Artichoke Hearts

It’s swimming today but I’m missing it, because we’re going on this ‘adventure’, as Nana calls it. To be honest I wouldn’t have minded going swimming today because my period is over. I thought it would go on for longer than this, but when I looked it up in this book called Questions You Might Not Want To Ask Your Parents that Mum ‘just happens’ to have had lying around the bathroom for ages, it said that it was quite common for your first period to be really light. It hasn’t actually been that bad, except for the appearance of the period pustule, and even that has shrunk to half its size overnight. You could almost call it a normal-sized spot today. So, if it wasn’t for going away with Nana Josie, I would have gone swimming today. I like swimming in a pool, but I love swimming in the sea best, when the waves come crashing over you!

We started swimming lessons in Year Six and I remember thinking that it seemed a bit late because the chances are, if any of us were going to drown, we probably would have done it before we were ten, so I always just assumed that everyone could swim anyway . . . but then there was Orla, who had never once in all her life been taken to a swimming pool. It’s not that unusual according to the not very subtle swimming teacher who shouted across the pool to her: ‘Don’t worry, dear. There’s usually at least one “non-swimmer” in every class.’ I think she was trying to make Orla feel better.

Now we’re in Year Seven, while the rest of us mess around in the big pool, Orla is still in what she calls the ‘Pee Pool’ with the mums and babies and the beginners. Mostly, though, she pretends she’s ‘got stomach ache’. The last time we went swimming one of the teachers said, ‘You can’t have tummy ache every week,’ and Orla looked at the woman and said in a really loud voice, ‘Actually, I’ve got my period, miss!’

So, for all the swimming humiliations that Orla has suffered she has come up with a strategy for revenge. Orla and her ‘glamorous assistants’, as she calls Demi and Bo, have devised a competition about who’s got the best (and worst) body. It works like this. There are three judges, Orla, Demi and Bo. They hand out marks out of ten for each bit of your body. When it comes to judging, Orla is definitely the most scathing. She will literally dissect you, limb from limb. You could have a score of six for your legs and four for your tummy and three for your arms. If you’ve got boobs growing, you get a low mark from Orla, because that’s just embarrassing. She grades the boys too. Ben Gbemi always gets ten out of ten because he’s been working on getting a ‘six-pack’. Jidé usually comes in second place. If you asked me anything, I would switch it the other way round.

Orla never gives any of the girls a ten, because she thinks she’s got the best body. Orla is definitely the thinnest girl in our class. You can see her hip bones and ribs sticking through her swimming costume. If you’ve got any fat on you at all, you get a low grade in Orla’s scoring system. I only get four out of ten because I’m a bit rounded. Millie gets a really good body score except that Demi always makes a point of saying something horrible like ‘shame about the four eyes’. But Millie doesn’t care what they say; neither do I.

Nana has a brilliant rant about what a load of rubbish it all is, people worrying so much about how thin they can get. ‘Haven’t they got anything better to worry about? What a bore to be so weight-obsessed!’ The other day when I was sitting with her and she saw me looking at how thin she is now, she said, ‘To think, some people actually aspire to being a size nought.’ She kept stroking my cheek over and over.

‘Don’t you ever get into all that dieting crap. It’s the quality of your skin, its plumpness, that makes me want to paint you over and over. You’re a beauty, Mira Levenson.’

I get really embarrassed when Nana talks like that, but I know she really means it, and the truth is that most of the time I don’t think too much about what I look like and I would hate to be bony like Orla. I just am how I am.

Yesterday, Mum had a word with Miss Poplar and she’s given permission for me to take the next couple of days off as ‘compassionate leave’. Nana Josie wants us all to go to her cottage in Suffolk. I think she sees it as a kind of a family pilgrimage. I actually woke up early this morning and I couldn’t get back to sleep, thinking about Jidé and Pat Print’s writing group.

Clank, clank, clank. Last night I got my keys ready so I wouldn’t be so hassled.

‘We’re late. It’s already quarter to eight,’ Millie says, peering through the letterbox and snapping it closed as I unlock the door.

