The Museum of You Read online

  She sits on Mrs Mackerel’s sofa in her Tena Lady Pants (Discreet), knitting, watching Murder She Wrote, occasionally glancing up at the Virgin Mary on the wall, who is wearing an expression that is both surprised and pleased – the exact one Dad was supposed to adopt, in fact. She feels completely different on the inside and wonders whether it shows yet. She is half expecting Mrs Mackerel to notice and burst out with, ‘I know it’s NONE of my BUSINESS, but . . .’ just like the sharp-eyed Jessica Fletcher.

  This is what life will be like when she is an old lady – knitting, afternoon telly and special knickers – but she isn’t old yet and there’s no way she is spending the whole afternoon on Mrs Mackerel’s sofa.

  ‘I think I need to go and water the allotment now.’

  ‘Are you SURE? Your dad NEVER MENTIONED it. I don’t want to get CAUGHT IN THE CROSSHAIRS.’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘When will you BE BACK?’

  ‘I won’t be long.’

  Mrs Mackerel puts her ugly knitting on the covered arm of her chair and pushes herself up. She looks slow and old and something tugs in Clover’s chest.

  ‘Just sit down,’ she says. ‘I’ll show myself out. And I’ll bring you a beetroot.’

  ‘Oh, that’ll be LOVELY.’

  Clover sneaks around the back of the house and gets her bike out of the shed. Then she wheels it down the path and out, on to the pavement. The padding on her bottom acts like a cushion, it’s a comfy ride up the hill and down, past the shops and the post office, whoosh – hair blowing behind her like streamers.

  The gate hasn’t been fixed: the smallest of nudges makes the catch slip and it yawns open. She slides off her bike and holds the warm metal. Gently, gently, she edges it, until click, it’s shut again. She pushes her bike down the track, and as she approaches the allotment she notices that Dagmar is there, lying on the carpet beside her trolley, drawing.

  ‘Hello,’ she calls, rolling from her front to her side. ‘I wait by the shop and you are not coming. So I think you are here. I just push the gate and it is opening. You don’t mind?’ She makes her dash of a smile, so fast you might easily miss it.

  ‘No.’ Clover sits on the carpet, too.

  Summer is fading fast. There are gaps now, empty rows of disturbed soil where onions, potatoes and beetroots used to be; only a few sad stragglers remain, unharvested in the hope that they’ll grow a bit more. The broccoli and pumpkins are coming into their own, but everything else is ending. Leaf tips are curling. Stalks are yellowing. The apple tree in the wild allotment next door is loaded with fruit. If no one picks it, it will all fall off and it will be wasp heaven, literally.

  She looks at Dagmar’s sketch pad. ‘That’s good. I like the way you’ve got the beans from the ground up, so they look like they’re going really high. Like something from a fairy tale.’

  ‘Thank you.’ There’s no fuss with Dagmar. No pretending modesty or fishing for compliments.

  ‘Do you want to know something?’ Clover asks.

  ‘I don’t know until after you have told me. And then it will be too late.’

  ‘Something happened today.’

  Dagmar waits, impassive, patient.

  ‘I had a big fight with my dad,’ she says, surprised by the words – she had intended to tell Dagmar about her period. ‘And I said some horrible things.’

  ‘You are being angry?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hneˇv je špatný rádce.’

  ‘Hen-yev ye sh-patney rad-ste,’ Clover tries.

  ‘It means anger is a bad . . . helper. No, advice-giver? My mum is saying it. To my dad.’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘It is a good week. He is sleeping every night.’ She flicks her fringe away from her eye. ‘And how is your dad, after you are being horrible?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You are sorry?’

  She thinks about it. ‘Mostly.’

  ‘You will say it?’

  ‘Yeah. I suppose.’ She lies down too, back on the carpet, bum warmed by the Tena pants, and speaks the words she had originally planned to say. ‘I started my period.’

  ‘You are twelve. It is expected.’

  ‘I know. But . . .’

  ‘But?’

  ‘I don’t know! It’s a big deal too, isn’t it?’

  ‘You are happy about it?’

