CHAPTER FIVE
It’s only the middle of the week – and I shouldn’t complain, because we’re breaking up at lunchtime on Friday – but I am so tired. Tired to my bones tired. The teachers are wound up about exams as usual, and the special-needs coordinator is stressing out about me having somewhere quiet to do my mocks. The room she wants to put me in is right next to the science lab and it stinks, but I couldn’t face the conversation, so I just nodded when she suggested it. I’m so tired I’ve run out of words. Mum picked me up from school and she must’ve got it, somehow, because I flopped into the back seat and she called Polly and asked her to look after Mabel this evening, and she didn’t ask me how my day had been, or expect anything but silence. Lucky, because I don’t have any words left.
‘Come on.’ Mum fiddled around with the CDs in the side pocket of the car as we left school. ‘We’ll take the coast road home.’
It takes twice as long to drive this way, but it’s nice, because the car is one of the places I feel safe, and where I can turn my brain off.
And I’m glad Mum gets it. She might make me want to scream sometimes, but she is good at recognizing when I’ve hit the wall and keeping me from losing it.
It makes me think about being small. When Leah was a tiny little pink blob in a car seat, Mum used to take us out in the car and drive around and around town, along the long shore road with the bleached grass of the dunes and the huge sky stretching out beside us. I remember the music playing and my blue shoes sticking out into the air and the same songs playing over and over, because it was the only thing I’d let her listen to.
She’d drive and drive, until Leah would fall asleep, and she’d sing along to Avril Lavigne, and she says I used to, too, and it became Grace’s Avril music, soundtrack to a million afternoons.
Only now it’s more than a decade ago, and Mum’s not singing this time – she’s driving in silence. I don’t mind, because the last thing I need is any more noise in my head. Leah’s got netball training, so she doesn’t need picking up for ages yet. She chose to go to the school on the other side of town, the one with the award-winning sports teams. If it wasn’t for the fact that she looks like a smaller, neater, less scribbly version of me, I’d be convinced Leah had been swapped at birth.
I let my eyes stop focusing. Outside becomes a blur, passing by the car windows.
I rest my head against the glass.
The trouble is that by this time my filtering system has broken down completely and there’s a light flickering in the corner of my eye and the plastic smell of the car is giving me a headache right behind my eyes.
‘Grace?’ Mum’s voice breaks through my thoughts. We’ve pulled up outside Leah’s school.
Dinner’s in front of the television tonight because Dad’s programme is on. I’m curled up in my chair, with a cushion on my knees, and a bowl of pasta balanced on top. Mum’s got a row of tea lights flickering along the mantelpiece and the fire’s lit – it’s only October, and the weather forecaster said we’re going to have an Indian summer this week, but it looks pretty, anyway. And autumn is waiting to catch us – I see it when I’m out riding Mabel. The fields have been ploughed and the grass on the verges is faded and tired. A bit like me tonight.
Leah is sitting on the sofa beside Mum, who is clutching the remote control so tightly her knuckles are going white. She’s narked – I think because she was half hoping Dad would call tonight before his show went out, even though he’s already told her it’s virtually impossible to ring to order when he’s floating around on an iceberg, or whatever he’s doing this week.
‘Right?’ Mum looks at me.
‘Ready when you are.’ I hate missing the beginning of programmes. If I do, I won’t watch them at all. Same with the cinema. I like to be in my seat before the adverts start and I stay until the end of the credits, long after the lights have gone up and the usher is tidying up the sweet wrappers and strewn popcorn. It’s just one of my things.
‘The tortoise of the Galapagos Islands is an intriguing creature . . .’ begins the voice from the screen.
I curl my hands round the bowl of my pasta and sit forward in my chair, fascinated.
Dad’s been disappearing off on wildlife shoots for as long as I can remember. He’d be there, then he’d be gone, then he’d come home with a gigantic stuffed cheetah (toy, not actual animal, obviously) or whatever, and we’d all sit watching his programmes together. But in the last couple of years he’s been away a lot more, probably half the year, and, unlike this one, the shoot he’s on at the moment is special, because he’s going to be narrating it too, so it’ll be like he’s here in the room.
