For the first time this summer there’s cloud, the thick, pillowy kind that buries the whole sky. The inside-outside feeling has vanished and it’s a day to dress for the weather. A blustery wind races along the promenade, teasing hair, wafting jackets and whipping the sea into stiff-peaked waves. They wear jeans, T-shirts and coats, except for Kelly, who is sporting tiny shorts and a pair of grey tweed platform shoes. Clover remembers the wobble of her own walk when she experimented with her mother’s black patent heels. She studies the way Kelly trots, feet clopping like hooves, and admires her legs, which are the same shade of bronze as the rest of her. There is a walk-in spray-tanning booth at her salon; she must hop inside it when she hasn’t got any customers.
It’s only a five-minute walk from the car park. Blackpool is nowhere near as pretty as the locations on her holiday board. Everything is grey: seal and smoke, slate and shadow, iron and pebble – beautiful in its own way, she decides in a burst of happiness. Wires and cables from the trams and the illuminations criss-cross above the road. Light-up models of SpongeBob, Squidward, Mr Krabs and Patrick hang from lamp posts ready for the switch-on at the end of the month. Pleasure Beach looms, the scaffold-like structure of The Big One rising up from behind brightly coloured shopfronts: a chippy, an ice cream and souvenir shop, Pizza Hut and the Beach Amusements arcade.
‘Whoa, The Big One is massive!’ Tyler says.
They all stop briefly to admire the twist of red and blue metal.
‘You’re going to tell me exactly what it’s like, aren’t you?’ Dylan asks.
‘Exactly,’ Tyler promises.
There’s a queue to buy tickets. Clover watches Kelly while they wait. Kelly touches Dad’s arm as she talks, her hand doubles as a full stop, comma and exclamation mark. And sometimes she gives him a look like butter, a look that melts all over him. She thinks he is the dog’s bollocks, literally, and he doesn’t seem to notice.
Clover finds she doesn’t mind Kelly coming as much as she did yesterday. Dad had a bad afternoon, pulling his everything face when he thought she wasn’t looking, and not listening when she spoke.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were there any jigsaws in the pound shop?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you get some?’
‘Yes.’
‘How was Uncle Jim?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you pretending to listen to me?’
He said he had some sorting out to do and went into the garden, but he couldn’t decide what to keep and what to throw away and ended up rearranging things. Mrs Mackerel watched from an upstairs window, initially nodding encouragement and then shaking her head in annoyance. Afterwards, it looked like the bikes, the milk crates, the boat engine, the paddling pool, the slide and the water pistols and balls had been enjoying a game of musical chairs.
He is better today. Maybe because of Kelly. It’s a shame Colin couldn’t come too; they’ve known each other for so long, they can fill Dad’s gaps and smooth his edges. Dad probably thinks Kelly coming is a happy coincidence, and perhaps it is. But Clover can’t help wondering whether he mentioned having this weekend off at some point and that’s why Kelly also arranged to be free. The boys are all over him like a rash – ‘Watch me, Darren!’ ‘Will you race me on the Steeplechase, Darren?’ ‘Mum says we can have lunch at Pizza Hut. Are you coming too, Darren?’ Whatever was bothering him yesterday is fading. At this rate he’ll be fine by teatime.
While Dad was shopping for Uncle Jim’s things and visiting him in hospital yesterday, she was opening boxes in her mother’s room. Clothes mostly. And shoes. She emptied and collapsed the boxes and piled the clothes she didn’t want into bin bags. Her mother mostly wore casual things: jeans and T-shirts, tracksuit bottoms and leggings, trainers and flip-flops. She discovered a couple of blouses and a few pairs of smart-ish trousers. It was all big. Nothing she could wear and nothing she would wear, even if it was smaller. She piled up the collapsed boxes ready to sneak into Mrs Mackerel’s bin next week.