  She has no idea whether it is something to be happy about. She glances to the side, eyes shaded by one hand. ‘I like talking to you. You say unexpected things.’

  Dagmar looks flushed, pleased. ‘I don’t know what to say now.’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  Although the sun is out and the carpet is warm there’s something in the air, a smell perhaps, a slight spikiness that will sharpen the coming autumn mornings. The sun slips behind a flossy cloud and there’s a bit of a whoosh as the wind brushes the tips of the big trees that border the allotments.

  ‘Next week,’ Dagmar begins, and Clover wants to shush her. Next week is not something she is allowing herself to think about. The autumn smell seems stronger now, and it is accompanied by an ending feeling: the nights will get darker, the allotment emptier and the mornings cooler. Dad will burn the rubbish. They will stand in wellies and jackets beside the licking flames, downwind from the billow of the smoke, and afterwards they will sprinkle the ashes on the soil, ready for the new things to be planted and grown next year. There will be Halloween, and Bonfire Night, and Christmas, and then it will be next year.

  ‘Next week, we are going back to school and . . . you don’t have to be knowing me.’

  ‘But I do know you,’ she replies, appalled that Dagmar is reconciled to the possibility of being ignored. Just thinking of it makes her feel sick. ‘And anyway,’ she says, realising, as she forms the words, that they are true and at least one good thing has happened this holiday, ‘we are friends.’

  ‘I am glad,’ Dagmar replies, fiddling with her pencil for a moment. ‘I am checking the name days and I find Cecílie on the twenty-second of November. It is the only girls’ name with ‘C’. So I am thinking it can be your name day.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And I will bring you a present.’

  ‘Epic!’

  ‘Now I am drawing. And you are doing the gardening.’

  Mrs Mackerel comes to the door with her knitting.

  ‘YOU’VE BEEN GONE A LONG TIME.’

  The mustard thing has grown. It’s too wide to be a scarf and too long to transform into a section of jumper.

  ‘I THOUGHT about COMING TO FIND YOU. But it would have been like LOOKING in a HAYSTACK full of NEEDLES.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Here’s your beetroot, it’s not very big, there’s only little ones left now. I should go home and make the tea.’

  ‘ALL RIGHT. I hope your dad GOT SOME REST for his NECK.’

  ‘What are you knitting?’

  ‘WAIT AND SEE.’

  Once she has swapped the Tena pants for a sanitary towel and binned them in a pass-the-parcel bundle of knotted carrier bags along with the stained knickers, she makes the tea. She mixes runner beans with boiled cod and a packet of cheese sauce. When it’s ready she knocks on the bedroom door.

  ‘Down in a minute,’ Dad calls.

  She waits, planning her apology. As it gets later and later, and the plate cools on her lap, she begins to anticipate an apology from him, for spoiling the food. But when he finally appears he doesn’t comment on the temperature of his tea.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about this morning,’ he says, between cheesy mouthfuls.

  ‘Me too.’ Her voice is small, mousy.

  ‘I have never wished you dead. You know that, don’t you?’

  She nods. Of course she does. She tries to eat, too. The cheese sauce is horrible cold. It has grown a sort of skin. And the beans make a rubbery kind of squeak when pressed between her molars. ‘I’m sorry for saying it.’ She puts her fork down. ‘I was angry.’

  ‘I know.’ The
way he shovels the cold, squeaky slop into his mouth makes her wonder whether he has had any lunch. ‘And what you said about me being angry?’

  She nods again, her skin prickling with embarrassment.

  ‘It made me feel angry – ha!’

  She tries to smile at his joke, lips straining like a weightlifter’s arms. She can’t do it. None of this is funny.

  ‘Do you trust me?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she says because it is the right answer.

  ‘Look.’ He pulls out his phone and shows her a series of pictures he has taken. Pictures of the dressmaker’s dummy and the decorated walls; the magnet-spotted radiator and the made bed; the Becky Brookfield exhibit card and the MDF boards. ‘So you can remember it,’ he says, which makes her feel like crying, partly because it sounds like he has moved everything and partly because he is trying so hard to be kind. ‘When I’ve sorted through it all, we’ll go up together and talk about it, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  That’s it. He doesn’t ask about her day, so she won’t tell him. He will realise about her period eventually, even if it’s not until she writes ‘sanitary towels’ on the shopping list. In the meantime, she waits, withholding the news like a punishment. She won’t say a word about it until he asks if she is all right.