Leah’s got her phone tucked under the cushion beside her on the sofa. I can see she’s messaging with one hand while eating dinner and looking innocent with the other. She’s become a complete social-media addict over the last few months and Mum and Dad haven’t noticed. Mum, meanwhile, is halfway down a glass of red and has barely touched her pasta. She’s flipping a coaster between her fingers and she looks cross – or maybe tired? I can’t really tell.
I flick a piece of my pasta across the chair so it lands on the arm beside Withnail.
‘Grace, if you’re feeding that cat at the table again he’s going out.’ Mum doesn’t even look across at me.
‘We’re not at the table.’
I flip another twirl of pasta out and sneak it into my palm for him to have in a moment. He’s started his motorbike purr of delight in anticipation. How can I deprive him of his favourite thing? (Besides chips, cheese, strawberry yogurt and Christmas cake, but you know what I mean.)
‘GRACE.’
‘FINE.’ God, she’s in a right mood. Meanwhile, Leah’s doing whatever the hell she likes right under her nose.
‘Who were you talking to earlier when Grace was in the shower?’ Leah looks at Mum, mouth stuffed full of pasta. I swear our carb-wolfing qualities are in the blood, with Mum being half Italian. ‘Was it Dad?’
Mum shakes her head.
‘Grandma?’
‘I do have friends, you know,’ Mum says, and she sounds a bit sharp.
‘Who?’ I look across at her, interested. The turtles are still doing their thing on the television – between you and me they’re not that interesting, and I speak as someone who’s watched more nature nerd programmes than anyone I know.
‘For goodness sake, you two.’ She sounds a bit huffy now. ‘If you must know, it was my friend Eve from university.’
She’s never mentioned an Eve before. I wonder if that’s who she was talking to the other night when I went into the sitting room. But she can say she’s got friends all she wants . . . the truth is that basically all Mum does is be a mum. And do her volunteer stuff at the centre. And attend classes on How To Parent Your Asperger’s Child. And read books on the same. Meanwhile I just get on with being myself, because nobody actually gives you a guidebook on How To Be An Autistic Person. Anyway, it seems to keep her occupied.
‘But you said “see you later” to this Eve person.’ Leah slides me a look.
‘Ooh look, pause it – rewind it! There’s Dad.’ I wave my arm at the television where, for a brief moment, he pops into view, and I feel a weird, gulping sense of missing him that makes my cheeks ache.
Mum sighs, and hits the rewind button. We all sit forward in our chairs for a moment, peering at the screen, not speaking.
‘Well, there we are,’ says Mum, taking a big mouthful of her wine. ‘That’s the closest you two will get to a bedtime story from your father this evening.’ Her face twists a bit into an expression I don’t recognize, and we all sit back with our pasta and watch the rest of the programme without talking. There’s a weird feeling in the air that makes me feel unsettled. When it’s finished, I get up and take the bowls through to the kitchen, Withnail following me for his share of leftover pasta.
I can hear Mum and Leah laughing at some comedy thing on the television now, but I’ve had enough of today. I climb the stairs and don’t even bother getting into my pyjamas, because I’ve only got to get my uniform on again in the morning and I’ll brush my teeth later, and I stuff my headphones into my ears and turn the world off and Taylor Swift on.
I don’t mean cool, hanging-out-with-her-squad-in-NYC, everyone-loves-her Taylor Swift. I mean Taylor-Swift-from-when-I-was-little-and-I-wanted-her-ringlets. That’s what I want to listen to. I pull the covers over my head and hit repeat on my phone so it plays over and over and over again like an aural comfort blanket until I’ve forgotten everything else, and I’m living somewhere in Tennessee and my mom is making pancakes with maple syrup as an after-school surprise.