And I wasn’tsure if that was right.
Gabe
When I was a kid, I had these fuzzy felts, little silhouettes made of felt that I stuck onto a board to create a picture. The pictures didn’t change, just the setting or the scene I’d create. They now reminded me of my family. Wherever you placed them, they were the same. We’d grown up in a household that was steady, stable, not overly wealthy, but we’d never wanted for anything or had to worry about money – having too much of it or too little. And they had no false airs and graces.
They’d been through a lot. It took my family about nine months to realise that although my world had ended with Ryan’s death, a piece of their world had ended with it too. I was different: the son, brother, uncle that they knew had gone and a shell devoid of any interest in anyone else had been left. Grief made me its bitch and I had no guilt about that. It wasn’t a permanent state but a route I needed to travel. I never understood that at the time, being too focused on what I’d lost to see what was still there.
My sister appeared on a day when I was taking down walls. I’d decided that there was no need to keep the addition that should’ve ended up in a coffee table book about the world’s worst extensions and I had the need to get rid of the barriers I kept starting at. It was time for a lot of things to change.
“I’ve brought you two willing helpers who want to demolish anything.”
I’d already jumped the moment my music had been turned down. Hearing her voice in person after so many months of it just being over the phone was surreal and slightly scary. I’d missed her; but I knew she’d have more than a lot to say.
Two helpers that were taller than the last time I’d seen them, two terrors that ran straight into my legs as if they were trying to rugby tackle me.I bent down and started to tackle them back into big bear hugs, making them laugh and pull at my hair and beard.
“Uncle Gabe! We’re going in the sea!”
I shook my head. “The poor sea, being contaminated by you two!” After another few minutes of being tormented, they wriggled out of my hold and escaped outside. I followed them with Janie. They weren’t careless kids and Janie had instilled a healthy sense of danger into them, but given that my house was beginning to look like a building site, we needed to keep half an eye on them.
“I’m surprised.” Janie looked at me with the same eyes that I saw when I looked in the mirror.
“What at?”
She laughed. “You’ve started. I thought this place would still look like a relic from the sixties.”
I couldn’t help smiling. She’d expected me to had done nothing with it, for me to have been the wreck I was when she’d travelled here with a van she’d hated to drive filled with boxes of my stuff. Most of it I’d never unpacked.
“Anya kept making comments.” I hadn’t said much about Anya, not wanting my sister to get the idea that it something more than a summer fling. “The barn doesn’t have a bathroom for a start.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“I’m pulling down everything that was built after nineteen-thirty, which is about seventy percent of it. That started a couple of weeks ago. I received planning permission yesterday for what I wanted to do.” I’d expected more resistance to what I’d put forward, given that the style would be completely different, going for a New England style look, with vaulted ceilings at the front, full glass frontage to make the most of the views and then at the side a two storey extension with a balcony that wrapped round. The original building would become the snug downstairs, the upstairs eventually converted into a guest suite.
Janie had heard enough about buildings since I was a kid to understand what I was talking about when I fell into using terminology, and knew enough to question me.
“What’s your timescale?”
“I’ve pulled in favours.” Many. And at cost.
“Before Christmas?”
“Mid-November is my aim. The realistic goal is Christmas. But I’ll be able to live in here properly from the start of October.”
She nodded. “This makes me happy. And you know what? It would make Ryan happy too.”
My sister had never shied away from talking about him, unlike everyone else who thought that just mentioning his name would send me to the nearest bottle.
“I know. I’ve tried to use design features that he would’ve suggested.” I had in all the plans I’d done in the last three weeks. The job on the island had led to three more, two quite extensive ones. Somehow I’d managed to get around fairly easily, sometimes by boat, other times by bike. No one had asked why I didn’t drive. I guessed word had gotten around.
“This is good.” She looked at the building, eyes narrowed. My nephews screamed loudly, blending with the seagulls. We ignored them.
“How’s Liam?”
“Coming home. Six weeks. He doesn’t know how long for. There’s a possibility of him being based here and stepping into some training officer role.” Her words lacked the edge they’d carried a week ago. This was news.
“That sounds positive.”
“It is, Gabe, but we had to take a long journey to get there. He’s still not a hundred percent, so he may go back for one more last tour. He’s a bit like an aging rock band – can never quite give it up even though everything creaks and their voices have gone. But he’s acknowledged that his boys need a father that’s actually here and not just via an internet connection.” She walked around the side of the house and turned to face the sea.
