‘You’re missing work, aren’t you?’ Rob says.
Paul groans.
‘Let me do that,’ I say, reaching to grab the A4 pad from its drawer. I pull the pencil out of the ring-binder bit at the top, flip over to a clean sheet and quickly draw eight lines down the page.
‘Kit,’ Ali says, raising the iPad one-handed. ‘I’ve got it covered.’
‘This is quicker,’ I tell her, starting to scribble letter groups along the top of the page: Dad, Me, Hol … ‘Race you!’ I tell her, glancing up. Pri, Ali, Haz, Rob, Pol. Down the side of the page I start listing the various bits of the house, beginning with ‘At’ for Attic.
Ali places the iPad on the table. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘if it keeps you happy.’ She nods at the pad in front of me. ‘You’ve got all of us, yes?’ She leaves a space for me to confirm that I do, but I just keep on writing. ‘Then,’ she says, ‘you need all the places we can look, then some free space for other categories, like somebody who can liaise between all the rest, or … make the tea or something.’
‘Got it,’ I tell her.
‘Or we could do it like ants,’ Haze suggests.
We all look at him. ‘What?’ Guy says. I suppose somebody had to.
‘Yeah,’ Haze says. ‘Only, I saw this documentary, see? The ants don’t have, like, a plan between them, not like a proper, thought-out, like … plan, but the way they just sort of all mill about, right, it looks … it looks, like, totally random? And it sort of is, at first, but then they end up communicating with … like, chemicals, and these trails let them explore everywhere but then, like, concentrate on the bits where they need to, yeah? See?’
‘Not really,’ Pris says.
Ali looks back at me as I get to near the bottom of the page, writing OH (for Outhouse/s) 1, 2, 3 and Gar. There’s about an eighth of the page left for Any Other Business.
‘And maybe,’ Ali says, ‘another column for promising areas too big for one person to cover in the time that would benefit from further research and additional resources being brought to bear.’
‘Got you,’ I say, drawing another line down near the right margin.
‘But that’s what I was saying …’ Haze says in a small voice.
‘Might I make a suggestion?’ Guy says. ‘Given that this is my fucking house and home?’
‘What?’ Ali says.
I look at Dad, pencil poised.
He looks at me. ‘Let’s have a big fucking bonfire. Clear all the shit.’
Hol glances at the door of the bedroom. ‘You did okay, by the way,’ she tells me quietly. I raise my eyebrows. ‘Over breakfast,’ she says. ‘Good deflecting. Saying, “Now I’m blushing.” That worked.’
I might be starting to blush again now. ‘I’m getting better at this stuff,’ I agree. ‘That box ready?’
‘Ready to go. Take it away, young Kit.’
My principal role is liaison and logistics; this is what I’ve been tasked with. Mostly this means carrying boxes. I take the box down the stairs to where Guy sits in his wheelchair by the open back door in the kitchen porch. I plonk the relatively shallow cardboard box – it originally contained bananas – down on an upturned plastic crate I brought from my room to sit in front of Guy. He leans over, peers into the box. ‘Books,’ he says. ‘Charity shop.’
‘Righto,’ I say, lifting the box.
‘This you?’ he says, nodding at some of the mud and soil I left behind earlier, lying just outside the door.
‘Told you; I fell.’ I head for the garage to add this box to the couple already in the car.
‘Yeah,’ Haze says, pulling out a crumbling cardboard container from beneath a pile of old curtains. We’re in what Guy and I have always called the old outhouse, because it’s even more dilapidated than the others, but which for the purposes of our organised search we’re calling Outhouse Two. ‘I was sort of given … well, I was thinking, you know, that maybe Guy was getting us here to, you know, pass on some of his worldly goods or whatever. You know, rather than wait. Rather than involve the lawyers more than they need to be, know what I mean? Maybe tell us what he was handing on, to, like, you know, acknowledge what we’d all meant to each other. Or something. I don’t know.’
‘Yeah, well,’ I say.
I peel back the flaps on top of the box. Inside, there is a lot of wood and fabric stuff, like bread bins, chopping boards and light shades.
‘Do you think Guy’s got any surprises lined up, or anything?’ Haze asks me.
