Something Like Breathing E-Book

Angela Readman

• Herausgeber: And Other Stories
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 326

Beschreibung

It's the 1950s, and Lorrie is unimpressed when her family moves to the remote Scottish island where her grandad runs a whisky distillery. She befriends Sylvie, the shy girl next door: 'The slightest smile from Sylvie was a fluffy elephant at the fair. It had to be won with a clear aim,' writes Lorrie. Yet fun-loving Lorrie isn't sure Sylvie's is the friendship she wants to win. As the adults around them struggle to keep their lives on an even keel, the two young women are drawn into a series of events that leave the small town wondering who exactly Sylvie is and what strange gift she is hiding. Readman's feel for emotional nuance and flair for mixing strangeness with poignant detail make this long-awaited debut novel one to savour.

Leseprobe

First published in 2019 by And Other Stories Sheffield – London – New Yorkwww.andotherstories.org

Copyright © Angela Readman, 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transported in any form by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book. The right of Angela Readman to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or places is entirely coincidental.

ISBN: 978-1-911508-30-4 eBook ISBN: 978-1-911508-31-1

Editor: Anna Glendenning; Copy-editor: Fraser Crichton; Proofreader: Sarah Terry; Typesetting and eBook: Tetragon, London; Cover Design: Tree Abraham.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This book was supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

‌

Contents

Part ILorrie15th July 1957Lorrie20th July 1957Lorrie25th August 1957Lorrie25th September 1957Lorrie5th October 1957Lorrie5th November 1957LorriePart II19th February 1960Lorrie19th March 1960Lorrie30th March 1960Lorrie21st April 1960Lorrie22nd April 1960Lorrie30th April 1960Lorrie1st May 1960Lorrie5th May 1960Lorrie9th May 1960Lorrie13th May 1960Lorrie17th May 1960Lorrie25th May 1960Lorrie26th May 1960Lorrie1st June 1960Part IIILorrieThe Day I Left the SandpitLorrie8th June 1960Lorrie9th June 1960Lorrie13th June 1960Lorrie16th June 1960Lorrie17th June 1960Lorrie22nd June 1960Lorrie26th June 1960Lorrie26th June 1960 (continued)Lorrie27th June 1960Lorrie

‌

‌Part I

‌

‌Lorrie

I could tell you about Sylvie, but you wouldn’t believe me. I have just one photo. It fluttered out of her dustbin and lodged by our door. It’s a blur of a girl stretching her cardigan over a filthy skirt. She has these skinny fawn legs, ready to canter if you looked at her sideways. It’s impossible to figure out the look on her face. The girl is a streak, smudging herself out of the camera’s gaze. She prefers life that way. Hushed, soft at the edges. I hear that hasn’t changed. I haven’t seen her in years, though I hear whispers. Girls swearing there’s someone looking over their shoulder. They say she’ll appear if they fall off their bikes, or fly a kite too close to the cables, and, just as quick as she came, she’ll disappear in the mist.

It was windy. The dustbin lid clattered, rolling along the path. I picked up the photo and squirrelled it in my drawer, knowing I’d want it someday. I’m in the picture too: feathers stuck in my hair. I look stunned, mouth open, gormless with confusion. It’s not pretty. If you asked Sylvie about the feathers, she’d say she doesn’t remember. She’d change the subject to wild flowers, puffins, or something, anything, other than her. So, it’s me who’s going to tell you about Sylvie. Like it or not, someone must.

I was all about rabbits; she was all about chickens. Looking out the window I saw whiskers, cottontails hopping all over, making the poppies quiver. The girl next door stood beside a chicken. Now I saw her, now I didn’t. The apple tree shuffled in the breeze and covered the girl with leaves. When the wind settled, and I had a clear view, she was gone.

My mother and father stood outside staring up, brows crinkled, knotting their thoughts into one.

‘It’s so dark in Lorrie’s room,’ Mum said. ‘We should cut that tree down. It’s crazy.’

The saw dangled in my father’s hands. He circled the trunk, looking. ‘It’s so close to the cottage, though. Cut it wrong and we could lose the roof.’

