Читать книгу Sixteen, Sixty-One - Natalie Lucas - Страница 11

On 20th October 2001, I walked to Matthew’s after school as usual. My dad was still at work so it was easy to sneak away and I left a note saying I’d be out for dinner. Annabelle was visiting her mother for the evening, so Matthew wrapped his arms around me as soon as the door was closed. We kissed as if we hadn’t seen each other yesterday and the day before. With hours before us, there was no hurry. Matthew was making shepherd’s pie and there was an Eccles cake waiting for me with a pot of tea ready to be poured. We played cards and talked about books until my foot beneath the table aroused enough interest for Matthew to pull me from my chair and shoo me upstairs.

In the attic, we fucked. I don’t remember how. Perhaps that was the day he bent me over the bed and I cried as his cock dug painful holes in my abdomen. Or perhaps it was the time I knelt to suck his dick and guided my hand behind his balls only to find shit on my finger when I was done. Or perhaps I enjoyed it, despite not orgasming. Either way, we finished and dressed and padded downstairs to shovel potatoes and gravy onto our tongues. Annabelle came home at some point and we divided a bottle of wine before retiring to the living room. When Friends ended, Annabelle made a show of yawning and said she was going to bed. I scurried to the other sofa and folded myself into Matthew’s arms, flicking to the music channels hoping to find the Britney Spears video that turned me on. As Matthew was slipping his hand beneath my T-shirt and fingering the fabric of my bra, knuckles rapped at the front door.

Matthew snapped his hand away and stood up in one motion, then strode into the hall, smoothing his hair.

‘John!’ I heard from the other room.

‘Um, hello Matthew. Is Natalie here?’

‘She is. Would you like to come in?’ Matthew’s voice was liquid, subtly patronising yet unquestionably friendly.

I moved into the hallway. My dad looked distracted, annoyed even.

‘Nat, I’ve been trying your phone for hours.’

‘Oh, sorry,’ I muttered, realising my bag was in the kitchen and I probably hadn’t turned my profile off silent since school.

‘Your mum called. Nana’s in hospital—’

‘What?!’ I shrilled, as if shoving all the concern I should have felt in the past few hours into one short sentence.

‘She seems to have collapsed in the supermarket. Your mother says it’s possibly a stroke. I’ve been trying to get hold of you.’

‘I’m sorry, I left a note. My phone’s on vibrate,’ I muttered guiltily. ‘Is she going to be okay?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think it’s looking good.’ My dad looked apologetic. ‘James is at ours, will you come home?’

‘Of course.’

I darted along the hall to get my coat and bag, and then left with only the briefest of waves to Matthew, hovering helplessly in his study doorway.

As we walked back to the house, I begged my dad to drive us to the hospital immediately. I imagined my mother all alone in some waiting room as blue-suited nurses rushed in and out of an operating room, my nana lying on her back, her face as pale as her permed hair and today’s carefully selected jewellery gleaming rudely against a dishevelled hospital gown.

Trying to calm me, my dad explained it would take thirty minutes to get to the hospital and that my mum had said there might not be that much time, that we should wait for news; that it didn’t bear thinking about, but there was no point making the trip if she was going to die in the next half hour.

I cried of course. I could hardly see the tiles on the floor as we stepped into the house. My brother was a smudge as he offered a shy hello and asked if I wanted a glass of water.

The phone rang at 11.46.

‘Sweetie, Nana’s passed away … No, it’s okay, there was nothing you could have done anyway. It would have happened before you got here … I’m fine … I have to sort some things out here and go back to her house, but then I’ll come home … Don’t wait up … Honestly, I’ll be okay … Goodnight darling … I love you too.’

I crawled into bed and saw a strobe of images in the dark. I saw my nana falling in the bread aisle, reaching out for the handle of her trolley and crashing into a display of muffins. My mum struggling for breath as the paramedics wheeled her mother into the ambulance. The blinking of a sad coffee machine opposite plastic chairs in the relatives’ room. A man in a paper suit and white shoes telling my mum they did everything they could. Her hand wrapped around the payphone, the dial tone buzzing from the receiver after I’d hung up. The walk back to her car, seeing Nana’s coat on the passenger seat, entering the house where the afternoon teacup still bore lipstick, the fridge still hummed and the VCR had kicked in to record Midsomer Murders. I saw my mum pacing around the house, flicking switches off and trying to avoid looking at knick-knacks. Locking the door behind her and sitting in her car, resting her head upon the steering wheel and wondering how she could drive down the dual carriageway with so many tears in her eyes. Finally getting home at almost two in the morning and looking in on my brother, tangled in his sheets and snoring lightly. Glancing at my old room and wondering if I too was sound asleep at my father’s house. Turning to her own bed and sobbing quietly into her pillow because her mummy was gone and nobody was there to hold her. Then I saw myself, writhing in Matthew’s sheets and laughing at a sordid suggestion. My foot sliding up his trouser leg as we ate and his lips nibbling my ear while I selected a CD. I saw my phone vibrating furiously in an empty room and my tongue forming a lie for my father about playing cards.

As I slept, my sheets turned to chains; I felt my lies wrap themselves around my limbs and imagined my nana in a sterile room, watching me on a projected screen, seeing my thoughts and knowing my crudest acts. I woke in a sweat and cried as I stared into the bathroom mirror.

I called my mum as soon as it was light and offered to help her sort everything out, but she told me to go to school, she’d be fine. I ignored his emails and didn’t return to Matthew’s for a fortnight.