‘Hi!’ she says, as if we’re old friends and it’s an extraordinary coincidence we’ve bumped into each other.
‘Hi,’ I mumble, heading home without breaking stride.
Inevitably, she follows me.
Callum is in front of his house, chucking a tennis ball against his garage then catching it on the rebound, and I know immediately what will happen next.
Sure enough, as soon as he’s made the next catch, he turns and positions himself to block the way to my front door.
‘Who’s this?’ he says.
‘I’m Sky,’ says Sky, with clueless friendliness.
Callum smirks. ‘What kind of a name is that? Are you called after the TV channel?’
‘No, I’m called after the sky. Up there,’ she says, pointing upwards. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Callum.’
‘You live next door to Luke?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Nice house.’
‘It’s OK.’
‘It’s big.’
‘Not as big as yours. But then mine isn’t filled with homeless people, is it?’
Sky’s face freezes as she begins to sense the hostility in the air. Her eyes flick anxiously towards me for a moment, looking for clues as to what is going on, but I can’t think of a way to explain it.
‘Let’s go,’ I say, but before Sky moves, Callum takes a step towards her, sniffs the air, and says, ‘What’s that smell?’
Sky stares at Callum with a look of bewilderment.
‘I can’t smell anything,’ I say.
‘Must be both of you, then,’ says Callum, turning back to me. ‘Are you going to move into the freak house with your sister?’
‘They’re not freaks, they’re climate protesters,’ I say, stepping around him and heading for my door, but before Sky can follow, Callum says ‘Catch!’ and chucks his tennis ball straight up into the air.
Sky stands under the rising then falling ball with her hands cupped together, but I can tell by her awkward stance and worried expression that it is going to bounce free of her grasp, which is exactly what happens.
Sky hurries after the ball as it skitters away into the gutter, goes on her hands and knees to fish it out from under a car, then scampers back and hands it to Callum, who tosses it from hand to hand without breaking eye contact.
‘Butterfingers,’ says Callum.
Sky squeezes past him and follows me to my door.
As I unlock it, Sky says into my ear, ‘Mum says I have to get my clothes back. The ones your mother took.’
‘I’ll get them for you,’ I say.
I’m about to ask her to wait on the doorstep, but Callum is still right there, staring at us, bouncing his ball against the pavement with a sinister look in his eye. I have no desire to invite Sky into my house, but I sense that I can’t leave her out there at Callum’s mercy, so I usher her in with a wave of my arm and close the door behind us.
By the time I’ve found the clothes, which are in a neatly folded pile on top of the washing machine, she’s sat herself down on the sofa and put on the TV. She has the same rapt expression on her face as last time, except that now she’s watching one of those mind-numbingly boring programmes about doing up houses.
I hand Sky the clothes, but her eyes don’t budge from the screen.
I stare at her for a while, feeling as if I ought to say something about Callum, sensing that I owe her an explanation of what just happened outside my house. I want Sky to understand that Callum is someone who zeroes in on other people’s weaknesses, and that Sky, of all people, should give him a wide berth, but I don’t want her to think I’m her ally or protector. I don’t want her to mistake me for a friend.
I can’t think of any way to put this into words, so instead I sit with her for a few minutes in front of the boring show as a gesture of low-grade companionship, then slip upstairs, leaving her in front of the TV. Mum can get rid of her when she gets home from work.
I’m not sure how much time has elapsed when I hear Mum calling me down for dinner. My room can be something of a black hole when it comes to the passage of time. Once I’m behind that door, hours can disappear without me having any idea what I’ve even been doing.
When I come down, after being called a couple more times, I’ve almost forgotten that I left Sky in the living room, and I’m certainly not expecting to find her chatting over dinner with Mum and Dad as if they are old friends. It’s true that I didn’t exactly hurry downstairs, but the sight of the three of them eating happily together, with Sky sitting in my seat, immediately makes me bristle.
‘This is very cosy,’ I say, pulling out the chair Rose usually sits on.