Mum wandered to the back door and glanced back, laying a hand on her collarbone.

‘I wonder how deep the roots go.’

Roots were a problem. She could almost feel them writhing under the house and pulling us all underground.

‘That tree’s fine,’ Grumps said at dinner. ‘It’s a rare thing on this side of the island. The story goes my grandmother brought over a seed and planted it herself.’

‘I know,’ my mother said. ‘It’s a lovely tree, but it’s so near the house.’

‘If we want to cut it down, we’ll have to get someone in,’ my father said. ‘Just to be on the safe side.’

Grumps rolled his eyes. We could almost see him add Cut down a tree to his mental list of things his son-in-law couldn’t do. Mum rose from the table carrying plates.

‘It can wait.’

That was that, for now the tree stayed. They were picking their battles, considering the lead water pipes and the woodworm in the kitchen cupboards. She pulled a pencil from behind Toby’s ear and scribbled Do Something about that Tree on her list.

‘Every time I tick something off I add seven things,’ she said.

‘You’re that Greek fella.’ There was a lake of gravy next to Toby’s hillside of potato. He mushed it into a landslide without mercy.

‘What?’ She tilted her head. I’ve seen dogs with their head at the same angle waiting for their owner to return. My mother was fascinated by my brother. He dangled morsels of conversation for her and she leapt for the snippets, shiny as liver. He told her about some bloke pushing a boulder uphill every day, only to start over at sunrise. She rose from the table and said, ‘Yup, me and him should have a cuppa sometime. We may be soulmates.’ I never heard her use that word any other time.

The water coughed into the sink loud as an old man catching a lungful of the morning.

‘The water looks cloudy again.’ Mum pushed back her hair with soapy fingers, suds fizzing in her ear. ‘I suppose I should call the plumber.’

The days of saying the place needed ‘a little tender loving care’ were over, though that’s how she had pitched it before we came here. It was a solid cottage, she said, a beautiful place to grow up. It could be lovely with a lick of paint. We were going. That was that. Grumps slipped a disc shifting a barrel and our whole life was folded into crates and driven north.

The horizon opened as we left the city. The land folded around us. The clouds laid their shadows on the hills. Mario Lanza crooned out the window to a shiver of lavender and started to hiss. He gave up, resigned to the radio losing a signal. The static was as loud as the rain.

We boarded the ferry quietly, bored of I spy featuring mostly mountains and lakes. I clung to the railing, face streaming, tears pinched out by the wind. I stared at the mainland we were leaving behind. The life I’d known narrowed to a streak. The sea heaved. The keel kept us all gripping the railings, except for my father. When the rain cleared, and my mother insisted we huddle together to have our picture taken on the deck, he held the camera and let himself rock with the boat.

It was funny, how he never put up much of a fight about moving. He had to give up his job selling insurance, and he hated Cullen skink. He couldn’t stand mackerel, or weather. Or wildlife, or chit-chat. In short, he cared for the island about as much as he cared for his father-in-law, who, on a good day, he called the Mule-Headed Man. Toby and I called him Grumps. It had been a secret when we were little, but when we blurted it out in front of him one Christmas the old man laughed and we saw no need to stop. Grumps was who he was, he was proud of it, and glad we’d found out. There was no need for pointless small talk any more. He could finally break wind in public. He could see a neighbour approaching, mutter ‘fuck that’, and we wouldn’t judge.

We drove towards the distillery, the roads winding, steam rising from the chimneys and fusing with the clouds. The small windows were coppery, glinting in the sun. We drove on to the cottage. Our belongings all arrived long before we did. Every stick of furniture we owned was sitting outside on the grass. Grumps stood in the middle of it shaking his head.

‘You’ve got a tonne of stuff.’ He squinted along the lane, waiting for another van to show up and dump the world on his back. The man was a distiller. The idea of a flawed batch was never far away. Even at his happiest, he never lost that look that something could happen and pour it all down the drain at any time.

