Uncle Jim sits on the end of the bed, a pile of collapsed boxes behind him. When he first sat down he pretended he was testing it for comfiness, but he only kept that up for a moment. The truth is, walking up the stairs has made him knackered, but he’d rather die than admit it. He only left hospital yesterday evening. She and Dad picked him up, stopping at South Garden on the way. They ate chips in Uncle Jim’s bedsit, squeezed up on his sofa, greasy papers warming their laps. Then they had a bit of a tidy-up – Dad’s on a roll! As they left, Dad asked Uncle Jim if he’d mind helping out with something. And Uncle Jim, pleased to be home and full of ‘the best food he’d had for weeks’, accidentally said yes straightaway, without pretending to think about it first. Which is why he’s sitting here, today, in the second bedroom, still a bit wobbly, his skin bruised in the daylight, like an old apple core.
Dad has been busy. There are more bin bags. He has them organised into two separate piles, one pile for charity shops, the other for the tip. The dressmaker’s dummy remains intact, but the walls are bare; the MDF boards and the various pieces of her artwork rest on the floor under the window, alongside a few other things that remain unpacked.
So, here they are: family, whether they like it or not. She likes it; Dad and Uncle Jim don’t look at all sure.
‘Shall we get started?’ Dad asks.
Uncle Jim presses his lips tight, which means he has thought of something rude and is trying not to say it.
‘Right, there are probably some things here that you both want to keep.’
Uncle Jim looks like he might burst.
‘So I thought we could go through –’
‘Shit, Dazza – this is like finding out you’ve got bodies in the cellar or something.’
There. He’s said it, and now it’s Dad’s turn to bite back words, which he does, before beginning again.
‘Right, let’s get started. We’re here today to –’
Uncle Jim laughs. ‘We are gathered here today,’ he says in a posh voice, like a vicar in a film. ‘We are gathered here today to witness the –’
‘Shut up.’
He looks sorry. And then he bursts out with: ‘I can’t believe you kept her hair. It’s creepy.’
‘It’s just hair.’
‘I know what it is.’
‘It’s your sister’s hair. Not creepy at all.’
‘To you.’
‘What should I have done with it? Buried it in the garden?’
‘No.’
‘Chucked it in the bin?’
‘No.’
‘Do you want it?’
‘Do you?’
‘No.’
‘No.’
‘Well.’
‘Well.’
‘I’ll have it,’ Clover says, and they look relieved, glad that someone is keeping it. ‘But,’ she adds, ‘I’d like to know the story of it.’
‘She cut it herself.’ Dad’s mouth makes the words carefully, deliberately. ‘Are you sure you want to talk about this?’
‘Yes,’ she says, glad that their confinement and Uncle Jim’s presence prevent the kind deflection he would usually employ.
‘But you’re pulling that face.’
‘What face?’
‘The face you do when I talk about her.’
‘I don’t do a face.’
Uncle Jim stares at her, too. Like she’s got an extra head, literally.
‘What?’
‘Like this.’ Dad closes his mouth tight and lowers his forehead until it hammocks his eyebrows.
Uncle Jim makes the face, too.
‘I do not look like that.’
‘You do, actually,’ Uncle Jim says, unexpectedly agreeing with Dad. ‘You look dead worried.’
‘Well, I’m not. I’m just concentrating.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘You hardly ever say anything about her, and when you do, I have to remember it.’
Dad leans against the closed door. ‘God, Clover.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You were talking about the hair,’ she prompts, keeping her face as still as possible.
He lifts his chin and rolls his shoulders before stepping away from the door. ‘Becky was upset. Really tired. I think she wished she hadn’t cut it, later.’
‘Was she upset with me?’
He looks uncomfortable. ‘She was upset with everything, everyone.’
‘So yes.’
‘Here.’ He reaches for her notebook, which is resting on the floor with the other things. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’
She takes it from him and flicks through it, starting at the back, searching for anything she might mind, worried that he might have crossed out details or removed pages. But he hasn’t taken anything away. He has written on the blank page opposite her QUESTIONS heading; made a new column titled ANSWERS. She can see that some of the answers are brief – YES or NO – but they are there. She flicks further. He has made an addition to the THOUGHTS ABOUT BECKY BROOKFIELD section, which previously had pages headed UNCLE JIM, COLIN, KELLY, GRANDAD, NANNA MAUREEN. It now has a new section, headed DAD, followed by several pages of tiny writing. She squeezes the notebook closed, so his words can’t escape.