  She makes sure she has a pen and paper ready when Bake Off starts so she can write down any raspberry recipes, as promised. The bakers start with self-saucing puddings and two of them use raspberries. The recipes are complicated: one makes chocolate, lime and raspberry fondants; the other does strawberry, rhubarb, raspberry and orange puddings. The puddings are hard, but she makes some notes anyway.

  Dad doesn’t come downstairs, even though they always do this together. By the time the bakers get to the showstopper, she stops listening for him. The showstopper is baked Alaska, this amazing thing where you coat a cake with ice cream before smothering the whole thing in meringue and cooking it in the oven. Three of the bakers make their Alaskas with raspberries. There’s mango, raspberry and coconut baked Alaska; pistachio, raspberry and chocolate baked Alaska; and raspberry ripple baked Alaska.

  One of the Alaskas, not a raspberry one, melts because it is very hot in the tent where they do the baking. The ice cream just slides off the cake like butter. The baker gets really cross and chucks the whole thing in the bin. It’s very exciting, and for a few moments she forgets that Dad is upstairs dismantling her displays. But when the programme ends and he doesn’t appear with one of his daft treats – not a Cornetto or a meringue nest in sight – it’s rubbish.

  Still, she is a woman now. She is leaking actual blood. She thinks she has heard Mrs Mackerel mention the blood of life, though it might have been bread . . . Anyway, the blood of life – it sounds good, doesn’t it? She sits on the recliner, the blood of life seeping into the sanitary towel (with wings) that is fastened to her knickers. She feels ripe and responsible. Grown up. Until scenes from One Born Every Minute trickle into remembrance, and blood of life has other connotations – pain and screaming and umbilical cords, purple-knotted and pulsing. Actually, it’s just blood, she thinks. Forget the life.

  As an adult, she decides to take the high road and forgo her treat with good grace. She remembers something Mrs Mackerel says. She got it from Jesus, who was good at taking the high road: forgive him, for he knows not what he does.

  Exhibit: ‘Becky Brookfield – the Untold Story’

  Catalogue

  Object: Magnets & mugs.

  Description: A small collection of fridge magnets and mugs (plus one egg cup and one tea towel) with sayings written on them:

  ’You can’t scare me, I have children.’

  ‘The first thirty years of parenthood are always the hardest.’

  ‘I need a time out.’

  ‘When I count my blessings I always count you twice.’

  ‘Home is where the hugs are.’

  ‘A family is a little word created by love.’

  ‘To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world.’

  ‘God could not be everywhere and therefore he made mothers.’

  Item Number: 30–37.

  Provenance: Becky Brookfield (my mother) collected them. Perhaps she planned on having a kitchen like people on the telly. One with a fridge covered with pictures and plans of what every person in the family is doing. Clover Quinn (me) was born in the kitchen, so it is actually a special place and maybe that is why Becky Brookfield wanted to buy these things.

  Display: Put the magnets on the radiator because it is magnetic. Display the other items on the floor beside the radiator.

  Curator: Clover Quinn.

  Keeper: Darren Quinn.

  16

  After the front door slammed he’d stood alone in the kitchen and finished his mug of tea, hands shaking, neck aching. ‘Maybe you wish I was dead and not her’ – how did such a thing get thought, let alone said? He’d never seen her like that before. Never imagined such a disagreement. It was fixable though, wasn’t it? Almost-teenagers said all sorts, didn’t they?

  He rinsed the mug and went upstairs. Clover hadn’t got around to his things. He was grateful, until he got stuck into them himself and realised that practically everything he had saved was rubbish. He uncovered school exercise books, swimming certificates and football cards. He opened another box and discovered a pair of aviator sunglasses, a Spiderman annual and his old school tie. In another he found cassette tapes, an insert template and some home-made single and album cover designs for his and Colin’s band, Mad Scouse.

