Tender Earth

‘Why keep all this stuff anyway? I should get a giant bin bag and chuck it all out! I mean, look at all these bits of old pottery . . . a lid for something . . . and there’s half a beach worth of holey stones here. We can keep a few, but honestly . . . !’ Mum picks up a big white pebble and looks through the hole at me.

‘Don’t throw those out, Mum – they’re from the competition Mira and me had this summer.’

Mum smiles and puts the pile back on the shelf. ‘Well, perhaps we can return a few next time we go!’

Now Mum’s holding up a drawing I did in Year Six that I thought was useless, nothing like Mira could have done. I know Mum only keeps it because she’s trying to make me feel good about my art.

‘I should have made a scrapbook for your art . . . like I did for Mira and Krish. Maybe now I’ll get around to it. I’ve been meaning to mend this old picture frame for about five years. I suppose that says it all!’ Mum shrugs and drops the broken frame into a bin bag.

I pick up a dusty box with a crack through the lid. I’m about to hand it to Mum when I wipe a finger over the top and it comes up shiny. It’s painted in what looks like varnish and has a delicate painting of a bonsai tree on the lid.

‘It’s all chipped at the edges. We’ve got to be brutal. Bin it!’ Mum says.

‘It’s broken, Laila!’ Mum sighs. ‘We’re not getting very far with clearing things, are we?’

Seems like I’m annoying her, so I throw the box in the bag – but as I do, I hear something rattle. I lift the box back out and open it.

Inside is a black silk drawstring purse. I loosen the strings and see a silver-grey bauble the size of a giant marble, with patterns of stars, moons and suns cut into it, like a tiny little universe. At the top is a hook with a cream-coloured ring, threaded through with a faded blue ribbon.

‘Oh, thank goodness we didn’t throw that away!’ She inspects it more closely. ‘I’d given up on ever seeing this again. It was your Nana Josie’s rattle when she was a baby. We hunted and hunted for this after she died because she wanted you to have it. Has it still got its chime?’ I rattle it and it rings. ‘That’s what I remember . . . such a sweet soothing sound.’

‘I know all that. But you mean she actually gave me something, just for me?’

‘Yes, she did. She adored you, Laila. It made that time bearable, having a baby around.’

‘So Mira had the easel and the charm thing that she lost, Krish got Grandad Kit’s war medals and one of Nana’s paintings, and I got a baby’s rattle that’s been lost for nearly eleven years?’

‘Yes, it does seem like much. It seems like a lot actually. Only no one bothered to tell me about it. Maybe you want to throw me away too!’

My eyes are stinging with tears of anger, but I clench my teeth together so they don’t fall and I run up the stairs to the landing with the box. I go into Mira’s room and place it on one of her bookshelves, open the box, tip the chime out of the drawstring purse and take it back to my perch. I feel like I want to keep it close while I read . . .

I find the ruby-red velvet cushion, take out the letter that’s addressed to Mira and open it.

Dear Mira,

You may not remember me . . . but we met once in the hospice. I was a great friend of your Nana Josie’s and I know the two of you were very close. I seem to remember Josie used to call you her ‘fellow artist’!

Anyway, the point of writing to you is that I would like you to come and collect the Protest Book Josie made me the guardian of. Of course if you’d prefer I could send it, but it’s heavy and the post isn’t what it used to be.

Josie gave me firm instructions that one day, when I had done with it, I should pass it on to you. I was thinking of addressing this to your parents, but then it occurred to me that you must be an adult by now, and with the world as it is, I’m thinking now’s the time to hand it over.

I hope your family still live at the address Josie left me – if not, I suppose I’ll have to do some research and see if I can trace you online. Hopefully I won’t have to! I thought I’d try by letter first. I do like a letter. Myself and your Nana Josie have written quite a few and got a few replies too, but you can read those in the Protest Book.

I hope to meet you again soon to hand over a very special book – it contains so many of the things Josie and I stood up for . . . about fifty years of campaigning, letter writing and protesting all in all. No wonder it’s heavy!

Yours,

Simon Makepeace

I should tell Mum about this. I know I shouldn’t have opened it, but I’ve heard Mum and Dad talk about the protests Nana Josie went on. Sometimes when we sit and watch the news together and there’s a march like the one to make refugee people welcome, Mum or Dad say, ‘Josie would have been there with her banners.’ I asked Dad why we don’t do that, and he said he’d been on his fair share – but I’ve never been on one with him.

I had no idea there was an actual book with the things Nana Josie felt so strongly about written down in it. At least Mira and Krish remember her. It doesn’t seem fair that Mira gets to go and meet Simon and have the book too. I put the letter back in the envelope and tuck it inside the cushion cover. What if I went to pick it up for Mira, just to have a read and give it to her when she comes home?

I rattle the chime and it makes a sound like a sweet clear voice that carries on singing in my ears for ages until it gets interrupted by the home phone ringing.

