First Aid (12 page)

‘So you know Trevor pretty well?' he said.

‘No,' Ella said. ‘I was downstairs. I don't know whether he was upstairs or not. He might have been.'

Vince made a graded pile of the rubbish, ending with the wrapped core that sat on top like a paperweight.

She knew what he was thinking. He was as transparent as a clean pond. All those tiddlers in his mind coming to life. She raised her eyebrows and looked indifferent.

‘You'll stay there forever, will you?' he said. ‘Gathering dust, as my nan says.'

‘Is she the one who shifts the furniture?'

‘Yes. Not that it has much chance to gather anything. If Ray won't go round, she asks anyone in, complete strangers.'

‘Could I move in with her?' asked Ella. ‘I'd like to give her a hand. I move stuff round my room too. I'm strong. I won the triathlon.'

‘No you didn't,' said Vince. ‘Lisa Summers did. Nan's barmy. I mean it. She thinks things are behind the cupboards. She's not happy unless it's all on the move and the things can't hide. Her sister's already in hospital with it. Nan visits her every Friday.'

‘Does she go on the bus?'

‘What a stupid question,' said Vince. ‘No, she drives a Ferrari.'

‘I think I saw her.'

‘Where?'

‘On the bus. Yesterday.'

‘What were you doing on it?'

‘Nothing particular,' said Ella. ‘Forget it.'

Vince gave her a cool look. She could see him thinking she was an odd girl and that she was even odder than he had thought. They had known each other for a couple of years now, though they were never in the same classes because he was younger. She had noticed him when he first joined the school because he didn't look like a new boy. He was taller than the others and his blazer was a few shades lighter. She'd never liked to ask him whether it had belonged to his brother and faded with age or been put through a hot wash.

Ella moved away from the window and lay down flat on the floor.

‘Are you feeling ill?' Vince said.

She shook her head. ‘Put some music on,' she said.

‘What do you want?'

‘Anything. You choose.'

‘This is all Ray's stuff.'

Vince got up and walked across the room. He stared at the edges of the CDs, stacked in a tower.

‘You wouldn't like any of this. We could go upstairs to my room. We can smoke up there. My brother doesn't mind,' Vince said.

‘It's all right,' Ella said.

‘What do you want to do then?' he said.

‘I don't know. Have you got any animals? We could walk your dog.'

‘I don't have a dog. You'd have seen it by now. Dogs always say hi. Do you have one, then?'

‘No. We're not allowed pets,' she said. ‘Mum bought her boyfriend a goldfish for his birthday. She never buys
us
anything living. She made him a sticky chocolate cake for breakfast. Then they went out together to buy some weed from the garden centre.'

‘Did he want a goldfish?' Vince said.

‘I don't think so. She asked him if it reminded him of the one he'd had when he was little.'

‘Did it?'

‘He said it was much prettier. He always spouts crap. How could he remember?'

They heard the door click. Ella rolled on to her stomach and lifted her head to see who it was.

Ray was hobbling into the room with a towel round his waist. He lowered himself on to the sofa.

‘I told you, you didn't want to sleep on there,' Vince said.

‘What's that?' asked Ray.

‘Isn't the treatment working?' Ella said.

‘Too bloody right, it's not,' Ray said.

‘You should try sleeping on pebbles, like Ella,' said Vince. ‘Good for the muscles.'

‘I didn't,' Ella said. ‘I just told you.'

‘Girl's got more sense,' said Ray. ‘Sort of crackpot idea you'd come up with. So what are you two doing for the rest of the day?' he asked, with his eyes shut.

They could hear the washing machine, with Ella's clothes inside, humming drowsily through the wall.

‘Nothing, as far as I know,' said Vince.

Ray snorted. ‘I saw you'd taken that hat off. I thought it meant you were going somewhere.'

JO WALKED BACK
from the river with Rob in near silence. She asked him if he'd seen any interesting boats or if he had bought himself some sweets. She sounded like Geoff – but not as nice. She had lost the knack of talking. Annie woke up and ran in and out of other people's front gates.

‘Wait, wait,' she said.

And when they turned round she was holding a fat orange dahlia in her hands – just the bloom, without a stem.

‘Are you letting her do that?' Rob said.

