Artichoke Hearts (28 page)

Aunty Abi, Aunty Mel and Piper arrive to take Krish off to buy a suit. His first ever suit. I see that Mum’s already decided that I’m going to wear what Nana bought
me for my birthday, because she’s washed and ironed it and hung it on the back of my bedroom door. I wonder if she saw the blood. I suppose I
have
to wear it now because if she
didn’t see it there’s no excuse not to wear it.

When Piper sees Krish and me, he barks and jumps all over us, licking our faces like he’s really missed us.

‘Can we take him for a walk?’ Krish pleads, jumping up and down in excitement. It’s the first time I’ve seen him anything like his usual lively self since Nana died.

‘After
we’ve got your suit,’ says Abi.

‘Boring!’ sighs Krish.

Krish hardly ever wears anything except sports clothes or, if he’s being really smart, jeans. So going shopping for a suit is not exactly his idea of heaven. I would love to go out and
choose something to wear, something I really like, but I wouldn’t go today, not to try things on . . . just in case. One thing that does make Krish happy is the fact that Aunty Mel has taken
the roof off her beaten-up old sports car. As they drive off, Krish waves like the queen, probably to make me jealous. Irritating though he is, I’m actually pleased he’s more his old
self again.

I lie on my bed for most of the day, flicking through Nana’s giant art books . . . her art books
and
her collection of catalogues from all the exhibitions she ever went to in her
life . . . she left them all to me.

The phone rings. Mum’s voice is shrieking at the same unbearable pitch as the smoke alarm. Suddenly the atmosphere in the house is charged. To make matters worse, Laila
sets up her wailing. I jump off my bed and listen from the landing.

‘What do you mean, run off? How long ago?’ Mum fires question after question down the phone. I run downstairs to see that Mum’s face has turned Payne’s Grey. Dad’s
rocking Laila, too fast, backwards and forwards, straining to hear what’s going on over Laila’s wailing. Mum’s holding her hand over her mouth, trying to calm herself down. She
looks as if she can’t believe what she’s hearing.

‘OK! Sam and Mira will come over to look with you. If we don’t find him in an hour, we’ll call the police.’

Dad hands Laila to Mum.

‘Abi’s on her mobile,’ says Mum. ‘They’re looking over the Heath for him.’

‘Get your shoes on, Mira,’ orders Dad.

Suddenly we are speeding towards the Heath. This is the second time in a month I’ve been in a car with my dad in a total panic. Pat Print was right: a lot can happen in a month.
We’re taking the same route that we always took to the hospice and that’s what gives me the idea.

‘Maybe he’s gone to the hospice.’

‘Why would he do that, Mira?’

‘I don’t know. He’s been very quiet since Nana died.’

‘It’s worth a try, I suppose,’ Dad says, picking up his mobile to call them, but right at that moment his phone rings.

‘Uma . . . where? Mira thought he might . . . Ran all that way . . . Have you called Abi? Good. I’ll pick him up.’

Dad smiles his ‘you know best’ smile at me and we drive, a bit less dangerously than before, to the hospice. When we arrive in reception, Headscarf Lady gives Dad and me a huge hug .
. . It feels like we’re coming home.

‘He’s upstairs, with Jo. He ran all the way from the other side of the Heath. Can you believe it?’ Headscarf Lady says, buzzing us up.

I can. That’s no further than one of his competition runs.

When we get to the Family Room, Krish is playing table football with Jo. He looks worried when he sees Dad, as if he’s going to get told off, but Dad just scoops him up
and holds him in his arms, as if he’s Laila’s size. It would look ridiculous now, if Dad tried to carry me like that.

‘We would have brought you, if you’d asked us, Krish.’

‘I wanted to see Jo,’ sobs Krish.

‘That’s all right, mate,’ says Jo, patting Krish on the back. ‘We just had a few things we needed to sort out.’

Dad sits on one side of Krish and Jo on the other, each with an arm around him. He looks tiny sandwiched between them, almost disappearing into the folds of the sofa. As Dad and Jo talk,
Krish’s eyes grow heavy and he falls fast asleep. I don’t think he’s slept since the day he gave Nana his painting.

‘Looks like he’s out for the count,’ smiles Jo.

Dad shakes Jo’s hand, pats him on the back, hoists Krish up over his shoulder and carries him along the corridor, down in the lift and out past Headscarf Lady.

‘Bless him!’ she says. ‘He must have tired himself out with all that running.’

Dad settles Krish into the back seat and he stirs for a moment, opens his eyes and nestles his head into the curve of my shoulder. Normally, this would really irritate me, but not today

Just as we’re about to set off, Dad adjusts the rear-view mirror and, as he does, he catches sight of his own face and stares at himself, smoothing his fingers over the map of lines
fanning from the corners of his eyes.

‘I’ve aged more this month than any other time in my life. There are whole years where I’ve aged less than this, Mira,’ sighs Dad.

Me too, I think to myself.

Krish has been bugging me all day. I want to tell him to get out of my room, but after yesterday I can’t risk upsetting him.

‘Why did you run off like that anyway?’ I ask him.

‘I didn’t think about it. I just ran.’ Krish shrugs.

‘What did you want to talk to Jo about?’

Will you two get into bed,’ Dad yells up the stairs. ‘It’s a big day tomorrow.’

When Krish finally leaves me in peace, I turn the light off, close my eyes and try to think of nothing. I am beginning to drift off when I hear the door open and somebody creeping on tiptoe
around my room. In the half-light from the hallway I see Krish heading over to the easel. I don’t move an inch, but I clearly see him place Nana’s charm on the little ridge where the
canvas sits.

