*
The room was part office, part waiting room and smelt of cleaning products. Not the sweet-scented variety that sent a whoosh of peach or lemon up your nose when you walked into the bathroom – this was more chemical and a little unpleasant. Anna let her gaze flick briefly towards the woman who sat in the corner with a novel in her hands. She had heard her sigh twice.
‘How are you doing?’ the woman asked for the fifth time.
And for the fifth time Anna nodded and looked into her lap, wishing she had a novel in front of her. Danny, the Champion of the World would do. Not that she could read anything right now. She felt too... She felt too...
She reached below her hair and pushed at her ears, trying to clear them. She felt as if she was underwater. Everything, even the woman’s voice, was muffled.
‘Remember, when your thoughts are too loud, or you feel afraid or you just want to pass the time...’ Anna heard her mother’s voice in her mind. And she began.
A...
A... answerphone. I think that’s one on the desk, either that or it’s a cassette player, but I’m going to let it count.
B...
She let her eyes rove the crowded, sagging shelves built into the alcoves of the room.
Books. Easy.
C... clock.
She looked up at the industrial-style timepiece on the wall. 3.15. How long have I been here? A long time. Don’t think, just keep on doing the game.
D... desk.
Her fingers drummed on the tabletop and she tried to count the stain marks left by dozens of tea and coffee mugs. Her tummy hurt and she couldn’t stop clamping her teeth together until they ached.
I want my mum! Where are you, Mummy? I need you right now!
The part-glazed fire door opened slowly and the smiling doctor woman she had spoken to before poked her head inside the room.
‘How are you doing, Anna?’ she asked kindly.
Anna couldn’t bear to look back up at her. I don’t know how I’m doing. I’m trying not to think. I just want Joe. Where is he?
The doctor exchanged a look with the woman in the corner and carried on talking without waiting for an answer. ‘We are still trying to get in touch with your brother and as soon as we have, I will come and let you know. Can I get you a drink or anything to eat?’
Anna shook her head.
Please, Joe, please hurry up and get here soon. Please...
‘Righto.’ The doctor tapped her fingers on the doorframe. ‘Well, Julie will stay with you of course, and I will be back as soon as we have more news.’ She smiled as she closed the door slowly.
I can’t think too much.
I can’t think about it.
E... envelope.
F... filing cabinet.
G...
*
Anna didn’t remember falling asleep with her arms cradling her head on the table, but evidently she had. She came to at the sound of the door opening, and there he was. Like magic, sprung from thin air.
Her relief at seeing Joe was so acute, it was as if a knot had unwound inside her. Her tummy ache was replaced with the need to visit the loo and she felt her bones go all soft. Her throat started to close up and her tears spouted as she scooted the chair along the polished grey linoleum and jumped up. Running around the table, she crashed into her skinny big brother. With her eyes closed, she locked her hands behind him and held him tight. The large silver-eagle buckle of his leather belt bit into her. She buried her face against the flat of his white T-shirt and inhaled the familiar plasticky smell of his faux leather jacket and the sweet, woody scent that she associated with him. She felt as if the weight of his hand on her shoulder was the only thing anchoring her and stopping her from floating up around the ceiling.
‘It’s okay, Anna Bee. I’m here now.’
Even though it had been months since she’d last seen him, all it took was him using her family nickname and she felt a million times safer. He was her family, her brother. He knew things that no one else did, he shared her memories. He knew about the alphabet game, and he knew how their mum called her Anna Bee so that with their surname, Cole, added on, she became ABC.
He put his thin arms around her briefly, then gripped her shoulders and bent down to look her in the face. There was a red tinge to his eyes, a crop of spots on his chin and dark, bluish crescents at the top of his cheeks.
‘She...’ Anna tried to say the words out loud, tried to make it real. ‘She...’
‘I know, Anna Bee. I know. It’s okay. You don’t have to say it. They told me when they called and I am so sorry.’