‘I think these might be yours.’ Dad passes the envelope of teeth to Jim.
He opens it and laughs. ‘I could do with them!’ He tongues the space at the back of his gums where the dentist removed two rotten molars. ‘Becky always did the tooth fairy for me. I think she nicked the money from Mum’s purse. I wasn’t supposed to know it was her.’
‘There’s some notes, too,’ Dad says. ‘From you to Becky. I’m not sure whether you . . . they might make you feel . . .’
‘Just hand them over, you arse-waffle.’
Dad does as he’s told. Uncle Jim looks pleased, but makes no effort to examine them. He’s probably saving them for later, too.
‘What about this?’ Dad asks, holding up the old school photograph.
‘Bloody hell. I’d completely forgotten about that. Maybe Clover would like it?’
She would. But she can see that Uncle Jim also wants it, so she shakes her head.
‘Would you like the school reports?’ Dad asks her.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘What about the skirt?’
‘Would you like to keep it?’
‘Did she like it?’
‘She never wore it.’
‘Oh. Well, no then. Can I have the necklace?’
‘If you like.’
‘Did she wear it?’
‘Sometimes. It’s going green, though.’
‘We can clean it.’
‘I don’t think so. The plating’s coming off. It’s not real gold.’
‘Can I have it anyway?’
‘If you like. Would you like the T-shirt?’
‘Did she like it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did she wear it?’
‘Yes,’ Jim and Dad answer together.
‘I’ll keep it then,’ she says.
‘Westlife were shite, though, weren’t they? What? Oh, come on – they were! I bet you don’t do any of their songs on your tiny guitar.’
‘It’s a ukulele,’ Dad says, for the millionth time. He points to the few things left on the floor. ‘What about these things? Do you want to keep them?’
She picks up the Little Golden Book. ‘I want to keep this.’ Dad opens his mouth, as if to disagree. In response she flips open the cover and holds out the inscription: Love from Mummy xxxx. ‘See?’ she says. ‘It’s mine.’
‘Yes,’ he agrees eventually. ‘It’s yours.’
‘And her magnets,’ she says.
‘They’re junk, you don’t want them.’
‘I do.’
‘They’re not your mother’s. They’re mine.’
‘Yours?’
‘I used to . . . collect them.’
She looks at all the lovely words. ‘And the mugs?’
‘Yeah,’ he says.
‘And the tea towel and the egg cup?’
He nods.
‘When I count my blessings I always count you twice.’ Uncle Jim makes a puking noise.
‘Let’s put them in the kitchen!’ she says, ignoring him.
‘Ah . . . all right,’ Dad says.
‘Her art book.’
‘It was mine.’
He has surprised her again. If the Rubens book isn’t her mother’s, she doesn’t want it, but perhaps Dagmar would like it. ‘I’ll have it anyway,’ she says. ‘And I’d like the clown.’
‘That’s mine, too. It was a present, from her to me.’
‘Oh. I thought it was mine.’
‘No. She gave it to me the first time we went out. It used to hang from the mirror in my old car.’
‘You two should talk about this properly some time.’
Dad’s jaw tightens and not just because of his stiff neck. ‘That’s what we’re doing, now.’ He passes her the things which she made. ‘You can decide about these. They’re yours.’
Clover fingers the holiday board.
‘Did she like holidays?’
‘She liked sending off for holiday brochures and imagining where we could go.’
‘Mum was always going on about it,’ Uncle Jim says. ‘Next year we’ll go on holiday. Next year, next year. I used to think we’d know when we’d stopped moving around and everything was settled, because that’s when we’d go on holiday.’
Dad is listening as intently as she is. Perhaps he and Uncle Jim have never talked about these things, either.
‘And because she’d stopped moving around and everything was settled with Dad, she wanted to go on holiday.’
‘I suppose,’ Uncle Jim says.
She fingers the pages from Mrs Mackerel’s colouring books. The heavenly messengers greeting the surprised women. ‘This was a bad surprise, wasn’t it?’
‘Well . . . I was a bit shocked.’
‘I was a bad surprise, wasn’t I?’
Dad looks like his heart is in his socks. Uncle Jim glares at him and it is one of those moments when someone needs to say something but everyone is worried that it will be wrong. ‘I thought you were a good surprise,’ he offers.
