“No! Mum, you haven’t even let her have a try. Once she gets home she’ll be absolutely fine. If you just let her get up, she’ll be running around and—”
“Bluebelle. ENOUGH!” Mum yells, and it shuts me down. I turn around and cry. I’m angry. I can’t believe what I am hearing. Of course Dove is all right. It’s DOVE! She doesn’t need a chair. Why would she need a chair?
“It’s OK, BB,” Dove says, and a small tear runs softly down her cheek. Dad holds Dove’s hand so tightly. “I wouldn’t even know how to walk today anyway.”
My brain launches out of my skull like a camera on a wire, X-raying her body: a jigsaw of snapped bones, a train set with a missing track. A squashed bird, crushed in the hand of a giant.
She’s broken both of her legs.
Dove closes her eyes and blocks out the world.
The doctor, a nice enough man with a broomstick stache and kind blue eyes, gently raps on the door and enters. He is already saying sorry with his little silent smile.
“How are we doing in here?” he asks in a chirpy whisper.
We? No, not we. I ignore him.
I turn to Mum and plead. “Can we please just try her legs again, before all this cast stuff goes on? Can we just see if she can walk a sec?”
“I’m afraid—” The doctor begins to answer for Mum but she interrupts and gets there first.
“Bluebelle! STOP now, no. These people do this every day and they know what they’re doing.”
My voice rises. “I don’t understand why they’re not putting her up on her feet and letting her just have a try at walking?”
“Stop it, Bluebelle, you’re being ridiculous. She can’t even get up out of bed,” Mum orders.
“Of course she can!” She can do everything, can’t she?
“Stop shouting.”
“I’m not shouting. THIS is shouting!”
“Bluebelle!”
“She’ll be fine and she’ll recover but for now she has to rest,” the doctor answers calmly, too calmly for my liking. “Your sister has had a lucky escape. A fall like that could’ve been fatal.”
“I wouldn’t call it lucky,” I mumble.
“Bluebelle!” Mum cries. And then, “Sorry, Doctor.”
“It’s all right, don’t apologise. Everybody’s tired, you’ve had quite a scare and it’s normal to be upset,” the doctor says. “I understand this is a big change and a lot to take in but as I say it won’t be forever. Dove will recover.” I stare at him blankly. “It’s OK. I’ll give you some space; it’s rather cramped in this room. The nurse will be round soon with something for the pain.” Yeah, you just go home to eat lasagne with your girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever and walk your dog and forget all about us.
Mum smiles sweetly at him and mouths a thank you.
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” the doctor says, already halfway out of the door.
“Yeah, bye,” I bark. I throw the diary at the wall behind him. It pounds off the smudged face of some hideous re-creation of a warped Smurf and flops open.
“BLUEBELLE!” Mum explodes, bearlike and gnarly. I’ve never seen her so mad. But it’s Dad who turns on me this time. He rips his glasses off his face and glares at me. His cheeks show colour. I know he’s only being like this to show off to Mum, prove that he has a backbone. A vein pulses in his forehead. He’s fuming. He points at me.
“We’ve always let you be exactly how you need to be, Bluebelle, let you do exactly what you need to do, your mum and I and even Dove…and we let you get away with it. You manage to make every situation about yourself. But it’s not about you today. This is about your sister and this time you’ve crossed the line.”
“How is it about me? It’s NEVER about me; it’s always only ever about you and Mum, fighting like kids and—”
“ENOUGH!” Dad bellows, and I slam into silence.
Mum tries to perch on the edge of the bed and then apologises and mentions something about needing to call Granny back. “She’s worried,” she mutters, making no eye contact, backing against the door and turning away from us.
“Lucy, Lucy, don’t,” Dad says.
“I’m sorry, I just…sorry.” Mum squeezes herself out of the door and I watch her flutter out of the room as quick as she can, almost in a jog now. To get away from me. Times like this remind me once more that Dove and Mum are small. And thin. And light. They have that in common. And I feel horrible. Like a stain.
My phone vibrates. Max. I cancel it.
He rings again and I cancel that too. I don’t read the texts either.
