Lifesaving for Beginners (20 page)

‘Why don’t you write under your own name?’

‘I like the anonymity, to be honest.’

He nodded.
He got it.

I said, ‘What about you?’

He said, ‘Well, I really am a farmer.’

‘You’re not, you’re a journalist.’

‘I’m a farmer who happens to be a journalist as well.’

‘You’re a journalist who happens to have a farm.
A very small farm.’

‘It’s not that small.’

‘It’s five fields of stony grey soil in Monaghan.’

‘Five grand big fields,’ he said.

Then he said, ‘I was married.’
I felt like someone had slapped my face.
Hard.

‘It was a long time ago.
We were young.
In our twenties.’

I said, ‘What happened?’
Even though part of me didn’t want to know.
This was messy territory.

‘She died.’
He said it in a way that suggested he didn’t say it often.
‘In a car crash.
She was five months pregnant.
So I suppose they both died.
That’s the way it felt to me anyway.
At the time.’

At first, I was kind of mad with him.
Why couldn’t he have been like everyone else and just been married and then got divorced?
Why did it have to be such a tragedy?
How could anyone compete with that?
The least he could have given me was a much-hated ex-wife who had left him for his best friend and was now screwing him for maintenance.
That would have been a helluva lot easier to take.

Another part of me was glad to know.
I told him something.
He told me something.
This was what people did.
People in a relationship.

Out of the blue, I said, ‘I don’t want to have children.’
I don’t know why I said it like that.
Just blurted it out like that.

‘Oh,’ is all he said.

‘I mean, I know we’re not serious or anything.
But I just want you to know.
I don’t want any misunderstandings.’

I dived into the space in the conversation where he was supposed to say something but didn’t.
‘Just because I’ve got a womb doesn’t mean I have to fill it to the brim, does it?
I mean look at you.’

‘What about me?’

‘Well, you’ve got those three nipples and you never use any of them.’

‘That’s a birthmark, I keep telling you.’

‘It’s a nipple.’

‘It’s a birthmark.’

‘It’s a nipple.’

‘Anyway.
I am serious.’

‘About what?’

‘About you.’

And in the space in the conversation where I was supposed to say something, he leaned towards me and kissed me and, even though my mouth might have tasted of vomit, I kissed him back.

And there it was.

I suppose, if you want to be soppy about it, I could say that was the moment when I knew that he was right.
What he had said.
That day.
‘You’d better be mighty careful, Katherine Kavanagh.’

But I wasn’t careful.
My door was open wide and here he was, traipsing all over my lovely cream carpet in his steel toe-capped, mucky boots.
And instead of telling him to get out, or at least have the decency to take off his shoes, and getting busy with the Shake n’ Vac, I just let it go.
I let everything go.
I might as well have gone to the roof garden at the top of the apartment block and roared at the top of my voice, ‘I LOVE YOU.’

That’s how bad it was.

The next day, Faith says, ‘Where are you going?’

I say, ‘To the library.’

‘Is Damo going with you?’

‘Yeah.’
Which is pretty funny when you think about it, because Damo isn’t a member of the library.
I don’t think he’s ever been inside it.

But Faith won’t let me go to the library on my own on account of the two roads, even though there’s a zebra crossing on one of them and traffic lights on the other.

I run out of the door in case Faith thinks of something else to ask me.

The post office isn’t that far from the library and you still have to cross two roads but neither of them has a zebra crossing.
I stand beside a mam and a dad and their two kids.
One of them is strapped in a buggy, all wrapped up.
You can’t really see the kid but I reckon it’s a girl because everything is pink.
The other kid is holding her mam’s hand.
They’re both wearing mittens, the same colour, so it looks like a pair of hands except one of them is really big and one of them is really small.
The dad is carrying the shopping bags.
I wait until they’re crossing and then I cross too.
People probably think we’re a family.

There’s a long queue in the post office and the man behind the glass screen keeps looking down the line and then looking at his watch and shaking his head.
Mam used to love it when there was a queue at the Funky Banana.
She’d rub her hands and say, ‘We’ll eat like kings tonight, my son.’
I don’t think the man behind the counter loves queues as much as Mam.

It takes ages to get to the top of the queue.
The man behind the screen looks at me like I’ve called him a name or picked my nose right in front of his face.
‘You want to clear your account?’

‘No.
Thank you.’
Sometimes, if you say please and thank you, it makes adults smile, but not all the time.
Not this time.
‘I just want to take out one hundred and fifty-three pounds and forty-one pence, please.’

‘But that’s all you have in your account.’

I say, ‘I know.’
I point to my post office book, which I have slipped under the glass between us so he can see it too.
See the number at the bottom.
One hundred and fifty-three pounds and forty-one pence.