That’s it. No one says anything else. It is awkward and awful, and as it is her fault, she moves, picking up everything that is hers: the boards, the colouring pages, her notebook and the things Dad has said she can have. She places them on the bed, beside Uncle Jim, and arranges them into a stack. She’d like to be by herself for a bit, but she doesn’t want it to seem like she’s stomping off or flouncing out.
‘Ad perpetuam memoriam of Becky Brookfield.’
‘And what does that mean?’ Dad asks, pretending patience.
‘To the lasting memory. Ad perpetuam memoriam.’
‘Absolutely,’ Uncle Jim says, and he sings ‘A-a-men’ like a vicar and winks at her. ‘I need a cup of tea.’
‘You know where the kettle is.’ Dad sounds cross, but he helps Uncle Jim off the bed, opens the bedroom door and calls ‘Careful on the stairs!’ as he makes his way down.
She steps to the doorway, holding her pile of stuff.
Dad places a black envelope on the very top of the pile. ‘For you,’ he says. They look at the room. It is already assuming the shape it will take when it is empty. ‘Different, isn’t it?’
She nods. ‘The window’s stuck shut,’ she tells him.
He digs his fingers under the sash and pushes. She notices condensation on the inside of the glass. He tries an up-and-down manoeuvre. The glass rattles and finally the window opens and the last warmth of summer seeps in as her mother wisps out.
She steps on to the landing. ‘Dad?’
‘Yes.’
‘There’s some things I don’t want. In my room.’
‘Right.’
‘When Colin comes, can he take them as well?’
He rolls his shoulders. ‘If you’re sure.’
Oh, it is horrible to hurt him. She turns to go to her room.
‘Clover?’
She stops, waits.
‘The most surprising thing,’ he says, his words piling up and bumping into each other on their way out, ‘was how much I loved you as soon as I saw you.’
As she stacks the things on the landing, she remembers all the times Dad has asked, ‘Is there anything you need?’ and all the times she has said, ‘No.’ Every time she has ducked his question and every time he has ignored her reply. All the occasions when she should have replied, ‘I’d like to talk about my mother,’ but didn’t.
The bean bag shaped like lips, the record player, every babyish book she owns, ten different-shaped erasers, sixteen cuddly toys, a Monsters, Inc. pencil set – so many things. If she was to sort and arrange them into some sort of story, where would she be in it? The story would be Dad’s, wouldn’t it? It would be all about what he thought as he bought the things. And what did he think? she wonders.
She realises.
Clover – that’s what he thought. Clover, Clover, Clover – that’s why it’s so hard to get rid of these things.
She leans over the banister and looks at the cluttered stairs, worried that Colin might fall and hurt himself as he carries everything down, and since Dad shouldn’t be lifting things with his bad neck, she opens the front door and starts removing the stuff from the stairs and placing it in a little stack on the driveway: the pile of her old clothes Dad has never managed to give away, the books that were twenty pence each last year when the library closed, and the Dulux Black Satin paint – it probably won’t come in handy. She puts the free newspapers and the motorbike helmets in the dining room. Maybe Dad will get a motorbike one day and they will ride it somewhere for a holiday – that would be epic!
‘We’ll start here,’ Colin says, standing in the middle of the lawn, hands on hips, biceps like balloons. ‘I’ll point to an item and you’ve got five seconds to say whether you want it or not.’
‘Is this what you usually do?’ Clover asks.
‘No,’ he says. ‘You’re getting special treatment.’
Dad snorts.
The garden chairs and the table have been carried out of the shed and arranged on the grass. It might be the first time they’ve ever been used. Nicely played, Dad, she thinks – it’s not as if Colin can take the seats from under people’s bums.
Grandad has arrived, and Kelly has come too. Colin must have told her. Jim lights a cigarette and Kelly moves away from the smoke and takes her e-cig out of her purse.
‘Anything that’s too small for the current residents of the house will automatically be removed.’
‘Hang on,’ Dad says, but Clover agrees.
‘That’s a good idea. I don’t need any of my old bikes for starters.’
‘Maybe we’ll just keep the first one you ever had,’ Dad says. ‘Remember practising? With the stabilisers, and then with me holding the back of your seat, running with you? Up and down The Grove, until you just took off all by yourself.’
Colin gets his phone out of his pocket and takes a picture of the stack of bikes. ‘Anyone who wants to remember any of the bikes can look at the photo,’ he says. ‘Next: one paddling pool. Clo, when did you last use this?’
She can’t remember.
‘Any plans to come out here in the near future and stand in a couple of inches of water?’
She shakes her head.