‘You’re looking well.’ Dad lit a cigarette and looked for an ashtray, briefly forgetting the lounge he was standing in was outside. Toby and I glared at our mother. If Grumps was well, couldn’t she stop worrying about him rattling around the place all by himself? Couldn’t we all hop in the car and turn around? The distillery was open. It was business as usual, even if its owner used a cane on damp days, had stopped ironing his shirts and ate cereal for every meal. Mum pointed at the creases on his shirt and frowned.

‘It’s not like I’m trying to impress anyone.’ Grumps smoothed out his pocket. ‘Who’s going be offended by a wrinkle or two? Why cook? Who can make anything better than cornflakes anyhow?’

‘Can I have cereal for dinner?’ Toby asked.

There was a chorus of ‘No’. Mum started it. I was glad to prolong it.

Those first weeks were spent swooping through the cottage clearing the cupboards. My mother forever had a cloth in her hand. There were cobwebs in the pantry, wasps in the sugar and mouse droppings on the floor. The distillery was clean as a pin, but the cottage was irrelevant for a man on his own. It was a place to eat, sleep, dress for work, and do it all again the next day, and the next. Grumps didn’t mind spiders or cobwebs. Without his glasses, he no longer noticed the silverfish. The carpet in my room writhed, a tide of spines under my feet. I got so used to the sheen I told my parents it could stay. They rolled up my opinion and carried the carpet downstairs anyway.

I festered in my bedroom, a fortress of boxes. Toys, Books, Clothes and Bits and Bobs. The sound of the wind in the leaves outside resembled traffic, if I closed my eyes. I could imagine strolling along the street we used to live on in England. The paint on the door of our house was purple. Next door’s was yellow. The buildings of the terrace were identical, but each house found a way to be itself.

On fine days, my mother wouldn’t always make me go to school. ‘You’ll catch up tomorrow,’ she’d say, ‘it’s the first day of summer. Time to learn the feeling of the sun on your face.’ We’d wander to the park, ignoring the ‘Keep Off the Grass’ signs. We used to sit on our coats and tuck into our lunch in waxy bags from the bakery. It wasn’t possible to walk past without salivating. The aroma of sweet buns glazed with honey would waft onto the street and we’d breathe deep. The bakery was so close to our house we bought something several times a week. Then we didn’t. My mother would cross the street to buy bread from the burnt-bottom place instead. My father wouldn’t look the baker in the eye. I’d see him turn over his bread, inspect his slice of disappointment and sigh. ‘I’m not sure I put that cigarette out properly,’ he’d say, scurrying to his office to check the ashtrays.

Eventually, we stopped eating bread altogether. Mum did without her lemon curd on toast, rather than risk inspiring another conversation about insurance, and the importance of planning your escape routes in advance of an emergency. There was only one spare set of sheets in the linen cupboard on the day we moved out. My father had taken the rest and knotted them into ladders we could dangle out the window of the top floor.

I pushed my hands over my ears to block out the shuffle of the wind in the leaves. I hated the island. I hated the sulky skies and the rustling quiet. I swore I’d never unpack. If I did, it would be saying: This is it, this is my life. I’ll never leave.

‌

‌15th July 1957

the diary of… sylvie tyler.keep out!(i mean it, ma)

The lass bursts out of the Ford like it can’t contain her. Pow! The parents and the wee lad follow, his ears are peachy-coloured cups lit up by the sun. I’m looking out. The mother’s stretching all over like a cat in pedal pushers. She’s wandering about inspecting this and that, polishing the china cabinet with a hankie. Everyone’s picking up lamps and pointing to scuffs on the dresser. They all look dead amazed anything’s still in one piece. That is, everyone but the lass.

She drags a pouf to a chair, brushes a bee off a sunflower-patterned cushion and sits. Arms folded. Firm. I freeze behind the curtains like she’s mummified me or something. I can’t budge, and I can’t look at anything but her. I reckon she’ll never go inside and might just live outside in the wild for all her days like a hare. Just because she can.

