Closer (5 page)

This guy in a weird black shirt comes up to the front and he seems to be some kind of vicar. I've never seen him before. He says something about Granma, but he's reading from notes. Stuff about hardship and the war and everything. Makes her sound interesting, but not like the Granma I knew who could be so mean and cruel. It's like now she's dead she's perfect. 

I'm sitting next to Dad, and Mum's on the other side. He's holding the funeral leaflet tight and looking down. George is next to Mum picking his nose, and Hannah's by me with a tissue screwed up in her hand. I don't want to be here and I spend the time looking round and thinking about Raj and wondering if he's texting me right now and it's over before I know it. 

Granma's coffin gives a little shake and I almost think she's alive in there after all, and then there's this weird noise and it slides back behind some little gold curtains. It makes me want to laugh but I don't know why. Dad's got that cough he has when he's stressed. Mum holds his arm. We go outside and there's all these rows of flowers with names by them. One's got flowers laid out to look like a football pitch and I can see George looking so I give him a nudge. We get to ours and they look pathetic. There's one made into MA and I know Dad sent that. Then there's two other small bunches and it's embarrassing to have such rubbish flowers and I want to pretend we're some other family but I can't. I look up and there's this grey smoke coming out of a tall chimney at the back of the place and I wonder if that's Granma. 

These two old men are hanging round, and three old women. I've never seen them before, though they all look the same to me, and I suppose Granma did have a life before she got ill. Dad coughs again and he invites everyone to ours and the old men say they'll come but the old women say obvious things and go off together. Expect they're going off to drink cups of tea and gossip and moan. I suppose a funeral's a day out when you get that old, something you look forward to. At least it's not you who's dead. 

When we get back we have to stand about in the living room with these two old men. There's only enough chairs for our family in there. They eat loads of the food Mum bought, and George and Hannah stuff their faces like there won't be anything else for weeks. I have one sausage roll and I eat it bit by bit so nobody realises. The old men drink some beer then they say they've got to go. Mum says “Must you go so soon?” and it is so phoney. I wonder if maybe they didn't know Granma at all and they just go to funerals to make up the numbers and have a free binge, but Dad seems to know their names and shakes their hands when they go. 

Afterwards Dad goes in the kitchen. He's looking rough and says he wants to clear up. I follow him in and we tidy stuff away and stack the dishwasher, not talking or anything. I think of him in the shed with his dad. 

“What shall we do with the food?” he asks. How should I know? Can't stand the sight of it. The sandwiches are all curling up in the heat, and the sausage rolls look disgusting. Even the bits of lettuce are going slimy. Dad takes the top off the rubbish bin and lobs a sausage roll into it. Then another, a perfect throw. The next one lands on the floor and splats into bits. Then he throws one high up and gets it in and he rubs his hands together and I look at him to see if it's okay and I join in. We're chucking sausage rolls and sandwiches till the floor round the bin is covered with all the bits that miss. He rigs up a plastic plate over a rolling pin on the table and he puts a piece of tomato on one end and bangs down on the other, and the tomato flies across the room and hits the fridge door and slides down onto the floor and suddenly we're both laughing hysterically and breathless and Mum walks in and we go all quiet like we're both kids and we've been caught out by a teacher and Mum goes ballistic about the mess.

I've got to do something. All this mourning business is getting to me, and I'm no further with what Hannah said in her notebook about me and Dad. Keep coming back to it, but it's better to do something. 

“Got any black bags, Mum? I've looked everywhere, but somebody's hidden them.” 

Mum sighs. “Nobody's hidden them, Mel. They're under the sink.” 

“Oh there!” I hadn't thought of that. Don't know how I'm supposed to know. I get them out, and unroll a trail of them. 

“What are you doing?” says Mum. 

“I'm having a clearout in my room. It's time all my toys and old books and stuff went.” 

“I'll come and give you a hand.” 