Geoff was looking out for them as they walked up the path but Jo smiled a few seconds too late. He had already turned away to open the door. Dilys came up behind him in the hall and greeted them by saying that they were later than she and Geoff had expected. The clock on the wall said five o'clock. A blameless time, Jo would have thought. Dilys asked if Rob had found what he wanted at the shops. Both Jo and Rob had forgotten that this was the reason for going out and said yes and no simultaneously. Jo went up to the bathroom, splashed her face with cold water and washed her hands, turning the pink scented soap over and over under the running tap. She could hear Geoff setting out cups and saucers on a tray in the kitchen, then the clinking they made as he carried them to the front room. Rob had wanted her to say something. He would have known how to stop her from talking, if she'd worried or embarrassed him, but he had no way of making her start. He had taken to Felpo. She had been glad; though she hadn't always wanted a large boy accompanying them. He would miss him, she thought. The tiny strips of sticking plaster on her cheek were beginning to loosen. She picked one off and looked at herself in the mirror. The wound was mending. There was no fresh blood. She tried another one, then a couple more. The last few were slightly stickier but she eased them off. Then she dabbed around with damp cotton wool. She stayed in front of the basin until her face had dried. When she went downstairs again they were all drinking tea and watching the news. The back window was open and through it she could hear the screams and laughter of kids playing in the next street and the retreating tune of an ice-cream van. Santa Lucia. It was a tune that went round in a circle – like all the worst tunes. Dilys had never allowed her to buy a cone from the van. She said the ice cream was made in a plastic bag in the man's back garden and would make her sick. She had made Jo go to the newsagent and get a wrapped slab from the deep freeze that was then jammed in a comet or slapped between wafers.

She wondered if Dilys and Geoff had been saying things about her while they were out. She had always hated cropping up in conversations she wasn't taking part in. As a child, she had spent a lot of time hanging around half listening, hoping she wouldn't hear her name mentioned but determined to be within hearing distance if it were. Overhearing Dilys talk about her had been like sniffing neat peppermint oil. She hadn't recognised herself, or at least, she hadn't recognised the fixedness of it. She had felt fluid, unmade, but had discovered that not only was she these things her grandmother said she was – dreamy, careless, clever, too clever by half – as surely as her eyes were a particular colour, but that she did what she did because of them. They were the explanation. For instance, Jo had thought that she had failed to open her mouth in the presence of Dilys's cousin, Frank (visiting from Australia), because he'd smelled of ear wax and had shoes with the eyelets so placed that they looked like small dangerous animals. But she had learned that it was because she was shy. And this single word, like other single words that described her, hadn't floated free; it had been weighted down at its corners with causes and consequences.
It would be a handicap until she grew out of it. It came from Dilys's middle sister, Jean. It had a good side, which was that she could be depended on not to show off in company but to be quiet and lose herself in a book
. It hadn't stopped her from being interested in strangers until they spoke to her, which, of course, they did, as she'd looked at them with such interest. Geoff, disappointingly, had agreed with Dilys, though he'd called it unforthcoming. It had been one way to acquire vocabulary. She hadn't liked other people speaking about her mother either – what had happened to her. She had found it insulting. She felt protective towards the young woman whose old toys she played with and whose school projects were still in a cupboard upstairs.

She tried not to talk about Ella, Rob or Annie out of their hearing. Particularly the older two. Both their father and their great grandmother would, she knew, have liked to hear more anecdotes. They didn't live with the children and wanted to feel included. Occasionally she failed: she set sail down the telephone on paper boats – her daughter the Drama Queen, her son the Conformist. The compliant applause fluttered back down the wire. But her children didn't need to be explained. They were strong. Explanation broke on the strength of them. She hadn't been as invincible.

Jo sat down and picked up the only full cup that was left on the tray. She tried to focus on the scene before her. Airport chaos. People sitting on luggage. A little girl missing from a camp site in Cumbria. The newscaster's voice seemed to come back louder with each new item. Jo watched but couldn't, at the end, have said what had been happening. There was always a sequence of sorts. Hopes fade, feared dead, found dead. She couldn't recall which stage had been reached. Once the weather forecast was over Geoff turned the volume down to a murmur. Rob leant forward in order to carry on listening. Annie drew shapes in the air with her finger.

‘Did you bring me any books?' Dilys said.

‘No. Sorry, Gran. Not this time,' Jo said.

‘I expect you had too much to think about,' Dilys said.

‘The print was too small.'