Everyone’s carting stuff indoors, except for her. She’s slipping pink sunglasses off the top of her head and staring at the clouds. The sky is her cinema. I picture doing the same, just sitting, thumbs twiddling, while everyone else is skittering about. I could never do that. I’d have to carry stuff in. I’d be in the kitchen already, knee-deep in newspaper. I’d be listening to Ma give me a sermon on how to correctly stack the bowls.

The lass is bonnie, feisty looking, and bored. I bet she’d rather be blowing bubbles into orange juice with a straw. Or hanging cocktail-stick fangs out of her gob, just because folk say it’s rude. She looks up and I lurch from the window, heart filling like a balloon. Pop! It could burst. It’s aching to know her that much.

Urgh, I doubt that sort of lassie would knock around with me anyway. And if she did, what good would it do? Ma would hate it. ‘What do you need friends for? I’m your friend,’ she’s always saying, ‘I’m the only friend you have or need.’ This has to be the saddest sentence any lassie my age ever wrote, I know.

‌

‌Lorrie

I rushed to the garden and she was gone. The same as yesterday, and the day before. The shape of her sandals lay on the grass, and a trail of dropped corn was leading to her door. She’d caught the sound of the key in the lock, heard me coming and run. The rabbits nibbled the spot where she’d stood, pulling her long socks up over her knees.

I never saw her stroke the rabbits. She only had eyes for chickens. The fluffy white one was her favourite. On Saturday morning, it strutted beside her, a feathery shadow to every step she took. The girl put a hand into her bag of feed and waited. I raced out in my slippers. This time, she wouldn’t hear me coming. She was mine.

‘What you doing?’ I poked my nose through the fence. I’d assumed she was the same age as me, but now I looked closely, I figured she must be younger, even though she was taller. She wore a violet ribbon in plaits the colour of barley and her cardigan had those tiny pearly buttons mothers sew on jackets for babies. She looked at me and reminded me of a child peering out from her mother’s skirts. The paper bag rustled in her hand. The chicken paused. She dropped some corn and took a step backwards. The bird’s feet clawed the dirt. It followed her without turning around.

‘You’re teaching the chicken to walk backwards? Brilliant!’ I said. ‘I’m Lorrie.’

I’d scraped my wrist poking a hand through the fence. The girl didn’t shake it. There wasn’t a hostility to her, not exactly. I’d think about it later and decide it was more that she was considering whether to smile and was undecided. I wondered if she was deaf, or if the cat had got her tongue. Grumps sometimes kept the company of a cat that hung around the distillery. It was a wild thing with a patch missing from one ear, a scar on its flank, and the stare of a boxer with a famous fight under his belt. That cat probably could catch someone’s tongue. I wouldn’t be surprised. I wouldn’t be surprised at anything here. Everything was so still, and quivering at the same time. The wind switched and the grass darkened, shivering with creatures looking for somewhere to curl up and die.

Not long after we arrived, I found an owl on the doorstep. Stone cold, out of nowhere. ‘Is it dead? How did that happen?’ Grumps winced at my shrieks and grabbed the dustpan without saying a word. That was his style. Silence was the style of everyone on the island, as en vogue as chunky socks and wellies. Here, it wasn’t always possible to avoid someone who annoyed you. Instead of confrontation people made their faces stone walls.

Even my mother was quieter than she was before we came. It seemed she’d found part of herself she’d left in her old room with pictures of tightrope walkers on the wall. She no longer ever said, out of nowhere, ‘I fancy doing something, let’s go to a matinee.’ There was nowhere to go. Instead, she fostered long silences and staring out at the peeling paint on the gate and the boot prints the workmen left in the lane. I found the quiet so disturbing I did anything to avoid it.

I started following my grandfather to the distillery most afternoons. If I stayed in and admitted I was bored, my mother would reel off a list of chores I could do: peel wallpaper, dust, or unpack. I polished copper pipes with my sleeve and listened to Grumps evaluate whisky instead. He swirled a sparkling glass and held it to the light, nose perched over the liquid, sharp as a park-keeper at his pond.