He wiped his nose with the back of his hand and she saw a new little tattoo on the skin between his thumb and forefinger. It was a tiny pot of ink with a little dagger poking out of the top. She ran her finger over it and her brother smiled despite his tears, revealing a gap where a front tooth used to be. This only made her more sad. Yet another piece of Joe was now missing.
He didn’t get it. She wanted, no, needed to say it.
‘She died, Joe. She just died. I... I said goodbye to her before I went to school. She was standing at the worktop making toast, and “The Things We Do for Love” was playing on the radio and she was singing along.’
Anna could hear it now in her head. She pictured her mum and herself in the rain, in the snow, holding hands.
‘And I thought I would see her when I got home for my tea like I always do and then they came and got me from my history lesson to say that she died. She died, Joe.’
Her eyes searched his face for confirmation that this was real, that she wasn’t going mad. Because there was still the faint possibility that she had gone mad and even though that would be bad, it wouldn’t be nearly as bad as her mum being dead.
‘I don’t know what to do now,’ she whispered. It was a struggle to get the words out.
‘You don’t have to do anything. I’m here and I’ll come back to the flat with you and we’ll just have to take it one step at a time. How does that sound?’ He gently cupped her chin with his beringed fingers.
Simply knowing the next steps pacified her a little. As long as she was with her big brother, she could get through the rest of the day.
‘She... She died in the bathroom. The policeman told me her friend Maura from up the road knocked for her so they could go shopping in Catford and she looked through the letterbox and saw her on the floor. They said she had a heart attack.’
‘Yes, that’s what they told me too.’ Joe straightened and took her small hand into his.
She might have been nine and he eighteen, but at that moment they were once again six and fifteen, disorientated and wandering around Margate trying to find their mum as the light faded and the roar of the funfair lost its thrill and became something scary instead.
Again she pushed at her ears, still unable to shake off the feeling that she was underwater.
‘I guess it’s all right to take her home?’ Joe said. ‘Do I have to sign anything?’
‘No, you can go. Of course,’ the doctor said. ‘Everything’s in order and you’re her next of kin, so that’s as good as it can be, in the circumstances. She’s had quite a day.’ The doctor turned towards Anna. ‘Anna, I’ll be checking in on you, talking to your GP, and I want to say how very brave you’ve been today.’ She smiled with her lips tucked in.
‘Can we go now?’ Joe spat, looking anxiously towards the door.
Anna noticed he used his angry voice when talking to the doctor. It was the same voice that had shouted at their mum the last time she’d seen him. ‘You can shove it!’ he’d yelled, a line of spit dangling from his bottom lip and his wide eyes darting to and fro. ‘I came here for help and again you can only nag me! I like to think that if ever I have a son, I’ll be there for him instead of giving him nothing but shit!’ He had paced up and down then, running his fingers through his hair.
‘A son?’ her mum had shouted. ‘You are only my son when you need something, Joe! I’ve told you before and I c
an only tell you again: get clean, come off the drugs and I will help you all I can. But that’s the deal. You need to be clean, otherwise it’s not fair on me and it’s not fair on Anna. We can’t do it any more!’
Anna had wanted to shout out, ‘I don’t mind, Mum! I would rather have Joe home and on drugs than not have him home at all!’ but she didn’t. Instead, she’d stared at the telly, the one they’d bought to replace the one that had gone the last time they’d been burgled. Her mum had cried and decided not to tell the police. She said there was no point, she said that she knew who’d robbed them and that to get the police involved wouldn’t help anybody.
Anna took a breath and looked at the doctor.
‘My... My mum...’
‘Yes?’ The doctor and the other two people in the room all cocked their heads, as if what she might have to say was of huge importance.
‘My mum doesn’t like dark places or small spaces. She likes the window open and she likes a breeze.’
Julie started whimpering in the corner. The doctor shot her a look.
‘Okay.’ The doctor nodded. ‘Thank you for letting me know that.’
*
Joe reached into the pocket of his skin-tight jeans and pulled out a pound note. He paid the taxi driver while Anna stood by the front gate.