‘Is Krish OK? I know she’s going to spoil him rotten. You drive carefully up to Glasgow; make sure you’re not too tired. Laila’s been in a bit of a state. I’m leaving her to cool off for a bit. I know, emotions running high! It’s odd, isn’t it . . . of all the things, she decided to open that little box. No, no, I won’t, don’t worry. I’m going to go through everything with a fine-tooth comb from now on.’

Mum comes upstairs and sits down gently next to me, like I’m bruised or something and she’s afraid to put any pressure on me in case I hurt more.

‘Funny how you love this little landing sofa so much. When I see you sitting up here I always wish your Nana Josie had lived long enough to get to know you.’ Mum looks up at the paintings of Mira and Krish sitting on this very same sofa.

‘But she didn’t know me!’ I pick up the little rattle and make it ring again.

‘I’m so glad it hasn’t lost its chime. I know we’ve been a bit taken up with Mira and Krish leaving and you starting secondary school too –’ Mum cuddles me – ‘but you do know how much we all love you, Laila, don’t you?’

‘All right then. I’ve made the bed up for you in your new room. Why don’t you go and start getting moved in?’

I always thought the night before secondary would be me and Kez together, and in a way it is . . . with me going over that vile day at the beginning of the summer holidays when everything seemed to change between us. I don’t know why I keep raking over every detail. It’s not going to make a difference going back over it. No one else except me and Kez seem to understand how awful it was. I let the chime roll around my hand. Maybe if Nana Josie was alive and she’d got to see me and Kez growing up, like Bubbe has, I could have talked to her about that day. I’ve been over it so many times I’ve actually got a name for it. It feels like a lot longer than two months ago . . .

He comes straight out, opens both sides of our stupidly narrow doors and joins us on the pavement.

We start walking up the steps while Dad folds Kez’s chair and carries it up after us.

‘This is neat. Much easier to fold than the old one,’ Dad says as he stacks it down the side of the house.

‘My motorized one’s coming in the summer,’ Kez says, pausing halfway up and holding tight on to me until my arm trembles too. ‘I didn’t realize I was so tired. I’ll never make it up to your room. Let’s just stay in the kitchen today, Lai Lai.’

She’s not making a fuss, but she’s in pain – I can tell. I can always tell.

We’re just sitting at the table listening to a bit of music when a text pops up on Kez’s phone.

‘It’s Bubbe. I forgot I’ve got physio today. I’ve got to go anyway. Nature calls!’

‘You’ve just got here!’ Dad shouts down. ‘I’m sorry, I’ll have to call you right back.’ He looks a bit stressed as he runs down the stairs and opens up both sides of the front door again so we can walk out together. He’s got Kez’s wheelchair carried down, opened and ready for her before we’ve even made it to the door. ‘Come on then, girls!’

Kez and I are on the top step when Dad runs up and scoops her off her feet like he used to do with both of us when we were little.

I hear Jidé’s voice as he comes around the corner. He’s on the phone to Mira. When are they not!

Kez blushes and holds her face away from Dad’s chest, but then he wobbles and nearly loses his balance.

‘Hi, Kez, how’s it going?’ Jidé asks, touching Kez on the shoulder. She flinches away from him as he climbs the steps. ‘Hi, Lai Lai!’

Dad’s still out of breath as he lowers her into her seat. He wipes the sweat off his forehead as if the weather’s the reason he’s so puffed out.

‘It’s nothing.’ Dad puffs. ‘Really is a nice bit of new kit this! So much lighter than the old one.’

I wish he would stop going on about the chair, like it’s a new car or something.

As soon as he’s out of earshot, Kez’s smile fades. We don’t talk as I follow her into the park to the nearest bench on the main path that leads to school.

I sit down on the bench and she looks straight into my eyes and comes out with it. ‘That’s the last time that’s happening. I’m never being carried up and down your steps again.’

‘It’s not your fault, but I mind, Lai Lai. I really mind now. Maybe if I was built like you I could put up with it for a bit longer, but it feels wrong, especially in front of Jidé too. I felt like an oversized kid.’

‘You don’t get it! I don’t care what anyone else thinks. I’m the one who had to be carried by your dad. Maybe after they’ve tried this tendon-lengthening thing I’ll be able to get up your steps myself . . .’

‘Not sure. But in any case it might not make that much difference. We’ll just have to switch things up. You can come over to mine any time.’ Kez wriggles around a bit in her chair. ‘I really need a pee! Now I do have to go! Don’t worry about walking me back.’

I watch Kez till she’s on the pavement. I tell myself if she looks back and waves it’ll be all right.

‘We’ll just have to switch things up.’ Kez’s voice echoes through me. It started that day – the feeling that everything was going to change. I ring Nana Josie’s chime till it starts to sing through my mind and calm me down like a lullaby.