Читать книгу The Neighbours - Hannah Mary McKinnon - Страница 22

THEN ABBY

SIMPLY RED’S STARS played softly in the background of the Kettle Club Tea & Coffee Shop, lending the place a slightly cooler atmosphere than it actually deserved. Tom sat at the old wooden bar, a mug of steaming hot chocolate in front of him, complete with marshmallows, whipped cream and chocolate drizzle. I watched him sink his spoon into the fluffy top layer, take a big scoop and put it in his mouth.

“Mmmm.” His eyes closed for a second. “Despite your dubious music choices, you make the best bloody hot chocolate in the world, Shabby. No wonder Stu asked you to run the place.”

“Thanks,” I said, thinking that at almost twenty-two, perfect beverage-making was about the only thing I could put on my anorexic-looking list of work experience. “You know, you’ll give yourself a heart attack with that stuff,” I added, then told myself to shush or I’d sound like our mother before my next birthday.

Before Tom could comment, the door opened and an elderly couple walked in. I watched as the man held the door for his companion before popping their umbrella into the copper stand. He slid out her chair, helped her sit down, and as he said something to her, she chuckled and covered her mouth with her pale, slim fingers.

I walked over to their table. “Good afternoon,” I said with a smile.

“Good afternoon to you, young lady.” The man’s blue eyes were bloodshot and watery, but surrounded by laughter lines that could tell a thousand tales.

“Can I get you some coffee, or tea?”

“Two cups of tea, please, love,” the woman answered softly as she set her purple knitted beret on the chair next to her and patted her gray curls back into place. “And two sticky buns if you have any. Our George gets grumpy if he doesn’t have his sticky bun.”

I grinned. “Well, we can’t have that now, can we? Two teas and sticky buns it is. Back in a sec.” As I turned I noticed how they’d reached for each other across the table, their worn fingers already entwined. Six months ago I would’ve demanded Tom pass me the sick bucket. Now all I saw was Liam and me in sixty years. It was crazily weird. Wonderfully, crazily weird. As if he’d found a treasure chest of feelings buried so deep in my heart, even I hadn’t known it was there.

After I’d brought the couple’s order over to them I returned to the bar from where Tom eyed me with a barely concealed grin as he licked his spoon. “I saw how you looked at them,” he said.

I popped some dirty cups in the sink. “No idea what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, right. You’re going all mushy... Anyway, how are things with Liam?”

“Great. He’s busy with work. The bank’s given him more responsibility already.”

“Has he told them about losing his license?”

“Yeah. He didn’t have much choice seeing as he’s supposed to travel to the different branches. God, he was so worried and—”

“No kidding. I still can’t believe how much over the speed limit he was, he—”

I waved a hand. “Yeah, yeah. Anyway, they didn’t give him that much grief in the end. Obviously it can’t happen again, but they still think he’s amazingly talented.” Ugh. I was gushing. I cleared my throat. “How’s Sophia?”

He waggled a finger. “Oh, no, don’t change the subject. Have you asked him yet?”

“No. I don’t want to spook him.”

“Pah, pah, pah.” Tom put up his hands. “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but—”

“And you’re practically living together anyway. He hates his flatmates. He’ll never live with his parents again—”

“Not likely. I’ve never met such bigots. If you live south of the river they think you’re a foreigner.”

“Well, then,” Tom said. “It’s simple. Ask him to move in. Think of the money you’ll save.”

“Sounds like you want to move in with him.”

Tom flicked his spoon at me and I ducked, narrowly avoiding a well-aimed chocolaty milk blob that splattered on the floor. “I wish I could move out, believe me,” he said. “And as soon as I’ve finished this bloody economics degree, I will. Until then...”

“You get to live with the Wicked Witch of the East.” I grinned, wiping up his deliberate spill with a piece of kitchen paper.

Tom laughed. “Mum’s not that bad.”

“Not to you, she isn’t.” My smile disappeared. “She hates me.”

“Knock it off. She doesn’t hate you.”

“Yes she does.” I took a breath. “Because I remind her of Dad.”

Tom pulled a face. “You’ve said that before. But if it was true, she’d hate, uh, I mean she wouldn’t get along with me. I’m the guy. I must remind her way more of Dad than you do.”