‘Nose: a vanilla scent with a hint of smoke.’ He took a sip. ‘Palate: Toffee with an undertone of…’ He paused, considering his words, more words than I’d ever heard him say in one go. The drink all looked the same to me, but I couldn’t stop listening. This was his poetry. He spoke the language of whisky with absolute certainty. Here, I caught a glimpse of where he really lived.

An Evaluation of my Grandfather

Nose: Ginger beer, grain, the sugar he puts in the wasp traps. A residue of whisky lingers on his clothes. It runs through his veins. He carries the aroma of the roast chicken he peels into strips at lunchtime and places in a bowl by the distillery for the cat without a collar. He watches it eat the breast while he chomps the skin. No matter how close the cat gets, he never strokes it. Never even tries. It carries the scent of small bloody deaths, but he doesn’t mind. He enjoys the honesty of its hostile company more than a pet he could hold in his hands.

Palate: Whisky, crackers he dips into jars of chutney and pickled onions. He smacks the juice out of the lines around his lips with a slurping sound and never laughs off his lack of manners. Smiles are not something he scatters. When he does crack a smile, it has the power to make my mother recall suppers she had growing up when her parents didn’t really say much, but knew what the other was thinking because it was what they were thinking themselves.

Finish: He wears whatever hangs on the hook of his door, shirts and trousers that never match. For his whole life, someone got out his clothes for him. First his mother, then his wife, would iron what he should wear for the day and lay it flat on the bed. He makes little effort to learn what clothes might sit right together, even when my mother tries to give him pointers. He continues wearing chequered patterns with spots, red with green, any mismatched clothes he stumbles across. He’s as steadfast to clashing colours as a man is to a uniform. It is a uniform, a uniform of grief serving the memory of his late wife.

Overall: A man who brings a thimbleful of whisky and honey when I have a cold. He’ll tell me a story, but only if I ask for it to be told. It’s the same story each time. For a few minutes, he tells it and I see someone other than my grandfather–I just see a man, who was once a boy, who once fell for a surly girl.

Grumps shooed me out of the distillery, sick of me following him around. I put on my roller skates and jolted around the gritty lane, missing the smooth paving of the city. I hadn’t seen another kid since we moved in, other than Toby. He’d recently made the decision he wanted to be a magician and I was getting sick of him asking if he could saw me in half. The girl was a lifesaver. I spotted her and wondered if her rabbits could do tricks too. Perhaps something involving hurdles made of sticks and toilet paper. Rabbits racing, hopping over a ribbon staked in the grass. I’d place my bet on the spotted one that was humping her shoes.

‘We just moved here,’ I said. ‘My parents, me and my brother. Grandma died last year. Grumps is getting rickety, so we came. There’s a smell in my room of something dead,’ I chattered.

She stepped back. Conversation could be contagious. I wanted it to be.

I don’t know why I told her about the strange smell in my room, I hadn’t got around to complaining to my parents about it yet. I could imagine my mother shaking her head. ‘Lorrie,’ she’d say, ‘I’m sick of your attitude. We’re all trying to adjust to life here.’ I decided to say nothing to anyone, but it all spilled out anyway. There was something about the girl. I couldn’t help it with her. Now I’d told her my life story, I felt a bit better.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

A woman with strappy shoes trotted out of the house carrying a large box to her car. ‘Sylvie,’ she called. ‘Come on, we’ve got appointments. I have to make a sale. Don’t dawdle now. We haven’t got all day.’

The girl skulked towards her mother, who was jangling her keys, a lucky rabbit’s foot dangling off her key ring, pawing the air.

‘Sylvie? Is that your name?’ I called.

The girl span around, gave a small nod and ran. I waved. I had her name. It was a start.

‌

‌20th July 1957

The lass is here. And she ain’t going anywhere. If Ma could wave a sparkly wand or a feather duster and make her disappear she’d do it in a jiffy. Puff! But she can’t. It makes her do that wee frown. The one that, as soon as she realises she’s doing it, forces her to grab a pot of cold cream. Quick.

‘That lassie next door’s out there again,’ I say, ‘looking for us.’

Lorrie’s poking a sandal through the fence. Ma looks out the window, ‘If you ignore her, she’ll go away,’ she’s saying.

