Читать книгу Coming Home - Annabel Kantaria - Страница 7

I hated seeing the grief counsellor, but I couldn’t get out of it. My teachers, unsure of how to handle me, had contacted social services and I’d been assigned weekly meetings with Miss Dawson, a sensible-looking lady to whom I was reluctant to speak. I blamed her for that: she should have known better than to tell me to think of her as my favourite auntie; everyone knew I didn’t have any aunties.

Every week, Miss Dawson arranged a couple of chairs to one side, near a window that looked out over the playing field. I could see my classmates kicking about in the drizzle. As far as I was concerned, the best bit about the counselling was that I was allowed access to the staff biscuit tin.

I didn’t have much to say to Miss Dawson, though. We’d spent the first two sessions locked in silence as I’d eyed the biscuits. Sometimes under the digestives I could see the edge of a custard cream—once, even a Jammie Dodger. But Miss Dawson didn’t like me rummaging in the tin, so I had to be sure I picked right the first time. A biscuit lucky dip.

Miss Dawson doodled flowers on the clipboard she kept on her knee.

‘Why won’t you talk to me?’ she sighed after we passed the first twenty minutes of our third session together marked only by my munching. I looked at her. How stupid was she?

‘You can’t change what happened, can you?’ I hadn’t realised I was going to shout, and biscuit crumbs sprayed from my lips. ‘You can’t stop it from happening! So what’s the point of all this?’ I jumped up and hurled my biscuit at the wall. The sudden violence, the release, felt good. ‘It’s just to make the adults feel like they’re doing something! But don’t you get it? You can’t do anything! It’s too late!’

I threw myself back into the chair and glowered at her, breathing hard. What was the point? Miss Dawson’s hand had stopped mid-doodle. She locked eyes with me but she didn’t say anything. As we glared at each other, her eyes narrowed, she chewed on the end of her biro and then she nodded to herself, her lips spreading in a little smile as if she’d had some sort of epiphany.

‘OK, Evie,’ she said slowly. Her voice had changed. It wasn’t all sympathetic now. It was brisk, businesslike. I liked that more. She rummaged in her bag and pulled out a tangle of blue wool stabbed through with two knitting needles. ‘I know what we’re going to do, Evie. We’re not going to talk: we’re going to knit.’

‘I don’t know how to knit.’

‘I’m going to teach you.’

She pulled her chair over to mine, arranged the needles in my hand and showed me the repetitive movements I needed to make to produce a line of stitches. It was fiddly and unnatural, and it took all my concentration. For the first time since June, there was no space in my head for Graham. By the end of the session, I’d knitted five rows; by the following week, a whole strip.

I was eight when I learned to knit. I haven’t stopped since.