“Dove? Dove?” I nudge her. I stroke her hair. She is drowsy, with her eyes half closed. She cranks one eye open like I’ve woken her from a dream. “ ’K, you sleep some more, then.” I kiss her head.
We sit in the stillness.
Dad looks at me as if to say, “Well, that was dramatic.” There’s no space for being angry or stubborn. I can feel my face falling before it happens. Dad takes my hand and leads me out into the corridor.
And the moment we are away from Dove I fold into his arms and cry like a T. rex having a breakdown. I wet all down his front. Dribble and snot and hot red-raw emotion seem to have teamed up and kidnapped my whole body.
“OK, darling, my darling, let it all out. It’s OK.”
“I don’t want to cry in front of Dove,” I say. “I don’t want to—”
“It’s OK.” He strokes my hair. He’s been smoking. I like the smell. It reminds me of being young. I breathe it in. I’m aware of people walking past us. We rock stiffly in a tense, sharp shake. I haven’t felt hugged like this in ages.
“It’s just everything. I know it’s only broken bones….I know it’s her legs and they’ll fix….I know it’s the bittersweet ending in comedy films and TV shows where it’s funny after a big fall to end up with all your limbs in casts. I get that. I do. I just…I just don’t like imagining her falling…hitting her head…being scared…lying there on the ground, on top of all that rubbish, the bin bags and spiky stuff and crap…by the railings…screaming for us.” I can’t stop crying. “And us not being there.”
“Well, it’s lucky the rubbish was there, Bluebelle. Probably saved our girl’s life!” Dad smiles, holding my face, wiping my wet eyes with his thumbs.
“And it’s just hit me, the shock, to imagine losing her….” Dad strokes my hair. I cry into his chest. I miss him living at home. I miss being small and him carrying me. I don’t even remember when that stopped. “I should stop crying. I have to be strong for her.”
“You are strong.” Dad has wet eyes too now. “My God, you girls are the strongest girls I’ve ever met in my life. I’m lucky enough to even know you, honestly, that’s why I’m so desperate to come home. Because I’m so rubbish without the three of you.” I laugh at him. “Look at me,” he adds, drawing me out to face him. “I’m a right state.” I laugh again, through wet drops of tears.
“Come on, don’t be hard on yourself. We’re all in this terrible soap opera of life together. Honestly, I wouldn’t even act in it if I was paid all the money in the world….Well, maybe I would…I am quite desperate and haven’t done TV for years. Talk to my agent.” He winks. “Now, where’s your pump?” He pats my pockets. I don’t look up. I squeeze my eyes. I am trembling. He hands my inhaler to me. I take long, deep, wet-faced puffs.
“I thought she wasn’t going to wake up too,” Dad says. “So I’ll take the broken legs, trust me.” I laugh. “And besides, I’m looking forward to getting myself a fresh permanent black marker and practising the spelling of every single swear word I can think of on those casts. Two legs—now, that’s a LOT of space to fill!” He kisses my head and shoves open the door with his side.
CHERRY DROPS
Sorry. I wasn’t expecting this thing to become an actual diary. It was only meant to be about food. And here it is, gettin
g all…you know…heavy.
Really, I shouldn’t be writing in you because it’s a food diary and, well, I haven’t really been eating.
Not that that’s a good thing either. Undereating is just as bad for you as overeating. I know that.
Mum calls Dad to say she’s having a cup of tea in the cafe and then she’ll be back up. She’ll be sorry because the nurse enters with a temporary wheelchair for Dove. It’s kind of clunky and squeaky and not very comfortable and has some chewing gum stuck to the bottom of the seat. Still, I try to pretend it’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.
“Whoa, cool,” I lie. “Check it, Dove.”
Dove says she’ll “have a go” when she feels more awake. Dad offers me a cherry drop and I go to open Dove’s one for her but Dad doesn’t let me. He places his unintimidating dog-paw-like hand on top of mine and softly shakes his head. We mustn’t mollycoddle her. And I leave the wrapped sweet for her, untouched, on the side.