So I try to, all week, I ignore her like a whiffer in church. I keep my head down when I’m feeding the chickens, feart to look up in case the lassie meets my eye. And still she keeps wandering over, yattering my ear off. There’s this painter who did sunflowers and cut his ear off once. I reckon that’s what happened to him.

‘I dunno how long I can ignore her for, Ma. Won’t it look weird if I do?’

If there’s one thing I shouldn’t look, it’s weird. If Ma could knit me a gansey to match the wallpaper, she would, I reckon. Lassies like me should blend in. Be good. Be sweet. Be as ordinary as we can.

‘Hmm, I suppose it won’t hurt to be polite,’ she says. ‘Just don’t be too friendly to her.’

I know what ‘too friendly’ means. I found out when I was four and she banned me from speaking to that wee lad in callipers EVER AGAIN. Do you hear me? Sylvie, NEVER. I MEAN IT. I haven’t been too friendly since. I keep my gob shut, in company anyhow. Women blether and I stare at the buckles on my shoes. Kids blabber and I’ll think of something dead interesting to say, but the words clag in my throat before I can spit anything out. It makes school this never-ending spelling test full of words you could spell yesterday, but can’t picture once you’re holding the pen. Lorrie never notices. That’s why she’s fantastic. She’s so busy havering, I never have to worry about being struck dumb. I tell Ma this and she hmms, slathering a greeny face mask all over her cheeks like the witch in The Wizard of Oz. Maybe that’s what was wrong with her, she was just scared of the wrinkles setting in.

‘The child does have excellent posture, I’ll give her that. Hmm. You could invite her over. Just don’t—’

‘I know, I know,’ I say. There’s no need for her to finish. I know the rules. Don’t say much about myself, keep my mouth shut, and for heaven’s sake, Sylvie…

I put on my nightie and peek out before bed. I listen to the pip of a bird and stare at the light over the fence. That’s her room, Lorrie, my pal. Maybe. If she looks out she’ll see me. Lorrie and Sylvie. Sylvie and Lorrie, waving across the way. Flicking the lights on and off, knocking about. Ordinary lasses. Just like everyone else.

‌

‌Lorrie

Bunny Tyler believed in God and Tupperware. I’m not sure which she believed in more. Wherever she went, she carried a duck-egg handbag containing a Bible, a revolutionary cheese grater, and a storage pot. One hand remained on the clasp, ready to whip out the contents at any given moment, should anyone need spiritual guidance. There was no Tupperware on the island until she discovered it; even the mainland had never set eyes on it before.

Bunny’s pen pal in Florida had sent her a sample. Caroline Craig was married to a man Bunny’s husband served with. The wives, both lonely and curious about life beyond their front doors, started corresponding at the suggestion of their husbands.

I buried my sister today, Caroline wrote. We hadn’t seen each other for years. I drove across two states with a truck full of Bundt cake. Bringing something was the only thing that stopped me going crazy. When I got there, the cake was still fresh as a daisy. Thank God for Tupperware!

It hadn’t been long since Bunny’s husband suddenly passed away. In the time it takes letters to cross in the post, everything had changed. Bunny picked up a pen and found herself unable to write the words ‘my husband has died’. Instead, she’d replied asking her friend to tell her more about this Tupperware, please.

It was shiny and clean. It made everything last so much longer. Bunny imported a crate and set about converting the island with a missionary zeal.

‘This will change your life!’ she said, whipping out a salad pot in the grocers. Women in the village still quoted the occasion. It was proof she has airs and graces, that one, always has, always will.

It wasn’t only storage pots that took Bunny’s fancy. Whenever the mood struck her, she’d import a box full of some kitchen gadget or other, and set out to sell it to whoever she met. ‘You wouldn’t believe what I have to show you! This will save you so much time…’ she’d say, waving around a peeler that made short work of potatoes. ‘I can save hours of your life. Just look!’

I skipped around to Sylvie’s and avoided the hinges on the gate, sticky with oil. There were no men living at the property, not that I knew of, but a man arrived every weekend, always carrying something. Last week, he brought an oilcan.