The man rubs his eyes as if he hasn’t slept for a really long time.
Maybe he hasn’t.
Maybe that’s what’s wrong with him.

He says, ‘So you do want to clear your account, then?’

‘Does that mean the account will be closed?’

‘No.’

‘I don’t want to close it because I’ll be saving up again.
Half my pocket money every—’

‘Your account won’t be closed.’

‘OK.
So can I have my money?
Please?
One hundred and fifty-three pounds and forty-one pence?’

He sighs.
‘Does your mother know you’re here?’

I nod.
‘Yeah.
I mean yes.
She does.’

He sighs again.
He opens a drawer with a key.
He counts out the money.
Three fifty-pound notes.
Three pound coins.
Two twenty-pence pieces.
One penny.
It’s all there.
He pushes it under the glass, towards me.

I say, ‘Thank you.’

He says, ‘NEXT.’

I don’t go outside until I have the money inside the pocket of my jeans.
Just in case.
I’ve never actually seen a mugger but I’ve heard about them.

I can always start saving again for a PlayStation 3 when I get back.
Sully has one and, when he’s in a good mood, he lets me and Damo have a go.
If a girl lets him kiss her, Sully gets in a good mood.
He says he’s done sex with girls.
Loads of times.
When he’s away at the war, he locks his PlayStation 3 inside his wardrobe.

One hundred and fifty-three pounds and forty-one pence.
That’s worth more than half a PlayStation 3.

I got more than that for my First Holy Communion but I spent some of it on a new snorkel and facemask.
Mam said I should put the rest in the post office because you never know when you might be glad of a few bob.
Your First Holy Communion is when you eat the bread, except it’s supposed to be the body of Jesus.
And the wine is the blood, but we didn’t get to drink the wine.
Only the priest got to do that.

My jeans are in the laundry basket on the landing so I take them out and put them into the bag.
They don’t smell bad.
They just have the grass stains on them from the game of Bulldog Takedown we played at school the other day.
I have three clean pairs of boxers.

The socks I find don’t match and have holes in the toes.
They feel dead uncomfortable.
Mam cut my toenails every Saturday night after my bath.
I told her I didn’t need a bath on Saturday nights on account of going to my lifesaving class once a week and then a regular swim as well.
That’s like having a bath.
Twice.
In one week.
She’d tickle my toes when she was cutting my nails and, even though I’m too old for tickles, I’d laugh anyway.
You can’t help it.
Not when it’s your toes.

I do it myself now.
Cut my toenails.
Except that I keep forgetting.
That might be why most of my socks have holes in the toes.

In the end, I find four socks.
They’re all too big.
I think they’re Ant’s.
Or Adrian’s.
And they don’t match or anything like that.
But there’re no holes in them.
Not yet anyway.

Faith is talking to Dad on the phone.
He says he’ll be here in an hour.
I hope he’s not talking on the phone and driving at the same time because that’s a pretty dangerous thing to do when you think about it.

I check the bus timetable.
The bus into London goes from the top of our road so it’s not too far to walk.
I could get the train but the station is ages away and the bus is way cheaper and I’ll be able to sit on the top deck at the front.
The last one leaves at 00.14, which means fourteen minutes past midnight.
Then I’ll take another bus to Gatwick.
Faith’s flight is at eleven o’clock tomorrow morning.
I’ll be there way before then.

I find my passport in Mam’s room.
I run in, take it out of the drawer and run back out.
I used to love going into Mam’s room.
When I was little, I bounced on the bed.
It’s a very bouncy bed.
When I got too big to bounce, I lay across it and read my books.
Mam sat on the end of the bed and put make-up on her face or brushed her hair or painted her nails, and I’d read and she’d say, ‘Tell me something,’ and I’d tell her about a new dive we were learning at lifesaving or a new star that had been discovered or something like that.

I shut the door behind me when I get out of the room.

I put my passport into my bag.
I’ll probably be able to buy a ticket to Ireland at the airport.
Faith won’t be able to say, ‘No,’ once I’ve got a ticket.

I end up hoping the birth mother turns out to be a horrible person because then Faith will come back to Brighton with me.
I know that’s mean but you can’t stop your thoughts from thinking stuff, even if it’s bad stuff.

I hide the bag under my bed.
It’s small enough so it fits.
I hide it behind the box with the costumes.
I’m too old for dressing up now but some of them are still in pretty good condition, like the Power Ranger and the Death Eater.
There’s a cowboy outfit too.
I could give them away, I suppose.
To a charity shop, maybe.
There’s one in town.

I’ll do it when I get back.

When everything gets back to normal.