Uncle Jim is not himself. Last time he was not himself it was Christmas and there weren’t any beds at the special hospital by the park, so he had to go to Liverpool. He hates being sent to Liverpool. It’s like being deported, he reckons. Like being forced into exile or extradited. Dad says it’s not like being extradited at all; you’d have to commit a crime in Liverpool first, in order to be extradited there. Uncle Jim says that could be arranged.
When he is himself, Uncle Jim does armpit farts, impressions, Mexican waves with his eyebrows, volunteering in the charity shop and dead hard jigsaws. He sleeps at night-time, remembers to eat, and sometimes pops round for a cup of tea or a beer with Dad while they watch old films like Top Gun and Indiana Jones.
When he is not himself, Uncle Jim stops taking his medicine and believes everything he thinks. He responds to volunteer opportunities in the paper, like massage therapist for the Liverpool Marathon or van driver for the British Heart Foundation, even though he’s got no massage qualifications and he can’t drive; he starts up conversations with people he doesn’t know and tells them all the stuff he wishes was true, like he owns a pet shop and he could have been a professional footballer if he hadn’t busted his knee when he was younger. Once, he decided there was no reason why he couldn’t get a proper job, so he filled out a form to say his circumstances had changed and he didn’t need his benefits any more. Dad spent a whole afternoon on the phone trying to sort it out. When he is not himself, Uncle Jim gets fizzy on the inside – literally – and the fizz makes him walk really fast for hours at a time, even in bad weather.
It rained a lot last December and Uncle Jim walked so much that he wore holes into his shoes. He came round on the evening of the 23rd, all muddled up, thinking it was Christmas Eve when there’s always a special tea with him, Grandad and Mrs Mackerel, and all the best bits from the frozen Christmas buffet section of Lidl: sausage rolls, bite-size pizzas, prawn vol-au-vents and mini chocolate éclairs. He was wet from the rain and limping, scared because he thought someone had been following him. Dad made him come in and sit down. He cooked cheese on toast and brought it in on a tray. As soon as the tray was balanced on Uncle Jim’s knees and he wasn’t going anywhere, Dad knelt on the floor, unfastened Uncle Jim’s trainers and peeled off his socks. The bottoms of his feet looked like strawberry crumble. Dad said he would take him to the walk-in centre as soon as he finished his toast, but Uncle Jim didn’t want to go and they had a big argument. She doesn’t like it when they shout at each other. There’s no sparks – they’re firing blanks, but still. Uncle Jim called Dad a nutsack-wiper and Dad called him a royal pain in the arse. She had to go next door and sit with Mrs Mackerel because she wasn’t allowed in the house by herself back then. Mrs Mackerel held her rosary, said a Hail Mary for Uncle Jim – God help him. Then she did some prayers to St Dymphna, light of those in mental darkness. Dad got back from the hospital late, by himself. The doctor at the walk-in centre had sent them over to Accident and Emergency, where Uncle Jim had been sectioned.
When Uncle Jim is not himself she isn’t allowed to visit on her own. Dad says it’s in everyone’s best interests; that way, no one will get upset. But Dad and Uncle Jim are more likely to upset each other than she and Uncle Jim are. This afternoon, when she has finished at the allotment, she’ll cycle to Grandad’s with a load of vegetables, and then she might pop to Uncle Jim’s, just to say hello – he won’t want any vegetables, he only likes brown or yellow ones, like potatoes and baked beans.
Outside, the sun is drumming on the path. She locks the front door behind her, slips the key into her pocket and wipes greasy hands on her shorts. The suncream smells of coconut. When she was small, Uncle Jim told her that coconuts were bear eggs. He bought one from the supermarket and told her to keep it somewhere warm and light. Such an exciting wait, tipping the bristly ball from hand to hand, holding it up to her ear, listening for the bear. Dad told her in the end, said Uncle Jim was being unfair. But she didn’t mind, it had been like listening to an especially exciting story, it didn’t matter that it hadn’t been real.
