The Other Side of Summer (6 page)

On the morning of our flight, Gran made coddled eggs with cream, and thick soldiers on the side. It was only Dad and Gran and I eating because Wren had locked herself in the bathroom with Charlotte and Mum was still sleeping.

‘Shouldn’t I wake her?’ I said.

‘Not yet. Leave her,’ said Dad, getting up from the table. He was twitchy. He’d left to check the passport folder three times already.

‘It’ll be all right, Doug,’ said Gran, firmly. She patted his chair and he sat down again. She poured him more tea from her pot, which was big enough to fit a cat inside (we had tried once when we were little), and
stirred in three sugars. Dad seemed to have forgotten his health kick and no one was rushing to remind him.

‘Right. Time to sort out your sister,’ said Gran. She took off her apron and left the kitchen. I wished Gran was coming to Melbourne with us. Nothing felt as safe as the way it did when we were with her. Yesterday’s stack of unafraid goodbyes might fall over if I put Gran on top.

Gran got my sister out of the bathroom but Wren’s face was like thunder. She kept picking up the cat from the fireplace and hugging her so tightly the poor thing looked like her eyes were about to pop out. And then Charlotte would jump down and go straight back to the squashy velvet cushion Gran had put down by the potbelly stove. Charlotte wanted to stay and I think that made Wren even angrier.

‘I’m going to wake Mum,’ Wren said, in a break from chasing Charlotte.

‘Wait,’ said Gran sternly, grabbing Wren’s arm. ‘This is my house and I say when folks are woken up.’

Wren blushed and huffed and finally slumped into an ancient armchair with a seat so low that only her head was visible.

Dad and I were restless. He unzipped the luggage and zipped it back up, and I went to the bathroom four times. Gran said ‘Nerves’ every time she saw me
come out. She was keeping herself busy with her thick arms deep in a mixing bowl, kneading dough for fresh bread. I couldn’t help thinking that we wouldn’t be here long enough to eat it. Wren got up from her chair and she and I stood either side of Gran, picking at the raw dough with our fingers. Gran scolded us in her funny, gruff way.

‘You two are getting under my feet. I want you both to go out for a walk. Now. Off you go.’

‘But it’s freezing out there!’ said Wren.

That was true. There was condensation on Gran’s kitchen window.

‘Do as I say, young madam. It’s time. Time I got this bread in, for one. Isn’t it, Doug?’ Gran’s face was serious but she grabbed Wren into a big hug and then pulled me in, too. She had the smell of someone who lit fires every day.

‘Do I
have
to go with Summer?’ said Wren, her head so close to mine that I could feel her breath on my cheek. ‘Can’t we just go for a walk separately?’

‘Stop pretending to be so awful, Wren,’ said Gran. She let us go and we straightened up. ‘I don’t buy it for a moment. I mean it, my girl. Enough. Floyd wasn’t one to sulk, was he? He’d have told you.’

I couldn’t tell what Wren was thinking in that moment, but her painted eyebrows were drawn
together in a frown. We hardly ever said Floyd’s name out loud.

Gran hadn’t finished. ‘And look after Summer – and yourself, for that matter – or you’ll have me to answer to.’

Wren sighed deeply. ‘Fine, Gran. I promise to try very hard not to push her off a cliff.’

‘Well done. And Summer, as for you … well, you’re a big girl now. That’s all.’

‘Yes, Gran.’

‘Good girls. Head for the village, not the beach. That’s the safest walk. Now off with you.’

‘Charming,’ Wren said. ‘Come on then, squirt.’ She almost sounded as if she couldn’t be bothered to be mean. It was amazing what Gran could do.

We walked on opposite sides of the road. Everyone we passed said hello but they were nice, normal hellos because nobody in Tintagel knew about Floyd and felt sorry for us. Gran was famous in the village for her garden and for some of her political campaigns, but she said that none of them really knew the first thing about her and that’s the way she preferred it. She was like a really smart celebrity in that way.

The villagers even smiled at Wren, and the look on her face made me start to laugh.

‘What’s so funny?’ she said.

A car passed between us and gave me time to lose the grin. ‘Nothing. I was just thinking about something else and your face happened to be in the way.’

For once I had the last word.