“I don’t think gender has anything to do with it.” I paused. “I’m pretty sure I have his mannerisms, you know? Facial expressions, gestures, that kind of thing. At least that’s what Mum accused me of.” I plopped a tea bag into a mug. “But I’m not like him. I’ve never been unfaithful. I wouldn’t cheat on Liam. I don’t have a gambling habit. And I’d definitely never walk out on my partner.” I sighed. “I love Liam.”

He grinned. “Told you. You’re going all mushy.”

“I’m being serious. I mean I really love him. And it scares the hell out of me.”

“Why?”

I threw up my hands. “Why not? What if this is another relationship I mess up? I don’t want that to happen... I’d do anything for him, Tommy. Anything.”

Tom tut-tutted and rolled his eyes. “Except ask him to move in with you.”

I flicked him with my dishcloth. “We’ve not even been going out six months. Anyway... How is Sophia? And I mean really.” He pulled a face and I raised my eyebrows. “Arguing again?”

“Yeah.”

“So she’s still possessive, paranoid and, well, a bit odd?”

“Sounds about right.” Tom laughed.

I flung my hands into the air again. “Why do you bother? You hate conflict.”

“Well, that’s not surprising, is it?” Tom put a hand over his heart. “My poor soul’s been badly traumatized by all the fights you and Mum had.”

“And that’s exactly why I moved out. Five years later and I can still hear her shouting at me.” I nudged Tom with my elbow. “But Mum loves you, so her heart’s only half made of stone. Or maybe it’s two sizes too small.” Tom didn’t grin like I thought he would, so I added, “Like the Grinch who stole Christmas. Dad used to read us that book. Remember?”

He kept his eyes downcast and his shoulders hunched, looking like an abandoned puppy standing in the rain waiting to be let inside. “I wish I remembered him,” he said quietly. “Properly, I mean. I wish we knew where he was.”

“I know. So do I.”

I shook my head as I recalled the day my father had walked out, which had been ordinary in every other way. Everything about that day was still vivid, almost as if someone had etched it all, right down to the tiniest detail, permanently in my mind. A definitive marker of the day everything changed.

It happened during the school holidays, a few weeks after Tom’s ninth—my tenth—birthday. It seemed “Upside Down” by Diana Ross was on a constant loop on the radio, and I knew all the words by heart, singing them as loud as I could at every opportunity.

“Stop singing that!” Tom had moaned the day before, flicking me on the back of the neck each time I broke into the chorus. But it was one of those earworms you couldn’t get out of your head. Even walking around the house, humming The Muppets tune didn’t help. Although—and this delighted me—I noticed Tom couldn’t stop humming that now, which was payback for flicking me in the first place.

The boy I liked sat on the park swings with me the day Dad left. Derek Stokes stood barely taller than me despite being almost two years older. But he had big, emerald green eyes and the cutest half-moon dimples I’d ever seen. I greedily snatched up any and every glance he threw my way, storing them so deep in my memory, I could still recall them over a decade later. Derek really did turn me inside out, and made all my feelings go around and around.

Even my recollection of the weather was clear. I could almost feel the drizzle that had softly fallen on my cheeks as Tom and I walked home from the park. See the billowing clouds that hung around in the air until the evening, when, finally, the sun broke through. Whenever that happened I thought it meant good things were on the way. After all, if the sun always won against the rain there had to be hope for everything else. There had to be.

We ate supper. The four of us—Mum, Dad, Tom and I—sat at our square table with the vase of daffodils in the middle, and the red-and-white-checkered plastic tablecloth, which had a cigarette burn on the left side, three squares up. I couldn’t say what we had to eat the evening before, or the one after, but that day we had bowls of steaming homemade tomato soup, buttered bread, thick slices of cheddar cheese and sweet gherkins. Lots and lots of sweet gherkins.

Mum wasn’t unusually quiet. Dad didn’t shout. In fact, they had a perfectly civil conversation about politics. My mother had trouble believing an actor could be the President of the United States, whereas my father insisted Reagan was the man to rule the Land of Opportunity.

Tom and I didn’t care about politics. We pulled faces at each other when our parents weren’t looking and chattered about what to do with the rest of the summer holidays. Neither of us wanted to go back to school; it would get in the way of playing hide-and-seek until the streetlights came on—later if we could get away with it—or playing circus with Mrs. Bennett’s golden Labrador and my silver-and-pink-striped Hula-Hoop.

“Let’s go outside,” Tom said as he licked his bowl clean of the last remnants of soup, leaving an orangey moustache above his lips. “On our bikes. We can roll over the smiley ball.”