She fastens her helmet and ties a couple of carrier bags and the bike lock around the handlebars. All ready. She pedals to the end of The Grove and then back on herself, passing the house as she plugs up the hill of the bridge, bucket swinging with the effort. Once she has crossed the road at the top she takes her feet off the pedals and coasts down the other side, past Jewson’s, past Jo Kelly’s News and the post office. She’s pedalling again, just approaching the roundabout where she’ll turn off on to Moss Lane, when she notices Dagmar sitting outside the corner shop at the foot of the wheelchair ramp, a red and black tartan trolley beside her, the kind old ladies drag around. There’s an instant during which she could pedal on, pretending she hasn’t seen her, but she misses it – her timing is all wrong, her feet don’t move fast enough. Dagmar looks up and Clover freezes, like a statue when the music has stopped. She squeezes the brakes and her tyres skid on the scatter of stones that dust the pavement.
‘Hi.’ She glances at the shop door, checking for the owner of the shopping trolley, Dagmar’s nan, perhaps. ‘Who are you waiting for?’
‘I am waiting for no one.’
‘So that’s your trolley?’
‘Yes.’
Clover can see how the trolley might come in handy if you had a lot of things to carry. It is also a bit strange – if Abbie Higham saw it she would declare it ridiculous and die laughing, literally. That is enough to make Clover decide to like it. ‘It looks very useful,’ she says. ‘What’re you doing here, then?
‘I am watching the men with the dog.’
On the other side of the roundabout, in the empty parking spaces beside the hairdresser’s and the bakery, two men are talking. One of them is holding a small dog.
‘I am deciding what they are saying.’
‘Oh.’
‘Would you like to buy this dog?’ Dagmar asks, her voice gruff and mannish. ‘It is your turn,’ she explains, using her own voice again. ‘You must say what is next.’
‘Oh. Okay. Er . . . no, thank you. A dog is a big commitment.’ Clover doesn’t even attempt to adopt the second man’s voice.
‘It is your turn, still. Your man is talking.’
‘Right . . . I don’t have time to walk it. And dog food is very expensive.’
‘If you do not buy her, my wife is leaving me.’
‘Why?’
‘Shush, it is not your turn. My wife is leaving me because the noise is making her crazy.’
‘But I don’t want a noisy dog, either.’
‘Then I am being alone.’
‘You’ll have your dog,’ Clover says, and the men separate and walk off in different directions.
Dagmar smiles. It’s quick; a twitch of her lips, before her face returns to impassivity. She looks different outside of school. If Clover didn’t have very important plans, this could be interesting. They might find something to say to each other, something that doesn’t involve One Direction or who hasn’t been tagged in Twenty-Five Beautiful Girls on Facebook.
‘Where are you going?’ Dagmar asks.
‘The allotment. It’s this place where you grow stuff. Down there. Just to water things.’
‘I can come?’
Clover likes her time at the allotment: the work and the thinking, the quiet hum of the living things and the feeling of being responsible for it all. If she lets Dagmar come she might end up with less time to visit Grandad and Uncle Jim, and less time to sort through her mother’s things before Dad gets back. But she is curious.
‘All right then.’
Clover walks beside her bike, not minding the quiet. She gets the feeling that Dagmar is comfortable with it and would speak if she wanted to. They turn off Moss Lane and head down the track. Past the beech hedge on one side and the neat rows of the orchard on the other, until they reach the gate.
‘And all this is yours?’
‘Oh, no.’
Clover unlocks the gate and Dagmar follows, the hard wheels of her trolley scratching the ground. They pass a couple of neglected plots that are chock-a-block with thigh-high weeds, brambles and old vegetables gone to seed.
‘Here,’ she says, stopping beside a low wire fence. ‘This is ours. We’ve had it for ages. It used to be my grandad’s, like fifty years ago, or something.’ She leans her bike up against one of the canes that support the fence and then steps over the wire. ‘Come on,’ she says.
Dagmar explores the perimeter, leaning over dividing bits of fence and shrubbery to see into the neighbouring allotments. Clover glances at the enormous apple tree in the overgrown allotment to the left, its limbs piled with ripening fruit; at the tidy rows of Mrs Grindle’s allotment on the right, all topped by wooden frames that have been stapled with chicken wire. She listens to the drone of Mr Ashworth’s bees. Dad says, ‘Bees are the canaries in the mine of climate change’ – he didn’t make it up on his own, he read it somewhere, but it’s a good comparison. Last autumn Mr Ashworth gave them a jar of his honey. It tasted different from the honey from shops; it tasted like flowers. Clover hopes he will do it again this year.
