‘Are you sure I can’t get you something, love?’ Mum appeared at my side with a cup of tea. There was nothing in our family that couldn’t be improved by a cup of tea, allegedly.
‘No. Not hungry, thanks.’
I saw the way she glanced at Dad. I knew that later on there would be private mutterings that the Traynors were working me too hard, that the strain of looking after such an invalid was proving too much. I knew they would blame themselves for encouraging me to take the job.
I would have to let them think they were right.
Paradoxically, the following day Will was on good form – unusually talkative, opinionated, belligerent. He talked, possibly more than he had talked on any previous day. It was as if he wanted to spar with me, and was disappointed when I wouldn’t play.
‘So when are you going to finish this hatchet job, then?’
I had been tidying the living room. I looked up from plumping the sofa cushions. ‘What?’
‘My hair. I’m only half done. I look like one of those Victorian orphans. Or some Hoxton eejit.’ He turned his head so that I could better see my handiwork. ‘Unless this is one of your alternative style statements.’
‘You want me to keep cutting?’
‘Well, it seemed to keep you happy. And it would be nice not to look like I belong in an asylum.’
I fetched a towel and scissors in silence.
‘Nathan is definitely happier now I apparently look like a bloke,’ he said. ‘Although he did point out that, having restored my face to its former state, I will now need shaving every day.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘You don’t mind, do you? Weekends I’ll just have to put up with designer stubble.’
I couldn’t talk to him. I found it difficult even to meet his eye. It was like finding out your boyfriend had been unfaithful. I felt, weirdly, as if he had betrayed me.
‘Clark?’
‘Hmm?’
‘You’re having another unnervingly quiet day. What happened to “chatty to the point of vaguely irritating?”’
‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘Running Man again? What’s he done now? He hasn’t gone and run off, has he?’
‘No.’ I took a soft slice of Will’s hair between my index and middle fingers and lifted the blades of the scissors to trim what lay exposed above them. They stilled in my hand. How would they do it? Would they give him an injection? Was it medicine? Or did they just leave you in a room with a load of razors?
‘You look tired. I wasn’t going to say anything when you came in, but – hell – you look terrible.’
‘Oh.’
How did they assist someone who couldn’t move their own limbs? I found myself gazing down at his wrists, which were always covered by long sleeves. I had assumed for weeks that this was because he felt the cold more than we did. Another lie.
‘Clark?’
‘Yes?’
I was glad I was behind him. I didn’t want him to see my face.
He hesitated. Where the back of his neck had been covered by hair, it was even paler than the rest of his skin. It looked soft and white and oddly vulnerable.
‘Look, I’m sorry about my sister. She was … she was very upset, but it didn’t give her the right to be rude. She’s a bit direct sometimes. Doesn’t know how much she rubs people up the wrong way.’ He paused. ‘It’s why she likes living in Australia, I think.’
‘You mean, they tell each other the truth?’
‘What?’
‘Nothing. Lift your head up, please.’
I snipped and combed, working my way methodically around his head until every single hair was chopped or trimmed and all that remained was a fine sprinkling around his feet.
It all became clear to me by the end of the day. While Will was watching television with his father, I took a sheet of A4 paper from the printer and a pen from the jar by the kitchen window and wrote down what I wanted to say. I folded the paper, found an envelope, and left it on the kitchen table, addressed to his mother.
When I left for the evening, Will and his father were talking. Actually, Will was laughing. I paused in the hallway, my bag over my shoulder, listening. Why would he laugh? What could possibly provoke mirth given that he had just a matter of weeks before he took his own life?
‘I’m off,’ I called through the doorway, and started walking.
‘Hey, Clark –’ he began, but I had already closed the door behind me.
I spent the short bus ride trying to work out what I was going to tell my parents. They would be furious that I had left what they would see as a perfectly suitable and well-paid job. After her initial shock my mother would look pained and defend me, suggesting that it had all been too much. My father would probably ask why I couldn’t be more like my sister. He often did, even though I was not the one who ruined her life by getting pregnant and having to rely on the rest of the family for financial support and babysitting. You weren’t allowed to say anything like that in our house because, according to my mother, it was like implying that Thomas wasn’t a blessing. And all babies were God’s blessing, even those who said bugger quite a lot, and whose presence meant that half the potential wage earners in our family couldn’t actually go and get a decent job.
I would not be able to tell them the truth. I knew I owed Will and his family nothing, but I wouldn’t inflict the curious gaze of the neighbourhood on him.
All these thoughts tumbled around my head as I got off the bus and walked down the hill. And then I got to the corner of our road and heard the shouting, felt the slight vibration in the air, and it was all briefly forgotten.
A small crowd had gathered around our house. I picked up my pace, afraid that something had happened, but then I saw my parents on the porch, peering up, and realized it wasn’t our house at all. It was just the latest in a long series of small wars that characterized our neighbours’ marriage.
That Richard Grisham was not the most faithful of husbands was hardly news in our street. But judging by the scene in his front garden, it might have been to his wife.
‘You must have thought I was bloody stupid. She was wearing your T-shirt! The one I had made for you for your birthday!’
‘Baby … Dympna … it’s not what you think.’
‘I went in for your bloody Scotch eggs! And there she was, wearing it! Bold as brass! And I don’t even like Scotch eggs!’
I slowed my pace, pushing my way through the small crowd until I was able to get to our gate, watching as Richard ducked to avoid a DVD player. Next came a pair of shoes.