Allie was a cunning little witch. Aidan indeed. The reason she didn’t need my company was that she really wasn’t going to school. Unfortunately I’d sat through double English, a free period, the mid-morning break, several half-heard taunts about my mother’s radio slot and double Biology before I realised.
Allie’s Chemistry coincided with my Biology … (No, that’s Orla Mahon …)
What I mean is, Allie’s classes in the science block coincided with mine, so as usual I kept a sharp eye out for her as the corridors swelled with lunch-break crowds. Dodging the trouble spots and avoiding eye contact with the baby-faced dealers – I swear, they get younger every year – I hovered in the corridor that smelt of sweat and polish, sweltering in the sun that glared through the floor-to-ceiling glass. Somebody should have shot that architect and I wish it could have been me. My armpits were damp, my mood darkening; the skin of my face was corrugating into a scowl. Every one of Allie’s class passed me, most of them giving me a wide berth, but Allie wasn’t among them.
Allie, I thought, I’ll kill you if you’ve …
And then I spotted Orla Mahon, lounging in the L-shaped bit of the corridor beside a half-dead pot plant, her loyal posse around her.
I glowered at a spot in the middle distance, as if I was still looking for my sister, but my gaze slewed helplessly to the left. Orla, Orla, Orla. Beautiful, big-breasted Orla, Clyde-built, made for wallowing, made for a long leisurely voyage. Her straight dark hair fell over one of her smudged eyes, the foremost hank of it dyed an improbable platinum blonde. I wondered if the nose ring had hurt going in, and I wondered if I could use that as a conversational starting gambit. I wanted to eat her sullen glossy lips. I wanted to eat her.
She felt me watching and glanced up, contemptuous. She said not a word, but by some kind of osmosis the posse too realised I was there, and they turned as one.
‘I’m looking for Allie,’ I snapped.
Orla looked at the girl on her left, then at the one on her right. Then she looked at me, upper lip curling. Her jaw moved around her chewing gum.
‘Sheesh,’ she said. All the boredom and apathy in the world went into that one syllable. ‘Any Words of Wisdom for us, Nicholas?’
‘Eff off,’ I said. Except I didn’t say ‘eff’, and what I did say I didn’t mean.
One of the posse giggled, so I glared at her and she shut up. But I could feel Orla’s stare, so I turned to her again. ‘You seen my sister or not?’
I only asked for her help because I was desperate. Actually that isn’t strictly true: I asked because I wanted to go on talking to Orla, even in these circumstances. But she didn’t say another word. Her pewter irises glittered, outlined in that ugly black eyeliner. God, she was intimidating. God, she was beautiful.
Under the implacable hostility of five girls, I looked away and tugged my collar. Then I snatched my hand away, annoyed at myself. And that’s probably one reason I got so furious when Shuggie emerged from the Chemistry lab, last as usual, and no Allie in tow. I stormed up and collared him, and he eyed me nervously through his thick geeky glasses. I gave him my best intimidating glower.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he said. ‘If you can’t control her how am I supposed to?’
Sighing, I let go of him. ‘She wasn’t in class then?’
For answer Shuggie just rolled his magnified eyes, as if it was the stupidest question he’d ever heard. Which it probably was.
‘I thought I told you to keep an eye on her?’
‘How do I do that if she isn’t there? She never showed up. You’re her brother.’
‘Listen, you little dirtball, you were supposed to come and get me if this happened.’
‘Look, Nick, you don’t scare me.’
‘Oh, really?’ I got hold of his collar again and twisted.
He tugged himself away. ‘Really. You’re not a thug, Nicholas; you’re an utterly unconvincing excuse for a thug.’
I stared at him. Beaten as usual by the little tick. ‘Nevertheless, Shugs, there are days when I could happily kick you to death.’
‘I’m sure. Let’s move along now. People are staring.’
I swear, there were times I didn’t know how Shuggie had survived two school years. I didn’t worry for him, though. If he wasn’t dead by now, he’d probably make it through. He certainly couldn’t get any more annoying.
He walked alongside me as I turned and strode back down the corridor, which was embarrassing in itself, but I knew better than to try and shake him off. It would only make him stick closer. Shuggie seemed to think I was some kind of unpaid bodyguard.
‘I really fancy your sister.’
The geeky little git. The nerve of him. I found there were no words for my disbelief, so I just walked faster.