‘You are not having a shed?’ Dagmar calls.
‘No, not here.’
Clover looks at Mr Ashworth’s shed. He used to sit in it with the door open when he needed a rest, making it look like a guardhouse. He wore a Puma baseball cap and drank home-made elderflower cordial. Dad says the old men used to wear flat caps. But since flat caps got fashionable and you can buy them in all the clothes shops, even at the supermarket, the old men have started wearing baseball caps. This is true – even Grandad has got a baseball cap. Mr Ashworth’s wife had a stroke at Christmas, so he can’t come as often as he used to.
When Dagmar has made her way back, Clover walks her down the strip of turf that dissects the plot, naming everything: onions, carrots, cabbages, potatoes, pumpkins, lettuce, broccoli, strawberries, raspberries, runner beans, beetroot and peas. Dagmar nods seriously, like she’s memorising it for a test.
‘Want to try some?’ Clover opens a pea pod and pops the peas into Dagmar’s open hand.
‘They are different. Crunchy.’
‘Good, aren’t they?’ She collects a strawberry and a few of the raspberries that run along the back fence. ‘Try these, too.’
‘You come here every day?’
What to say? She doesn’t mind Dagmar being here today, but she can’t afford to have regular distractions burning up her summer.
‘Me or my dad.’
She lifts the carpet that covers the empty bed to reveal the watering can, and retrieves the bucket from her bike. They walk to the tap and back, side by side, feet kicking up dust. Dagmar’s black trainers turn grey. She’s a mouth-breather; Clover can hear the air wafting in and out of her, blowing her lips dry. Dagmar lifts a hand to scratch her bare neck and Clover notices her bitten nails and the purply transparency of the skin under her eyes.
‘You are doing this all holiday? The gardening?’
‘Yeah,’ Clover says, thinking that gardening is the wrong verb, but not sure what to suggest as a replacement.
‘You are not going anywhere?’
‘No.’
‘I am not going anywhere, also.’
‘Well, we might go to Blackpool for the day.’
Once they’ve finished the watering, Clover hides the can and they sit side by side on the dusty carpet.
‘This is very nice. I am having a yard. No garden.’
‘Did you have a garden where you came from?’
‘A flat, with balcony. But there is a river. And mountains. And not far away, a castle. In the town it is . . . the colours are different. The buildings are in white and yellow, with red and orange roofs.’
‘It sounds very different.’
‘There is a Tesco.’
Clover catches the small smile again. ‘Are you okay, at school?’ she blurts. A silence follows and she worries she might have overstepped.
‘In stories, people are being horrible because they are sad. My dad says this is not true. People are being horrible because they can. And that is it. The end.’
‘Oh. That’s sad.’
‘It is true.’
‘How was it in your primary school?’
‘I come very late. In Year 6. People are already having friends. And my English is very bad then.’
Clover lies down and shields her eyes from the disc of the sun with the flat of her hand. ‘What’s your favourite time of year?’
‘What is yours?’
‘The summer holidays. Right now.’
‘Why?’
‘Because all the time’s mine. There’s no school, no nothing. Dad doesn’t care if I go to bed a bit late, and I don’t have to do anything, except come here. But I like this, so it doesn’t really count.’ She pauses for a moment, searching for the right words. ‘It’s so warm – I love it when you don’t need a coat or anything. You get that inside-outside feeling. You know? The feeling you get when you can go anywhere without even thinking about it. You don’t have to think, Will my feet get wet? Are my hands going to be cold? Might I need an umbrella? You step out of the front door, and it’s so warm; and the days are longer and time gets all stretchy: that’s the inside-outside feeling.’
Clover can’t see Dagmar’s face, because she is still sitting, arms propping her from behind like tent strings. But she hears the thinky sound she makes as she deliberates.
‘I think . . . I like October. The field is not so muddy, so the boys are not bothering me, they are playing football. I am going to the after-school clubs and when I go home it is dark. And soon it is bedtime.’
‘I like October, too,’ she says, hoping Dagmar is happier at home than she is at school, though her answer suggests otherwise. ‘What’s in your trolley?’
‘My things.’