Once the boxes on the window side of the bed were all emptied, she could finally open the wardrobe. It was an exciting, Christmassy sort of moment. What did she expect to find? A succession of accessorised outfits, lined up like shed skins? Two rows of fur coats and a lamp post in the distance? Nothing so grand. She just expected something. Anything. But when she pulled back the door, the rail was deserted and the wardrobe, which had felt like a destination, was more of a dead end. She was silly to be surprised – where did she think all the boxed clothes had come from? Dad must have started the packing and not quite finished. It was just like him, wasn’t it, to start something and then give up. She immediately felt mean for thinking it. Starting things is a sort of talent in itself. Some people never try anything new; some people never even talk about it.
All that was left in the wardrobe was a jumble of stuff covering its bottom. On the top of the mound was a red handbag. It was old. You could tell because there were places where the leather was really scuffed and the stitching was unravelling on one side. The bag had a handle and a long strap. Inside, she discovered some tissues and a rectangular, red leather purse. The purse contained some change, a National Insurance card, a book of first-class stamps, some receipts and a library card.
In a zipped compartment at the back of the purse she discovered a strip of four photographs, folded in half between photos two and three. They were like the one she has on her bus pass, but each photograph was different. In the first photo Dad and her mother were facing the camera, which had caught them, mouths wide, laughing. In the second photograph Dad’s head was turned slightly; he was at the tail end of the earlier laugh, smiling at her mother, his face all gooey. In the third photograph they were looking at each other, and what Clover saw there was love. Both faces were soft, and not just from being young; their expressions were the kind people do when they are mad about each other. In fact, there was so much love that looking at the picture felt a bit like spying. In the last photograph they were kissing, of course. It was as if the kissing had to follow because it was the next bit of the story. The photos were amazing. Firstly, because her mother was smiling, and secondly, because Dad didn’t look worried or preoccupied or as if he was trying very hard to have a good time. He just looked happy.
She hung the bag’s long strap around the dummy’s chest and shoulder, and put the photo strip with the love-related objects. It was proof. Evidence that, once upon a time, her mother and her dad had lived happily, even though they didn’t manage an ever after.
In the bottom of the wardrobe, underneath a navy duffle coat and on top of a folded duvet, she found the strangest thing. A plaited piece of hair as long as her arm, one bobble at the top and another at the bottom, where the hair tapered. She held it with the tips of her fingers. It dangled like something dead, reminding her of the wild animal collection she and Dad used to visit at the Botanic Gardens Museum, before it closed. One day, when they were visiting, the fire alarm sounded and Dad wasn’t sure if it was a drill or for real; he didn’t know whether to evacuate or stay put. While he was deciding, the fire door closed by itself, shutting them in the big, high-ceilinged room with all the stuffed animals doing unconvincing impressions of their former selves. It felt as if the room had captured them and it seemed possible that by the time the door reopened, she and Dad might find themselves imprisoned behind a sheet of glass, with fixed grins and buttoned eyes. It was a delicious fright, one they remembered and reconstructed on numerous occasions, tiptoeing into the animal room, half hoping the alarm would sound again and trap them for a second time.
She held the plait up to her own hair; it was a shade or two lighter. She wrapped it around the hook of the dummy’s head and placed the black patent shoes beside the stand. There. It looked as if she was building something.
The tables in Pizza Hut are sticky with tomato sauce and spilled pop. A biting wind licks around the restaurant every time someone opens the heavy door. Clover sits beside Kelly, whose legs are dimpled by goosebumps. They watch Dad standing at the buffet counter with Tyler and Dylan, laying slices of pizza on their waiting plates.
‘I married someone like my dad,’ Kelly says. ‘People do that sometimes. It probably won’t turn out as badly if you do it.’
No one likes Pete. Except the woman he replaced Kelly with – she must like him.
‘So do men marry women who are like their mothers?’
‘Hmm, maybe. I’m not sure.’ Kelly tries to spear a crouton with her fork. ‘I used to babysit you, when you were little.’ She gives up and uses her fingers.
‘I know.’
‘Do you remember?’ Kelly’s face has gone all mushy – the croutons must be really nice.