‘Have you got your key?’ he asked.
She looked up and was almost surprised to see him standing there. In her head, she’d gone back to that morning, to when she’d closed the gate behind her and stopped a little way along the path to pull up her socks. She remembered doing that but very little else afterwards, until she got to school. How was she to know that the last ever image of her mum would be of her standing at the worktop with the butter knife in her hand, waiting for the toast to pop?
Her mum had blown her a kiss seconds before Anna shut the front door and, as always, Anna had caught it and pressed it to her cheek.
Wasted seconds. If she’d known it was going to be the last time she’d see her, the last time she’d hear her voice, she would have clung to her, buried her head in her chest like she had when she was a baby, and she would have told her all the things she needed her to know.
I love you, Mum, more than anyone else in my whole life and more than I will ever love anyone, ever, ever.
I can only go off to sleep if I can hear you washing up in the kitchen or watching the TV in the front room because then I know that you’re close by.
It was me that broke Nanny’s vase and hid the broken bits behind the ironing board in the hall cupboard. I didn’t want to get in trouble and I’m sorry.
It didn’t matter to me, Mum, that it was just you and me, or you and me and Joe. Even though Tracy Fitchett says having a dad is the best thing in the world because he takes her swimming and she can jump off his shoulders into the pool. I know, Mum, I know that you are the best thing ever and you are better than two dads or even three dads.
And last of all, I miss you every day when I am at school. I miss you now and I always will. I miss you so much I feel like there is nothing inside me. I’m like an empty Easter egg. And I feel like I might break.
‘Anna!’ Joe called gently. ‘Have you got your key?’
She tried to answer him. Tried to say that there was a secret key tied to a piece of green ribbon in the bottom of her new Snoopy rucksack that their mum had put there with the instruction that it was to be kept for ‘just in case’. But she couldn’t talk. Her teeth chattered and her limbs were trembling. It was the coldest she had ever been.
‘It’s okay.’ He laid his hand on her back. ‘We’ll get you inside and you can wrap up in a blanket on the sofa and I’ll make you soup or something to eat and we can put the fire on.’ He gulped, as if these tasks might be beyond him, and the idea that Joe might not be able to do things made her feel scared, made her shakes worse.
‘Do you have a key, Anna Bee?’ he pressed.
She handed him the rucksack and watched as he rested it on the low wall of the small yard that housed the metal dustbins of the house that had been divided into three flats. Theirs was on the ground floor, at the front of the building.
Joe went first, pushing open the front door and peering ahead. She followed, letting her hand trail along the wall of the narrow hallway, feeling the dips and bumps of the spongy, flowery wallpaper beneath her fingertips. She wondered what it must have been like when the ambulance men carried her mum out into the street. She wondered if people had gathered to watch.
Joe went straight to the kitchen and switched on the overhead striplight, which flickered and buzzed as it came to life. It wasn’t yet dark, but the kitchen was always gloomy, no matter what time of day or month of the year it was.
Anna walked forward on jelly legs until she reached the bathroom. The door was wide open. Their best towel, a large blue one with a frayed edge, was folded neatly on the floor under the sink. She squatted down and could clearly see an indent in it. It was like a pillow – a pillow for her mum’s head. Maura must have put it there for her.
Anna stretched out her legs along the cork floor tiles until the bottom of her brown school shoes touched the avocado-coloured side of the bath. Slowly she lowered her body and carefully placed her head in the dent in the towel, exactly where her mum’s head must have been. Closing her eyes, she gave way to the tears that flooded out from deep inside.
When she was very little she’d worried about her mum getting kidnapped and thrown over the side of a boat, just as she’d seen happening in one of Joe’s favourite films, which she’d watched illicitly from the doorway in her nightie. More recently, she’d pictured kissing her mum goodbye when she was very old, her hand poking out from a lacy bed jacket as she sat propped up on a ton of pillows, an image Anna had borrowed from the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. This had been enough to reduce her to tears – the thought that one day her mum would die.