  He fingered one of the inserts, a sketch of him and Colin – stick men with daft hair and boxing-glove hands – hanging out of the top window of a badly drawn tower block. Their first album was going to be called Mad Scouse in the House. He’d pestered for a guitar for his birthday and had been disappointed because the one Mum and Dad chose was second-hand and there were scratches on its body. At least they bought him a How to Play book, too. After he mastered the section titled ‘Seven Basic Chords’, Colin came round with his portable ghetto blaster and they recorded themselves, taping over the cassettes they’d previously used to record the Top 40 off the radio on Sunday afternoons. Darren’s guitar playing was stilted, and Colin couldn’t sing. They practised ‘Sweet Caroline’, ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’, all sung and played with unscripted pauses as he worried the fingerboard between chords. They were crap, but imagined a day when they might be good. ‘The next Oasis,’ his mum said, encouragingly, and although they knew it wasn’t likely, they basked in her optimism and scoffed the Curly Wurlys and cans of Tango she left on a tray outside the bedroom door. Mad Scouse: it was such a crap name for a band, an amalgam of northern pride – the whole Madchester thing – with reference to the nearest big city (Liverpool) and a light-hearted nod to BSE, which they found hilarious at the time.

  In among the rubbish he found a packet of old photographs. Finally, something worth saving. There was only one roll of film and the pictures were pretty crap, truth be told. They were taken with a disposable camera. Maybe he could photograph them with his phone and filter and sharpen them, airbrush shiny foreheads and fix red eyes. They were of the house when he and Becky first bought it. There were far too many wasted shots of empty rooms. He wished he could go back in time and insist that either he or Becky be in each picture. But at least they were in some of them. He flicked through the bundle: him, holding a paintbrush like a microphone; Becky, coating a strip of wallpaper with paste; him, rolled up in a length of old carpet, face creased with laughter; Becky, clasping a sheet of sandpaper, grinning into the camera. Sanding was such bloody hard work, but she was happy – there was the evidence. He studied her mouth and saw something of Clover in the sequence of her teeth and the creases on either side of her smile. By the time Clover was old enough to ask whether there were any pictures besides the one on the mantelpiece in the lounge and the one in her room, he could only remember the two of Clover and Becky together, which
are awful. The pictures in the packet should be up somewhere, he decided. He’d give them to Clover so she could make a proper display, one they’d put up in the lounge – something real and genuine, so much better than her dead-end clues and half-baked assumptions.

  *

  It happened at the bottom of the bridge, just where The Grove meets the main road. If you stand on a chair and lean out of the front bedroom window, you can see the exact spot – another reason to cede the biggest room to Clover and retreat to the back of the house. The car hurtled over the hump of the hill and Becky stepped out in front of it. Those are the facts.

  Here are some more: he was up to date with the shopping; there was milk in the fridge and tea in the caddy. She had her bag with her. The red one. It flew off and scuffed the tarmac. She had her purse and her keys and she was dressed for the weather, which was pleasant, warm. There had been only one phone call that morning. From the pay phone at Jim’s B&B. Afterwards, the police assured him that there was no evidence she intended to leave him; it hadn’t occurred to him until they said it.

  On the day, the road was closed and the buses re-routed. He did a loop of the diversion before he knew; behind schedule, worrying about reaching his timing stops. They were waiting for him on Lord Street. Two police officers, a man and a woman, and Dave Newton, relief driver, ready to take over the shift. He climbed out of the cab, knees spongy, feet flat and clumsy. It was Dad, he thought: a heart attack, or a stroke. He braced himself for it as they escorted him to the car they’d parked on the double yellow lines behind the bus stop. There was time for a moment of embarrassment as he settled into the back seat alongside the female officer – did it look like he was being arrested? There was time to fasten his seatbelt, time to tense in anticipation of the blow. The woman started to speak, and time bent and stretched; he was newly aware of the intersecting muscles in his face and the effort it took to hold his mouth closed. He remembers the woman’s shoes. As she spoke he counted the little holes that patterned the toes. There was something horribly wrong with her words. If he concentrated on the pattern, if he locked his jaw shut with cheeks and teeth, he might contain the howl.