We’d been walking for twenty minutes when Dorrit passed us and slowed to a stop. Dad was driving. Gran had probably sent him on an errand to get him out of her way, just like she’d sent us on the walk.

‘Get in, girls,’ Dad said when we reached him. His eyes were bloodshot.

‘What for? Gran told us to go walking,’ said Wren.

‘Could you just do as you’re told for
once
, Wren?’

His tone made me jump. I didn’t need to be told twice and neither, apparently, did Wren. She took the front seat and I got in behind her.

‘Seatbelts.’

‘Dad, it’s a country road and we’re only two minutes from Gran’s house.’

‘I said SEATBELTS!’

‘All right, keep your wig on.’

‘Wren! For God’s sake!’ He looked as if he was about to go on shouting but he stopped suddenly. He put his hand on Wren’s shoulder. Then he faced forward and started the engine.

The atmosphere in the car thrummed in my bones like a deep bass note.

‘Dad,’ I said nervously, ‘don’t get cross but we’re going in the wrong direction. Gran’s house is back that way.’

‘It’s all right, Summer.’

My back pressed into the seat as the car sped up.

‘What’s going on?’ said Wren.

‘I need you to be really brave and good now, girls.’

‘Why? What do we need to be brave about?’ she demanded.

‘I’m going to tell you. Just give me a moment. I need to concentrate on driving.’

Instinctively I put my hand to my chest where my heart was running itself to panic. ‘Dad, tell us quickly. You’re scaring me.’ I could see the side of his face from the back seat. He was clenching his stubbled jaw and the muscles of his face twitched like creatures hiding under sand.

‘Everything’s fine, girls. Please just wait a second. I need to focus.’

The car sped up a little more, still going in the wrong direction. Wren started shouting at Dad in her usual way. I watched us join a main road and turned to look out of the back windscreen, just as a fierce rain came pelting down. Somewhere back there was Gran and Mum and Charlotte. That’s when I noticed our luggage in the boot and, instantly, everything inside me hurt.

‘I know what it is,’ I said. ‘Wren, she’s not coming with us.’

‘Who? The cat? I know that, you idiot!’

I couldn’t breathe. I saw the whole morning in fast forward from a new perspective. Mum not showing for breakfast. The stony silence between her and Dad in the car on the way here. Mum so happy to be with Gran. Gran getting us out of the way. Had they planned this or had Mum decided at the last minute?

‘Are either of you mutants going to tell me what the hell is going on?’ shouted Wren.

‘Dad, say it,’ I said, still hoping I’d had the wrong idea.

Dad kept his eyes on the road, but his face was full of pain.

I was right.

‘What is it?’ Wren looked around at me and then at Dad.

‘Dad, say it,’ I said again, louder.

‘You say it, Summer!’ screeched Wren. ‘Someone tell me!’

I started to cry. It came out as a high-pitched moan. ‘Mum.’

‘Oh my God. You mean we’re going without her,’ said Wren. ‘YOU MEAN MUM!’

My eyes were swimming with tears as Wren raged
on, madly twisting under her seatbelt as she shouted at the windscreen.

‘I don’t understand!’ she shouted at the top of her voice. ‘How could she not come with us?’ Wren thumped the window with her fist and kicked the dashboard. And then she said, softer, as if the shock was setting in, ‘You mean she just isn’t coming today, Dad? She’s getting a different flight? What do you mean? Tell me! You have to tell me!’

‘IT’S JUST FOR TODAY!’ Dad yelled. All our different cries and gasps for breath filled the car; there was no air. Dad continued, steadier now. ‘She needs time with Gran. Just for a while. I begged her. Believe me, I begged her to come.’

‘Just for today? Or just for a while? Or longer? Which is it?’

‘I don’t know, Wren!’

Wren started screaming again. ‘Why didn’t we say goodbye? How could you do this?’ This time she sounded like a wild animal, with her hands like claws and her teeth bared. No words, just a sound. Her scream was my scream. I sat in stunned silence. It was the language of loss and, most of all, disbelief that the pain we thought we had been dealing with had grown a new tumour. Wren didn’t believe it was just for a while any more than I did.

The empty seat beside me was like a sinkhole. The doctors said Mum couldn’t control how she felt, but
this
felt like something she’d chosen. And I could taste how angry I was. It made me shake everywhere, from my fingers to my back teeth. I pressed my cheek to the cold window because I thought I might faint. From there I saw Wren’s face in the round wing mirror where two days ago I’d seen Mum’s. Wren cried messily and I stared.