I think about this. ‘No,’ I tell him.
‘Look at these! We can’t throw these out!’
‘It’s not really throwing out,’ I tell Pris. ‘We’re just going to recycle some.’
Pris is in Guy’s room, with full permission to get rid of any clothes she deems fit for disposal. She has a laundry basket for things to be recycled and a big cardboard box for things to be burned. She’s holding up some old stuff; things I think must be from the time of Guy’s parents. A white silk scarf, fronded, a slinky dress of silver, frayed, an old pair of yellow cords, so thick they look ploughed, an electric-blue dressing gown with vivid, colourful Chinese decorations, delicately pitted by tiny burn holes down the front.
‘Do you want to take anything?’ I ask Pris. ‘For you?’
‘Hmm, I don’t know. I’d mostly only be taking them for other people. Friends.’
‘Shall I get another box?’
‘Do you think these would fit Rick?’ she asks, holding up the pair of yellow cords.
They look big and baggy and old-fashioned. ‘Yes,’ I tell her, sticking strictly to remit.
‘Hmm.’ She holds them out in front of her, puts her head to one side. This is an action humans share with dogs. I’ve never worked out why either species employs it.
Technically I’m still waiting for an answer to my question about getting another box; however, I’m starting to think Pris missed it somehow. Eventually I say, ‘Do you think Rick is a thick yellow cord kind of person?’
Pris first purses her lips, then sort of shifts her whole compressed mouth to one side. She frowns. ‘Maybe not,’ she concedes. ‘I’ve never seen him in anything like this. But that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t try something different, does it?’ She looks at me.
‘Does he have much that would go with them?’ I ask her.
She shakes her head. ‘Not really. Need to be part of a whole new outfit.’
‘Hmm.’
She puts them down on the bed. ‘Do you like my new man, Kit?’
‘Rick?’
‘Well, duh.’
‘He seems perfectly nice.’
‘You don’t think he’s …?’
I look at her.
My initial assumption – naturally, I think – is that Pris isn’t sure what she wants to ask me, but then I remember one of those handy-tips-when-having-an-adult-conversation I got from either Hol or Mrs Willoughby (maybe both): sometimes when people leave a question like that hanging it’s not because they’ve suddenly been distracted or have simply forgotten what it was they set out to ask; they’re doing it deliberately (or instinctively) because they want to see what you think. They want to know what you believe they were about to ask; either that or they’re giving you permission to raise something that was on your mind anyway.
This applies especially with a question couched as Pris’s question was, as ‘You don’t think …?’ The implication is that the person is worried that you think badly of somebody or something they care about. If she’d said, ‘But don’t you think …?’ then the meaning would most likely be reversed. People use this latter form when they think you might be thinking too well of somebody or something they believe needs criticising.
The trouble is, I don’t really have any strong or deep feelings for Rick either way, so I can’t really help here.
‘Don’t think he’s what?’ I ask, resorting to the kind of conversational Route One tactic I’d have used in the old days regardless. It still has its place.
&nb
sp; ‘I don’t know,’ Pris says, lifting an old black cape with a maroon lining and dusting something off it. ‘I thought maybe, you being, you know …’ She sighs. ‘A sort of independent observer, you might be able to judge whether he … what the others think of him, or what he … how he appears compared to the rest of us, you know?’ She looks up at me briefly, goes back to brushing at the dark cape.
I have a think. ‘He’s younger than you lot.’
‘Do you think they resent that?’
‘No.’
She looks at me. I get the impression this may have been the wrong answer somehow, even though it seemed the obvious right answer to me. ‘Really?’ she says.
‘Well, I don’t think so.’
‘He’s not that much younger,’ she says, almost to herself. She smiles at me. ‘I suppose I worry they could look down on him. Because, I don’t know. Because he didn’t go to uni. I mean, he could have, but his career, you know, just took him along a different path.’
‘I’m not going to uni,’ I tell her.
‘No?’
‘Probably not.’
‘Some people can be a bit, you know, snobbish. Towards people who haven’t.’
I shrug. ‘Their problem.’