‘What things?’ Clover waits but Dagmar will not be goaded by silence and in the end it’s up to her to fill it. ‘I’ve got this,’ she says, sitting up as she pulls Latin Words and Phrases for Beginners out of the back pocket of her shorts.
‘What is it?’
‘Latin. I’m learning the words.’
‘Why are you doing this?’
‘Because they sound good.’
‘This is what you think?’
‘Yeah. They’re old words. And they remind me of Hogwarts – that’s the school from Harry Potter.’
‘I know this.’
‘Plants have Latin names – they’re called botanical names. They put them on seed packets to tell you stuff like the colour or smell and what kind of shape the leaves will be. Long names – they’re a bit tricky. I like these words better.’
‘What words?’
‘Ad astra.’
‘What is ad astra?’
‘It means “to the stars”. And ad astra per aspera means “to the stars, through difficulties”, which is even better.’
‘I have this.’ Dagmar pulls a sketchbook out of her shopping trolley.
Clover takes it from her hand and leafs through the pages. There are pencil drawings of trees and flowers and arrangements of objects like fruit and ornaments. Some of them are crossed out, scribbled over, the perspective is wrong or the shading too dark; others are really good.
A pheasant screeches, the noise accompanied by a drubbing of wings so loud that it almost sounds like the coughing start of a motorbike. Dagmar jumps and Clover laughs and stands up.
They do a bit of picking before heading back up Moss Lane, carrier bags of fruit and vegetables sitting in the bucket.
‘What are you doing now?’ Dagmar asks as they arrive back where they started, outside the corner shop.
‘I’m going to see my grandad.’
‘And you will see your grandmother, too?’
‘No, she died before I was born.’
‘You have another grandmother?’
‘Yes, but I don’t see her very often. She lives in Portsmouth.’
‘And that is very far?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And she has no car?’
‘She doesn’t drive.’
‘And there are no trains?’
Of course there are trains. Every so often Dad talks himself into inviting Nanna Maureen. She won’t stay overnight. Up and down in a day, that’s how she does it. The idea of Nanna Maureen is always better than the reality. She is like those lemon sherbet sweets: when you haven’t had one for a while, it’s easy to forget that they are hard and sour, and burn the skin off the roof of your mouth.
‘I need to go now,’ Clover says, rather than explain herself.
‘I can come?’
‘Oh. My grandad’s old. And you can’t just –’
‘I wait, outside.’
‘He hasn’t got a garden.’
‘I wait on the pavement.’
‘It’s a while away. By the Marine Lake.’
‘It is not far,’ she says.
Despite Dagmar’s protestations, Clover locks her bike to the railings outside Grandad’s flat.
‘You might get tired of waiting,’ she says.
She presses the intercom, announces herself and the main door jerks open. Once upstairs she walks straight into the flat; Grandad must have unlatched the door and shuffled back to his armchair.
‘I’ve brought some stuff from the allotment,’ she calls as she steps down the hall, past the cuckoo clocks and the photograph of Dad with Grandad and the nanna who died before she was born.
‘Put it in the sink, love.’
The smell in the kitchen reminds her of Year 3, when they had a class pet, Harvey the hamster. She dumps the carrier bags in the sink and joins Grandad in the lounge. He is wearing shorts with a proper buttoned-up shirt. It’s as if his bottom half is complaining about the heat, but his top half is saying, ‘Don’t be silly.’
‘How are you, Grandad?’
‘Old and disappointed. Now park yourself. And shush. I want to see what happens.’ He’s watching Jeremy Kyle. A woman has taken a lie detector test and Jeremy is kneeling beside her, hissing nasty things in her face so she’ll shout at him and he can tell her off for being rude. ‘We’re about to find out if her boyfriend is the baby’s father,’ Grandad says. ‘I reckon she’s at it.’
The results are handed to Jeremy. He holds the card up, starts reading, and the woman’s protestations begin.
‘I knew it.’ Grandad lifts the remote and fires it at the telly. ‘What a load of rubbish. Who watches it?’
Clover grins.
‘I’m not watching it,’ he says. ‘It’s just on, for company. What’ve you brought me?’
‘Beans and peas, a lettuce, some strawberries and raspberries and an onion.’
‘Good girl. You all right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Well, that’s good.’