‘Not really. You know . . . you know my mother?’ she asks, not wondering whether it’s okay until after the words are out and it’s too late to take them back.
‘Ye-ess.’ Kelly’s lips worry the word.
‘What was she like?’
Kelly licks her fingers and thinks. ‘Your dad really loved her.’ She pulls a face, a sort of apology for not answering the question. ‘When a friend who’s a boy falls in love, you don’t see them as much. Things change and you only bump into them sometimes. You see each other at parties, but you don’t . . .’ Her face twists again. ‘Becky was . . . she seemed nice.’
Nice – it’s not much, but she’ll add it to her notebook. ‘Did you cut her hair?’
‘I wasn’t her hairdresser.’
Clover steals straight into the gap between her question and Kelly’s answer. ‘But did you ever cut her hair?’
‘Once.’
She doesn’t know what to say next. She’d like to try, ‘Did you love my dad back then, before you married Pete?’ But she daren’t, and moments later Dad and the boys are back, their plates stacked with pizza, arguing about whether the wind will drop enough for The Big One to open. Dad reckons it’s unlikely, but the boys are desperate.
‘The Big One goes at eighty-seven miles per hour,’ Tyler says. ‘It’s more than two hundred feet tall and there are warning beacons for aeroplanes on the two highest bits.’
‘Is that right?’
‘Yes, Darren.’ Dylan tuts and waves a slice of pizza for emphasis. It’s hard for him to believe that anyone doesn’t know these important facts. ‘The Big One is an experience of a lifetime,’ he claims in a stilted, word-for-word voice, clearly repeating something that’s been either read or said to him.
‘You’re not big enough for it, mate. And growing takes a while. I hate to break it to you, but you’re not going to reach a hundred and thirty centimetres this afternoon.’
‘Darren! I know that! I want it to be open so Tyler can go on it.’
‘Aww, you’re a good lad.’
Dad noogies Dylan, and Kelly looks like she might dissolve all over the sticky table. Once you’ve spotted love with a capital ‘L’ you can’t stop seeing it. It’s plain as a pikestaff, literally.
The Big One doesn’t open, but they go on everything else: Avalanche, Infusion, Revolution and The Big Dipper. They leave Valhalla to last because it’s an absolute soaker. Afterwards, they stick pound coins in the human-sized dryers and stand in front of the blasting warm air until their clothes have gone from sodden to slightly steaming.
Dad buys two large bags of chips, which they eat in the car on the way home. Clover shares with the boys, who dig in, all fists. Dad uses his fingers to feed himself, but he spears chips with a tiny wooden fork for Kelly and slips them between her lips as she drives.
By the time they reach Preston, the boys are fast asleep, heads flung back, mouths open, hands glistening with chip fat, and Kelly is talking about people she and Dad used to know at school. Clover wipes her hands on her jeans and digs in her coat pocket for the Latin booklet. There are so many Latin phrases that she already knows, like ex libris, which you sometimes see in books, and hosanna in excelsis, which is a line from ‘Ding Dong Merrily on High’ and means ‘hosanna in the highest’. And then there are words and phrases she has never heard of but wants to learn because they sound epic when she whispers them to herself. Like this one: nil admirari, which means ‘to be surprised by nothing’.
‘What did you say, Clover?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You did, I heard you.’
‘Nil admirari.’
‘What?’
‘She got this Latin book from Edna, but no one speaks Latin, do they? Shall I get you a French book?’
‘Mark’s fluent, you know. He can help with her French, when he gets back. That’ll be better than a book.’
‘It’s fine, I don’t need a book and I –’
‘So what does nil-mirary mean?’
‘To be surprised by nothing.’
‘Oh. Good plan,’ Kelly says, and carries on chatting to Dad.
Clover whispers the words to herself, committing them to memory. She will write them on a piece of paper and colour them in; they’ll provide a nice contrast to her mural of surprised women.
When Kelly pulls up outside the house Clover climbs through the gap between the front seats and out of the passenger door so as not to wake the boys.
‘I had a really good time,’ she tells Dad as Kelly turns her car around.