‘I’d be ready too, if I were you, only coming in for the best bit of the day!’

She runs, flat out, to school. I trail way behind her, because when I got up this morning I made one of my ‘don’t ask me why I do it’ pacts with Notsurewho Notsurewhat, that if I trod on a single crack in the pavement, along the walkway to school, our car would break down on the way to Suffolk. Which is not a great pact to make when the probability is pretty high that our car will break down, as it’s so decrepit. Why did I do that? If it does break down with Nana in it, it’ll be really awful, and now, for no reason at all, except for having the stupid thought, I’m going to feel like I made it happen. Not only that, but it also means I look like a lunatic weaving around all over the place, when I could be walking in a straight line.

‘For God’s sake, Mira, what on earth are you doing?’ Millie shouts as I pick my way, like someone demented, between the cracks in the pavement.

By the time we get into the ‘safe haven’ of our Year Seven block that Miss Poplar has tried to make all cosy so as not to shock us because our new secondary is one of the biggest schools in London, Ben and Jidé are already talking to Pat Print and fussing over her sheepdog. But when Millie and I come in the dog spirals round, practically knocking us over with its frantically wagging tail.

‘Moses, behave yourself, my boy. You’re so excitable anyone would think you’re still a puppy,’ she laughs, dragging him by the collar back to her side. Pat Print either doesn’t care, like Nana, or she just doesn’t know that dogs aren’t allowed in school. I love the way she talks to him, as if he can understand exactly what she’s saying.

‘Why did you call him Moses?’ I ask, and as soon as I speak Ben elbows Jidé in the side. Jidé elbows him back as if to shut him up. Of course, I can’t look him in the eye but what I do notice is that Jidé has gelled up his hair at the front, he’s not wearing his tie and his shirt is all hanging out. I blush again, even though there is no way on earth that Jidé Jackson can know how much I’ve been thinking about him, even dreaming about him . . . One day someone will make a fortune inventing an anti-blushing device. Whenever you feel one coming on you could just press a button and stop it in its tracks.

‘You’ll have to read my book if you want to find that out. I collect strays!’ Pat says, smiling at me.

It’s weird how that happens. Before last week I had never heard of anyone actually being called Moses, apart from Moses in the Bible, and now within one week I’ve met Eco-Endings Moses and sheepdog Moses.

‘So what have you all found out about your names?’ Pat asks. That’s when I remember what we were supposed to do. She looks around the room, letting her eyes rest on Jidé.

‘My full name is BabaJidé. It’s an African name . . . it means “father has returned”, that’s what Jai, my dad, told me anyway. He said Grace liked the “Baba” bit when I was a baby, but when I started to grow up they dropped “Baba” and just called me Jidé and Mum says it goes well with Dad’s name . . . Jai.’

I think it sounds really weird calling your mum and dad by their first names, especially when your mum’s a teacher at school . . . she’s Ms Jackson to everyone else.

‘Interesting, isn’t it, how some names are better for babies and others feel too grown up to call an infant,’ Pat Print comments.

Jidé doesn’t reply. He seems lost in his own thoughts so Pat Print turns her attention on Ben. He’s funny because he just launches into things; he often makes me jump. I peer over his shoulder at his notebook. Ben always does as little work as he can get away with. He’s got about three notes written down, that’s all, but he tells Pat Print this whole epic story of his name, hardly even glancing at his book. He seems to have no nerves at all.

‘Well, my mum and dad couldn’t decide what to call me. They couldn’t even agree on any names they both liked before I was born. My mum’s Irish and my dad’s Nigerian . . . that’s where my surname “Gbemi” comes from . . . Nigeria. Dad told me that “Gbemi” means “favoured one”. A long time ago the name used to be “Fagbemi”, which means something like “favoured by the Oracle”, but somewhere along the line we dropped the “Fa” bit. My mum thought I should have an Irish first name but Dad wanted a Nigerian one, and even after I was born they still couldn’t agree. So Mum says she just lay in the hospital bed thinking about what to call me. Then one day she looked up at Big Ben, because Mum was in the hospital just opposite, and she thought, That’s it. The answer had been staring her in the face and blasting her ears, all that time. That’s why she called me Ben, and Dad said it sounded good with Gbemi. So that’s it, that’s why I’m called Ben Gbemi.’