‘Course, she’s so hung up on that Aidan, I haven’t got a chance at the moment.’
‘Shuggie, you haven’t got a chance ever, in the entire future of the world.’ I came to a dead halt outside the canteen and eyed him malevolently. ‘Do not encourage her, right? Do not ever encourage her about bloody Aidan.’
‘It’s not my fault. You’re her brother.’
‘Like I could forget.’ I peered through the lunch crowds, hoping she’d be among them, but hope didn’t make her materialise.
‘You’re putting off the inevitable,’ said Shuggie, dumping a yoghurt and a fruit juice on my tray.
I dumped them right back off. ‘Shut up.’
‘Where do you want to sit?’ He picked up his own tray.
‘Miles away from you.’ I scowled at the dinner lady, who had just managed to flip a noodle against my sweatshirt, where it stuck like a tapeworm. She was always throwing food at me. I think it was deliberate. ‘Shuggie, go away.’
He shrugged. ‘Who else are you planning to sit with?’
‘Nobody,’ I gritted. ‘Nobody. I mean, that was the plan.’
He was Allie’s age, for God’s sake. Bad enough that he was a speccy little nobody, but the fact he was in my sister’s year only made this more humiliating. They used to be in and out of each other’s houses all the time when they were at primary school, and right after they went to Craigmyle High. Of course, that was before she decided to be best friends with some boy who didn’t exist. Shuggie could hardly compete with the mythical Aidan, but I didn’t see why he had to stalk me instead.
He was hovering now, trying to edge into the seat beside me. The little tosser had the antennae of a hippopotamus. Around me other kids, depending on their personality, were either talking louder and pretending they hadn’t seen me, or finishing their lunch in record time and buggering nervously off. I think my force field of disapproval might have scared off even Shuggie, but just then someone grabbed his shoulder and shoved him out of the way.
‘Eff off, Middleton,’ said Shuggie’s usurper.
Oh, shit. Without glancing up I reached back, gripped Shuggie’s arm and wrestled him into the place beside me. ‘You eff off, Sunil.’
Shuggie was an aggravation, but he was my aggravation, and I wasn’t about to let him be shoved around by the likes of Sunil.
‘What’s your problem, Nick?’ snapped Sunil.
‘I haven’t got a problem,’ I said, ‘these days.’
He leaned down slightly, so Shuggie couldn’t overhear. ‘Look, I just thought we could …’
‘What?’ I gave him my foulest Tarantino glare.
‘I thought I could sit here, that’s all.’ He was getting the message at last, tensing with hostility.
‘So you can take the piss out of me with your mates? Forget it.’
‘Aye, fine. If you’d rather hang out with Stephen Hawking Junior.’ Sunil gave a short laugh and effed off.
I sat in silence, making myself eat rubber hamburger though my appetite was gone. Shuggie, catching the mood for once, stayed quiet. There was a chance Sunil was genuinely trying to be friendly. It was possible he’d been trying to make it up with me. I wasn’t about to take the chance, though, seeing as the last time I saw him up close, it was through a film of blood and his boot was in my face.
I could feel a stare burning between my shoulder blades, so I turned. Orla and her gang were watching me with pure loathing, and Gina was murmuring in Orla’s ear and giggling. I was about to flash her the finger when I remembered how God-awful yesterday lunchtime had been. Same as every lunchtime, of course: Allie, sitting beside a vacant chair, resting her chin on her hand and smiling at thin air. Spluttering giggles from some kids, embarrassed silence from others, meaningful murmurs between teachers. Sneers and pitying glances thrown in my direction as well as Allie’s. Orla’s gang sniggering. And Orla herself, face darkening with disapproval, finally getting to her feet and swanning disdainfully out, her gang in tow.
I was mortified, and furious with the lot of them. Allie was a bit eccentric, that was all. Kind of odd. They had no right to laugh at her.
But I was angriest with Allie. How could she do this to herself? How could she do it to me?
Thinking that way, remembering the horrors of yesterday, I was glad she’d skipped school today. I wished she’d stay away. For good.
Guilt kicked in like a Timberland boot.
‘I’ll have to go and look for her.’ I rubbed my hand across my eyes.
‘Yes,’ said Shuggie, shovelling yoghurt into his face.
I checked my watch. ‘I better go now.’
