by Dani Atkins
I’m sure I must have looked every bit as astounded as I suddenly felt. Did I have Jamie’s heart to break? If I did, how come he’d never said anything about it until now?
‘No. No, of course I’m not,’ I said, dropping my head on to his shoulder as though it never wanted to be anywhere else.
‘Phew,’ he said, and I swear I could feel the relief as though it was a tremor, shuddering through him.
‘Why would you even think that was what was wrong?’
Very tenderly, he turned to me and tilted my face so that our noses were practically tip to tip. It was hard to concentrate when his lips were that close to mine.
‘Because I’m always afraid that one day you’re going to get tired of having to hide me from everyone, or the grief you’d get from your family if they knew about me.’
This is what happens when you’re a coward. This is what happens when you don’t stand up for the people you – I stopped short of the word love – the people you care about. This is what happens when you’re not brave. For a moment I envied my grandmother the courage to stand up for the person she was, and the person she loved. Which brought me right back to the source of my anxiety this evening.
‘Oh God, Jamie. It’s not you at all. It’s Gran.’
How could you not love a boy who didn’t dismiss your elderly grandmother as inconsequential? Who understood perfectly how precious that woman was to you? Who reached for your free hand, as Jamie now did for mine, and squeezed it warmly?
‘What’s happened now?’
‘It’s all going down tomorrow. The shit is about to hit the fan. Big time.’
‘Oh.’ It was a small word that encompassed a huge looming catastrophe.
‘Mum and Dad think Gran’s depressed and needs cheering up, so they’re going to surprise her tomorrow by taking her out for Sunday lunch. Only I think they’re the ones who are in for a surprise.’
‘Do you think she’ll tell them what she told you?’
I shook my head from side to side. ‘I don’t think she will. I know she will.’
There was a long moment of silence.
‘Awks,’ said Jamie, totally without irony.
‘Awks indeed.’
*
I had my headphones on. They were the expensive noise-cancelling type, a gift from my parents for my last birthday, and yet I still heard the slamming of the front door and the raised voices in the hallway below. Tentatively, I pulled one of the pads away from my head, the history notes spread across my bed temporarily forgotten.
‘Gerald, calm down.’
Something banged and then fell over, which was followed by a string of earthy expletives, half of which I wasn’t aware my father even knew. Mum did not sound impressed.
‘I really don’t see how charging around and barging into things is going to help.’
I couldn’t make out the exact words of my father’s response, but I got the general gist of it. Oh, Gran. What have you done? I glanced back at my homework, which for the first time ever actually looked more appealing than slacking off. But I was only delaying the inevitable. With a sigh I pulled off my headphones and headed downstairs.
My parents had moved from the hallway to the kitchen, but I could still hear them. I had a feeling that even our neighbours could tune in without too much difficulty. Mum was doing her best to placate Dad, which was a good idea, for his face and neck had turned the shade of pink it only did when he’d forgotten to apply sunscreen.
I padded into the kitchen, pulling the door to a close behind me. Dad’s head shot up and for a moment concern for my gran was overshadowed by that for my parent. Dad looked completely lost and that really wasn’t an expression I could ever remember seeing on his face before. He also looked angry – that one I had seen a couple of times, but never to this degree.
‘Mandy,’ he said, making my name sound more like an accusation than a greeting.
‘I thought I heard a noise,’ I said innocently, hoping to defuse the atmosphere with some gentle humour. From the flare of his nostrils, I suspected I was several weeks too early for that as far as Dad was concerned. From behind him I could see my mother shaking her head in warning. There was no need to ask how lunch with Gran had gone. The answer was obvious.
‘Why didn’t you tell us about your grandmother?’
My tongue was lodged somewhere at the back of my mouth, and seemed to have forgotten how to work. Not that it would have mattered either way. I could sense an unstoppable tirade was about to crash over us like a tsunami.
‘Are you angry with me, or Gran?’ I asked.