Ben definitely speaks as though he’s projecting his voice across London. He’s tall too, probably the tallest boy in Year Seven.

‘I’m thinking . . . you could be a presenter, no, maybe more daring . . . a journalist reporting while battling against the elements, earthquakes or storms, or even in a war zone . . . surviving against all odds and still bringing us the news.’ Pat Print is obviously enjoying herself making up a story for Ben’s life.

You can’t help but smile, because you can just see Ben Gbemi in a job like that.

‘Which comes first – the name or the personality?’ asks Pat Print. It’s one of those questions she’s not expecting us to answer.

Ben looks down at his feet and tries hard not to show he’s smiling underneath his copper glinting curls.

‘I’m sorry, Miss Print, I didn’t do the name bit. I wrote the diary though.’ There it is again, that thin little voice of mine.

‘OK! I’ll hear that later. Call me Pat, please. Now Millie, what have you got for me?’

‘My ancestors are Scottish and, further back, originally from France, dating right back to 1066. Dad’s told me all about it, but it’s a bit complicated. Apparently, one of my ancestors had Robert the Crusader or Marauder’s heart locked up in a box.’

‘Well, my ancestor’s job was to keep Robert the Something’s heart locked up in a box. That’s why I’m called “Lockhart”.’

‘Why would he have to keep the heart locked up?’ butts in Jidé, forgetting again his own rule that he’s not supposed to be this interested.

‘Fascinating, Millie.’ Pat smiles. ‘It’s a great name, “Lockhart” – beautifully iconic. The heart is the subject of so many wonderful stories. I bet if I asked you, you could all write a different story about love. Now you’ve given me an idea.’

‘Write down as many words as come to mind when I say the word “heart”. Just make a list. I’m giving you fifteen seconds so don’t think about it too hard, just scribble down whatever springs to mind . . . starting NOW! The word is “heart”.’

artichoke

blood

love

layers

break

Pig

blood

black pudding

brave

stop beating

I was going to swap with Millie, like I always do, but before I can, Jidé Jackson has swapped papers with me. In fact, he’s sitting shoulder to shoulder with me, and just that closeness makes me turn my most impressive crimson colour. At least I can keep head down while I read his list.

love

hate

murder

blood

machete

lost

scar

mother

father

sister

cloth

empty

river

‘Now see what words you have in common and choose one word from the list that you would like to ask your partner about,’ Pat instructs us.

I look sideways at Jidé and for a second I do what I can never usually do . . . look him in the eye. Jidé makes a tiny movement with his head that tells me not to ask him anything about his words, so we talk about black pudding and pig’s blood and how my Nana Kath’s friend tricked me into eating it by telling me it was a vegetable.

Then he asks me about the artichoke, so I tell him about Nana Josie’s artichoke-heart charm and what she told me about it, and all the time I’m talking I’m thinking of what his story might be behind those words.

‘Let’s have a couple of examples then,’ calls out Pat Print as Jidé and I go back to avoiding eye contact with each other and her. For a moment I forgot we were even in class. Now that I’ve actually looked into them, I realize that Jidé’s eyes have a hazel light in them.

It takes me a while to get my head back into the room, and by the time I do Millie’s reading out the word ‘transplant’, from Ben’s list, because what he didn’t tell us earlier is that he was one of the youngest babies in Britain ever to have a heart transplant. It’s hard to believe that Ben Gbemi could have ever been small and weak.

‘I’ve got the newspaper clippings. I can bring them in to show you, if you want,’ Ben booms.

‘You see,’ smiles Pat Print. ‘You were only just born and you’d already hit the news.’

‘We talked about Millie’s ancestor, guarding the heart,’ Ben says. ‘He must have really cared about the person whose heart he was protecting, to stay loyal to them for all that time, even though they were dead.’

Ben’s dad left home a few years ago. I bet that’s what he’s thinking about, but he’s not the type to say anything.