I'm not sure about this. Mum doesn't often come in my room now I'm older. But maybe I'll find something out, and anyway she seems to have decided without asking, because she's standing up and following me out of the kitchen and up the stairs to my room. 

“Right, charity shop pile here, rubbish pile on the floor, and keep pile on the desk.” 

She's taking over. I knew she would. But maybe it's good for her, she's looking ancient today. 

I get out the books first, from under the bed. There's mainly girly ones, George has the others. I dump them all on the floor, and Mum gets down on the carpet to look at them. 

“You can't throw these out! They're part of your history, part of our family's history.” 

Stress. 

“So what do
you
want me to do with my old books?” I say, with that tired voice she uses to me sometimes. 

“No need to be snappy. I'd like to keep some of them, that's all. In case there's grandchildren who come to stay.” 

I look at her with my mouth open. Grandchildren. What does she take me for? 

“No pressure or anything,” she says, laughing. “But you never know.” 

“I'm never going to have children.” It comes out wrong. I don't even know if I mean it. The only time I thought about having children was when Mandy in our year got pregnant last summer and got rid of it. I decided that when I have sex I'll use at least three kinds of contraception. Not that I have yet. I'm waiting for Raj, but he doesn't seem in any hurry. 

“Mel, don't say that. I've never regretted having any of my children, however hard it is sometimes.” 

I want to ask if she knows if I mind being born, but I think better of it. 

“You and Dad, you're not going to split up or anything?” 

“Where did that come from?” 

“It's just, all the rows you've been having and Dad not working or anything.” 

She puts the books down and leans over and hugs me. I almost like it. She still has that mum kind of smell and feel. But not for too long. 

“Sweetheart, I didn't think you'd be worried about that. We've been going through a bad patch, but every relationship has its down times. And with Granma dying and everything. We'll settle down again.” 

I can hear the lecture coming on, but it doesn't sound like she believes it herself. Too bad Mum's a teacher, she takes every chance she can get. 

To change the subject I fetch a cardboard box of stuffed toys and dolls from under the bed and start going through them. I open a black bag and start shoving them in. 

“That big teddy. Your Dad gave you that, when he and I had just met. So sweet of him to give you and Hannah something. Hannah's was a rag doll, I remember. You know, I think I fell in love with him when he brought those round for you both.” 

Spare me the yucky details, please, I'm beginning to feel sick. 

“There we were, the three of us, living in a tiny flat, waiting for a better place to come up. He didn't know what he was taking on. And of course, he was living in this big house, with Granma, after his first marriage broke down.” 

She's on a roll now. I keep filling the bag while she's remembering, hoping she doesn't notice. 

“Grandad was already dead, and your dad came home to look after Granma. She fell apart, like she'd been holding everything together while he was alive. He was such a…” 

I'm interested now. 

“You can't put all those in there, most of them can go to the charity shop. Some other little girl would love them.” 

I am not a little girl. 

“What was Grandad like?” I try to stay chilled in the interests of research. 

“I don't think human beings are evil, I think all of us have goodness inside.” 

The lecture voice again. 

“But I do wonder about your Grandad. I know the war was hard for him, but he treated Steve so badly, so cruelly. His only son. I don't understand how anyone can do that to a child. And I don't know how Granma could let him.” 

“What did he do?” I have images of Grandad locking Dad in the cupboard under the stairs, or hitting him. 

“Best not to talk about it, sweetheart.” She sighs, smiles and gets up. She wants to get away. “You know best about all this. Save us a few bits to remember by. I'd better put the tea on.” 

She leaves the room. I fill the bin bags and sneak past the kitchen door while she's not looking. The wheelie bin is in its wooden shelter, like a horse or something, so nobody must know we have rubbish. An ear of Dad's teddy is poking out of the top of one of the bags. I pull it out and dust it down, smell its dusty sweet teddy smell and put it under my arm before the rest goes in the bin.