‘Neither,’ he said bitterly. ‘It’s those bloody idiots at Sunnymede I’m angry with.’
I must have looked as confused as I felt, for Mum added quietly, ‘Your dad thinks Gran isn’t very well.’
‘What’s the point of paying for a fancy home full of medical experts when they don’t even recognise a clear-cut case of dementia when it’s staring them in the face?’ he thundered.
I glanced over at my mother, who was looking troubled as she poured hot water on to teabags. It was the British cure-all for any emergency, but somehow I didn’t think PG Tips’ finest was going to fix this situation.
‘Gran isn’t sick or suffering from dementia,’ I defended loyally.
‘Well, she’s certainly not firing on all her cylinders at the moment. I take it she told you about this ridiculous notion of hers?’
‘Gran told me how she felt about Josie, if that’s what you mean.’
My father made the kind of noise I imagine a pressure cooker might do, right before it explodes all over your kitchen.
‘Your grandmother has clearly lost her marbles.’
‘Is that a new medical term for being gay?’ I asked, unable to disguise the thread of anger in my voice.
My mother’s eyes were flaring now. Do not make it worse, they were practically shrieking. But someone had to defend Gran, and I was the only one here to do that.
‘Your grandmother is not gay,’ Dad declared. Each word was sharply enunciated, as though severed with a knife. ‘For God’s sake, she was married to my father for almost fifty years. Does that sound like gay to you, because it certainly doesn’t to me?’
‘I don’t think Gran realised the kind of feelings she was capable of having until she met Josie,’ I said, trying to reach the reasonable part of him that was currently buried beneath an avalanche of distress. ‘She’s not saying this to upset you, Dad.’
‘Well, I am upset. My mother is clearly not in her right mind, and this so-called friend of hers must have been – what’s that phrase? – grooming her.’
I laughed then, which was a mistake, but what Dad was saying was so preposterous I couldn’t take it seriously. The thought of sweet, frail Josie grooming anything other than a small Pekingese was utter nonsense.
‘If my father knew about this, he’d be spinning in his grave,’ Dad said brokenly, running a hand through his hair. ‘This whole thing is just ludicrous.’
*
‘You should have told me.’
The knock on my bedroom door had been light. The distant sounds of the lounge TV and my father’s accompanying snores told me Mum had been biding her time to have a private word.
I sat up, and with feigned nonchalance pushed my mobile beneath the pile of colourful cushions at the end of my bed. I’d been messaging Jamie, keeping him up to date on how things had gone – badly – and telling him how much I wished he was here with me right now – also badly.
‘It wasn’t my news to tell, Mum,’ I said sadly.
She sank down on to the edge of my double bed. ‘I could have done with a timely heads-up though, sweetheart.’
‘Was it very bad?’
Mum shut her eyes, as though the memory was still too painful to view again. ‘It wasn’t good,’ she admitted. ‘Although I’m sure the other diners in The Plough found it quite interesting.’ She sighed. ‘If I’d known what was coming, I’d probably have chosen so
mewhere less public.’
Okay. That one was down to me. ‘Sorry, Mum.’
My mother shook her head sadly. ‘It’s really shaken your dad up, you know. He’s very upset.’
‘I bet Gran is too. Knowing Dad, I don’t suppose he handled it very sensitively.’
‘Your dad didn’t handle it at all. He believes your gran is delusional. Weirdly, he’d rather accept she has Alzheimer’s than consider she’s fallen in love with someone.’
‘Would it have made a difference if that someone had been a man rather than a woman?’
She considered my question with a thoughtful expression. ‘It might have been easier, but he’d still have seen it as a betrayal of his father. He still misses your grandad very much, you know.’
‘I do too. We all do. But that doesn’t change what’s happening now, does it? I just want Gran to be happy. Surely Dad should want that too?’
‘He does, or he will do once the dust settles and he calms down.’
From beneath the pile of cushions, my phone pinged with an incoming message. We both turned towards the sound and I could feel a guilty flush warming my cheeks.