‘Maybe Kelly would like it, for the boys,’ Dad suggests.
‘They’ve got their own,’ she says kindly.
‘Bikes and pool – out to the trailer then.’
‘Perhaps we could sell them.’
Next door, an upstairs window widens. ‘OH NO YOU DON’T. You said you’d TIDY UP. You PROMISED.’
‘I will. I am.’
‘FINE WORDS BATTER NO PARSNIPS.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Colin calls up to Mrs Mackerel. ‘It’ll all be done today. Why don’t you come down and help?’
‘You git,’ Dad hisses.
‘Aw, come on. Who doesn’t want their parsnip battered?’
‘I’LL BE DOWN IN A JIFFY.’ She disappears for a moment before returning to momentarily dangle an enormous woolly mustard halo out of the window. ‘I’VE KNITTED YOU A SNOOD, DARREN. For your NECK.’
The window clicks shut.
Jim laughs, and Kelly rolls her eyes at Clover, which feels nice, like they’re on the women’s team, against the boys.
Colin drives the first load of stuff to the tip and comes back for the charity-shop bags. Grandad goes with him because he thinks they should go to Cancer Research, but it’s on Lord Street where it’s difficult to park.
While they’re gone Kelly starts cooking. She does sausages on one BBQ and chicken on the other. When Dad and Colin get back she smothers the chicken in Jack Daniel’s sauce and tears it up before rolling it in wraps with salad. Mrs Mackerel isn’t sure what to do with her wrap. She fetches plates and cutlery from the kitchen and puts them on the table.
‘I MIGHT be going to AUSTRAILIA,’ she says as she attacks her wrap with a knife and fork.
Grandad sticks his hanky down the front of his shirt and holds it out with one hand to make a bib. ‘I’ll look it up for you on the internet,’ he offers.
It feels like a party. A welcome-back Uncle Jim party, a tidy-up party, a goodbye-summer party. Dad makes tea and carries the mugs outside, two at a time, his neck and the top half of his chest hidden by the mustard snood.
Clover lifts her mug in a toast. ‘Ad multos annos!’
‘Did she say anus?’
Kelly shushes Uncle Jim. ‘What does it mean, Clover?’
‘To many years,’ she says.
‘God, you’re clever, you.’
‘Or we could say ad fundum, which means bottoms up.’
‘Cheers,’ Kelly says, and everyone follows suit, preferring her toast to the special Latin ones – ad interim.
While Colin is driving back to the tip, this time with Uncle Jim, who has been persuaded to go along for the ride, and Mrs Mackerel is washing up in the kitchen, Clover slips away. She heads down the hall, past Grandad, who is trying to reattach the radiator, and up the stairs.
Emptied of the things she doesn’t use or need, her room is different: bigger, airier. She opens the black envelope Dad gave her and arranges its contents on her bed. Dad says he will buy one of those special frames with lots of holes. She will be in charge of arranging the photos and then they’ll put it on the wall in the lounge. The picture of her mother holding a piece of sandpaper is her favourite. But there are other good ones – her mother lying in the empty bath, fully dressed, grinning; her mother cutting a sheet of wallpaper, forehead creased in concentration; her mother standing in the back garden, arms spread, as if to say, ‘This is mine, all of it.’ Here is her mother. Here and here and here.
The notebook sits on her desk like a wrapped present. She opens it.
I met Becky on the 43 bus. It was April, snowing. Her face was pink and her hair sparkled. I thought she looked like an angel. Her bag was sitting in the cab behind me. Someone had handed it in when she forgot it, earlier that day.
This is not new. The bones of it are known to her, but Dad has attempted to cover them with tissue and skin: the snow, the sparkling hair, her mother like an angel. She closes the notebook. She will not read it all at once. She will ration it. Now the pieces are here, she will examine them one at a time.
She steps into the second bedroom. It is empty now, apart from the stripped bed. She stands at the window and, cloaked in one of the green curtains that have been here since before her parents moved in, peeps through the open sash into the garden.
And what she sees is this: Dad and Kelly, sitting on the grass beside the cooling BBQs, both leaning back, Kelly resting on her elbows, Dad propped on straight arms. Not a single part of them is touching, but their hands are a matter of inches away from each other, literally, and she can tell that they are both conscious of the inches and there is something electric there. Dad’s legs are crossed and one of his feet twitches. He is nervous. She feels funny on the inside – slightly wobbly and a little bit disgusted, but interested, too.