Pat nods. ‘The heart is probably the most powerful symbol in life and literature. My guess is that Millie’s ancestor could have either been protecting the heart, because it was such a precious symbol, or preventing it from being returned to its people, like a scalp or a macabre trophy. You might have to dig a bit deeper to find out,’ Pat Print tells Millie. ‘So what do you think? If Millie did the research, would you want to read that story?’

‘I would, for definite . . . that’s what I go for . . . adventure, mystery, that sort of thing,’ perks up Ben.

‘Indeed. You’ve got an epic historical novel on your hands there, Millie Lockhart. If anyone can handle it, you can. Why don’t you write the opening paragraph for next week? Let’s see if we can help you out a bit. Jidé, if you were reading that book, what would make it a page-turner for you?’

‘She’ll have to make a link between herself and that story, like an adventure through time.’

‘I think I’ll just give up my day job,’ jokes Pat Print. ‘With a writer’s note like that, I may as well pack up and go home.’

A noise that never escapes my mouth in school fills up the room. It’s strange and low and loud and it shocks everyone, my laugh, because I don’t think, except for Millie, the others have ever heard it before. It’s so embarrassing. I don’t even know why I’m laughing.

My face is as hot and red as if I’ve been running a very high temperature. How did that slip out? And now my laugh and Jidé’s nudge have made my temperature shoot up to boiling point and left behind a stupid grin that I can’t wipe off my face. I can’t even look up. Pat Print must realize that I am paralysed with embarrassment because she switches to Jidé instead.

Jidé shakes his head, Suddenly Jidé the joker looks miserable. It’s like we’ve swapped roles.

‘”We don’t have that information.” That’s what Grace said when I asked her if we could ever trace my original surname. I wasn’t always a Jackson.’

‘I don’t know what my birth name is. I had a sister, she was about three when she died, they think, older than me anyway . . . but she wouldn’t speak, not even to tell them her name or mine. Grace said she was too traumatized to talk. Grace and Jai, they gave me the name “BabaJidé” when they found me. I told you, didn’t I, it means “father has returned,” and even though Jai met so many children out there he had a feeling, as soon as he saw me, that he should be my father. I was about a year old, they’re not sure. I have a made-up birthday. And . . . my birth parents, who knows? You probably watched them on the news, floating down the river.’

A blueberry-coloured rash starts to spread up Pat Print’s neck and over her face. I didn’t have her down as a blusher.

Aid workers in one of the refugee camps, the one my sister walked into with me. I suppose I could research what happened to people like my birth parents, but I could never find out my proper name,’ explains Jidé. Anyway, I’m lucky to be alive, aren’t I? If it wasn’t for Grace and Jai . . .’ Jidé trails off.

He suddenly looks exhausted. I don’t think he talks about his past to many people. I haven’t really understood this before, about Jidé, how much he doesn’t say. The layers of his heart are well protected. Even the way he tells us all this is said in a matter-of-fact sort of voice, but he can’t disguise the fact that he’s angry. Now I think I understand why there are all these different edges to him. ‘Jidé the joker’, ‘Jidé with attitude’, ‘Jidé trying his best to hide how clever he is’, although at least in Pat Print’s class he seems to be giving up on that one. Nana thinks I’m lucky because I haven’t had a reason to grow protective layers. Jidé has, and suddenly this all makes me feel like I live in a very cosy little world. A minute ago we were discussing names. Now, suddenly, we’re in Rwanda. I don’t even know where Rwanda is.

I’ve been trying to work out what’s different about this class. I don’t know what it is about Pat Print, but she’s definitely got this way of letting people say what they want to say. Once she gets us all talking it’s as if she’s almost not here at all; she sort of disappears from the room while the conversation’s flowing and only really steps back in to start it up again, like keeping one of Laila’s spinning tops whirling. Maybe that’s why Jidé Jackson has talked about himself for the first time ever. I don’t think anyone in this room knew that, about Jidé, and I’ve been at school with him since primary. By the look on Ben’s face, he didn’t know either.

