I remember Dad telling me to think carefully, to consider how life would change with someone else around all the time. And I’d shrugged and ignored him and thought he was just thinking of excuses. But I had underestimated just how different everything would be. And sometimes, I did just want to scream to be left alone, to not have to think about someone else all the time. Sometimes it felt like me and Jon were each other’s shadows, tripping over each other’s heels, breathing each other’s air. We got driven to school together, we spent lunch together, we got the bus back together and we ate together in the evening. Our bedrooms were next door to each other and we knew when the other one cleaned his teeth, went to the toilet and went to bed. And sometimes, I just wanted to disappear, to erase myself from it all and not always have to worry how someone else was feeling. It wasn’t Jon’s fault; it was nothing he said or did; he didn’t change at all. But I saw it as my responsibility that he felt as settled as possible. And it was my responsibility because I had pushed for this to happen. But when I had to, I grabbed my painting stuff and headed for the hills or wherever. Jon seemed to understand that I wanted to be left alone and he never followed, he’d go to Greenside or to the Library or just read in his room. Sometimes I didn’t paint at all but just sat for a couple of hours in Jon’s Portakabin and read one of his dusty old books.
Of course it delighted the retards at school that we were living together and we were both asked where our boyfriend was all the time. Jon got through it with his usual head-down, oblivious-to-everything policy. I managed to ignore it most of the time too but occasionally snapped. It amazed me that even in a town as crap as Duerdale there were still strict divisions and cliques. And because me and Jon were from up on the fell, because we saw fields from our house and had to get a bus to school, we were the stupid, inbred yokels. I wanted to yell at everyone that the whole place was a shithole and as far as I was concerned they were all a bunch of inbred straw-munchers. I never snapped with Kieran Judd though. I’d learnt my lesson. And although nothing else had happened for a while I didn’t know if it was an uneasy truce or if he was just biding his time. I tried not to aggravate him; just when things had settled down as much as they were likely to, I didn’t want to be the one to start any more storms.
But then Jon’s grandma died. It was horrible to see how the grief stamped all over him and tore him up. I think that Dad hoped I might swing into action and help pick up the pieces but the only thing I’d learnt was that there were no magic words, nothing really to be done, and like father like son I didn’t say much to Jon at all. Dad patted him on the back when he got chance and I gave him a painting of Neptune I’d done for him, painted in the brightest blue paint I could find and framed in a silver frame. We all went to the funeral and I was as nervous as hell. I was worried that I might be sick, that I wouldn’t be able to cope, but it was completely different to Mum’s. The church was almost empty and nobody carried the gormless shocked expression that seemed to be the only look going at Mum’s funeral. There were several old women there who treated it as a chance for a catch-up and Jon didn’t even know who they were. The only people in the church who showed any signs of grief were Jon and Arthur and I was certain that occasionally, deep in Arthur’s expression, I noticed a tiny flicker of relief that it was over now. Jon sat in the front pew next to his granddad, and me and Dad sat three rows back. The vicar clearly had no idea who had died and hadn’t got much out of Arthur so it was a brief affair with all the usual stuff about full lives lived and resting in peace and all that crap. The vicar’s voice was fake solemn and quiet and a rainstorm was hammering away outside so some of his words disappeared completely but nobody leant forward in an effort to hear. When it was over Dad asked Arthur if he wanted to come up to the house for something to eat but he shook his head. He looked exhausted and spent and said he just wanted to go back to Greenside. He looked like he was about ready to jump head first into a coffin himself and I hoped he could stick around a bit longer for Jon’s sake. Jon was quieter for a few days, for a few weeks, but gradually he started getting back to his old self. We did occasionally speak about death and what might happen afterwards and all that kind of stuff and it was a shock to me to learn that for someone obsessed with fact and science he had an unshakeable belief in God and the afterlife. I wasn’t going to start banging on about Darwin and evolution, the planet being billions of years old, dinosaurs, and how faith is just a security blanket for people too scared to look at life and see it exactly for what it is. I stayed quiet. He knew what I thought anyway.