‘I think you should have gone five minutes ago. Don’t you?’
He was right, of course. I’d only been putting off the evil moment because I didn’t want trouble and I didn’t want to be responsible for my mad sister. But I couldn’t put it off any longer, so I slunk out of the canteen and out of the grounds, unnoticed, wounded and feeling hard done by. Everybody had it in for me. Orla. The posse. Allie, for doing this to me. Even Shuggie, that itching louse on the bum of the school population. Sometimes I felt like the lowest form of school life. To think I used to be one of its alpha males.
I hunted all over town for Allie, and that wasn’t easy. She didn’t have favourite shops so I had to check everywhere and by the time I’d done one side of the High Street I reckon the security staff were phoning ahead to each other. Shaven-headed thug coming your way, Darren. Scar on his right eyebrow. Broken nose. Lock up your CDs.
Jeez. I must have been a gift to any genuine shoplifters that day, because nobody was watching anyone else.
Including my sister. I caught up with her in Drugstore Cowboy, shoving a bottle of shampoo up her sweatshirt.
‘Put it back,’ I growled out of the corner of my mouth.
She sighed dramatically and let the bottle fall back into her hand. Nestling it in her palm, she studied the ingredients. ‘Go away, Nick.’
I stood right beside her, examining a display of conditioner. ‘No.’
‘Go away.’
‘Allie, grow up.’
‘No.’ She made to stick the shampoo back up her sweatshirt so I grabbed it, prised her fingers off and dumped it violently back on the rack.
‘And the rest,’ I said.
‘The what?’ She blinked.
‘The rest. Don’t make me frisk you, Allie. Just don’t.’
Her hand wandered towards her pocket, but without much enthusiasm, and losing my temper I pulled her wrist aside, shoved my own hand in and found three lipsalves. I yanked them out as she winced in exaggerated pain. ‘Where do these go?’ I could feel the beginnings of panic. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want trouble.
There was a presence behind us, a big, threatening, muscular presence. Bigger than me even. I turned my head.
‘Is he bothering you, love?’ The security man was talking to Allie, but his eyes were on me. I snapped my head back round to glower at the shampoo. I was going to kill her. Kill her.
Sliding a bottle of nail varnish remover elegantly from pocket to shelf, Allie turned and gave the brute a dazzling smile. Her cheeks dimpled and her huge eyes lit up and her spikes of hair fell endearingly across both eyes.
‘It’s all right, Richie,’ she said. ‘Really. I can deal with him.’
Richie. Richie? The little criminal was on first-name terms with the security staff.
‘I don’t know about that, love.’ The man’s eyes slid from me to Allie, softening as they did so, then back to me, hard as nails again. He was making some point about the height difference and picking-on-someone-your-own-size, and I didn’t bother arguing. Waste of effort, and anyway I couldn’t betray her, tempting as it was. Sullenly I kicked a heel against the display stand, doing my best to outstare him.
‘Honest. I’m fine. I can handle him.’ Like I was some Neanderthal with gristle for brains. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘If you’re sure, love.’ He tightened his biceps. Tosser.
Allie touched his arm, very lightly. ‘Thanks,’ she said.
Manipulative little witch.
He gave us his undivided attention after that, and Allie turned on her heel, gave Richie another sweet smile, and left the shop. For pride’s sake I hovered, scowling at him, for a few seconds more, then sauntered after her. Once out of the shop, I bolted.
As soon as I caught her up I grabbed her arm hard and dragged her along the street. I must have been hurting her but I couldn’t help myself, and she didn’t let on. I didn’t speak to her again till we were a hundred metres down the High Street.
‘Don’t do that to me.’ I felt like crying, which was humiliating and made me even angrier. ‘Just don’t.’
She shrugged. ‘What was I supposed to do? Tell him you were bothering me?’
‘You got me in trouble. You could’ve got me in a lot worse.’
‘Quite. I could’ve got you in a lot worse. Stop moaning.’ She smiled at me so unexpectedly, it took the wind out of my sails and I stood in silence, nonplussed.
‘Did Aidan put you up to that?’ I asked. I hoped things hadn’t taken another turn for the worse with Allie. I hoped she wasn’t really going mad.
‘Course he didn’t. I only did it to annoy him. Sometimes he gets up my nose, Nick.’ Allie wrinkled it for proof. ‘He’s so self-righteous.’