Pat Print sighs deeply. That’s the other thing about her. She’s not scared of long silences like some teachers are. It’s weird, but you don’t get embarrassed in the silence in her class and it doesn’t feel like a punishment either. It’s actually a relief to have the time to feel whatever it is you’re feeling, and after what Jidé’s told us I think she’s right . . . we need a bit of time to let it all sink in.

‘I did it,’ perks up Millie, enthusiastically, ‘but I’d rather not read it out aloud.’

‘Now you said you’ve got something for me, Mira. Will you read it out to us?’

I take out my red leather diary. I have already decided which bits I don’t mind them hearing about -obviously there are some things I wouldn’t want any of them to know, not even Millie and especially not Jidé!

‘I got this diary last week. It starts on my birthday, but I’ll read last Sunday. That’s the day me and Nana went to buy paint,’ I explain.

We park right next to Dusty Bird’s art shop. Nana leans on my arm as Mum and I walk her inside. She wants acrylic water-based paints. Nana says it’s very important to choose the exact colours she has in her mind . . .

All the way through reading this I feel Jidé watching me and properly listening, and all I can feel is guilty, because I’m talking about my nana dying . . . and in a way she’s had her life, and such a good life, and a rich life. I just wish that Jidé’s family were alive. I wish that his little sister hadn’t died so young and that he knew her name. Because I can’t stop thinking about Jidé, I’ve forgotten how much I hate reading aloud. Anyway, reading out your work isn’t so bad because at least you can lean on the words you’ve already written. I don’t manage to get to the end because the bell rings for the start of school. Usually everyone jumps up and starts packing their things away, but today, nobody moves till I get to the end of my sentence.

When someone is dying, everything you say and do means more than it normally does. When someone is dying, you notice things . . . everything really. The whole of life is in slow motion.

There’s that silence again . . . the one where you can hear people’s thoughts echoing around the room. Jidé nods and smiles at me sadly. Somehow, since he told us what he told us, he seems less tough.

‘Everything OK?’ chirps Miss Poplar, peering round the door and spotting Moses. She raises her right eyebrow. That means something’s happening that shouldn’t be happening . . . Miss Poplar never raises her voice, just her right eyebrow. In this case that right eyebrow is managing to say two things at the same time – ‘Dogs aren’t allowed in school,’ and, ‘Why aren’t you wearing your uniforms correctly?’ but she doesn’t say anything to Pat Print, not in front of us anyway.

‘I wish you could have heard what I just heard. Mira read us a diary entry about her grandmother,’ Pat Print tells Miss Poplar.

Sometimes, because I don’t talk very much, some adults might assume I don’t think much either. Maybe Pat Print thought that about me.

‘When I agreed to take this job, I anticipated it would be a nice little bit of research, nothing too stretching, but I feel absolutely wrung out by the talent and the bravery of your students,’ Pat says, looking from Miss Poplar to Jidé. ‘Jidé, could you just stay on for a minute.’ It’s Jidé’s turn for a private word.

‘Excuse me, I’ve got to go now,’ I say, standing up and packing up my diary.

Ben sticks his tongue out at her and wanders off laughing and occasionally glancing back at her.

I have it stuck to the back of the phone until I remember it, which will probably be never because I’m rubbish at memorizing numbers. Millie repeats it over a few times out loud.

‘OK, got that. I’ll call you. I wish I could come with you. Remember the last time we went?’

It was only last summer that Millie and me were together in Suffolk, jumping off the dunes and making a den down on the marsh. I can’t imagine us doing that now. It feels like a whole lifetime away.

Still, the thought of Millie being the first person to call me on my mobile cheers me up as I walk along the corridor following the faint mud trail of Pat Print’s journey into school.

As we drive past the school, on our way to pick up Nana, Pat Print and Miss Poplar are standing at the end of the walkway to school that leads out on to the road. Miss Poplar waves and says something to Pat, who peers into our car. She glances from Mum to Dad, past my brother and sister till she finally sees me. Then she waves, smiles and blows me a kiss.

‘Miss Poplar’s probably told her why we’re going to Suffolk. Maybe she feels sorry for us.’

‘Do you want to know or not?’ I say, cutting him off and wishing I’d never asked in the first place.