Trevor acquired books in job lots from his ladies along with the rest of the rubbish. She usually picked out one or two for Dilys. The latest batch had come from a kleptomaniac who had never taken back library books. They had become non-returnable, the library in question having shut for good ten years ago. No one wanted to buy them. They had shrunk inside their covers like old people who have shrivelled, but carry on wearing their clothes of plumper days. The Sellotape holding them together was crisp with age. It was probably true that the print was too small. But she hadn't bothered to look.

Geoff got up and looked out of the window.

‘Marion's son's car is still there,' he said.

‘She'll be glad to have company,' Dilys said. She turned to Jo. ‘She had the burglars a week ago. Did I tell you about that?'

‘I don't think so,' Jo said.

She moved slightly in the chair to face her grandmother and made herself pay attention. Marion was a comparative newcomer, having moved in since Jo left home. No memories attached to her. She tried to form pictures as Dilys talked, exorbitant pictures that would fill her mind. Marion asleep in her bed, a man climbing over the back fence, a strange hand opening and shutting drawers, the Krugerrand in a felt box that the burglar had turned his nose up at. She had met Marion and liked her, but that didn't make any difference, the images failed to appear. It was like trying to light up a room by striking a dead match. When Dilys paused, Jo forgot to say anything. She looked round, hoping that something on the walls would jog her memory.

‘I'm sorry,' she said.

She felt sorry.

Geoff nodded.

Dilys started up again. ‘She didn't hear him break in because an early-morning aeroplane flew over the house,' she said.

‘Say that again, Gran,' Rob said.

‘They start every morning. Four a.m. You can set the clock by them,' Dilys said.

‘What's that got to do with it?' Rob said.

‘She'd have heard the glass smash otherwise. So she said.'

‘But how did Marion know? That's what I mean,' Rob said.

‘The first she knew of it was when she came downstairs and felt the draught,' Dilys said.

‘Leave it, Rob,' Jo said.

‘She thought it might have been the boy who comes door to door selling dusters and gardening gloves who did it. Ridiculous prices he charges,' Dilys said.

‘Why pick on him?' Rob said.

‘He was very careful,' Dilys said. ‘He didn't leave a mess. She was grateful for that.'

‘I thought you said he smashed the window,' Rob said. ‘You wouldn't call it careful if I smashed a window. Even by mistake.'

‘Rob,' Jo said.

‘He didn't harm her,' Geoff said. ‘That's the main thing.'

‘Ella's not nervous, being on her own at night?' Dilys said.

‘Not as far as I know,' Jo said. ‘She doesn't seem to be nervous of anything.'

‘She seems young to me to be left,' Dilys said.

Jo watched as Geoff collected up the cups and carried them out on the tray. She looked back at the television screen, mottled gold as the sky it reflected. She had only been to see Dilys and Geoff once since March. It had just been for the day. She had gone with Annie, up and down on the usual trains. Felpo had come to meet them at the station. Her grandparents had said how well she looked. Bonny, Geoff had said – and they hadn't asked her why. They weren't like that.

Now another evening stretched ahead. Annie to be put to bed. The table laid. Food prepared. And eaten. No one had mentioned her cheek – the fact that the plasters were off – though they had all had a good look at it.

THERE WERE STILL
people moseying around Lois Lucas & Son. Most of the shops and tea-rooms had closed so the day-trippers who weren't ready to drive back home wandered the streets. They were relieved to find somewhere to pass the time. Even in fine weather they liked to shop. Trevor generally picked up a bit of trade at the end of the day. He got up from his chair on the pavement and went inside to pour himself another glass of wine. A man and a woman were opening and shutting the doors of the huge mahogany wardrobe, sticking their heads right inside it. Woodworm, he supposed they were looking for. He was fairly certain it was clean, though he hadn't looked too closely. He hoped they wouldn't want the wardrobe. Unless they had come in a decent-sized van that was parked round the corner, they wouldn't be able to have it. He dodged past them into the kitchen. He didn't want them to start asking him questions. Would he deliver it to Bromley, preferably this evening, or, at the latest, first thing tomorrow morning? Would he put it in acid to strip off the varnish? Someone had asked him that once. What did they take him for – even a serial killer wouldn't have an acid bath the size of a small swimming pool. One day he'd just have to set light to all the big pieces. They caused too much aggravation. Sometimes he found a mate with transport to help him out with deliveries, but he couldn't depend on it. Blokes with vehicles over a certain size were a law unto themselves. If he managed to pin them down, he never knew what favour they'd ask in return. He wasn't up for burying asylum seekers who had been accidentally suffocated.