Dad and I suck cherry drops as we take a look at the chair.
Dad, with his crackly actor voice that read children’s audio books to earn a bit of extra cash. He’d take it really seriously, barging round the house, stretching out the words “Ru-mmmp-el-stiltz-skin” and “Rap-UNNNN-zel.” When we were small we’d play them and let his “actory” voice read us fairy stories before bed. Feeling so superior to all the other kids because he was OUR dad and no one else’s. Sometimes he’d sit next to the speakers, miming to make us laugh, stories of princesses and magic, of wicked witches and evil stepmothers. It sounded like Dad’s normal voice except he’d just pronounce all the bits correctly and leave out all the swear words. Sometimes I’d get jealous that other kids went to sleep listening to his voice and he’d say, “Just think of all the little children without a daddy to read them a bedtime story before bed. It’s very generous of you to share your dad.” But that only made it worse. He was OUR dad. Not the generic comforting voice of a dad for everyone.
* * *
—
We are on our second round of cherry drops by the time Dove stirs. My tongue is red, soft and numb.
“What you guys eating?”
Dad nods his head towards the wrapped sweetie on her bedside. She grins.
“Well, well, well then…,” he mutters in his Big Bad Wolf voice, “want to know what I think about all this?”
Dove nods.
He continues. “I think it’s a good thing to try jumps that are too high for us.” Dad’s voice starts to crack; his eyes go all watery. “It is, it’s a good thing. You’re bloody crazy but my word, babe, are you cool.”
SOME MORE TOAST
“BB.” Mum knocks on my door. “I’ve left some toast out here for you, noodle.”
“Thanks.” I’m not going to be one of those bratty kids who says “I’m NOT hungry” because even though I’ve lost my actual appetite for life doesn’t mean that I want to make Mum worry about me too. She has enough on her plate. Figuratively.
I take the toast, slide the plate in as the china growls on my wooden floorboards. A patch of the wood is covered in black fluff from when I spilt a whole bottle of Diet Coke over it years ago and didn’t clear it up. It went sticky. Now it’s covered in sock fluff and bobble.
I roll over on the trifle and stick my phone on charge. The screen flickers with messages.
Max: Blue, really hope you’re OK, thinking of you. xx
And then: AHHHH! Alicia is doing my head! Wish you were here. x
I don’t dare open the messages from Cam. The ones from girls at school. I think about sending a group message to everybody with some lame joke about all the things Dove can’t do now that both her legs are broken, with some great emojis, but then delete the whole thing in embarrassment like I’m pretty much the grossest most unfunny person in the universe. It’s probably better to say nothing.
The toast is hard to swallow and goes down like eating a shoe. I manage one of the four buttery triangles. Guilt runs through my whole body from doing absolutely anything. Because all I think about is all the things that Dove can’t do. I have an image of finding stainless-steel silver sheets and wrapping them, conelike, around my skin, carving off the layers like those ham cutters at the deli. My flesh, thinly sliced, piling up in that waxy paper.
I can’t stop thinking about Dove and how she feels and what she’s going through, even though I know I should. If I think too hard about it, it would be like a tidal wave rushing through my mind and body and once I let the emotion in it would burst my bones and flood me until I was full to the brim and I would combust out of my body completely until my body was no longer a body and all of me would turn to absolute water without any bones at all.
I am useless. I am school-less. Max doesn’t even know I don’t go to school…so I’m uneducated too. A waste. A waste at sixteen. Who was I fooling that I was cute and cheeky and strong? I’m annoying and weak. People will see Dove in her chair and they will see me, the big sister, looming over her in my towering monstrosity and think, shame it was the little one. They will naturally resent me. Because Dove did everything with her body. And I do nothing with mine.
If I was in a chair, nobody would even notice the difference.
QUAIL
Mum’s upstairs with Dove, and Dad and I sit downstairs by the little coffee shop. I hate seeing sick kids. Worried parents.
I get a picture message from Mum. D’s getting her wounds redressed! X
Dove’s smiling in the photo but I am not and neither is Dad. “Zeesh!” he winces. “She looks like a bloody Francis Bacon painting.”