Grandad runs out of things to say if you don’t help him. Last summer’s book club was epic because every time he got stuck he read a discussion question: ‘Why was it so important for Anne to have a dress with puffed sleeves?’ ‘Would you prefer to be called Anne with an “e” or Ann without an “e”?’ ‘Why did Anne want a kindred spirit or a, um, a . . . bosom friend?’
Clover glances at the laptop resting on the floor beside his chair. ‘What are you doing on your computer at the moment?’
‘Shakespeare.’ He reaches for the laptop, lifts the lid and logs in. ‘I’ve finished Mars – if you want to know anything about it, I’m your man. I’ve got Hamlet this afternoon. See, all ready, on the right page. The BBC one with Derek Jacobi. I’m going in alphabetical order. All’s Well That Ends Well, Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like It – right through to The Winter’s Tale. Sometimes I can only find a radio version. It’s hard to stay awake without pictures.’
‘And what’s next?’
‘Haven’t decided yet. It’ll take another month to get through this lot.’
‘Seen any good cat videos this week?’
‘Too busy. Want a biscuit?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Get me one while you’re at it, love. And a cup of hot water. Use the beaker by the sink. Two hundred and fifty mil.’
Grandad has written measurements on the plastic beaker in black permanent marker. She fills it up to 250ml with warm water from the kettle. Today he’s got ginger nuts in his tin. She takes two and slips a third into the front pocket of her shorts. Ginger nuts are really hard, it shouldn’t break.
‘Thank you muchly,’ he says when she gives him the cup. He sips like it’s tea or something nice.
One of the clocks in the hall calls the half hour. A few seconds later, the others announce it.
‘You know, you should get your dad to unpack the clocks. You could help him. It’d be fun. Tell him I said so. Are you having a good summer?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, why wouldn’t you be, at your age? So . . .’ He closes the laptop and nods at the telly. ‘Want to watch the rest of that bun fight?’
‘All right,’ she says, and he switches it back on.
Dagmar is waiting by the doors. ‘You are a long time,’ she says.
‘You didn’t have to wait.’
‘I am doing nothing else.’
‘Won’t your mum be worried?’
‘She is working.’
‘What does she do?’
‘She is deputy hotel manager.’
Clover hands Dagmar the warm ginger nut before unfastening her bike from the railings.
‘Thank you. Where are you going?’
‘To see my Uncle Jim.’
‘Where is he living?’
‘By Asda.’
Dagmar clasps the handle of her trolley. ‘I can come?’
Clover wonders whether there’s a polite way to deter her and, on a scale of one to ten, how upset she’d be if she said she didn’t want her to come.
‘Come on,’ Dagmar says, and it’s too late to do anything else.
There’s nowhere to fasten her bike at Uncle Jim’s. Dagmar offers to watch it.
‘I might be a while,’ Clover says, opting to wheel it past the parked cars and hide it behind an enormous wheelie bin.
The main door is open, so she steps into the building and heads down the tiled corridor. Uncle Jim’s door is open, too. When he is not himself he finds closed doors more frightening than burglars. He is sitting on the floor in front of the sofa, legs crossed, elbows on his knees, head resting in his hands. She knocks on the edge of the door to let him know she’s there, but he doesn’t look up. The TV is muted and the room is a mess.
‘It’s me. I’ve come to say hello. Are you all right?’
‘Got-toothache,’ he mumbles.
Clover hears the trundle of wheels in the corridor behind her and makes a shooing motion with one hand.
‘Can I do something?’ she asks scanning the empties and the dirty clothes, the jigsaw pieces and the cigarette butts. Where would he keep painkillers – the kitchenette, or the bathroom, perhaps? ‘Have you got any medicine? Shall I come in and have a look?’
‘S’all-right,’ he says, still cradling his head. ‘Had-something. You-get-off-home. Come-and-see-me-when-I’m-better.’ The words waddle fatly into each other on their way out of his mouth.
‘Are you sure?’ she asks, nudging Dagmar away from the open door with the point of her elbow.
‘Hmmm.’
‘Can I get you anything?’
‘Uh-uh.’
‘Shall I . . . would you like a cup of tea?’
‘Uh-uh.’
Sitting there, he almost looks like a little boy in a school assembly, about to recite the Lord’s Prayer, and she is struck by the thought that one or more of the children who sat, legs crossed, in her own school assemblies might one day find themselves sitting on the floor of a dirty bedsit in that same, cross-legged position.