‘You have to try this food,’ says Sky. ‘It’s incredible.’
‘Should I? I was planning to just sit here and watch.’
Sky stares at me blankly, as if I’m talking in a foreign language. Why did I invite her in? What was I thinking?
‘Sky’s been telling us all about the commune,’ says Mum. ‘Apparently there are rotas for everything, and everyone has to do their share of cooking, washing-up, cleaning and other household chores.’
‘Cleaning? I don’t think that’s on the rota,’ I say.
‘It is,’ says Sky.
‘There’s also a skill-share pool,’ says Dad, ‘where everyone in the commune contributes their time to teach a skill to other people in the house. There’s yoga, music, carpentry, cooking … lots of things.’
‘What’s Rose teaching?’ I ask. ‘Whining?’
‘She’s been helping me with my schoolwork,’ says Sky. ‘She’s really nice.’
‘Never helped me with my schoolwork,’ I say. ‘But I’m only her brother, so …’
‘And … what’s her boyfriend like?’ asks Mum, in an unconvincingly offhand manner. I haven’t told her anything about Space, but news of his existence must have filtered through, either from Rose herself or from something Dad has spotted on one of his snooping trips. Or maybe she’s just fishing – acting like she already knows there’s a boyfriend as a way of tricking Sky into revealing whether or not there is one.
‘He’s OK,’ says Sky, cutting herself a large mouthful.
Mum gives a small nod, glances at Dad, then says, ‘What do you mean “OK”? Is that OK as in not nice?’
Sky shrugs.
‘How old is he?’
Sky shrugs.
‘Is he … are you saying you don’t like him?’
‘He’s OK. He does a lot of drumming.’
After that Mum and Dad grill Sky for the entire duration of the meal about who lives in the commune, whether they have jobs, what they used to do before they moved in, and various other coded questions to try and figure out if they have criminal tendencies or dangerous habits. Sky somehow manages to answer all my parents’ questions without giving anything interesting away, but I get the feeling this isn’t because she’s concealing something, it’s because she genuinely doesn’t know anything about anything. If the commune is a hotbed of drug abuse and subversive behaviour, Sky is clearly oblivious to it all. In her world everyone is either ‘nice’, ‘OK’ or (for a couple of people who are obviously beyond the pale of awfulness) ‘not very nice’.
Reading between the lines of Sky’s vague comprehension of what people other than her do all day, none of the residents of the commune have actual jobs, but thanks to crowdfunding and other mysterious sources of money, there’s always food on the table (eaten communally and cooked according to a rota), though some of it is ‘freecycled’ from past-sell-by-date supermarket stock. A few things have been planted in the garden, some by Sky herself, but nothing has been successfully harvested yet, apart from some cress that she grew on a piece of kitchen towel on a window sill.
Mum seems to have learned her lesson about the difficulty of getting rid of her, and at the end of the meal, with Dad still quizzing Sky on every detail of life in the commune, Mum stands up and says, ‘It was nice to see you, Sky, but now it’s time for
you to go home.’
This, it turns out, is just about direct enough for Sky to get the message. She thanks Mum, lifts her plate, licks off the last dregs of food, then leaves.
‘Poor kid,’ says Mum as the front door closes.
‘She’s so weird. I wish you’d stop inviting her,’ I say.
‘I didn’t invite her. She was here when I got home.’
‘You didn’t have to give her dinner though.’
‘It’s amazing how they’re just over the road, but it’s like they’re in another world,’ says Dad dreamily, more to himself than to us. ‘All the things we do without even thinking about it, just blindly going along with what everyone else does, and they … don’t.’
‘Parenting, for example,’ says Mum.
Dad looks at her for a moment, then turns his head and gazes pensively into space, his eyes clouded over with some distant private thought. The warm orange light of a summer evening is slanting into the room, casting a skewed shadow of my father across our plates and glasses, and for an instant the room seems paused, like a photograph. I have a strange sense of this insignificant moment dropping itself into my memory and taking root, and as this happens, I’m struck by a feeling that everything is about to change.