She sort of stares at me. Her eyes go wide for a bit. ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’
‘He seemed okay,’ I tell Pris. Which is truthful, though of course we all have our own definitions of what ‘okay’ means, and we each might have several different definitions, depending on context. Which allows a lot of room for ambiguity and even misunderstanding. I sort of disapprove of such terminological inexactitude and laxity, frankly, but Hol assures me sometimes this sort of leeway is exactly what people are looking for, especially in a situation where they hope to be reassured.
You get to say something vague that means one thing to you – maybe something not really that complimentary – and the other person is allowed to interpret it as being entirely positive and supportive. As long as they don’t actually misquote you or cite your opinion, as interpreted, as the whole reason for a subsequent, disastrous course of action, this is regarded as a good outcome for both parties.
‘Rick, I mean,’ I add, realising I’ve left a bit of a gap here. ‘He seemed okay.’ I try hard to think of what Hol would want me to ask here. ‘Is he … nice? Is he a decent guy? To you?’
Pris is nodding, still looking at the surface of the cape and picking at it. ‘Yes. Yeah, he’s sweet. Can be really funny, once you get to know him. Lots of mates. And he gets on really well with Mhyra. You know; my little girl.’
‘Yeah, of course. She’s …’
‘Hmm?’
‘She is … your only child, is that right?’
‘Uh-huh,’ Pris says, frowning at me.
‘Well, there you go,’ I say.
‘It’s just,’ Pris says, going back to picking at the cape, ‘we’re such a … bunch of Heathers, you know?’ She smiles at me.
‘Heathers?’ I say, not getting whatever it is I’m supposed to be getting.
‘Film?’ Pris says. ‘Heathers. Winona Ryder, Christian Slater?’
‘Not seen it.’
‘Well, long time since I did, I suppose, but I just remember it being about this clique of really bitchy girls, all called Heather. And sometimes I wonder if we’re a bit like that.’
As recently as only a year or so ago, I’d have said something obtuse here like, ‘But you’re not all girls.’ However, now I’m a bit less stubborn about such things and I’ve accepted Hol’s point that you have to partner people in conversations; it’s generally supposed to be a cooperative, not an adversarial, process. You’re helping each other to feel your way to some sort of shared meaning, not jousting from either side of a fence.
Unless it’s Ali, and sometimes Rob, and other people like that, who often do appear to be trying to score points off you. Then the rules are a bit different.
‘Swings and roundabouts,’ I tell Pris. ‘It’s good being part of a gang or a group, but there are negatives too. Bound to be.’
This is close to something Mrs Willoughby’s said, though I also know a little about this kind of thing from first-hand, because I’ve usually – well, always, so far – been on the outside of any given gang, group or clique. Which I don’t mind, because I think you see more as an outsider. (‘Yeah, you see more but you feel less,’ was Hol’s reply when I told her about this.)
‘I’ve got lots of other friends,’ Pris tells me. ‘People from work, from dance classes, pals from my local. Too many, I think, sometimes … But it’s like you always need to come back to the people you sort of half grew up, half matured, with, from uni days, from then, to …’
‘Calibrate,’ I suggest, after a decent interval, as Pris stares unseeing at the cape in her hands.
‘Calibrate?’
‘You calibrate against a known reference point or standard.’ I shrug.
She nods, looks away. ‘Yeah, we’re always measuring ourselves against others, aren’t we?’
It’s not quite what I meant, but if that’s the point she needed to reach, I can’t really contradict her. She’s brushing the cape smoothly now, with the nap, as though trying to soothe it. Her phone goes.
‘Hey,’ she says. ‘Glo; everything okay?’ There’s a pause, then her face relaxes and she sees me smile. ‘Have you now?’ she says. ‘My. Who could that be?’ Another short pause, then, ‘That wouldn’t be a certain snooky-wook, name of Mhyra, would it? Oh! Is that you? Is that my little shnuggy-wuggums, sounding all grown up already?’
‘I’ll get that box,’ I tell her.
‘Can’t seem to pick up the WiFi here,’ Ali says, when I visit her in Outhouse One. It’s cold and damp in this old stone shed of a place and she wears a padded shirt and a thickly quilted gilet of shiny electric blue.