‘Well . . . I’ll just go then,’ she says. ‘But I’ll definitely come back another day.’
‘Hmm.’
As she turns she bumps, half on purpose, into a goggle-eyed Dagmar and forces her back down the corridor, hard, so the trolley bumps the skirting and they almost trip over it.
‘What is wrong?’
Clover steps out on to the drive and disappears around the back of the enormous bin to fetch her bike. ‘He’s not himself,’ she says, wheeling the bike past Dagmar and the parked cars and on to the pavement.
‘But what is wrong?’
‘He’s . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘He’s just . . . not himself.’
Dagmar seems about to press her further, but then she shrugs. ‘Where are you going now?’
‘Home,’ she says. And, fed up of being shadowed, she adds, ‘I’m not allowed anyone in the house while my dad’s not there.’
‘Your dad is scaring you?’
‘He’s a bus driver.’
‘And he is scaring you?’
If she says Dad isn’t scary, Dagmar might insist on coming back to the house with her. ‘Well, maybe a bit,’ she fudges.
No one from school ever comes to the house. When she was small enough to have birthday parties, Dad booked them at KidzKlimbz in town. For as long as she can remember she has been aware that other people don’t have as much stuff as she and Dad do. When she was at nursery school she was invited to have tea with a couple of girls. Their houses seemed empty, cavernous.
‘My dad is scaring me,’ Dagmar says.
Clover listens, not wanting to interrupt the interesting words that will surely follow. Their feet smack the hot pavement. The bike’s wheels tick, tick, tick and the bucket sways gently from its handlebars. Dagmar’s trolley drags and the dry puff of her breath makes her very existence seem a matter of great effort.
‘My dad,’ Dagmar says eventually, pausing before continuing, as if she is already thinking better of it, ‘is not himself, also.’
Clover has an hour in the second bedroom, tops. Last time she was here she spotted a wire sticking out of a pile of stuff near the headboard and, breaking her self-imposed rule about working methodically, tugged it gently until a portable CD player and headphones on a thin metal band emerged. She found some batteries and listened to the old songs on the CD it contained: ‘Born to Make You Happy’, ‘Spinning Around’, ‘Beautiful Day’ – cheerful, summery songs, from ages ago; she already knows some of them from Dad’s nineties CDs. They are the perfect accompaniment to her work, and she clips the CD player to the waistband of her shorts, arranges the headphones and presses play before lifting another pile of paper off the bed. Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish. When she realises there are even more holiday brochures, she goes back through the bin bag and retrieves the others. Then she sorts them into piles: winter sports, canal boats and sailing, beaches, cruises, and adventure. The beach pile is the biggest, closely followed by winter sports. She keeps those two piles on the floor and slips the other brochures back into the bin bag.
Downstairs, in the dining room, she roots through a pile of MDF offcuts. You can make all sorts of things with MDF: photo frames, magazine racks, Christmas decorations – she and Dad haven’t made any of these things yet, but they might, one day. Grandad’s cuckoo clocks are here, in among the other stuff: plugs, owner’s manuals for various electronic devices, an old-fashioned overhead projector and a sizeable collection of empty sweet tins that Dad likes to save, just in case. She flicks the lids of a couple of clock boxes and sees roofs topped by ridge tiles, some flat, others corrugated, each carved out of a different coloured wood. But there’s no time to look properly now. She selects a slice of MDF that’s poster-sized, grabs a pair of scissors and a glue stick, and negotiates the stairs – careful!
She cuts out the best beach pictures, the ones with palm trees, white sand and turquoise water, so different from their beach with its dark sand and churning grey-brown sea. Then she cuts out the best of the winter pictures: tiny skiers gliding down jagged mountains against sapphire skies; grinning families drinking hot chocolate in log cabins. She glues the beach scenes to one side of the board and the snowy scenes to the other. Of course, she has no idea which of these places her mother has visited. They interested her, though, that much is clear. She must have requested the brochures and she must have spent time thinking about what it would be like to lie under a palm tree or speed down a mountain. In a sense, these are personal items – they came in envelopes, addressed to Becky Brookfield. The lady at the museum said you get a feeling about things as you hold them. Clover closes her eyes and skims the tips of her fingers over the collage; first one side of the board, and then the other. The feeling she gets is this: a day at Blackpool is a bit rubbish. The pictures are like a message from her mother, who seems to be saying: there’s more to life than candyfloss, donkey rides and Pleasure Beach. Clover wonders about going on a proper holiday. Perhaps to one of the places in the pictures. It might even be that while visiting one of her mother’s favourite places – because that’s surely what these places are – Dad would be unable to prevent himself from talking about her. That’d be epic! She opens her eyes and leans the board against the foot of the bed. Not long until Dad gets home. She’ll update her notebook and then she’ll plant herself in the recliner with a cup of tea and a biscuit.
