast and as there’s no sound from Jay’s bedroom we eat it together in companionable silence, perched on the windowsill and staring at the unfamiliar landscape outside.

  ‘You and Jay made a wonderful snowman when you were about ten,’ Mum says, out of the blue. ‘You used chocolate buttons for his eyes and a parsnip for his nose. Took you all morning to finish.’

  She wipes her eyes on the red cord sleeve of her dressing gown and stares out at the whiteness for a m
oment or two longer without speaking.

  I feel like something is about to burst out of me. I’m not sure what it is. It’s not my usual anger. It’s not exactly sadness, either. No – it’s more a sense of growing excitement. And determination. And like there’s an invisible string linking me back to the past, when Jay and I built the snowman.

  Why shouldn’t things be that good again?

  ‘Wait there,’ I say to Mum.

  I pull on my thickest black winter coat, a stripy scarf and woolly gloves and I pound out onto the powdery snow in the front garden. The crispness of the air threatens to suck my breath away and my feet get wet even through my black biker boots, but I don’t care.

  Mum laughs at me through the window as I dart this way and that, piling up snow into head and stomach-shaped balls and patting the sides to make them rounder. By the time I’ve finished my cheeks are flushed and numb with cold and my nose is dripping but I don’t care. I run inside, grab a carrot and two coins and give the snowman a face. Then I get one of Dad’s old baseball caps and stick it on top. I stand back to admire my work.

  Not bad.

  Mum is clapping through the window. I haven’t seen her smile like that for ages.

  Since Jay got back, in fact.

  I glance up at Jay’s bedroom windows – curtains pulled tight across like he doesn’t want the outside world to ever get in. It will be like a sealed tomb in there. Jay hates fresh air and light.

  I pick up a handful of snow and I lob it up at his window – hard.

  The snowball shatters and showers me with cold wet ice but I remould another one and throw again, and again, until the curtains part about an inch and Jay’s cross face peers out and then looks down at me.

  I chuck another snowball, making him jump back as it hits the glass where he’s pressed his nose.

  ‘Hey!’ I yell. ‘Get down here and help me with this snowman, will you?’

  The curtains are redrawn.

  Silence.

  I become aware of how cold and wet I am and I pull my sleeves down as far as they can go and huddle by my snowman.

  I wait.

  And I wait.

  Nothing.

  The sky looks grey and unfriendly and I’m just thinking of going in to soak in a nice hot bath when the front door creaks open and Jay comes out into the snow, wearing a coat over his pyjamas and wellington boots underneath.

  ‘Christ, Liles,’ is all he says, but it’s enough.

  It’s the first time he’s used my nickname since he got back. It’s the first time he’s spoken to me since that first evening.

  He goes over and surveys my snowman and then with a sudden spurt of energy he rebuilds the entire thing and adds stumpy legs and arms and a branch sticking out of its mouth as though it’s smoking a cigarette.

  I stand back and I watch my big brother mould the snow and I don’t say anything, but inside I’m holding my breath in case this is a dream and I’m going to wake up or in case I say the wrong thing and shatter this moment.

  ‘That’s better,’ says Jay. He stamps his snowy boots on the front doorstep and goes back inside and up to his room.

  I stand there all stunned for a moment. The snowman stares back at me with his flat copper eyes.

  The curtain in the front lounge moves a little and I see Mum’s face emerge from behind it. She’s been watching us all the while.

  I give her a small cautious smile and she returns it.

  Then I brush the snow off my coat and head back inside.

  Jay spends the rest of that day back up in his bedroom.

  I’m kind of disappointed. I thought perhaps he might come down and chat to us a bit, but there’s no sound from upstairs, and by the time Dad comes home from Morley Zoo we’ve given up expecting him to surface and I’m helping Mum make supper in the kitchen.

  ‘Don’t expect miracles, Lilah,’ Mum says to me as I peel potatoes and chop up a pile of French beans. ‘That must have been a big effort for him, coming outside to help you.’

  I nod. I know that, deep down. But I just want everything to be back to normal so that we can have a family Christmas like the ones we used to have.

  ‘We’ll still have a good Christmas,’ says Mum, doing that spooky mind-reading thing that mothers do. ‘At least this year we won’t be worrying about where Jay is!’

  I think back to the last two Christmas days in the May household. Mum crying as she cooks the turkey. Dad trying too hard to be jolly and then ending up rowing with Mum because she can’t do the same. The empty chair at the dining-table. The lack of games because Jay had been the great one at making them up and having us all in fits of laughter. The staring at the television while each of us had our own private thoughts. The early nights and the relief when the whole Christmas holiday was over.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Yeah. It should be better than last year.’