The rabbits dusted my shoes with their tails. I bent down.

‘Can I pick one up?’ I cradled a rabbit and rubbed the sunlight in its ears. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Pie.’ Sylvie studied the grass on her shoes.

‘What’s his name?’ I pointed at a rabbit so perfect my brother would have done anything to pull it out of a hat.

‘Stew.’

I didn’t understand. Not straight away. The rabbits weren’t christened because they weren’t pets. Their job was to breed and hop into pans, their leftovers interned in plastic coffins in the cold store. Bunny was saving for a fridge. She dreamed of drinking milk in the middle of the night without trudging outside in her dressing gown. If I’d known about the rabbits, I’m not sure I’d have waved at her carrying an armful of kitchenware and trotting across the lawn in her heels.

‘You must be from next door? Lorrie, is it? Lovely to meet you.’

The sunlight was a halo behind her, cupping her curls. Bunny beamed as if angels or the King of Kitchen Gadgets had landed on her lawn.

‘I’m so sorry about your grandmother last year. Lovely lady,’ she said. ‘I’d let her have my redcurrants and she’d give me her apples, so we could both make jelly all year round. Well, she’s gone to a better place now.’

The plastic boxes in her arms slotted into one another Russian-doll style. Bunny looked down at them as she said ‘better place’ and I couldn’t be sure if she meant my grandmother had gone to heaven or Tupperwareland.

‘Come on in,’ she said. ‘I’ll make lemonade.’

Bunny charged around her kitchen sprinkling sugar and slicing lemons. It was nothing to whip up a batch. When it came to Bunny Tyler and I, everything was nothing. If I came over after supper, apple crumble withheld because I’d grabbed a crowbar and lifted the floor in my room, she’d whip out the caramel wafers, or pop open a container of lavender shortbread. No problem. Nothing was too much trouble, providing I followed her rules: cross my legs at the ankles, use a coaster and always say please and thank you.

‘It’s wonderful to see Sylvie with such a confident girl. Perhaps you could teach her a thing or two.’

Bunny proffered the biscuit barrel, looking at her daughter. I’d once seen a beauty queen hand over her crown with the same look on her face. Beautiful disappointment.

‘If you’d only speak up and smile now and then, like Lorrie,’ she said, ‘people might like you!’

‘I like her as she is,’ I said.

I wasn’t sure if I did yet. Sylvie was so quiet I wasn’t sure there was much to like, but in the conspiracy of children against adults it was the right thing to say. Bunny stirred clanking ice in the frosty jug. Sylvie scratched her knuckles, back and forth, in the same place until the skin was raw. I sensed a silent war between them I was fighting both sides of. I was a hero and a traitor all at the same time.

The kitchen was lemon. The plastic table was cleaner than ice.

‘It’s a lovely room,’ I said. ‘My mother would be so jealous.’

Don’t ask me how I knew this was the right thing to say to get in Bunny’s good books, but I did. Bunny dreamed of owning more kitchen gadgets than any other woman on the island, and displaying them with the most flair. I knew it, even then, I knew her kind. It wasn’t so different to mine.

‘I just had it painted. I had that dresser built to fit there.’ Bunny pointed at the dresser.

The wood was painted fire-engine red. Whoever made her it had sawed a heart and the silhouettes of a pair of rabbits into the plinth.

The room was the same as ours, but in reverse. The window was on the opposite side. The hob sparkled. I could see what my parents meant when they stared at crumbling walls and said, ‘I can see the potential.’ This was a life they could see, if everything was put away and labelled correctly, which it wasn’t.

We’d been spooning sugar out of the coffee canister since I’d found the rat under my floor. I’d been desperate to get to the bottom of the smell in my room. The crowbar was lying on the stairs, carpet fibres still clinging to the steel. I pried up one floorboard, then another, and brought the rat down by the tail. Dangling. Its skeleton visible, poking out of the fur. I winced to hold it, but I wanted my mother to see. I wanted her to realise I’d lifted a floorboard under the bed she’d slept in as a girl. It wasn’t the only thing I’d found.