‘WiFi?’ I say, not wanting to give anything away.
‘Yeah,’ Ali says, bringing an ancient, sagging cardboard box down from a shelf. She places it on an old gateleg table she’s opened up. ‘Saw you had broadband and a hub, in your room,’ she tells me, opening up the box.
‘Oh. You were …’ I listen to my voice trail away. I locked my room this morning when I knew we were going to be conducting this search, after assuring people I knew it inside out and that it was one place where the tape most certainly wasn’t. It was Ali I was thinking of, specifically, when I locked it.
‘Oh, I popped in the other night, looking for a spare socket to recharge something, you know,’ Ali says. ‘But I was admiring your games set-up and I saw you had broadband connected and just wondered how come there was no WiFi signal anywhere.’ She smiles at me. The cardboard box in front of her is full of tapes, but they’re the wrong sort; ancient reel-to-reel audiotapes in plastic cases, probably from when Guy was in local radio. Ali starts flicking through them anyway.
‘Yeah, there is no WiFi,’ I tell her.
‘Really?’ Ali says. ‘How does that work? Or not work?’
‘Mostly by me not turning it on.’
‘That’s a little selfish, isn’t it?’ Ali says immediately, as though she already knew this, had gamed our exchange and prepared her reply.
‘Yes, it is a little,’ I tell her. ‘I need it for playing HeroSpace. Paid for it myself.’
‘Well, that’s very enterprising of you, but don’t you think you could afford to share a little? Hol’s indoctrination of socialist values not taken fully after all, hmm?’ she asks.
I just stare at her.
‘Wouldn’t cramp your style as a games wizard too much to turn it on, would it? Bet we’d all be grateful.’
‘You’re all going home tomorrow.’
‘Mm. I suppose. What about Guy? Wouldn’t he like to have WiFi?’
‘Probably not. He’s not that bothered. Have you seen his phone? Hasn’t even got a camera. Its only game is Break Out. It’s a joke. And he’s never really got on with computers.’
‘Does he know?’
I could pr
etend I don’t know what she means, but I suspect there’s no point. ‘No, he doesn’t.’
‘Oh,’ Ali says, as though I’ve just disappointed her. I’m giving her quite a good hard stare but it’s unappreciated; she’s still flicking through the tape cases, her finger knocking them delicately from one angle of lean to another. ‘I see,’ she adds.
‘But I’m sure he’d love to have something else to dig me up about,’ I tell her. This is a bit bold, but I’m pleased with it; it sounded quite adult. I think Hol would approve.
Ali gets to the end of the audiotapes and closes the box again. She leans her elbows on it, smiles at me. ‘Do you know where the tape is, Kit?’ she asks.
‘I wouldn’t have let all this happen if I did,’ I tell her, gesturing around. I am not blushing. I think this is a true statement. It is also an instruction. Just think steely, I tell myself. ‘I don’t need you guys to do all this. I could clear the place myself. I’d rather, in a way.’
‘What was that you were clearing from the room with all the papers, into your room?’
Good grief, the woman sees everything. Yesterday evening I shifted the year’s worth of copies of the Bew Valley and Ormisdale Chronicle and Post out of the upstairs room where I’d left them drying and into my bedroom, so they wouldn’t get thrown out. ‘Old newspapers,’ I tell her.
‘Lot of old newspapers.’
‘Fifty-two,’ I say. ‘One year. From the one with the announcement of my birth, back.’
‘Oh,’ Ali says.
‘I thought there might be some sort of clue in the papers that would help me work out who my mum might be.’
‘I thought she was a Jewish princess from NYC,’ Ali says. ‘From this fabulously wealthy family of ultra-strict financiers; some naive exchange student Guy seduced while her bodyguard’s back was turned, bringing shame on the whole family. So they couldn’t possibly keep the baby. Something like that?’ She’s shaking her head, frowning. ‘No?’
‘It depends who you talk to, and that seems to depend on what Guy’s told that particular person.’ I pause, look thoughtful. ‘Though that is a new one. Jewish princess. That would make me Jewish, too.’
‘It would?’
‘It’s a matrilineal … faith … inheritance thing.’