When it’s time for bowling, Kelly comes to the door by herself. The boys wait in the car, licking the windows like monkeys. They are called Tyler and Dylan but they are mostly known as the boys: ‘Come on, boys,’ ‘Don’t do that, boys’ and ‘Sit down, boys.’
‘Oh God, don’t look at them. My mum let them overdose on e-numbers this afternoon. They’re high as kites.’
Dad laughs.
‘You encourage them, Darren, and I’ll kill you.’ She kisses Clover on the cheek and leaves a sticky print behind. ‘You’re looking lovely, so grown up. Oh, sorry.’ She licks her index finger and rubs. ‘There. Let’s go.’ Her heels click-clack as she hurries down the path back to her car, and her hair, which is silvery blonde today, swishes.
Although Kelly is Colin’s younger sister, she doesn’t look anything like him. Colin’s got a shaved head and massive muscles. When Clover was small he used to lift her above his head with one arm and, if she was wearing trousers, he’d turn her upside down and boost her so high that her feet could actually walk on the ceiling. He doesn’t do that any more. She’s too grown up. Instead, he says things like, ‘Anyone messes with you, Clo, and I’ll sort them,’ which sounds scary, but he’s a big softy, really – last time she was at his house, she saw a little home-made chart, counting down the number of days until Mark gets back, every X like a kiss.
Kelly is long and straight, like her hair. She talks fast, walks fast, smokes fast and always seems a little bit nervous. She wears heels all the time, even with jeans, and she always has dead nice nails because her friend is a beautician and they give each other freebies. Clover could have freebies too, if she wanted. And she might, one day, when she has grown into the new bits of herself. In the meantime, she’d just as soon not.
The boys mash their faces against the glass, tongues out, noses flattened. Kelly knocks on the window. ‘Stop it, you monsters.’
Clover sits between the monsters. They go to her old primary school and like to tell her about things that have happened since she left. She is planning to ask about school when Dylan shouts, ‘Let’s have some music!’
Kelly slides a CD into the player. ‘Sing quietly,’ she warns as she drives out of The Grove. But they don’t.
It doesn’t matter that there’s a queue at Premier Bowl, because your hour only starts when you bowl the first ball. They take off their shoes as they wait. Kelly holds Dad’s shoulder for balance, and the boys climb him like a piece of playground equipment.
‘Can you lift us both at the same time, Darren?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Not like that – get me in one arm and Tyler in the other. Like two rolls of carpet! Uncle Colin can do it.’
Dad pats and chucks them like puppies. They stand on his feet and tug his arms, rubbing at the tattoo of Clover’s name. She is too big for all that. The top of her head is level with his shoulder. Too tall to scale him, too big to be turned upside down – she is the wrong size for those dad things; she’ll get used to it before long. As she watches him playing with the boys, she thinks up a new question to add to the growing list in her notebook: did Dad and her mother plan to have other children?
The wait stretches. The boys get fed up with grappling with Dad. They go a bit bananas in their socks, running between the arcade machines, flinging themselves on the motorbikes and the racing cars: brum-brum, brum-brum! The queue inches forward and Clover feels Kelly’s hand on her hair.
‘I could do a lovely wrap-around braid.’
She tries to catch Dad’s eye – look, she’s playing with my hair again – but he is watching the boys. And it’s not so bad, really. Clover has been doing her own hair for a while now, but she remembers the feel of Dad’s big, painstaking hands as they made a plait. Kelly’s fingers are gentle and quick as they section and smooth, and weave and tuck, and Clover discovers that she is exactly the right size for this; this . . . tending, by a mother.