‘Do you want the tour?’

Bunny led us to the lounge. The plastic-covered sofa broke wind when Sylvie flopped down, but Bunny didn’t giggle. She stood by the TV the way a salesman stands beside a new car. No one on the island had ever owned a television before Bunny Tyler, she wanted me to know.

‘It was the craziest thing. I got it with the life insurance. Women kept calling around the week it arrived. Their kids pressed their snotty noses against the window, smearing the glass to get a peek!’ she said. ‘You’re welcome over anytime, Lorrie, if there’s anything you want to see.’

I suddenly loved her. There was no set at home yet. Dad always promised to get one as soon as he got a bonus. But no matter how many life insurance policies he sold, he always fell short. It wasn’t that he was a lousy salesman, as such. If anything, he painted a picture of disaster too well. People couldn’t wait to shoo him out of the house. They had somewhere to go. Someone to meet, dinner was ready. His what would happen if… was enough to put anyone off their shepherd’s pie.

There was a faded Virgin Mary figure on Bunny’s fireplace. The afternoon sun streamed through the curtains and bleached her features a little more each day. The statue’s painted lips were almost as pale as her face. Bunny wasn’t a Catholic, but she’d had the figure since childhood. Whenever she went out, she patted it and said, ‘Look after the house.’ Whenever she came in, she ignored it. Next to Mary, a pair of wrinkled boots stood on the shelf. It appeared they’d been walking through mud and frozen with their laces undone.

‘The sun’s coming out anyway. That reminds me, I’ve left plastic in the car.’ Bunny flitted out to save her storage pots from warped lids. I nudged Sylvie in the ribs.

‘What’s with the boots?’

‘They’re his,’ Sylvie said. ‘They’re the Miracle Boots.’

I had to hold my breath when she spoke. Really listen. If I missed a word, she’d never repeat it. The way she breathed his made me think Jesus had stopped by, slipped his sandals off at the door and come in for a cuppa without leaving a footprint on Bunny’s freshly scrubbed carpet.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, but Sylvie was off, trudging upstairs to her room.

I followed. Beyond the swallows on the walls and the canary in a cage by the window, I could see my bedroom window. It looked cleaner at a distance.

‘Have you been sick?’ I gestured to a jug of flowers, a pot of vapour rub and a packet of cough drops by the bed.

‘Not lately,’ Sylvie said. ‘I’m always poorly though.’

‘Always?’

‘Pretty much.’

The canary started to sing. Its throat was a yellow pulse bobbing in and out, brighter than a summer’s afternoon. Sylvie kicked a glossy stack of magazines under the bed and slammed a diary in the drawer, flustered.

‘You’ve got more than one copy of the same book.’ I pointed to a shelf higgledy-piggledy with books for identifying birds and wild flowers, plus several editions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

‘I love comparing the illustrations. Look.’

Sylvie turned to a page bookmarked by a folded Tunnock’s wrapper.

‘This Alice is beautiful, but that one looks wise, like a little old woman is locked inside her somewhere.’

The page didn’t interest me as much as annuals about girls solving crimes of stolen peppermints at school, or my mother’s film magazines, but I looked. Sylvie had never showed me anything before. Every word from her had to be dragged out slower than pulling a splinter. She made it look as painful.

‘Look at this one, compared to this.’

She flicked through the pages, showing me her favourite illustrations. If I was dying to hear about the Miracle Boots? Tough. I’d have to wait. I’d never seen her look so enthusiastic about anything.

‌

‌25th August 1957

So, I’m standing there with Lorrie. And everyone’s giggling. And trying to be clever. And making me look stupid. That’s school all over, I reckon. It’s just there to make some folk look clever. And Lorrie can see it. She’s wearing this cardigan the colour of wild hyacinths and her hair’s all shiny ripples like a breeze on a loch. The kids are all clutching their lunchboxes and peering at her behind fringes cut with kitchen scissors. Hands twitching at their sides, desperate to stroke a shiny new pet.