‘Me too,’ he says, and they wave Kelly down the road.
While they watch the first episode of the new series of Doctor Who she colours some of the pictures from Mrs Mackerel’s books: Our Lady of Fatima, Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal and The Story of Mary. And, sneakily, when she is sure Dad isn’t looking, she colours the tiny hearts she has drawn on the sheet of paper that will head the LOVE board.
‘I knew you’d use those colouring books one day,’ Dad says, and she smiles and lets him enjoy being right.
Early on Sunday morning they pop to the allotment to water. It’s cool and still windy, but at least it’s dry. They pick a big bag of raspberries, a selection of vegetables for Grandad, and some new potatoes for Mrs Mackerel, which Dad delivers on the way home.
Mrs Mackerel comes to the door in her dressing gown, the crown of her hair sticking up like a label.
‘Oh dear, I didn’t get you up, did I?’ Dad asks.
‘OF COURSE NOT,’ she says, lips baggy without the scaffold of her teeth.
Dad has this big idea for the raspberries. He gets baking trays out of a cupboard and arranges the berries on them. The trays go in the freezer. Once the fruit is frozen they will put it in bags and keep it for cooking. Next time her programme is on he wants her to watch it with a pen and paper at the ready in case there are any good recipes. Easy ones, mind. He acts like he’s asking a big favour, but she is dead happy to do it; just think of all the things they might make.
They visit Uncle Jim in the afternoon. Dad is cross with him. She doesn’t know why, but she can tell because he explains how to get to the room and, instead of accompanying her, he stops in the corridor and coats his hands in antibacterial gel. He does it so thoroughly that you’d think he was a vet getting ready to shove his arm up a cow’s bum.
‘Go on,’ he says. ‘Don’t wait for me.’
Uncle Jim is sitting up in bed. He is attached to a machine and he looks very tired.
‘Am I glad to see you!’
He extends his arms for a hug. She is careful. He looks like he might break.
‘Are you feeling better?’
‘I’m fine, it was just a stupid mix-up. Look at the jigsaws your dad bought.’
She laughs when she sees the boxes sitting on the over-bed tray.
‘He was trying to annoy me.’
‘Oh no, I’m sure it was just a mix-up, too.’
He waves a hand, dismissing her protest. ‘Thing is, they’re not as bad as you’d think. Push them over to me. That’s right. You can do this with them,’ he says, and he gets both puzzles out of their boxes and creates two mixed-up pictures, using alternating pieces. ‘You can go with every other piece, every other line, half and half diagonally, half and half horizontally – the possibilities are endless.’
‘Really?’
‘No. Endless is the wrong word, but I thought it sounded impressive.’
‘It did.’
‘Oh, good.’
He must be very bored to have tried so many different combinations of jigsaw pieces. ‘Is the telly broken?’
‘It’s different here. You have to pay. And it’s expensive.’
‘Is the food okay?’
‘My mouth hurts. I have to choose the soft things.’
‘You know what’s soft?’
‘What?’
‘Vegetables.’
‘They make you choose some every day. I don’t eat them, though. They can’t force me. I’m seeing the dentist on Monday.’
‘That’s tomorrow.’
‘Oh. Yeah.’
‘Don’t worry. I expect they only let the best dentists work in hospitals.’
‘They’re all rubbish,’ he says. ‘That’s why they let them practise on people who can’t run away.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I just do.’
‘No you don’t.’
‘Yes I do.’
‘Don’t.’
‘Oh, all right,’ he says. ‘Where’s your dad?’
She walks to the door and pokes her head around it. Dad is standing at the nurses’ desk, chatting.
‘At the desk,’ she reports.
‘Ahh. The silent treatment.’
‘No, he’s talking to the nurses.’
After twenty minutes Uncle Jim starts to flag. He asks about school, forgetting it’s the holidays, and he starts to tell her a story about a time when he had a pet rat, which is probably not true because he’s not very good at looking after himself, never mind an animal.
Dad appears in the doorway. ‘Jim.’
‘Dazza.’