Dad’s right, her head is covered in weird shapes and muddy marks. We zoom in: there’s this one bit of sticky dried blood that looks like black beans from the Chinese, all dehydrated and gross. Like chewed-up, spat-out licorice. Her hair is all greasy from where it can’t be washed because of all of her dressings.
“We should text back,” Dad says, rubbing his specs on his moth-eaten jumper. “A joke or something.”
* * *
—
I wish Dad would stop using Dove’s accident as a chance to flirt with Mum. Or use me as Cupid.
“Hungry?” Dad asks.
“Not after seeing that,” I joke.
“Could stretch our legs, though, have a mooch?” as Dad loves to call it.
We head out of the car park, past the neon ambulances and wheelchairs, the stretchers and flustered visitors hailing taxis, towards the street, back to where the shops and normal people are. The people who don’t even think about the hospital until they need it.
“Sure you don’t fancy any lunch?” Dad suggests, snooping at a menu as we pass the high street.
“No. I’m not hungry.” My eyes skim the bland, predictable menu. Overpriced. Ugly. Pretentious and uses weird words to mislead you.
“You have to eat. You’ve had nothing all day.”
I say nothing.
“The eyes are off you now with all this—you don’t have to worry about writing that diary anymore, Bluebelle. Mum isn’t going to mind about that. Come on, eat something?” he offers. “When am I ever offering to buy you lunch? Me—what is it you call me? Mr. Tight?” I smile. “Come on. Spread some gossip about me and my generosity. It’s a rare opportunity, one not to be missed!”
“I really don’t want to eat, Dad.”
“Well, can’t hurt to take a peek at the menu.” He tilts his spectacles. The place he wants to eat at is one of those weird actors’ club member things, which I can’t be bothered to go to because he’ll just bitch about everyone in there stealing his roles and owing him rounds of beer and then be upset when he finds out that his signed headshot has been removed from the wall for not being famous enough.
“Hmm…quail.” Dad considers it. “No.”
“I’ve never tried eating a quail.”
“Oh, don’t bother.”
He almost physically brushes the menu away. “You’re not missing anything; it’s the most pointless food of all the foods. It represents the ultimate food for snobby toffs.” He blows his nose on a scraggy tissue scrumpled up from his sleeve and briskly walks on.
“One time I went to a posh charity dinner where—honestly—thousands of pounds must have been spent on this luscious wine and complicated canapés and decorations…and the staff were impeccable—you know, first-class, and—”
“That’s so weird, if it’s a charity, why don’t they just not spend all the money on the event and give it to the charity instead?”
“Oh, to butter up the millionaires so they part with their cash. It’s giving a little to gain a lot, I suppose.” He begins to walk away from the restaurant. “Or giving a lot to gain…more.”
“But surely if they’re that rich they should just suggest not having the meal and instead giving it to the people that actually need it and give the donation regardless?” I argue. “I think it’s horrible that people need to be massaged to hand money over. If you can afford it, share it.”
“Too right! Of course. But I wasn’t one of the millionaires, don’t worry.” I wasn’t. “I was reading a poem for the entertainment. They didn’t even listen; they talked over me.”
“Oh, Dad. Poor you.” I felt sorry for him.
“I’m used to it, darling. These millionaires are used to fantastic wine and food and probably used to good theatre, so they don’t care. Anyway…not my crowd. There were about eight hundred guests there, maybe even a thousand, and we all, apart from the vegetarians, I suppose, were given a quail EACH. A whole bird, a whole life right there on the plate.”
“EACH?”
“Each.”
“For one dinner?” I snarl, disgusted. “That many lives, wasted?”
“And let’s be honest, how tasty can anything be when a chef has had to prepare eight hundred portions of it?”
“True! I bet EVEN eight hundred slices of toast wouldn’t taste great, so why that many birds? At least with whole chickens you can share the meat, say spread between four, so that’s, what, two hundred chickens, two hundred lives eaten—but EIGHT HUNDRED?! Were they even nice?”
My Ideal Boyfriend Is a Croissant Page 17