‘Do you believe Gran is senile or has been brainwashed by Josie, Mum?’
Surprisingly, my mother actually laughed at that one. ‘I can’t imagine anyone less likely to be manipulated into doing something she doesn’t want to do than your grandmother,’ Mum said, reaching over and smoothing back a straying lock of hair from my face. ‘That’s where you get it from.’
I smiled, but even as I did a thought occurred to me, so startling that it wiped everything else from my head.
‘Did you know about Gran? Before today, I mean?’
There was a tiny twitch at the corner of her eye that told me the answer before she spoke. ‘I may have suspected something,’ she admitted, as though giving incriminating evidence in a witness box.
‘But you never said anything to Dad?’
‘What do you think?’ she asked with a wry smile, getting to her feet. She was halfway across my bedroom floor when she paused and looked back over her shoulder, her eyes travelling to the stack of multicoloured cushions at the foot of my bed. ‘Don’t stay up too late talking to your boyfriend,’ she advised.
My mouth was still in a perfect circle of surprise long after she’d left my room.
24
‘I think you’ve already got that one,’ I said, looking down at the latest book Jamie had added to the growing pile of manuals in his arms.
‘Different make of car, babe,’ he said, dropping to a crouch to better examine the lower shelf of the bookcase in the charity shop. While he surveyed the books, I admired the view of his broad shoulders and the way his T-shirt separated enticingly from the waistband of his jeans. Admittedly, browsing through second-hand books wasn’t the most thrilling way of spending a Saturday morning, but Jamie’s excitement at finding a cache of car repair manuals was how I imagined mine would be on finding a first edition of the dragon books I’d loved as a child.
I wandered away from the bookcase and began idly flicking through a stack of old CDs. I tucked a couple of classical music ones that I thought Gran might appreciate under one arm. It had been two weeks since the unfortunate Sunday lunch with my parents, and although Gran had seemed remarkably okay with how things had gone, I couldn’t help but worry about her.
‘I always knew your dad would struggle to understand,’ she had said, taking up a chair to one side of the baby grand piano in Sunnymede’s lounge. I was busy adjusting the height of the stool, but paused to look over at my elderly grandmother. She was bathed in a nimbus of sunlight from the window behind her. It shone through her hair and gave her an almost ethereal appearance, like an angel emerging from a cloud.
To be honest, Gran didn’t appear to be as troubled as I’d feared she might have been by my dad’s reaction. ‘Remember, I’ve known him longer than you have, my love,’ she’d said, squeezing my hand warmly beneath hers. ‘After forty-four years, there’s very little about your dad that is likely to surprise me. I’d have been far more shocked if he’d simply accepted it.’
From my bag I pulled a sheaf of music that I’d been struggling with for weeks.
‘Ah, Sibelius’s Fifth,’ Gran said softly, as though greeting an old friend. She waited as I set the music up on the piano stand and then inclined her head encouragingly as my fingers hovered above the polished ivory keys. This was where we connected better than anywhere else. This was the place where we spoke a secret language the rest of our family didn’t understand. In the music we found a common harmony, but more important than that, we found each other. I gave her one last smile and began to play.
*
A noise from the pavement jerked me back to the present. The charity shop was particularly busy, so busy that perhaps I was the only person who’d noticed the young woman in the wheelchair outside, struggling to open the door. I rushed over to help her, holding it wide as she expertly lined up her chair to glide through the opening and into the shop.
‘Thank you so much,’ she said, smiling up at me as I squashed myself as flat as a cartoon character against the wall to get out of her way. There was something vaguely familiar about her face, something that rang a distant bell in my memory, but I couldn’t quite place her.
‘Yes, thank you,’ echoed a deep voice from a tall attractive man wearing Clark Kent glasses, who’d come up behind the chair and guided it through the doorway with practised ease.
‘I thought you were going to wait for me,’ the man said, bending low and kissing the side of the woman’s neck. It was a curiously intimate gesture, one that a stranger should probably not witness, but pinioned as I was behind the door I really had nowhere else to go.
