After You

‘You have to stop drawing on things,’ Treena was yelling. ‘Paper only, okay? Not walls. Not faces. Not Mrs Reynolds’s dog. Not my pants.’

‘I was doing you days of the week!’

‘I don’t need days-of-the-week pants!’ she shouted. ‘And if I did I would spell Wednesday correctly!’

‘Don’t scold him, Treen,’ said Mum, leaning back to see if she’d had any effect. ‘It could be a lot worse.’

In our little house, Dad’s footsteps coming down the stairs sounded like a particularly emphatic roll of thunder. He barrelled into the front room, his shoulders hunched in frustration, his hair standing up on one side. ‘Can’t a man get a nap in his own house on his day off? This place is like a ruddy madhouse.’

We all stopped and stared at him.

‘What? What did I say?’

‘Bernard –’

‘Ah, come on. Our Lou doesn’t think I mean her –’

‘Oh, my sweet Lord.’ Mum’s hand flew to her face.

My sister had started to push Thomas out of the room. ‘Oh, boy,’ she hissed. ‘Thomas, you’d better get out of here right now. Because I swear when your grandpa gets hold of you –’

‘What?’ Dad frowned. ‘What’s the matter?’

Granddad barked a laugh. He held up a shaking finger.

It was almost magnificent. Thomas had coloured in the whole of Dad’s face with blue marker pen. His eyes emerged like two gooseberries from a sea of cobalt blue. ‘What?’

Thomas’s voice, as he disappeared down the corridor, was a wail of protest. ‘We were watching Avatar! He said he wouldn’t mind being an avatar!’

Dad’s eyes widened. He strode to the mirror over the mantelpiece.

There was a brief silence. ‘Oh, my God.’

‘Bernard, don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.’

‘He’s turned me bloody blue, Josie. I think I’m entitled to take the Lord’s name to Butlins in a flipping wheelbarrow. Is this permanent pen? THOMMO? IS THIS PERMANENT PEN?’

‘We’ll get it off, Dad.’ My sister closed the door to the garden behind her. Beyond it you could just make out Thomas’s wailing.

‘I’m meant to be overseeing the new fencing at the castle tomorrow. I have contractors coming. How the hell am I meant to deal with contractors if I’m blue?’ Dad spat on his hand and started to rub at his face. The faintest smudging appeared, but mostly seemed to spread onto his palm. ‘It’s not coming off. Josie, it’s not coming off!’

Mum shifted her attention from Granddad and set about Dad with the scouring pad. ‘Just stay still, Bernard. I’m doing what I can.’

Treena went for her laptop bag. ‘I’ll go on the internet. I’m sure there’s something. Toothpaste or nail-polish remover or bleach or –’

‘You are not putting bleach on my ruddy face!’ Dad roared. Granddad, with his new pirate moustache, sat giggling in the corner of the room.

I began to edge past them.

Mum was holding Dad’s face with her left hand as she scrubbed. She turned, as if she’d only just seen me. ‘Lou! I didn’t ask – are you okay, love? Did you have a nice walk?’ Everyone stopped abruptly to smile at me; a smile that said, Everything’s okay here, Lou. You don’t have to worry. I hated that smile.

‘Fine.’

It was the answer they all wanted. Mum turned to Dad. ‘That’s grand. Isn’t it grand, Bernard?’

‘It is. Great news.’

‘If you sort out your whites, love, I’ll pop them in the wash with Daddy’s later.’

‘Actually,’ I said, ‘don’t bother. I’ve been thinking. It’s time for me to go home.’

Nobody spoke. Mum glanced at Dad. Granddad let out another little giggle and clamped his hand over his mouth.

‘Fair enough,’ said Dad, with as much dignity as a middle-aged, blueberry-coloured man could muster. ‘But if you go back to that flat, Louisa, you go on one condition …’

CHAPTER FOUR

‘My name is Natasha and I lost my husband to cancer three years ago.’

On a humid Monday night, the members of the Moving On Circle sat in a ring of orange office chairs in the Pentecostal Church Hall, alongside Marc, the leader, a tall, moustachioed man, whose whole being exuded a kind of exhausted melancholy, and one empty chair.

‘I’m Fred. My wife, Jilly, died in September. She was seventy-four.’

‘Sunil. My twin brother died of leukaemia two years ago.’

‘William. Dead father, six months ago. All a bit ridiculous, frankly, as we never really got on when he was alive. I keep asking myself why I’m here.’

There was a peculiar scent to grief. It smelt of damp, imperfectly ventilated church halls and poor-quality teabags. It smelt of meals for one and stale cigarettes, smoked hunched against the cold. It smelt of spritzed hair and armpits, little practical victories against a morass of despair. That smell alone told me I did not belong there, whatever I had promised Dad.

I felt like a fraud. Plus they all looked so … sad.

I shifted uneasily in my seat, and Marc caught me. He gave me a reassuring smile. We know, it said. We’ve been here before.

I bet you haven’t, I responded silently.

‘Sorry. Sorry I’m late.’ The door opened, letting in a blast of warm air, and the empty chair was taken by a mop-headed teenager, who folded his limbs into place as if they were always somehow too long for the space they were in.

‘Jake. You missed last week. Everything okay?’

‘Sorry. Dad messed up at work and he couldn’t get me here.’

‘Don’t worry. It’s good you made it. You know where the drinks are.’

The boy glanced around the room from under his long fringe, hesitating slightly when his gaze landed on my glittery green skirt. I pulled my bag onto my lap in an attempt to hide it and he looked away.

‘Hello, dear. I’m Daphne. My husband took his own life. I don’t think it was the nagging!’ The woman’s half-laugh seemed to leak pain. She patted her carefully set hair and peered down awkwardly at her knees. ‘We were happy. We were.’

The boy’s hands were tucked under his thighs. ‘Jake. Mum. Two years ago. I’ve been coming here for the past year because my dad can’t deal with it, and I needed someone to talk to.’