Mum breaks the spell with a weary sigh, saying, ‘I don’t think anyone’s looking after that child.’
‘That doesn’t make it your job,’ I say.
Sky getting mocked by Callum may have stirred my sympathies, but the sight of her being mothered by my mum has had the opposite effect. The fact that Mum let her sit in my chair feels ominous and unsettling.
‘That’s heartless,’ snaps Mum, fixing me with a cold stare. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are.’
I look back at her and, for the first time ever, this tedious parental mantra doesn’t just bounce off me. In a flash, as a sudden revelation, I see that my boring, predictable house and family are, in fact, a blessing which has been bestowed on me, and not on kids like Sky. If it had never been given to me, I’d be someone else entirely.
An instant after this idea hits me, it seems to merge with a returning sensation of vague anxiety. I’m not sure exactly what it is that has happened, or what might be coming next, but I feel tugged in the pit of my stomach by a feeling that the straightforward family I belonged to until the moment I lent Rose my sleeping bag has begun to dissolve.
I cannot, of course, say any of this, so I roll my eyes at Mum and head upstairs.
A couple of days later, towards the end of another listless afternoon, I hear the sound of drumming pulsing out of the commune. This, in itself, is nothing unusual, but the sheer volume sounds different, as if not just a couple of people but everyone who lives there is playing the drums at once.
I head over the road to see what’s going on, and when I place my hand on the rickety front door, I can feel the sound reverberating through the wood. In the hallway, the floorboards under my feet also seem to be trembling in time with the ear-splitting racket emerging from the kitchen.
I go in, and even though, until this moment, I had no idea what a drumming workshop was, it’s clear that I’m looking at one now. Space is standing in the middle of the room with an African drum in front of him, held in place by a loop of purple and yellow rope which is slung over one shoulder. Scattered around him are ten or so people, squatting on the floor or perched on stools, each playing drums of different shapes, sizes and musical styles. But that’s not the weird thing. There’s something else, a sight that at first I can barely believe or comprehend.
My dad, playing the bongos.
He’s red-faced, drumming furiously, and seems to have worked up a sweat which has led him to strip off his shirt.
This is among the most alarming things I have ever seen. It’s like a crack has opened up in the surface of the Earth and swallowed up my home. It’s like gravity has decided to operate sideways instead of downwards. It’s my dad, in a vest, playing the bongo drums in a room full of hippies and, apparently, enjoying it.
I’m not sure how much of the sheer horror I’m feeling is visible on my face, but when Dad sees me, he smiles, waves and beckons me over. His whole body is rocking to and fro with his drumming. Even Grandpa, who has been certified mentally infirm by doctors, has never looked as mad as this.
I tiptoe through the aural carnage of slaps, booms and thwacks towards the grinning, sweat-soaked freak who used to be my father.
‘WANT A GO?’ he yells, barely audibly, into my ear.
I pull a what-is-going-on-here-and-who-the-hell-are-you? face at him, but he doesn’t seem to understand.
‘IT’S FUN!’ he shouts, beating out a failed attempt at a jazzy rhythm. His palms, I notice, are the colour of beetroot.
‘What are you doing?’ I say.
‘WHAT?’
‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING?’
‘DRUMMING!’
‘I can see that, but …’
‘Can’t hear you,’ says Dad, biting his bottom lip and twitching his neck in time to the beat (except not in time).
‘WHY AREN’T YOU AT WORK?’ I ask.
He grins at me, executes a little bongo flurry and says, ‘TOOK THE DAY OFF!’
‘WHAT … FOR THIS?’
‘PARTLY. AND I SAID I’D HELP CLYDE PUT UP A WIGWAM IN THE GARDEN. DO YOU WANT TO SEE IT?’
Yes, I really did just hear my dad ask me if I want to see his wigwam. The man who fathered me truly spoke those words.
‘IT’S ALMOST FINISHED!’ he yells proudly.
I stare at him, slack-jawed, and it dawns on me that the weirdest thing of all is how content and carefree he looks. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this happy.