He didn’t need to ask twice. As soon as Mum had given her approval in the way of a curt nod, we hastily shoved our dishes in the kitchen sink and ran to the front door, ignoring our mother’s instructions to be careful.

Tom had found a yellow ball a few days earlier, and we’d drawn a big smiley face on it with black felt-tip pen. We’d pushed the ball into a hole in the middle of our street, so only the top half stuck out, then we’d driven over it again and again, laughing and wobbling on our bicycles. We both knew one of us would fall. That was the whole point. The question was who would first. My brother probably had a bet on with the other kids it would be me. He was right.

The seventh time I drove over the ball that night it burst with a loud ka-boom. I jumped. The bike swayed, my hands hit the brakes too hard and I lost my balance and tumbled to the ground.

Tom laughed until he heard me crying and saw the blood on my knees. He jumped off his bike and ran over.

“Gross,” he said, looking at my leg.

I cried harder, big fat tears rolling over my cheeks.

“I can see a bone,” he said and I gasped, then howled. Tom laughed again. “Nah. It’s a pebble.”

“Not funny,” I wailed.

He grinned at me. “You’d better stop crying or Mum will cut your leg off.”

I wiped my runny nose with the back of my hand, leaving a wet streak from my knuckle to the middle of my arm. “Not crying. Help me up.”

Despite Tom being a year younger, he was already freakishly tall and strong, too. He put his hands around my waist and pulled me up. I tried to ignore the blood leaking out of my knees and running down my legs, staining my dusty socks.

“I’ll take your bike,” Tom said. “Okay?”

“S’fine,” I said and limped home. And that’s when we saw Dad coming out of the house with a suitcase in each hand. He looked up at us and stopped walking, then put the luggage down and held out his arms.

“Where are you going?” Tom said as he hugged Dad.

“Away for a while.”

“Can I come?”

“No, little fella.” Dad ruffled my brother’s hair. “You need to stay here. Look after your mum and your sister for me.”

I looked at my father, frowned when I noticed the tears in his eyes. “When are you coming back, Daddy?”

My father pulled both of us close and kissed the tops of our heads. “I’m not sure, sweetheart. Soon.” His eyes quickly traveled toward the front door. “I’d better go.”

He released us from his grip and stuffed the suitcases in the trunk of our old VW Beetle. Another hug, another smile. More promises he’d see us soon, and then he left, sticking his arm out of the rolled-down window, waving as he drove away.

It was only as he disappeared around the corner that I realized he hadn’t stopped to question the blood running down my leg, hadn’t asked if I was okay.

Tom and I raced inside to find Mum where we’d left her, sitting at the kitchen table, which had already been cleared and wiped down. When she looked up at us, her face void of expression and with what appeared to be a fresh coat of makeup, the only thing she told us was, “Time for bed.”

* * *

“I suppose Dad must have had his reasons for not contacting us,” Tom said quietly, snapping me out of the memory and back to the coffee shop.

I smiled at him. Tom, my baby brother who was exactly a year younger than me—to the day. He’d spent his first few weeks in an incubator because he’d arrived two months early. When he told people it was because he’d been in a rush to meet his big sister, it made me feel so proud.

I was about to reply when the elderly couple got up. The man pointed at the change he’d left on the table next to their used plates and cups, and they both waved at us as they walked out, leaving the shop empty except for me and Tom.

“Mum probably told him never to set foot on her doorstep again or she’d turn him into a toad or something.” I shrugged. “Or maybe he just didn’t care.”

“Do you think he’s still alive? People don’t disappear like that, do they?”

“Well, with the amount of money Mum said he owed... I don’t know. Maybe we’ll find out one day.” I patted his arm. “In any case, she still lives in the same house, so it’s not like we’re difficult to find.”

The coffee shop door opened, and Liam stepped inside, his shirt speckled with rain droplets. As he walked toward us, my heart thumped against my rib cage like a beating drum.

“Ask him to move in with you, or I’m telling,” Tom hissed out of the corner of his mouth.

“Do that and you’ll go straight to hell,” I whispered back through clenched teeth.

“No worries, Shabby,” Tom said with a laugh. “I’ll see you down there.”

I laughed, too, as I hugged Liam, thinking there was no way Tom would ever go to hell.

But something inside me whispered that I probably would.