‘Will I be able to talk there, Brendan?’
I kept driving.
‘Ronan,’ I said, ‘on the other side of the sun, I don’t even know if there’s a road.’
15
Ronan’s second day at school was going to be better than the first and I was going to make sure of that. Dad normally woke me up on school mornings with a rap on my bedroom door and an ‘up you get’ while switching on and off the light that hung above my bed.
But he didn’t even have a chance that morning because I was awake and downstairs well before him. I was motivated. Excited but anxious. I was Ronan’s best friend, he was mine, all we had to do was find a new road; a new day was like a new road. I even said it aloud, mouth full of cereal:
‘A new day is a new road.’
‘You’re up early, that’s a first,’ Dad said, coming into the kitchen.
‘Or you’re up late.’
‘No chance,’ he said, tapping his watch and looking at the kitchen clock. ‘You could set all the clocks in this house by me! Late? Don’t know the meaning of the word!’
I slurped the last of the milk from my bowl and swept past my confused-looking dad to wash my dishes at the sink whenI heard Mum arriving through the front door after her night shift. I put the dripping bowl and spoon on the dish rack and went down the hall as Mum was on her way upstairs. On school mornings I tried to avoid seeing her as much as possible because I didn’t know what to say to her anymore and it hurt me that she didn’t seem to have the energy to say much to me.
‘Morning, Mum,’ I said.
She stopped in slow motion on the stairs and turned to look over one shoulder but froze as if she had a crick, then slowly turned to look over her other shoulder at me standing at the foot of the stairs. Her eyelids were heavy as if she was half asleep already.
There was a moment when her face made an expression like she’d just remembered something important she wanted to ask me. I waited. But she shook her head as if she’d lost whatever it was.
‘It’s freezing out there, put your warm coat on,’ she said as she began to turn away from me again.
‘Will do, night night, Mum,’ I said. It’s what I always said to her on her mornings back from night shifts.
‘Night night,’ she said. I watched her shuffle into the shadow of the landing where she’d get ready for bed and sleep the whole day through in the roof space.
Wearing my duffle coat, gloves and woolly hat, I stepped out onto the frosty ground and walked to the petrol station where the bus picked me up. No one else that went to my school lived in my area so I stood there alone as always. It was the last stop on the route; there was never usually a seat available by the time I got on, so I stood in the gangway.
I love the feeling of winter: the spiky air that makes you feel like you have a cold, the nip on your fingertips and toes, the childish excitement of the boy I once was and the belief in magical things.
But there was a new feeling that winter as I thought of the things I’d lost during the year. I missed visiting Granny in her house with the open fire burning in the hearth and the soda farls on the griddle pan and tea stewing in the pot. I missed Mum being the caring, sensitive person she used to be. I missed Ronan running with me in cross-country every Tuesday morning in the winter months; I somehow didn’t mind it when he was by my side.
But now it was my turn to be byhisside.
I bounded off the bus and took up my position at the school gates. I had it all planned out. Matty would pull up and I’d go straight to the back doors to help Mrs McCoy get Ronan onto the electric ramp, I’d push him up to the school doors and get him to class. In the book the McCoys had given me there was a technique called ‘Now and Then’ so I would tell Ronan:
‘Nowyou have to go to all your morning classes,thenat lunchtime Mrs O’Neill is joining us and we can either go to the canteen or go to her room to eat.’
It was a way of preparing him so that he could set himself for one situation and plan for the next. The book said it could reduce the chances of an upset.
I’d been standing at the gates for a while when a hand came to my shoulder. I turned to see Mrs O’Neill.
‘Brendan, I’m sorry, we’ve just had a call from Ronan’s parents, he’s not coming in today.’
‘Why, Miss? What happened?’
‘No, nothing happened, it’s just he took a bit of a turn this morning and couldn’t be calmed down. His mum phoned reception just a minute ago to say it was probably best if he didn’t come in today to give him a chance to settle.’
‘Oh right,’ I said.
‘I think yesterday was a lot for him – it might be a bit likethis to begin with, we might have to take things a bit slower than Mr and Mrs McCoy had planned on.’
