Freia Lockhart's Summer of Awful (16 page)

“It's the special sauce that makes it so tasty,” says Gran, sniffing her Big Mac as if it's a fine wine.

I'm still unpacking my boxed lunch. It's been so long since Mum banned us from eating fast food that I had no idea what to order. When the girl at the counter asked me what I wanted for the third time I gave up trying to read the menu above her head and asked for what I used to get if Mum or Dad brought us here for a special treat. From the raised eyebrow she gave me, I guess not many teenagers order the Happy Meal.

“Mum'll freak if she finds out we ate here,” I say, putting the plastic figurine to one side and taking my burger from its wrapper. “She reckons they shouldn't be allowed to sell fast food in a building full of people who already have health problems. She calls this place the cardiologist's waiting room.”

“Well, what your mother doesn't know can't hurt her,” says Gran. She pauses her attack on her burger to dunk some fries in her thickshake. “And my cardiologist says I have the arteries of a sixty year old.”

The burger and fries do taste pretty good, even though they leave the inside of my mouth with a greasy coating that no amount of water will shift.

“I said you should have got a Coke,” tuts Gran as I swish more water round my mouth. She checks her watch. “Right, we've got about an hour and a half. Let's go into town.”

We walk until we get to the pedestrian mall in the middle of the city. “Here's a good spot to sit and people watch.”

I'm about to tell her that no one in their right mind would want to spend time just sitting on one of the benches in the mall, watching office workers and stressed-out mums, but when I look around the other benches are full of old ladies who appear to be doing just that. Gran sits down next to one of them and pats the bench for me to join her. Then she reaches into her tote bag and pulls out a mass of bright pink and yellow. Oh, great, she's brought her knitting.

“Your mum tells me you've met a nice fella,” says Gran, her needles click-clacking briskly. “When are you going to introduce me?”

When Boris has kittens
. “I'm not sure. Dan's pretty busy.”

“Perhaps you could invite him for dinner one night?” She turns her needles and starts knitting back the other way. “I'm sure he'll have
one
night free in the next couple of weeks. I could make a nice roast for him – men love my roasts. Unless he's one of these vegetarian types. He's not, is he? Maisy's grandson's gone vegan and she says it's hell when he comes for tea …”

She prattles on, apparently unaware that I've gone into a state of shock. Grandma Thelma's staying for at least two weeks. Two weeks of
my
holidays. And even when Mum comes home she won't be able to take Gran on drives to the country or to see her old friends in their nursing homes, so she'll just be hanging around. All. The. Time. As if Mum being sick wasn't bad enough, now my summer's been hijacked by a deranged old woman! Behind us, someone's phone rings loudly.

“That reminds me, I haven't switched my phone back on yet.” Gran pulls out a fancy-looking smartphone that chimes when she turns it on. “Ooh, four new messages from Archie. I hope nothing's wrong.” She chuckles as she reads the messages and then types a reply at breakneck speed. “It's true what they say about absence making the heart grow fonder, isn't it?” she says, pressing send.

“Is that your boyfriend?” I ask, trying to keep my revulsion at the thought of geriatric romance out of my voice.

Gran laughs. “It's a long time since Archie qualified as a ‘boy' anything, but he's good company. I've told him I'm not interested in anything serious, but you know what hopeless romantics men are.”

I don't know, but I'm not about to tell her that.

I never thought I'd be happy to see the pink walls of the hospital again, but it's a relief when we get to Mum's room. Jenny is holding Mum's hand and nodding as she speaks quietly. I hang back at the door, not wanting to interrupt – or to hear what they're saying – but Gran marches straight in. When Mum introduces her to Jenny, Gran asks her to bring them both a cup of tea and a biscuit.

Mum looks embarrassed but Jenny shows no sign of offence. “I'll see what I can do.”

As soon as she's out of the room, Mum hisses, “Jenny's a volunteer here, Mum, not the tea lady. Freia, go and help her, please.”

I'm out the door before she's finished her sentence, glad of an excuse to get away from Gran for five minutes. I find Jenny in the visitors' lounge, waiting for the kettle to boil.

“Sorry about my gran. I don't think she means to be so rude.”

Jenny smiles. She looks about Mum's age in the face, maybe a bit older, but she dresses way more trendily and her shoulder-length hair is highlighted with honey and caramel. “Don't worry about it. I often think that coming here is as hard for family members as it is for the patients themselves. When I had my first operation, my mother practically moved in. Your gran just wants to make sure her daughter's okay.”

Two words leap out at me as Jenny speaks: “operation” and “first”. I want to ask what was wrong with her, but either fear of the answer or good manners stops me.

“There you go,” says Jenny, handing me a tray with three cups of tea and more of the shortbread. “Tell Gene I'll pop in to say goodbye before I go home.”

I put the tray on the trolley table and slide it over Mum's bed. “Jenny said she'll come and see you later.”