We are making this trip to Suffolk because Nana needs to see the big Suffolk sky just once more. There is a lot of sky in Suffolk – that’s why people from London like it, because of the wide-open sky and sea, with nothing on the horizon.

Nana has a little wooden cottage, like a doll’s house; everything in it is small and delicate. It’s got a white porch, like a summerhouse, looking on to the garden. There are pots and hanging things on little hooks all over the porch . . . pottery birds, horseshoes, a rusty green wind chime that’s lost its chime, a Jeremy Fisher frog sitting on a lily pad, a rusty Indian metal heart with bells threaded through it and Nana’s long string of holey stones, stretching from one end of the porch to the other. I learned to count on those holey stones.

High up, on a whitewashed shelf, always in exactly the same place, sits the flycatcher’s pot. Every summer a family of flycatchers make their journey over the Sahara desert from Africa to the same little white pot that sits on Nana Josie’s porch. They’ve been coming here for as long as Nana can remember. Those little birds could have sat on a branch near Jidé’s mum and dad and flown thousands and thousands of kilometres over land and sea, just to be in Nana’s garden. She says she feels privileged to have what she calls her ‘feathered guests’, and that when she’s gone we must be very quiet, at the time of the flycatchers, so they will know they’re still welcome. But we can’t really be quiet enough. Nana used to stand for hours painting at her easel in the garden, hardly moving at all, but Krish is always kicking a football or playing cricket or swing ball, and as for Laila, well, you can’t make her be quiet unless she’s asleep or ill. Even I can’t be as quiet as Nana. Anyway, it’s too early for the flycatchers.

Nana and Laila have both slept all the way from London. They look so peaceful when they’re asleep, like, when they wake up, nothing in the world could bother them. We finally turn off on to the bumpety lane leading to the cottage. We wait in the car while Mum and Dad get out and unlock the flaky blue door that Dad and me painted Duck-egg Blue. As Krish races out of the car, slamming the door behind him, Nana wakes up. She sits and stares at her cottage as if she’s seeing it for the very first time. Then she turns to sleeping Laila and touches her rosy cheek with the back of her hand. I think she might not even know that I’m still sitting next to her until she slips her hand into mine.

‘Muuuuum, Miiiiiiira, what are you doing?’ Dad calls to us from the open doorway of the cottage.

‘I’ve lit the fire, just to air the place out a bit,’ Dad says, as he opens the car door and gently eases Nana out of her seat. Then he wraps his arm round Nana’s shoulder and walks her slowly inside.

We sit together, Nana and me, watching the flames dance while Mum and Dad are busy unpacking and making the beds up for tonight. Laila’s still asleep in her car seat, and Krish is out playing swing ball in the back garden.

The walls of the sitting room are covered in Nana’s paintings. I follow her eyes around the room at all that she has created. There are paintings of me and Krish and one of Laila too.

It’s like this between Nana and me – we’ve always been happy just to sit together. We don’t even need to talk. When I was eleven, we used to play her game, A Penny For Them, where we would try to read each other’s thoughts, and Nana was nearly always right about what I was thinking . . . but not today, because my silence is full of Jidé Jackson who she doesn’t even know exists. I get out my mobile and the manual I haven’t read yet, and start to mess around with the functions, finding out all the things it can do. I check for messages, but there are none. I turn to the texting page of the manual to work out how to text. I like the idea that you can send messages without anyone over-hearing what you’re saying.

‘That’s what I hate about those things. They stop people from living in the moment. Have you had anyone call you on it yet?’ Nana asks, jolting me back to her.

‘It’s far too hot in here. Come on, let’s have a look at the garden,’ Nana says, standing up and walking towards the back door and out through the porch.

Nana’s garden is for birds, butterflies, frogs, dogs and humans. ‘In that order,’ she jokes. All through the winter she hangs fat balls from the trees for the birds to eat. If she hasn’t been for a while, she’ll make a special trip just to replace them, so the birds don’t go hungry.