I had to pause for breath, but I couldn’t help asking, ‘Does he mind you talking like that about him?’
‘Not here, is he? He stormed off when I took the shampoo. I was fed up of him.’
‘Allie,’ I said, as gently as I could. ‘If you’re fed up, get rid of him. You can just get rid of him, you know.’
She stared at me, like it was me that was mad. It was a look that made me shiver. Then she shook her head slowly.
‘Get rid of him? Of course I can’t get rid of him. What d’you think, I can just tell him to go away? He cares about me. And besides,’ she added solemnly, ‘it isn’t finished yet.’
Whatever she meant by that. ‘Who says?’
‘Aidan does.’
I swallowed over the hard constriction of my throat. Sometimes Allie terrified me.
And sometimes Aidan did.
I shook my head. ‘Come on then.’
‘Come on where?’
I pointed at my watch. ‘Lunchtime’s over. I hope you ate while you were thieving, because you haven’t got time now.’
‘I’ve got all the time in the world. I can’t go back till I find Aidan.’
I grabbed her wrist. ‘Aidan can go play with the trains. You’re coming back with me.’
Allie didn’t resist and she didn’t pull away. She just turned quietly, her eyes so dark I thought I was going to fall in. I felt dizzy all of a sudden, queasy, and a bit afraid.
‘How dare you say that about Aidan,’ she said. ‘How dare you.’
My throat was as dry as an old stick. ‘Sorry,’ I told her at last, awkwardly.
‘You should be.’ Picking my limp fingers off her arm, she tossed her hair and stormed off.
God, what I have to put up with.
All I could do was follow, but she was small and quick and most of all she was angry. Ducking and swerving, she could nip through crowds of shoppers where I could only barge, shove and mutter belated apologies I didn’t mean. I was jogging now but I could barely keep her in sight, let alone catch her.
A gang of Reservoir Puppies swaggered across her path, but they were distracted by the burgers they were shoving in their faces and they let her through with a few remarks I’m glad I couldn’t hear. When they caught sight of me, their heads came up and their shoulders hunched forward, like something out of Big Ape Diary. Eyeballs swivelled to each other and to me, wondering if it was worth it, but I eyed them hard, then cut my eyes away deliberately, hands in pockets, forward momentum maintained. I’m not looking for trouble but I’ll give you some if you ask nicely.
They thought about blocking my way, then changed their minds. Didn’t get out of the way, as such, but they rearranged their choreography, slick and unconcerned, and somehow a path opened through so I wouldn’t have to shoulder any of them and they wouldn’t have to respond. We all have our pride. And you have to be in the mood to look for trouble. And anyway, it was lunchtime.
Allie had a terrific start on me now but I knew most of her evasive ploys and I knew she’d most likely head for the retail estate. It was on the edge of the town and she liked that; she didn’t like hanging around the streets. The streets of town meant more people. But beyond the retail warehouses and the railway line and the wasteland of billboards, the town petered out, turning into something you couldn’t quite call the countryside: broken fences, fields full of ragwort and willowherb, rusting car bodies and coils of discarded wire. A thin burn leaked through it, its edges marked by beige scum and torn plastic bags. Hardly the stuff of poetry but it suited Allie. No buildings, apart from one derelict shack and a filthy caravan tipped over on one wheel. Dad would have liked it here too. No people. No trouble.
I couldn’t blame her for liking it, but I wished she’d go the long way round to get there. I wished she wouldn’t clamber along the sides of the railway cutting, where weeds grew thick, where you couldn’t see rusting barbed wire or broken posts that might trip you and send you tumbling down the slope on to the tracks. I wished she’d slog down to the level crossing half a mile away like everybody else, but Allie didn’t ever take the long way round. She didn’t like the road. Houses backed on to it on one side, their long gardens blocked from the road by high fences. On the other side was the railway itself, sunk into a cutting, the rails emerging from a dark tunnel and converging far in the distance at the level crossing. The road was dingy and quiet, and in winter it was staggeringly ill-lit. I wasn’t keen on it myself.