I go round to Chloe's for tea. Had to cancel last week because of Granma and everything, so Chloe said she'd wait to have her hair cut till this week. Then we could go into school together with our hair different. Chloe lives in Shelley Road, not far from me. All the roads round here are named after poets from ages ago. Weird. Specially when they're all dark terraces with old factories in between. Our house stands out of course, with what Mum calls The Improvements. But Chloe's is like the others. The paint on the front window is peeling off, and the front door looks like somebody kicked it hard. 

I'm hoping Chloe will answer the door herself, but her older brother Dan opens it. Chloe says he fancies me but I don't know about that. He's so tall I'd need a stepladder to snog him. Or he'd have to kneel down. Can't say I fancy that. And he's twenty-four. Ancient. Anyway, I'm saving myself for Raj. 

He's got his fake American accent on. “Hello there, it's Mel come to see Chloe. Well my lady, you come right on in here and make yourself warm.” It's blazing down outside and he's so bonkers I stop being shy and I sort of want to hug him but I don't. 

The hall is full of stuff, spilling over the stairs and climbing up the walls. Books and papers and clothes and strange things from somewhere else in the world. It would take a month to tidy the stairs. And the rest is the same. Chloe's Mum and Dad don't care about how the house looks. There's a smell of something cooking and I feel hungry. 

Dan shouts upstairs. “Chlo? Mel's here to see you, your lovely friend.” You never know when he's serious. 

Chloe comes running down the stairs, she's got a towel round her shoulders and her hair's all wet. 

“Hi, good to see you,” says Chloe. “Come on up, Mum's nearly finished my hair.” We go up in the bathroom and there's an old stool in the middle with hair all over the floor. 

We're talking about Chloe's new haircut, still long but with loads of layers. It looks great. Dan's cruising in and out being crazy, and Chloe's mum's chopping at bits of Chloe's hair she's not happy with yet, and Chloe's flapping at her with the towel to stop, and her dad's up in the loft looking for something and shouting out what he's finding to anybody who'll listen, but nobody's listening to anybody else, it's one big warm muddle of voices. Dan's put loud music on the cd player downstairs and we're singing to the song now and then and everything's fine. 

Chloe's mum turns round to me and says, “Okay, Mel, how about I cut your hair for you? Chlo said you wanted it different. How would you like it?” 

I take a deep breath. 

“Short.” 

“A couple of inches off?” 

“No, short. Please. I'd like it short, spiky. I'd like it where one side's different from the other, one side shorter.” 

Chloe's mum sounds concerned. “Are you sure, love? Would your mum and dad mind, it being so long now and everything?” 

“It's my hair.” I'm standing my ground but my heart's thudding. Nobody says anything. 

“Do you think I'd better phone, just in case?” 

“No, it's cool, I told them and they said I'm old enough to know what I want.” 

She's convinced, and I feel bad that I've lied to somebody I like a lot. Chloe's mum would say that I'm old enough, she wants Chloe and Dan to think for themselves. 

Then Dan says “Wow. That's a great plan. The big change, hey?” 

I sit down on the stool and put the towel round my shoulders and it's gone quiet again. 

“Short?” Chloe's mum asks again. 

“Go for it.” 

And now she's laughing and whizzing round with the scissors and clumps of hair are landing on the floor and we're all laughing and teasing each other and it doesn't take long before all my hair's on the bathroom floor but I try not to look. I'm shaky, and my head feels so strange, like I can move it so easily. When she's done Chloe's mum gives me this big hug and says, “You look fantastic, if I say so myself.” 

“Don't look yet, don't look!” shouts Chloe, and I put my hands up to my head and it feels light and cold and my hair's gone and I run my hands through what's left. It's already dry. There's nowhere to hide now. I look down at the heaps on the floor and wonder about superglue. 

Chloe's gone in her room and comes back with some wax. Her mum rubs it onto her hands and pushes her fingers through the hair till it spikes up and Chloe claps her hands and says “Now!”