Then all I could hear was the road and Wren’s ragged breathing, until she said, in a tight squeak that stuck in my heart, ‘But … she’s our mum.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Dad. ‘But you, me, and Summer – we’ve got everything else we need.’

That’s when I checked the boot again and saw what else was missing. There was no guitar case. I gasped, and then tears spilled quickly and quietly down my face as if a completely new supply had been found. No Ibanez Artwood. I felt a pain that was so new it hurt twice as much. But I couldn’t say it out loud – ‘How could you forget the guitar, Dad? I can’t live without it.’ – because it was impossible to explain what it meant not to have an object when we’d just found out that we were missing our mum.

The hard Cornish rain somehow knew its job. It did its best to drown out the sound of our hearts breaking.
And the long road continued; it didn’t know or care about our troubles.

It was taking us away from everything we’d ever known.

Before sad things have happened to you, and you’ve only heard about them happening to other people, it’s hard to imagine how people get through it. But the truth is that it’s hard to understand even when it’s your turn.

For a whole day and night, with a quick stopover in Hong Kong, Dad and Wren and I sat in a row, facing forward, not talking about Mum. We ate four meals – including a packet of mints and an ice-cold banana when they’d turned the lights out and it seemed like I was the only person on the plane who was awake – not talking about Mum. We watched safety demonstrations and movies, gave the crew our drinks orders, and
politely climbed over one another to walk to the toilets. To anyone else we probably looked normal.

Now the cabin crew marched up and down the aisles, getting us ready for landing, and none of this felt like something I was getting through. I was on a plane that someone else was flying, and that’s what my life felt like, too.

The plane dipped. I gulped the swollen feeling from my ears. I looked at Dad looking at the view and wondered if he was thinking ‘home’. But I pushed that thought away for a new, angry thought to grow: if Dad hadn’t made us come here, we’d still be four. If Mum had tried harder, Dad would never have come up with this plan in the first place. Hating them both was soft and unsure at the moment, like the delicate top of a half-baked sponge cake. But I wanted the hate. I was finished with other people’s feelings.

The cabin crew took their seats. It looked like the land was coming up to meet the plane as much as we were falling towards it. A few people cheered when the wheels touched the runway. I turned around to see them – a group on an adventure. Their smiles looked like a foreign language. I felt smaller than ever, and completely defeated. The ground under us was a hard and heavy truth.

The engine noise stopped. Seatbelts clicked apart.

‘Here,’ Wren said, handing me my bag from the overhead locker. It was only then that I realised how long it had been since she’d sniped at me. Twenty-three hours, to be precise.

We sweltered, quietly, in the taxi queue. Wren’s pale face turned pink and the tiny hairs around her hairline curled with sweat. She stripped off black layer after black layer until her pale arms showed. Dad had shadows under his eyes. He caught me looking but he didn’t seem to be able to look back for very long. My eyes were full of gravel.

The taxi driver, Dave, was so friendly that we all had to grin back and pretend we felt something like normal. But the smile felt wrong on my face, the way your skin feels when you wash it with soap and it gets so tight.

‘So where’ve you just come from, folks? You on holiday here?’

‘London,’ said Dad, in a lifeless voice. ‘But we thought we’d try a new life, didn’t we, girls?’

‘Good on ya, mate!’ said Dave.

Hearing his accent was like watching Australian soaps on TV. I couldn’t believe I was actually
in
this scene instead of back home in my school uniform, watching it with Mal.

It was the middle of the night back home. Mal would be asleep. Would Mum be sleeping, too? I gulped
and bit the inside of my mouth to stop the tears. The pain made me angry, and anger was easier to deal with right now.

‘I went to Leeds once,’ said Dave. ‘I’ve got family there. Do you know the place?’

‘Not really,’ said Dad.

‘Right, mate, right. You watch cricket? See the T20 last week? We gave you a hiding.’

‘I don’t really follow it, to be honest.’ Dad sounded too tired for words.

‘Soccer?’

‘Not soccer either.’ Dad smiled weakly and then turned his head to stare out of the front passenger window. In the rear-view mirror I caught Dave raising his eyebrows. Australia 1, Britain 0.