Once the chair was clear of the door, I pushed it to a close, getting one more dazzling smile from the woman’s companion. He had to be at least fifteen years older than me, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t appreciate the dark good looks that were every bit as arresting as Jamie’s blond ones were. My eyes flitted between the two men. All we needed now was for George Clooney to put in an appearance and every demographic would be catered for.
I gave myself a sharp mental reprimand as I crossed the shop to rejoin Jamie. I was in danger of being just as bad as my father in judging people on their appearance rather than the way they behaved. But somehow I didn’t think I’d been wrong about that man. I glanced back towards the counter, where the couple were patiently waiting to be served. They were holding hands, and he only released hers as he reached for a long oblong box, which he placed on the counter. I saw the flash of a ring on his left hand. Once again there was a peculiar feeling that I knew this couple from somewhere, but I just couldn’t remember from where.
My interest in them had tipped over from idle curiosity to downright nosiness, and as Jamie was still immersed in diagrams of car engines, I kept watching as the man looked down at the woman, an easy-to-read question on his face. Are you sure? She looked up at him and nodded just once in confirmation. The man lifted the lid of the box, which infuriatingly was angled towards the woman behind the counter, giving me no clue as to what was inside it. The assistant reached into the container and something that looked a little like a billowing white cloud spilled out from one side. I caught a glimpse of a bodice scattered with sparkly beading and wisps of a flowing chiffon skirt.
‘All done?’ asked Jamie, nodding towards a second counter on this side of the shop. His books were already stacked up beside the till, and without a second thought he took the CDs for my grandmother from beneath my arm and added them to the pile. It was no surprise when he refused to let me pay for them.
‘You can buy the popcorn at the cinema tonight,’ he said by way of a compromise. I slipped my arm through his and reached up to deposit a thank-you kiss on his cheek, which already felt scratchy with stubble. As we left the shop to rejoin the Saturday morning crowds, I felt one final tug drawing my focus back towards the couple at the counter. I couldn’t explai
n my fascination with them, and fortunately Jamie hadn’t seemed to notice my rapt attention in two total strangers. As the door swung to a close behind me, I saw the shop assistant take the box they’d brought with them and place it beneath the counter. Even that felt important somehow, yet I had no idea why.
*
‘Oh shit,’ I muttered, glancing through the crowds and spotting a face I was more used to seeing peering over the back garden fence.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Jamie. His arm, which was looped around my shoulders, pulled me closer to his side. I stiffened, even though I knew I shouldn’t, and of course he felt it. He looked up and followed the direction of my panicked gaze. ‘Who is that?’ he asked, his arm already falling away.
‘That’s our next-door neighbour, Mrs Blake. She’s…’ I felt a bit disloyal here, because there was no real malice in the woman who’d lived next door to my family for as long as I could remember. ‘She’s kind of a chatterbox,’ I finished lamely.
Jamie understood, in a way that made me feel as though I was quite possibly the worst girlfriend in the entire world. Any girl – many girls – would be over the moon to be in my position, and yet here I was acting as though my relationship with Jamie was a grubby little secret that had to be hidden. All because of some outmoded idea my father had about who was, and who wasn’t, good enough for me. Jamie had already taken a broad step to one side, his hands now thrust into the pockets of his jeans. He knew the drill.
Mrs Blake hadn’t spotted me yet, so there was probably still time for us to duck into a nearby shop until she had passed. Jamie had slowed his pace and was now walking half a step behind me, a position where he could feasibly pass as just another shopper in the crowd.
It happened quite suddenly, with very little forethought or regard to the consequences of my actions. Afterwards, I liked to tell myself that I’d heard my grandmother’s voice in my head, silently encouraging me, but in truth I could hear very little except the rush of blood in my ears caused by a surge of adrenaline. Fight or flight, wasn’t that what that particular hormone was intended for? Who knew at the very last moment I would decide not to run, but to stand my ground?
