Читать книгу Coming Home - Annabel Kantaria - Страница 15

‘How was it when you went back to school?’ asked Miss Dawson. ‘It was after the summer holidays, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘So … six weeks? Do you think that was long enough?’

I sighed. How should I know? I sat back in the armchair and ate my biscuit. School was difficult, but home wasn’t much easier. Graham had been the only pupil from our school ever to have died and no one knew what to say to me, his kid sister. On my first day back, everyone had spoken in clichés. ‘Don’t worry. He wouldn’t have known what hit him,’ they’d said, way too graphically. ‘He’s in a happier place now. He’s looking down on you from heaven.’ My classmates repeated what they heard the adults say. A boy in Graham’s class even said, ‘Don’t worry. He’d have been happy that it was a BMW.’

Dazed, I’d nodded at people as they spun around me, all ‘Graham this, Graham that’.

‘When someone dies,’ I said to Miss Dawson, ‘why is it all about them? They’re not there any more. Graham couldn’t hear them saying all those things. I could. Why didn’t anyone ask how I was? I’m the one who’s still alive!’ I knitted a row furiously. ‘And now no one talks to me about Graham at all. It’s like he never existed. But sometimes I just want to talk about him.’

‘That’s what these sessions are about, Evie. You know I’m here to try and help.’

I forced myself to smile but my mouth wobbled. I looked down at the knitting on my lap. Miss Dawson hadn’t known Graham. How could she talk about him? I wanted to talk about him with someone who remembered the silly pranks he used to play, what his favourite food was, the fact that he was scared of Doctor Who.

‘I’d talk to Mum, but …’

On my first day back at school, I’d come home and, out of habit, I’d pushed open Graham’s door. The room had still smelled of him, as though his dusky boy-essence had permeated the carpet, the curtains and the duvet that Mum still hadn’t stripped from his bed. I’d lain down on his bed and hugged his pillow. For the first time since he’d died, I’d fallen into a deep and natural sleep.

I didn’t hear Mum come in but I’ll never forget the sound that came out of her mouth when she saw someone asleep in Graham’s bed. It was feral, animalistic and seemed to go on forever. Mum had grabbed handfuls of books from Graham’s shelf and hurled them at me, screaming ‘Get out! Get out! How dare you? How dare you try to fool me? Do you think I’m STUPID? Do you think I don’t know my SON IS DEAD?’ She’d collapsed on the floor and I’d slunk out, a part of me wishing it was me who’d died.

‘I’d talk to Mum,’ I told Miss Dawson. ‘But it’s not always easy.’