  Dad comes home with snow on his clothes from being outside in the lion enclosures all day.

  ‘Shakira’s trying to eat her babies,’ he says in a mournful voice. ‘We had to take them away from her. You should have heard her roaring.’

  Mum sighs. She goes upstairs with a tray and puts it outside Jay’s bedroom and then she comes back down and plonks a plate of shepherd’s pie in front of Dad. She’s heard these stories over and over during the last ten years.

  Dad gulps red wine and eats dinner with enthusiasm. Mum and I pick at the potato topping and mess about with the mince. She looks at me and raises her eyebrows.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, after I realise what she’s trying to do. ‘Yes. Erm, Dad. Jay came down and made a snowman with me.’

  Dad puts his knife and fork down at that.

  ‘Really?’ he says. ‘That’s brilliant. Did he talk to you, Lilah?’

  ‘Two words,’ I say. ‘But I guess that’s an improvement on nothing.’

  ‘It is indeed,’ says Dad. ‘I think this calls for more wine.’ He pours me some even though I don’t really like it, and tops up Mum’s glass.

  ‘Maybe after Christmas you could think about going back to work?’ he says to Mum. ‘You must be missing it, Rachel.’

  Mum gives him one of her Looks.

  ‘Firstly,’ she says. ‘I don’t miss being pelted with food by badly-behaved seven year olds. I don’t miss having to wear a hideous clown outfit and an itchy wig and painting my skin with so much crap that it has broken out in protest. And secondly, my son needs me.’

  ‘Not to mention your daughter,’ I mutter but she glares at me.

  ‘You get plenty of attention,’ Mum snaps. ‘Don’t be so selfish. Your brother has been through hell out there on the streets for two years.’

  I stand up and head for the door. It’s either that, or feel the familiar old prickles of anger start up again. If I stay I’ll just start shouting about the hell that we’ve all had to go through over the last two years and I’ll end up having Mum in tears and Dad slamming up to his study and I don’t want to ruin the rest of the evening after Jay spoke those two precious words to me in the morning so I go upstairs and lie on my bed and try not to cry instead.

  I’m still lying there at half past ten wondering if I’ve got the energy to get ready for bed and then my mobile rings which is unusual because the person who used to ring it most was Bindi, and of course we’re not talking, so it can’t be her.

  I pick up the phone and nearly die of shock. The display is flashing ‘Adam’ at me.

  Adam Carter! What on earth does he want?

  He’s got some nerve, ringing me up.

  But as ever I’m too nosy to ignore it, so I press the green button and make my voice as cool as I can.

  ‘Hey Adam,’ I say. ‘What’s up?’

  There’s a silence after I say that.

  I can almost see Adam pacing up and down in his bedroom. He’ll be running his hands through his blonde hair and preparing to speak in a very low voice so that his mother doesn’t overhear.

  He’s got music on in the background – Bl
ack Eyed Peas, by the sound of it. He likes Songs With Attitude. Sadly he doesn’t like Girls With Attitude. This is why he’s going out with Bindi and not with me. Bindi hasn’t got any attitude at all. When she walks into a room full of people she kind of melts into the crowd without anybody much noticing. When I walk into a room people turn round and give me looks of suspicion. That’s because I always look as though I’m angling for a fight, at least according to Dad.

  ‘You’ve got such an angelic face, Lilah,’ he says. ‘Shame you have to scowl all the time and ruin it.’

  I’m scowling now. Just the effort of hanging on to the mobile with Adam breathing on the other end of it is making me feel angry again.

  Benjie pokes his nose around the door and bounds towards me so I scoop him up under one arm and sit down on the bed.

  ‘What do you want, Adam?’ I say. ‘I’m kind of in the middle of something.’

  OK – that’s a complete lie, but I’m trying to sound cool and as if I don’t care that the boy I love more than any in the world – other than maybe Jay, but at the moment he’s not making it easy for me to even like him – is breathing right into my ear.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Adam. ‘Sorry. I know your brother’s come home and that’s really cool, right? Thing is – I need to tell you something and I can’t really say at school.’

  My heart starts to thud and leap at this point. I hate it when people say things like this. Usually it’s something really bad, like, ‘Your exam has been moved forward to this afternoon,’ or, ‘You’ve got your skirt tucked into your knickers,’ or, worst of all, ‘We think we’ve found your brother,’ which is what happened just before Jay came home and the police had found a body in the canal.

  I grip Benjie so hard that he wriggles free and bolts out of my bedroom.

  ‘Spill,’ I say. The expression brings unexpected tears to my eyes. It’s what Bindi used to say to me whenever I went round to her lovely, warm, crazy home and poured out some problem or another up in her pink bedroom.