Halting now at the tunnel mouth and the cutting, I knew Allie had come this way again. A new swathe had been cut through the undergrowth, zigzagging down to the line, the stems broken, cotton-fluff seeds drifting in air. I started to clamber, hesitantly and sideways, the gradient jolting my knees. The ground beneath my feet was treacherous sand and stone, litter-strewn and weed-choked beneath the scrub. It took me longer than Allie to get to the foot of the slope. Always did, which was another reason she came this way. I felt like a coward but I wasn’t going any faster.
I stopped three-quarters of the way to the bottom of the embankment and squinted up the line. Shimmering with distance, the little white sticks that were the level-crossing barriers sighed into place to block the road. No point going any further, then. I was not crossing the tracks, not now. I slumped among the tangled stalks and waited for the song.
It must have been something about the long gradual curve of the tunnel, or maybe the depth of the cutting. It muffled the song to a soft hum that was more a feeling than a sound, a sensation in your bones and nerves. More the nerves in my case.
Idly I pulled the white fluff off a dying stalk, let it drift in the windless day towards the rails. I thought the wisps hovered and trembled, but it might have been my imagination. I glanced up at the level crossing again, so far away, too far for a lazy girl to walk. Railways make everything distant. You look along them like you’re looking into another world and one you’ll never reach. It’s something to do with those parallel shining lines, converging, converging and never meeting. Infinity. Eternity.
Too big to get your head around, anyway. I lay back on my elbows. Anyone watching would have thought I was relaxing, cool as anything, but I was lying back so that there was more of me in contact with the earth, so that my fingers could curl round the coarse grass weeds and anchor me to the world. The singing was louder now, and soon the bass roar of the train would harmonise with its own echo, drown its own song …
Soon? Now. Then.
It came howling out of the tunnel mouth like a demon. I blinked fast so I could catch instants of lives behind my eyelids. An infant at the window, mother’s hands on its waist; a lanky girl gazing into a laptop; men, women, balanced like dancers, bums against seatbacks and folded papers in one hand. But the instants were only that, and they were gone.
Honestly, there are people who do not understand how fast they are. It’s not like taking your life in your hands and running across a motorway, say. That’s fast but it’s not this fast. That would be stupid, but this would be suicidal. It would be taking your life in your hands and chucking it on to the tracks and leaving it there. All broken.
I’ve always been afraid of the trains. Maybe it comes from watching them when I was very little, and thinking they were some kind of gods. Almost the first thing I read, when I learned to read, was the sign that said Beware of Trains. So I took the sign for a sign. I took it at its word. And I have never stopped being wary of the trains.
Allie had never been frightened of the trains, which was stupid of her, but at least she treated them with a healthy respect. After all, she too listened for the song. I could only trust that she’d never cross the tracks in the cutting when she heard the singing begin.
I waited till the song had faded, and that was a long time. It had to fade away to nothing, because I wouldn’t move till I knew there wasn’t another voice singing behind it, harmonising in a treacherous hum so you wouldn’t hear it till it broke into its own roar and hit you. I waited till the silence was more than silence, till it was a whole vacuum of sensation and sound, then sidestepped down the embankment once more. It did occur to me to trudge all the way down to the level crossing, but the little white sticks had lifted, and cars were trundling over. Besides, when I checked my watch I knew I was in enough trouble already.
I bolted across the tracks, trying to forget my phobia about catching a foot between the rails or under a sleeper, and scrambled up the other side. Allie wasn’t far away; in fact, when I got to the top of the embankment she was just on the other side, halfway down the shallow hill, arms hunched round her knees, fidgeting guiltily as I slumped at her side.
‘I’m sorry, Nick,’ she said, before I could get an angry word in edgeways.
‘It was wrong, what I did. I’m sorry.’
‘Which bit?’ I said bitterly.
She didn’t answer me for a while. In the ragged field below us, a pale sun glinted on a boggy patch that marked the feeble burn. Dirty twigs bare of leaves hung limply over its banks, garlanded with plastic bags and streamers of God-knew-what. It was pretty in a way.
‘I couldn’t go to school,’ said Allie, ‘because it’s the anniversary and the teachers were talking about some kind of ceremony, and I couldn’t stand it. But Aidan was angry with me. So I went out robbing things to annoy him.’
Something unpleasant walked up my spine, like a spider under my skin.
‘But I’m sorry I came across the railway. I shouldn’t’ve done that. I knew you were after me and once I got here I was worried about you. You did wait for the train?’
‘Course I did,’ I said. ‘You didn’t.’