‘DOES MUM KNOW YOU’RE HERE?’ I ask, attempting to burst his balloon of insanity by reminding him that he’s an adult, with a family.
‘I’LL TELL HER LATER. OOH, LOOK! THERE’S SOME MARACAS. DO YOU WANT THEM?’
The maraca request is too much. I take a final look around the room to see if Rose is there – she isn’t, unsurprisingly, since if she saw what our father was doing she’d probably go into an embarrassment-induced coma – then make a hasty exit. I take a quick tour of the house, and though I do find Clyde (who is either asleep sitting up or meditating, I can’t tell), and a roomful of women who seem to be reading poetry to one another, there’s no sign of my sister.
Stepping out of the commune into the bliss of drum-free open air, I feel momentarily as if I have just walked away from being beaten up.
Mum’s car is now back in the driveway.
Should I try and explain to her what I’ve just seen? Would that even be possible? Are there words to describe the horror? Or, given that Dad is clearly having some kind of crack-up, should I just stay out of the way and leave her to make sense of it? Dealing with this situation, whatever it is, really shouldn’t be my job.
I head home, and I’m still wondering whether to tell Mum about Dad’s personality crisis when I walk into the kitchen and find her standing at the counter chopping a tomato, doing spelling drills with Sky, who is at the table in front of an exercise book, gripping a pencil and writing something down with such intense concentration that she doesn’t notice me entering the room.
‘B – E – L – E – I –,’ she says.
‘No,’ replies Mum, not even looking up or greeting me. ‘“I” before “E” except …’
‘After “C”! So it’s B – E – L – I – E – V – E?’
‘That’s it! Spot on!’
‘What are you doing?’ I say.
‘Oh, hi, love,’ says Mum. ‘I’m giving Sky some help with spelling.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she asked me to.’
‘So you’re her teacher now?’ I say.
‘Oh, Luke! Stop being so sulky! You’re acting like you’re jealous, or something.’
‘Of her!?’
‘Maybe you’re just hungry.’
‘Your mum’s an incredible cook,’ says Sky.
‘Oh, really?’ I reply, with enough sarcasm to wilt a plant. ‘Is there anything else you’d like to tell me about my own mother that I might not be aware of? Since you’re such great pals.’
‘Luke!’ snaps Mum. ‘Come with me! Now!’
She slams down her knife, grabs me by the arm and marches me into the living room.
‘You have to stop this! It’s beneath you!’ she says, in an angry whisper.
‘What’s beneath me?’
‘The way you’re behaving to Sky. Can you not see what she’s been through?’
‘No, I can’t.’
Mum lowers her voice another notch. ‘Nobody’s ever looked after her! Nobody’s given her any proper schooling or decent clothes or even a haircut, and I’m sure she’ll move on soon enough, but for the moment, she’s our neighbour, and our house has become some kind of sanctuary from whatever madness it is she has to live with. And that leaves us with a choice. We can either be selfish and cold and ignore her and throw her out, or we can share a little bit of our good fortune and be pleasant to her and, maybe, in some tiny way, help her.’
‘How do you know nobody looks after her?’ I say.
‘It’s obvious!’
‘You just assume that everything those people do is terrible, but you don’t know. You won’t even go there.’
‘We’re not talking about them. We’re talking about us,’ she says. ‘We’re talking about you. What kind of a person do you want to be?’
I shrug.
‘How do you think you’d want to be treated if you were her?’
I force myself to meet her gaze and rearrange my scowl into a reluctant half-smile. ‘I’d probably want loads of spelling tests,’ I say.
Mum lets out a chuckle and gives me as much of a hug as I’ll let her. ‘How about you play a game with her? Give her some attention?’
‘A game?’
‘Monopoly or something.’
‘Monopoly!?’
‘Or something else.’
‘I suppose I could teach her to play Fortnite. But only if it doesn’t count as part of my screen time. Because it’s not for me.’
‘You are such a lawyer.’
The Summer We Turned Green Page 6