I whisper his name. ‘Krish.’ He jumps and stumbles, crumpling himself and the easel into a great clattering mess on the floor. It’s strange that Krish is such a good runner,
because he often falls over; like Laila’s spinning top, he’s only got his balance when he’s moving fast.

‘Why did you take it?’ I whisper.

‘She never actually
gave
me something, like she
gave
things to you,’ I hear Krish’s tiny hurt voice cutting through the darkness.

The light switch snaps on and I shield my eyes from the blinding brightness.

‘What on earth is going on in here?’ shouts Dad, staring at Krish as he tries to untangle himself from the easel.

‘Nothing.’

I jump in quickly, before Krish has a chance to answer. ‘He just fell.’

‘Please go to bed,’ Dad pleads, picking up my portrait and having a good look at it.

‘Is this you?’

I nod.

‘It’s good . . . makes you look older than you are though,’ says Dad as he bends down to pick up the easel. Then he drops down on to his knees and starts rummaging around on
the floor.

‘You’ll never guess what I’ve found . . .’ Dad stands up triumphantly and hands me Nana Josie’s charm. ‘Shall I take it and fix it on to your bracelet so you
can wear it tomorrow? It must have been there all the time,’ he says as I hand him the bracelet to fix the charm on to.

‘It must have been,’ I say, looking over to Krish, who’s refusing to meet my eye.

Dad kisses me and Krish goodnight, and practically skips down the stairs.

The sound of waves fills every sense in my body, as if the sea is flowing in and out of me. I hear a little girl humming . . . in and out flow the waves in even patterns . .
.a sweet lullaby . . . in and out softly sighing shhhhhhhh. The girl floats towards me. She’s holding her fingers to her lips. Shhhhhhh sound the waves in and out, somewhere inside me, but
still she floats on, the waves appearing and disappearing from my sight, a little girl of about four years old.

‘Who are you?’ I call to her, but I know who she is. She has Jidé’s face, his eyes, his expression.

‘Shhhhhh,’ answer the waves. She holds her finger to her lips and hums.

‘What’s your name?’ I whisper.

‘Shhhhhhhh,’echoes the sea.

The girl’s lips are sealed.

Then I catch sight of it under the waves, Jidé’s bright orange cloth shining through the grey water, floating towards me. I follow it through the wave, grabbing at it, until
it’s safely in my hands. Shhhhhh, sighs the sea. Then the little girl takes her finger from her mouth, smiles at me and sings.

The first thing I do when I wake up is look for Jidé’s piece of orange cloth. It was the kind of dream that follows you from night into day. Of course when the
sleep wears off, I realize it’s not real . . . but I discover something that is.

It
had
to be today of all days. I take the charcoal and draw a pair of moon-shaped earrings on my self-portrait. Something good has got to come out of having periods.

At breakfast Dad takes hold of my hand and attaches the charm bracelet to my wrist. He struggles with the catch for a few moments before he finally closes the clasp. I look up at him and see
that his eyes are full of tears.

‘Your nana was very proud of you, Mira.’

Krish keeps glancing my way with a worried look on his face. He thinks I’m going to tell. I shake my head to reassure him. I won’t tell because I think I understand how he felt.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ shouts Dad, dusting off his suit, ‘there’s glitter everywhere.’

I laugh. By the time we’ve had breakfast we’re all covered in glitter . . . it feels like Nana’s joke. She wrote a note in the hospice to say that nobody is allowed to wear
black for her funeral so I suppose it is right that I’m wearing my butterfly skirt, all pinks and greens and sequins . . . Nana’s birthday present to me. I’m beginning to think of
this as my period skirt. After today, I will never wear it again.

Krish is wearing his new blue linen suit with an Indian collar, the one Aunty Abi and Aunty Mel bought him, before he ran away. If my brother wears blue, his eyes sparkle. He keeps fiddling with
his tie, like it’s strangling him. I think he feels about as comfortable in his suit as I do in my skirt.

Me and Krish have been given ‘roles’ for the funeral. I’m going to read a poem from a book Nana gave me, and Krish is handing out our glittery programmes with a biography of
Nana’s life in it.

Nana’s body is being cremated at Golders Hill Crematorium. Dad says it’s the same place where Grandad Kit was cremated. Grandad Bimal says he wouldn’t mind ending up there too,
when his time comes, because he would like to follow in the footsteps of the maharajas whose names line the walls.

‘If it’s good enough for them, it will be good enough for me!’

Getting cremated means your body gets burned and what’s left is just ashes, but you get the ashes back. I remember Nana laughing when she told us that she wanted her ashes sprinkled in her
garden in Suffolk because they would ‘improve the soil’. I think the ashes are just for the living people because it’s so hard to think that there is nothing left of the actual
person’s body, and so people just want something to hold on to . . . and ashes are better than nothing.

We are all standing outside the chapel. Quite a lot of people I have never seen before are meeting each other and hugging.

Dad can’t speak to anyone. He’s trying to ‘hold it together’. He keeps looking at his watch . . . waiting for the funeral car to arrive.

The car is white. Just an ordinary car, one of those long estates. In the back is the coffin which my dad, a friend of my dad’s, Uncle James and Dunwich Dan are going to carry. Dan
volunteered; he said it would be ‘an honour’ to carry Nana’s coffin. It slides on wheels out of the boot, and then they have to lift it up on to their shoulders. I think of Dad
and Moses struggling to carry the plain white box out of the rusty blue Volvo. Today, these four men lift it up smoothly, counting one, two, three, and all lifting at exactly the same time. It
matters that it’s done gracefully.