Eventually, they reach the counter and a girl hands out the bowling shoes. Clover’s are still hot. She dips her feet into them and tries not to mind. In and out again. In, out. In, out.
‘Come on,’ Dad says, and she just has to get on with it, even though the shoes are steaming.
Up to six people can share a lane, and when their five names flash up on the screen Clover can’t help thinking of Uncle Jim, who is literally all over the place at the moment and might have liked some company. They should have invited him to come with them. If not him, then Colin, who has been a bit lonely since Mark went to Chad. She’s about to mention it to Dad when Kelly gets up.
‘Tyler, take my go for me. I’m just popping outside for a cheeky ciggie.’
‘Aw, come on, I thought you were giving up. Would you like some cheeky heart disease or a cheeky stroke?’
‘Are you going to give Mum a cheeky stroke, Darren?’
‘I am giving up,’ Kelly says, the SMOKING KILLS warning peeping out of her clasped fist. ‘I’m only on two a day. I’m mostly vaping. And there’s not going to be any cheeky stroking, boys. All right?’
Dylan climbs on Clover’s knee while Tyler takes Kelly’s go.
‘Do you know what happened at school before the holidays, Clover? There was this writer who wrote a joke book. And guess what? He came to do an assembly. He talked about bogies and he made up some funny things to say to people you don’t like.’
‘This isn’t going to be rude, is it?’ Dad asks.
Dylan shakes his head. ‘The funny things to say to people were: “Whatever, McDonald’s toilet cleaner” and “Whatever, Tesco shelf-stacker.” ’
Tyler, back from scoring a seven, tuts at his younger brother. ‘You missed out the actions. Watch me.’ He makes a big W shape with his thumbs and index fingers: “Whatever, McDonald’s toilet cleaner.” That’s how you have to do it.’
‘Mum said it wasn’t funny,’ Dylan continues as he climbs off Clover’s knee and slithers along the bench seat, eventually draping himself over Dad’s legs like a blanket. ‘Because Alfie Ashcroft’s dad works in Tesco on the night shift – this is my upside-down voice, can you hear it? – and teaching kids to laugh at their parents for working hard is a –’
‘Fucking disgrace,’ Tyler finishes for him.
Dad coughs. ‘I’m sure your mum didn’t say that.’
Dylan slides on to the floor and he lies on his back with his eyes closed. ‘She did!’
‘Well, not to the teacher.’
‘She went in to school,’ he says, climbing back on to Dad’s lap, ‘and gave Mrs Carpenter a piece of her mind.’
‘A great big slice of it,’ Tyler adds, ‘with cream and cherries on top.’
Dad grins, as if it’s the best thing he’s ever heard. They sit there, like a trio of hyenas, and Kelly hurries back, her walk strangely muted in the flat bowling shoes; past the arcade games and the pool tables, past the rollercoaster simulator and the bar, while Dad and the boys watch her as if she is the bees’ knees. Literally.
Three happy things today are, firstly, bowling. Dad won, he always does because his throws are the hardest, but she came second, with 102, her highest score yet. Secondly, the thought of going on holiday. Dad nods when she says this; he’s looking forward to their day in Blackpool, too.
‘Could we go on a proper holiday, though?’ she asks.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Away, somewhere.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know. Somewhere else. Somewhere hot or cold. A different country.’
He frowns and she feels she has done something wrong, but she isn’t sure what.
‘You don’t have to go somewhere foreign to be happy; you can just as easily be happy at home.’
‘I know, but –’
‘And who’d look after the allotment?’
‘Kelly and the boys? Or Colin and Mark?’
Dad snorts.
‘But we wouldn’t have to go in the summer, we could . . .’ she tails off because the last happy thing is tricky enough without making a big deal about imaginary holidays. ‘And thirdly,’ she says, ‘I’m happy about Uncle Jim coming for tea tomorrow.’
‘Very funny.’
‘Please.’
‘It’s not a good idea at the moment.’
She could mention going to Uncle Jim’s earlier; describe the open door and his school assembly sitting – it might help her cause, but it would also annoy Dad. Instead, she gives him a long, hard stare.
‘Oh, all right,’ he says, and then he hugs her tight, like he used to when she was little, filling her ear with the human noise of his heart. And it’s actually her top happy moment of the day.