In the middle of the garden there’s a pond, which used to have fish in it, but a heron moved in last year and ate them all. There are grasses at the corner of the pond, and a few newts, which Nana calls ‘the ancients of the garden’, swimming in the murky water. There are always frogs hopping around, or bathing just underneath the slimy green leaves, at the water’s edge. By the side of the pond is Nana’s spring garden, which is just about still flowering, though Nana says it’s past its best. There are primroses, bluebells, bright pink tulips and snake-head flowers with veiny, plum-coloured leaves . . . delicate as Nana’s hands.

The stone man we bought Nana for her birthday a few years ago – and which she calls ‘my man in Suffolk’ – stands in the middle of the spring garden in his artist’s smock, enjoying the flowers and the birds.

Behind the stone man you can just see the disused old railway wagon through the thicket of brambles, the wagon that my dad and Aunty Abi used to camp in when they brought their school friends to Suffolk. When Millie was here, we had this big plan that we would renovate it, but we couldn’t even get to it through the thicket of brambles.

‘Over there is your daddy, my little Sam, six years old, taking his white rabbit for a walk on a lead . . . Pipkin, his name was. Sam’s pulling him away from the pond – he’s worried he might hop in. And there on the porch is my beautiful Abi, with her long curly locks, pacing up and down, practising her lines for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’

As she speaks, Nana points, as if each person from the past is appearing in front of her eyes.

‘Out of sight is the railway wagon, covered in brambles. There I am with your mum and dad painting sunflowers and butterflies, red admirals and cabbage whites on the railway wagon. They keep disappearing round the back to have a snog. They think I don’t notice.’

I groan at the thought of Mum and Dad snogging, but Nana doesn’t seem to hear. She takes a deep, deep breath, as if she would like to breathe in all these memories as she holds my hand and we walk around the garden together.

‘And there you are, my darling Mira, standing next to me, under my parasol . . . just four years old . . . and little Krish tottering around trying to catch goldfish in the pond with the stick-and-string rod I made him.’

Nana paints the picture of the past so clearly that it almost feels like part of my own memory She has a way of drawing you in like that . . . making you feel like you’re the only one that matters in the world.

‘Lunchtime,’ Mum calls, opening the door on to the garden and releasing a delicious smell.

Jill, one of Nana’s Suffolk friends, left a soup simmering on the stove so that Nana would have something to eat as soon as we arrived. We sit round Nana’s rickety table, slurping. You have to be very careful not to lean too hard on this table, or it will collapse.

Nana keeps looking from one of us to the other, giving us the loveliest of smiles, like she’s completely happy now that we’ve brought her here. Then suddenly Dad starts to cry. He’s trying his hardest not to, but his body is shaking with man tears. He leans close to his bowl to cover it up, but he just ends up crying into it.

‘It doesn’t need salt!’ Nana jokes, holding Dad’s hand. ‘I wish you weren’t in so much pain,’ she sighs, hugging him to her as if he’s still a little boy.

I think this is a strange thing to say, because it’s Nana who’s really in pain.

Later, at night, I can’t get to sleep. I listen to my family breathing. You can hear Dad’s snoring and tiny noises creaking around the cottage. There are definitely birds fluttering around in the roof. But mostly I can hear people breathing. Then I feel my own breath, in and out, and the little space between the in breath and the out breath, just like Nana’s taught me. After a while I start to feel quite sleepy. Then I hear Nana’s sandals padding on the wooden floor and I listen to her trying desperately to catch her breath. She walks slowly to the sink and fills a glass with cold water so she can swallow her pills. Nana has to take so many pills now.

Her body is silhouetted against my bedroom doorway. I watch her leaning against the sink taking little sips of water. Suddenly, she drops the cup, as if it’s burned her. Now she’s clutching on to her shoulder like she’s being attacked by a wild animal. For a moment I think she’s going to fall over, but she just leans against the sink, holding herself up and making this horrible groaning noise.

Nana looks up in this helpless way as Dad walks towards her. ‘Take the pain away, Sam, just take it away,’ she pleads.

Dad puts his arm round Nana and leads her into the front room. I just lie here, staring at the empty doorway. This is not a nightmare. I am wide awake.