That’s all they say to each other. They are cross. She glances at Dad, wondering whether he’s too cross to sort out the telly.
‘It’s very boring here,’ she says.
‘Not guilty. I haven’t complained, honest. Wouldn’t dream of being such a turd nugget.’
Dad gets his debit card out of his jeans pocket. ‘Would you like him to watch telly?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘I’ll sort it for you, then,’ he says, tugging the telly’s movable arm.
Uncle Jim snorts. Clover catches his eye and gives a small shake of her head. If he’s not careful, he’ll end up with nothing. She puts a finger to her lips as Dad messes about with the screen.
When it’s done, Dad says, ‘Let’s go,’ and heads straight for the door, without saying goodbye, which means that she has to be extra nice to Uncle Jim on the way out in order to make up for it. She hugs him and says she hopes it all goes really well with the dentist. As she heads out of the room, she looks back and waves.
‘See you later, detonator,’ he calls.
Dad always goes out for a drink with Colin on one of the nights of his long weekend off. He doesn’t want her waiting up for him by herself, so he sends her over to Mrs Mackerel’s with a DVD. Mrs Mackerel calls the cinema ‘THE PICTURES’. She hasn’t been to THE PICTURES since the Odeon on Lord Street closed in 1979. Her favourite films are usually about the past because it is WHOLESOME and GOOD CLEAN FUN, even when terrible things happen. Films she has especially enjoyed on Dad’s weekends off include Les Misérables, which she pronounces like it’s named after an unhappy man called Les – SUCH LOVELY SINGING – and The Great Gatsby – SUCH LOVELY COSTUMES. The fact that neither film has a happy ending doesn’t bother her at all.
There is a rhythm to these evenings. Dad escorts Clover to the door and says exactly where he’s going, in case of an emergency. Mrs Mackerel makes him promise not to get drunk with THAT COLIN and then she says HE’S A QUEER ONE. Dad tells her that it’s called being gay now and she pretends to be shocked because she didn’t MEAN ANYTHING BY QUEER. When she has shut the door in Dad’s face she says, ‘Make yourself at home,’ and goes into the kitchen. She always comes back with Ribena or Lidl cola and a whole packet of Tunnock’s tea cakes arranged on a fancy silver tray. In the summer when it’s hot and it’s still light at night, you can sometimes see her fingerprints on the chocolate.
Tonight she asks about Jim before she presses Play.
‘He’s very tired.’
‘God help him.’
‘And bored.’
‘God love him.’
‘And there’s a machine next to his bed. For his blood.’
‘He’ll be having a BLOOD TRANSMISSION.’
‘I think it’s cleaning his –’
Mrs Mackerel presses Play. The conversation is over.
Tonight’s film is Gravity. Clover picks the outer layer of chocolate off a tea cake while Mrs Mackerel shouts at the telly. She seems to think that if she shouts loud enough, the actors – whom she insists on addressing by their real names – might hear her and save themselves a lot of trouble.
‘WATCH OUT!’ she warns Sandra Bullock.
Clover nibbles at the froth of the marshmallow. Underneath, there’s a blob of jam. She licks it off the biscuit base, which is always disappointingly soggy.
‘I wouldn’t do THAT if I were YOU,’ Mrs Mackerel advises George Clooney.
It’s strange to think that Mrs Mackerel would have been around Dad’s age when the moon landings happened. It must have been very exciting.
‘Space is VERY BIG, isn’t it?’
Clover agrees and slips off her shoes. Now she is allowed to put her feet on the sofa. Before she does, she helps herself to another tea cake.
‘MAKE AN EFFORT, GEORGE! If he’d just do a BIT OF FRONT CRAWL in the air I’m SURE he could SWIM BACK TO EARTH.’
Mrs Mackerel pauses the film so she can SPEND A PENNY. This happens at least once during every film because she has a BLADDER LIKE A CHEESECLOTH. Clover has no idea what a cheesecloth is. She imagines it must be very small, with lots of holes in, like Swiss cheese in cartoons – a sort of miniature cheesy colander.