But the end of her mum’s story had come much sooner than she could ever have imagined. This was where she had died. Right here on the bathroom floor with her head on their big blue towel.
Anna curled her legs up towards her chest and let her howls echo through the flat. Joe raced in when he heard her sobs and he too dropped to the floor and cried along with her.
‘Where is she, Joe? Where is my mum?’ she managed, her mouth contorted.
‘She’s... She’s with you. She will always be with you,’ he croaked.
‘I want her to cuddle me! I want her to cuddle me now!’ she screamed. Her legs kicked out against the flimsy bath panel. The thuds were quickly matched by thumps from the floor above.
‘Fuck off!’ Joe shouted up towards the ceiling.
Anna was briefly stunned into silence by his outburst and waited for her mum to shout back her reprimand. But there was no Mum to tell Joe not to swear. No Mum to cuddle her when she needed it the most.
No Mum ever again.
Anna felt desperation rising inside her, filling her up. She pictured it like a dark thing, solidifying in her veins and internal organs, weighing her down.
They stayed there together for what might have been hours, Anna lying on the bathroom floor, Joe leaning against the wall, both crying, both wanting to be in the place where their mum had drawn her final breath.
Eventually it got cold and Anna padded off to her bedroom and slunk down between the covers. With her torch providing a spotlight, she opened her rough book, flicking the pages until she found a space. In black felt-tip, she wrote some lines, crossed them out and started again:
Fifi and Fox
I havent writen to you for a long
dear Fifi and Fox I thouht I should tell you
hello Fifi and Fox I am very sad and you will be too. My mummy
I am so sad my heart hurts all the time.
I cant rite now. I dont know what to put. I will try soon.
Anna Cole
Fat tears fell onto the page in splats, smudging the ink. Anna held the book to her chest and lay back on the pillows. She turned he
r face into the cotton slip, one her mum had washed a thousand times, and inhaled the fading scent of washing powder.
I don’t know what to do without you, Mummy. I just don’t know what to do. I can’t think straight and I am so tired, but my head is too busy for me to go to sleep. I wish you were here to make it better.
3
Living with Joe was far from easy. Even though the authorities deemed him a responsible adult, it soon became clear to Anna that he was anything but. The most capable member of the household was definitely her. But that didn’t make her love him any less.
In the early days following their mum’s death she was too numb to notice anything much. It didn’t really bother her that the bed linen wasn’t changed or that the greasy sheets rucked up under her as she twisted and turned in the throes of her frequent nightmares. She didn’t make a fuss when she found that the bread bin was empty bar a few old, green crumbs or that the milk in the fridge had turned thick and sour. All these things seemed irrelevant when just remembering to breathe took such a lot of effort. Trying to figure out how to ‘be’ when sadness and exhaustion sapped all her energy was demanding enough.
Eventually, though, the fog cleared a little. Her body and scalp began to itch and she started to notice the disgusting state of the flat. It was then that she began to panic.
‘I’m... I’m hungry, Joe,’ she would whisper, standing in the doorway of the sitting room, which had been commandeered by her brother as his own, his old bedroom now overflowing with dirty clothes and rubbish. It bothered her less than it should. She had no desire to spend any time in the sitting room anyway, not now she couldn’t snuggle up on the sofa with her mum. Not now her mum was gone from the flat for ever.
Joe’s dirty, reclusive behaviour was the side of him that she found hardest to understand. She couldn’t reconcile it with the boy she loved so much. His grimy jeans were heaped on the floor by the side of the chair. The tile-topped coffee table had been pulled up against the sofa and was littered with long, thin strands of tobacco, cigarette papers, empty bottles of Woodpecker cider, half-crushed beer cans, blackened spoons that looked like they’d been dropped in the fire, and strips of tinfoil. There were needles and egg-smeared plates nesting on old newspapers, along with crumpled, empty cartons of John Player cigarettes and Gold Top milk bottles with rings of cheese growing inside them. The heavy red curtains were permanently drawn, making day and night almost indistinguishable.
Anna Page 3