We whizzed over a bridge and a neat city popped out of the distance on our left. I thought, if we just keep moving, I’ll be okay. First I hadn’t wanted the plane to land and now I didn’t want the car to stop. All I could see was this enormous sky towering over my head, making me feel like a tiny dot of raw hurt among millions of other tiny dots. My head said, ‘Look, the sky is beautiful!’ But my heart said, ‘Listen, the world is enormous and you are only just beginning to understand what pain is. The way it clings to your body, like this heat.’

Dad and Wren and I got out of the taxi at 24 Lime Street. ‘
Sensationally positioned! The family home of your dreams.
’ The picture was right in front of us, now. Dad opened the mailbox and took out an envelope with his name on it. Here was the key. It was all so surreal. We went inside quickly as if we’d finally found a place to hide.

Outside had been so hot and bright. Inside was dim and quickly filled with a dry and noisy cool from the aircon that Dad had switched on. The house echoed all our movements. We paced and stared. The journey to get here had taken weeks and now it was over. We were really in the
here
that had once been
there
.

A small hallway with two closed doors led into an open-plan kitchen and lounge. The whole place was empty, but not empty like our old house had felt at the end. I didn’t feel sad for this one because this emptiness had nothing to do with us; it was someone else’s.

‘I’m going for a sleep, girls. You should, too. This one’s mine.’ Dad pointed to one of the doors off the hallway.

His bedroom was already ‘mine’ and not ‘ours’ like his and Mum’s in London had been. Now that we were here, I wasn’t sure that Mum was ever coming.

‘New mattresses were delivered the other day, the landlord said. We’ll sort the rest out later.’

The way Dad looked, I guessed that ‘later’ could be days away.

There were glass doors all the way along the lounge room and, behind them, a neat, empty garden with a lemon tree in one corner, a large rectangle of patchy grass and high fences all the way around. Suddenly I remembered the promised dog. When were we supposed to pick it up? I couldn’t face asking Dad about it. A dog was the last thing I needed.

Wren wheeled her suitcase across the polished floors but at the foot of the stairs she suddenly stopped. ‘Are you coming up, then?’

She was different. Odd. This was the longest a ceasefire had lasted, just when I felt like I had enough anger to finally match hers.

Upstairs was twenty degrees hotter, with lower ceilings and harder edges, stark white walls and rough blue carpet lining the short hallway.

There was a small window in the middle of the hall, with a view of the garden, and beyond that a church steeple and lots of trees that looked a bit like the ones we had at home. I’d expected gum trees and koalas, to be completely honest, but I kept that to myself.

To the right there was a bedroom. I followed Wren inside. It was like a giant white cube with wooden floors. A mattress that looked like it wanted to burst
out of its plastic wrapping was propped against one wall.

‘Summer, you’ve got your own room across there.’

‘Right. I forgot.’

‘I’m going to sleep for a bit. See you later. Um … sleep well.’

Definitely weird. I went to the identical room across the hallway.

Empty.

I pulled the mattress down from the wall. It landed with a great thud that shook my bones. I wanted to smash something or just make a noise but there was nothing else in the room. I kicked the wall with the heel of my shoe and made a black mark, the only scar in this perfect space. I tore the plastic off the mattress until my fingers hurt.

By the time I’d finished, I’d moved past tired into dizzy and confused. The room was too bright and we were in Australia.

Australia?

Australia.

Abracadabra.

It sounded as ridiculous as when Dad had first told me, but now we were actually in it and so far from everything except the pain.

Awake.

Awake.

The word was a dripping tap.

Awake.

Awake.

Awake.

Mal would be wondering about me, waiting for an email or a call. I could never tell her that Mum hadn’t come. I was so ashamed and I couldn’t have kind, hopeful Mal persuading me not to be angry or trying to convince me that, deep down, Mum loved me.

I shut Mal and Mum and everyone else out of my mind.

Please let me sleep, I thought. Let me not be here and not have these thoughts anymore.

Finally my eyelids were closing. My eyes were dry and prickly and sore from tears. Inside my head became quiet and empty. Without Floyd’s guitar, I knew I wouldn’t hear his voice. He was gone, like the end of a day, and for the second time I hadn’t even said goodbye.