‘You’d better HAVE A GO, too,’ Mrs Mackerel says on her return. ‘I don’t want you INTERRUPTING THE SECOND HALF.’ She talks about the second half as if there’s a natural break in the film, a spot where the first half ends so old ladies can have a wee.
Clover takes herself off upstairs. It’s easier than arguing about the capacity of her bladder. Mrs Mackerel’s bathroom suite is powder blue. So is the carpet. Dad says only optimists and ladies who live by themselves have carpet in their bathrooms. The bath is the corner kind, with special taps that look like shells, and the bowl of the sink is scalloped like a cockle. It was ALL THE RANGE when Mrs Mackerel had it done. Beside the toilet there’s a powder-blue bidet, which Mrs Mackerel calls a BJ. You can wash your feet in it, or your bottom, apparently. When Clover was small they’d go upstairs and wash their feet in it, for a treat. Afterwards they dried their feet and plastered them in peppermint foot cream. Then they’d sit on the sofa sucking humbugs, a clean, minty smell emanating from between their toes and teeth. ‘CLEAN AS A BRISTLE,’ Mrs Mackerel would say.
Once she has squeezed out the smallest of wees, Clover takes her usual snoop around the bathroom. Mrs Mackerel’s things are different and therefore somewhat interesting. A pair of nail clippers that look like shears sit on the edge of the bath beside a bottle of Silver Shampoo and an Avon Timeless Cologne Spray. On the floor beside the toilet are some Tena Lady pads – ‘New Body-Shaped DryZone’ – and a packet of Lady Pants, which aren’t for periods, but cheesecloth bladders. Clover has seen the adverts: women laughing hysterically with not even the tiniest bit of wee running down their legs. On a shelf above the sink she finds a tub of peppermint foot cream, a white plastic container for dentures that looks like a teeny cool box, and a tube of Poligrip, which is the sticky stuff that’s advertised on telly by people who bite into apples and manage not to leave their teeth behind. Above the shelf there’s a mirror-fronted medicine cabinet. It’s locked. After she’s finished having a good snoop, Clover heads back downstairs to Gravity.
Mrs Mackerel becomes increasingly animated in the SECOND HALF of the film. Despite the fact that she has lived by herself for a long time without a man and seems to have got along just fine, she doesn’t think SANDRA should be ALLOWED up there without a RELIABLE SPACEMAN to fix things.
‘HAVE ANOTHER TUNNOCK’S.’
‘I’m a bit full.’
‘They’ll only GO TO WASTE.’
‘All right.’ Clover takes a third tea cake. The waxy chocolate is beginning to edge away from the marshmallow all on its own.
‘SANDRA!’ Mrs Mackerel shouts as the film reaches its climax. ‘FIND THE EJACULATE BUTTON!’
When Dad and Colin pick her up they are bleary round the edges and especially polite.
‘Good evening, ladies.’
‘Was the film to your liking?’
‘Oh YES. I was HANGING ON by the FINGERS OF MY NAILS.’
Colin puts his arm around Mrs Mackerel and says she’s priceless. She pretends to be insulted, before asking him how much he’d charge to come and clean up her untidy neighbour’s garden.
Colin laughs. He says he can’t imagine that any of her neighbours would dare to have an untidy garden, but if they did – and he looks meaningfully at Dad as he says this – he’d sort it out for free. Then he asks whether she’d like any other favours while he’s at it.
She swats him on the arm and asks about THE LOVELY BOY who’s gone to NURSE THE SICK and FEED THE HUNGRY. Colin says Mark is doing a great job of saving the world and the Pope will probably make him a saint before long. He’s only joking, he’s dead proud of him really.
Colin comes back to the house with them for a bit before Dad calls a taxi. Because it’s the holidays, she doesn’t have to go straight to bed. Colin says he’ll give her a game of Wii tennis and she thrashes him. He demands a rematch, this time with Just Dance. Of course, he wins hands down – hands down, legs up, and bum in the air, to be precise.