‘It wasn’t singing when I came.’
‘Allie,’ I said. I rubbed my arms to make them feel warmer. ‘Allie, if you heard the trains singing. And if you were running. And if Aidan said, well, run anyway, run and you’ll make it before the train comes …’
‘Yeah?’
‘Well, Allie, would you just run? Would you run across if Aidan told you to?’
She smiled at me. The faintest breeze wisped a blunt lock of hair across her face and I used my forefinger to push it back behind her ear. Then I picked willowherb fluff out of her hair. She was still smiling when I did all this and I wished she’d just stop smiling and answer me.
‘Nick,’ she said at last. ‘Nick, Aidan would never tell me to do that.’
‘But if he did?’
She pushed my hand gently away from her hair, and rearranged it herself, and then she tipped her head back to smile at the invisible boy leaning against her shoulder.
‘Aidan would never do anything to hurt me,’ she said. ‘Would you, Aidan?’
She wouldn’t go back to school with me, and I didn’t feel I could leave her, so that was it: I was for it. I tried not to think about it; at least I tried to think only about Allie, who would not get into much trouble. If I explained, I might not either. It was just that I felt too tired and too ground down and too hacked off with the world to bother explaining myself. So I just took Allie home (and Aidan now that she’d found him), and later that afternoon I went back to the seventh circle of hell to retrieve my stuff from my locker, hoping I wouldn’t be noticed.
I am never Not Noticed, I’m too big and ugly. And sod’s law being what it is, McCluskey was standing right there in the corridor outside his office as I sloped in. I did the eye-contact trick with the big fascist, hoping that like a one-man hostile gang he’d let me pass, but it was a non-starter.
‘Oy, Geddes.’
I thought about pretending I’d gone deaf, but he’d only snarl at me in sign language. I wondered how he’d sign an obscenity, an earful of sarcasm and another final warning. Be interesting to find out, but instead I let him bawl me into the deputy head’s office.
He was quieter with the door shut. ‘Would you care to explain yourself, Geddes?’
Oh, he was going to be elaborately polite. That was a bad sign.
‘I don’t understand you. You don’t have to be here.’
Oh, aye, and leave Allie to the hyenas? It was bad enough with me around, and I didn’t plan to find out how it would go for her if I wasn’t.
I couldn’t be bothered explaining this to McCluskey, so I gave him the Withering Look of Dumb Insolence.
‘Oh, you’re past this crap, aren’t you, Geddes?’ His weary sigh of boredom made my stomach twist and jerk. The shame was unexpected and a little painful. I didn’t let it bother me.
‘Sixth year, Geddes. That makes you almost a grownup.’ There was a sneer in his voice. ‘Sixth years are in school of their own free will, boy. If your free will can’t be bothered to turn up, get another life. Go flip a burger.’
A bit more along those lines, and he let me go. I got the impression he was trying to needle me into a reaction, but I was better than that. All I had to do was stomach a year. All I had to do was protect my sister. Oh, and turn around my whole life and my educational prospects. Piece of piss. I didn’t have to be liked. Not by McCluskey and not by anybody else.
Just as well, really.
Slouching home, miserable and furious, I wished I’d dragged Allie back to school to share the bollocking. But then, nobody yelled at Allie. Even if I’d hauled her back by the hair – even tomorrow, if she deigned to turn up – nobody would. They’d probably offer the brat more counselling.
At times like this, the only company I could bear was Lola Nan’s. I reckon that was because Lola Nan’s world made no sense at all, and sometimes mine didn’t either. She and I used to connect; we liked each other a lot. Perhaps, on some level, we still did.
Or maybe I was kidding myself, but as I creaked open the rusting gate of our house I felt a desperate longing to see her, to bask for a while in her irrational, largely silent company. Lola Nan didn’t ask awkward questions (apart from, occasionally, ‘Where’s Geoffrey?’ – Granda having retired to his crematorium urn twenty years ago).
When I was little, Lola Nan used to half sing, half hum to me to calm me down and stop me crying. Nowadays there was no singing but often she still hummed, tunelessly and for hours on end, and I found that just as comforting as I always had.
Anyway, I’d had such a bad day I didn’t deserve for it to get any worse. But it went right ahead and did, because when I got home and slammed the door and went into the sitting room, Lola Nan wasn’t there.
But Aidan’s mother was.