‘But Grandad, it was career suicide! What shall I do?’ Already I’m thinking about meeting him in the office tomorrow.I’ve heard he’s a bit of a shit actually. A real slave driver.How will I be able to look him in the eye? I’ll call in sick. But then again, he’ll know it’s a hangover, he’ll think me a coward and besides, I’d only have to face him the day after tomorrow. I could pretend I’ve been struck down with a mysterious bug.
‘Grandad? Are you still there?’
‘I’m thinking.’
‘Well, don’t think too long.’
Spencer says he’s a bit of a womaniser too, even though I think he’s married.
Maybe she hasn’t told him everything I said? But she had. He knew all right.
‘Jan, you go into work tomorrow with your head held high and you say sorry for any misunderstanding. If he’s half decent he’ll accept your apology and you can both move on.’
I chew my lip. ‘You’re right.’
‘I’m always right. Now, can I get back to watchingFrankenstein?’
Since Granny died, he stays up late most nights watching old black-and-white movies. Sometimes I’m not sure he even goes to bed. ‘I’m coming home this weekend,’ I remind him as I ask the cab driver to take a left at the lights, ‘for someone’s special birthday.’ Grandad is going to be eighty-six. Coincidentally, he shares his birthday with my mother too, so we always mark it as an anniversary for my parents. It’s an important weekend.
‘Is Lucas coming?’ Grandad asks, hope in his voice.
‘I think so,’ I say, unsure. ‘Hasn’t he called you?’
Lucas had rung me earlier in the week to warn me that he may have to work over the weekend, and that he won’t know until right up to the last minute. He didn’t come last year either. Sensing my disapproval he’d added, ‘Don’t give me a hard time, Jan.’ Lucas is a financial adviser for a leading UK merchant banking group and I understand it’s stressfulwith long hours, but still I wish he could occasionally prioritise Grandad over his career. Grandad doesn’t complain that he rarely visits, but deep down I know it hurts.
When I see Isla in bed, one arm hanging out of the duvet, soft silky hair falling down her cheek, instantly I feel calmer about Lucas, Grandad and Ward. OK, it was a disaster, but I’ve come through a lot worse. Countries are being devastated by civil wars. Some perspective would help here. Badly done, January, but it’s not the end of the world. I kiss her goodnight. ‘When things go wrong you pick yourself up and dust yourself down,’ I hear Granny’s voice saying inside my head as I leave the room. ‘Things always look brighter in the morning.’
4
1988
‘First one who sees the sea gets an ice cream on the beach,’ says Granny, just as she does each time we set off to Cornwall for our summer holiday. We go to St Austell. It’s on the south coast, close to Bodmin.
I glance at Lucas, his yellow Walkman on his lap. I’m nine; Lucas is twelve.
‘I can see the sea!’ I say.
Lucas whips his headphones off. ‘We’re miles away, moron.’
Granny turns round to us. ‘Now now! No argy-bargy.’ She offers me a tin filled with powdered sweets.
Grandad puts on his opera music and mutters something about how the delivery men had better not break anything. All our stuff is being shipped over in vans later today. You see, we’re not going on holiday to Cornwall this time; we’re moving there. Grandad’s dad, my Great-grandad Mick died and left us his house. It’s called Beach House because it’s by the sea, obviously. Lucas didn’t want to leave London; repeatedly he threatened to stay behind. ‘Now listen here,’ Granny had said to him, finally losing her patience, ‘while we look after you, you have to live by our rules. When you’re eighteen you can do what you like.’
‘I can’t wait till I’m eighteen,’ Lucas had said, staring at me with those dark unforgiving eyes.
I look down at my bruised hand. I close my eyes and see Toby Brown’s face as he slams one of his gym shoes on to it. I am trying not to cry when he laughs; I don’t want to give him the satisfaction. He presses his face right up to mine and says, ‘I’m glad your parents are dead!’ Mum and Dad were killed in a car accident when I was one and Lucas was nearly four. Another time he stole my cardigan and I found it at the end of the day, hung up on my cloakroom peg, wet and smelling of urine. ‘Why does he do it, Granny?’ I’d asked, feeling ashamed as I watched her put my cardigan into the washing machine.
‘People like Toby, they pick out a person and if it wasn’t you, it would only be someone else.’ She held me in her arms and rubbed my back. ‘But that doesn’t make it all right. I promise you I’m never going to let this happen again.’
A new start, Granny keeps on saying, for all of us. Grandad had told me that they had always wanted to move out of London because they’d lived in the city for over forty years. For the past nine we’d been living in Hampstead. ‘Sad as Dad’s death is, change is good.’
I’m glad to be leaving London and Toby Brown behind. Besides, Beach House has always felt like home to me. My bedroom has a blue patchwork duvet and a kidney-shaped dressing table with a three-tiered mirror and a set of silver hairbrushes. I love falling asleep in my big bed and waking up to the sound of the waves. First thing I do is look out of the window to see if it’s sunny because sunshine means a day on the beach. Rain means a day inside playing board games and Lucas throwing a tantrum if I beat him.
The one thing Lucas and I can spend hours doing together, with no cross words spoken, is fishing. Grandad sometimes takes us out in his small boat and we fish for mackerel. Lucas and I also see what we can catch in the rock pools with our buckets and nets. We’ve caught crabs, shrimps and prawns and quite a lot of seaweed too, which usually ends up in a seaweed fight. My brother can be all right when he wants to be.
After hours and hours of travelling, finally we turn right, down a narrow winding lane decorated with camellias. Our house is at the bottom of a steep hill, through a dark green wooden gate. My heart begins to race when I see the sea, a big blue blanket stretching into the horizon. It’s odd not to see Great-grandad Mick standing outside the front door, waving like the Pope, before hobbling towards the car leaning on his stick. After each holiday it was sad to say goodbye to him, knowing he would retreat back inside, alone. Grandad said how stubborn his father was; he wouldn’t go into a nursing home until he couldn’t look after himself. He wanted to end his life surrounded by memories of where he’d spent so many happy years.
The following day, after the removal men have left and we have been unpacking boxes for far too long, Granny suggests a picnic on the beach.