“She's lovely, isn't she?” says Mum. “You wouldn't think she's had two separate mastectomies, would you?”

“She has cancer?” I can't quite believe it.

“
Had
. She got her five-year all clear last month. You know, she was only thirty-five when she was first diagnosed, raising three kids on her own and working two jobs. Talking to her makes me realise how lucky I am.”

“I hope she doesn't just sit on your bed all day, telling you how much worse she's had it than you,” says Gran.

For the first time in my memory, Mum rolls her eyes. “Of course not. Jenny's been a huge comfort these past couple of days. It really helps to talk to someone who's been through the same thing.”

Gran tsks and takes a bite of shortbread. “Well, you can ask her to bring a fresh packet of biscuits with her tomorrow. That'd be more helpful.”

After dinner, Gran supervises Ziggy as he loads the dishwasher and washes the pots from the spaghetti bolognaise I cooked. She shook her head when she saw the price sticker on the organic mince Dad bought, but judging by the way she wiped her plate with her bread she enjoyed it. God knows what I'm going to make tomorrow, though. I can't see Gran going for Mum's beanbake or quinoa cutlets, and Dad's stressed enough without having to cook, too. When I told him what Gran had said about staying for at least two weeks his left eye started twitching.

“You mean we've got two weeks with
that
?”

At first I thought he meant Gran, but then I realised he was glaring at Rocky. While Ziggy was showing Gran his punching bag earlier, Dad told me that when he got home from the supermarket Rocky greeted him with a stream of expletives and tipped over his food bowl. “I'm telling you, he's evil. The whole time I was cleaning the seeds off the table he stared at me with those cold, beady eyes.”

Over dinner, Dad tried to convince Gran that Rocky would be happier in the laundry but as soon as he suggested it, Rocky went bonkers.

“Now you've upset him,” said Grandma, going to the cage and making cooing noises. “Birds are very social beings, Terry, especially parakeets. If I'm home, Rocky must be with me.”

Rocky looked straight at Dad and clacked his beak, as if to say, Rocky: 1, Terence: 0.

“Do me a favour,” says Dad when I excuse myself to get my stuff from upstairs, “put Boris in my room. I hate to think what'll happen if he sees that bird.”

Grandma Thelma unpacked while I was cooking dinner and I hardly recognise my room for all the creams and medicine bottles and random balls of knitting yarn strewn about the place. Mum definitely didn't get her neat-freak tendencies from her mother. Rocky's perch sits in the corner by the window, on top of some newspaper. He'd better have good aim or I'm demanding new carpet when they leave.

Boris has made a cosy nest for himself on one of Gran's hand-knitted cardigans. He growls when I try to pick him up, hooking his claws into the cardigan in case I'm not getting the message.

“It's for your own good,” I say as I unhook him and carry him to Mum and Dad's room. The sight when I open the door shocks me. The bed is unmade and there's a pile of dirty clothes in the corner and an assortment of plates and glasses on Dad's bedside table. In sixteen years, I've never seen this room look anything but perfect. I deposit Boris on Dad's pillow and get out of there as fast as I can, grabbing the box of stuff I'd packed earlier on my way downstairs.

Mum's study, at least, is still an oasis of order. On the desk, her notebook and diary sit parallel, with her favourite pen positioned above them. Her bookshelves are organised by author and topic, the hardback editions of Jane Austen on one shelf with the other Regency writers, the parenting self-help books on another. If visiting aliens based their impressions of the human race on Mum's library, they'd go away thinking we sit around all day doing needlework while we wait to get married, and that anyone under the age of twenty shouldn't be trusted.

I pull the neatly folded mohair rug from the arm of the sofa, releasing a whiff of the perfumed oil Mum always wears, and throw the cushions off so that I can unfold the bed. The first time Gran came to visit, I thought it was quite exciting to stay down here. It was fun sleeping on a fold-out bed with springs that bounced every time I moved, and I got a little thrill knowing I was in Mum's sanctuary without her, which was banned otherwise. Now, as I throw on the sheets and move the photo of Ziggy with his first footy trophy off the side table to make room for the one of me with Dan, all I think is that it smells of mouldy paper and stale air, like the university library.

While Dad goes to his room to soothe Boris's nerves, and Gran and Rocky and Ziggy watch
Lord of the Rings
(Gran's choice, she reckons Ian McKellen is “dishy”), I make myself a hot chocolate and check my email. There's not much in my inbox (and nothing from Siouxsie, which I take as a sign that she's still narked with me), just a couple of joke forwards from Steph with a note saying, “Thought you could use a laugh”, and a message from Vicky asking if I want to go to the zoo with her and the twins tomorrow. Ordinarily, I'd jump at Vicky's invitation – I love watching the meerkats sunbake and trying to spot the animals in the nocturnal house, and Billy and Tina are hilarious when they're in good moods – but somehow it feels wrong to do something just because I
want
to.