Chapter 18
? Reconnecting with the past
Jo welcomed me into her bungalow and gave my hands a gentle squeeze
with hers as she led me through to her living room.
‘Mally, love, Tom said you’d like to look through some things about Livvie. I’ve got a box full of stuff if you think it would help?’
Hearing someone say her name was like a drug. I sniffed and nodded, sitting down on the same soft spot I’d occupied a few nights ago. Chippie immediately rested his head on my thigh, somehow sensing I needed the comfort of touch.
‘Of course. Tom, could you go and fetch the pink shoebox from the spare bed?’
Tom nodded and left the room.
‘I’ve already had a quick look through what I’ve got, and have pulled out some things you might like to see and put them at the top.
Now, there is some… other stuff in there, too.
But I’ll leave you to decide whether or not you want to have a rummage.
I’ll leave you here for a bit and if you need me for anything you can just shout, okay? ’
I nodded again. ‘Jo?’
‘Yes, love?’
‘Before you go, can you tell me what you remember about her? You know, from when you knew her from playschool?’
Jo’s face lit up with warmth. ‘Oh yes! Well, let me think. Oh! I remember this one time, not long after a new boy had started, she came running to me to tell me that another boy had been poking him with a stick. I rushed over to see what was happening, and before I could intervene, your sister said, “Oh it’s okay, Mrs B, I dealt with it. I just wanted you to know because I think you might need to keep an eye on him in the future.” I looked down at the older boy she was pointing to, and there he was, sat there with tears streaming down his face, his beloved stick snapped clean in two. He never bothered anyone again.’
‘That story is classic Livvie!’ And it was.
She never put up with any mind-games or nastiness from anyone.
I laughed through my tears. It was amazing hearing someone else talk about her like this.
Mentioning Livvie – even in passing – had become a no-go zone for the Allisters.
If we didn’t talk, maybe we wouldn’t have to feel.
But I wanted to feel, now. I wanted to absorb the fondness that was emanating from Jo as she spoke about my sister, and connect it somehow to my own buried memories.
Tom returned, placing an impressively pristine Dolcis shoebox down on the coffee table and perching on the arm of the sofa next to me. He placed his hand gently on my shoulder as his mum shared more memories.
‘What else do you remember about her?’
‘Well, I remember thinking that she was nothing like her older siblings.’
‘Yeah, she was properly special, wasn’t she?’
‘Oh I didn’t mean it like that. It’s difficult to explain, but I suppose what I’m trying to say is that, like all kids really, each of you had such different inbuilt personalities – even when you were little.
Josh, for example, was always so quiet but deeply sensitive and loyal, too – and I only knew him for a few weeks after I started.
And you, Mally, well, you were a little sweetheart.
Always smiling, always sharing your toys and making sure everyone had someone to play with, and helping me tidy up at the end of the day. ’
Always smiling. That sounded about right. Why did I always feel the need to make people feel good about themselves, no matter how I was feeling? Livvie had never been that way. If she’d lived long enough to hear the term ‘resting bitch face’, she’d have claimed it with pride.
Jo could see I was getting lost in my thoughts. She grabbed her walker and headed towards the kitchen. ‘Anyway, I’ll leave you two to it for a bit.’
Tom gave my shoulder a squeeze, still sat on the arm of the sofa. ‘How are you doing?’
I puffed out my cheeks and smiled. ‘Yeah, I’m all right. I think I’d like to look at all this stuff by myself – I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Of course not. You need to do this in your own way and in your own time. I’ve got some stuff I need to chat to Mum about anyway. I’ll be back in a bit.’
‘Thanks, Tom.’
He closed the door soundlessly as he left the room.
I could hear them murmuring quietly to each other while I lifted the lid off the box and gently extracted the larger-than-expected pile of photos and clippings.
I took a deep breath, catching the crooked but reassuring gaze of Tom’s scraggly toy cat, Marmalade, on the branches of the Christmas tree.
There and then – despite the odds of me being sat on this sofa in Tom Brinton’s mum’s living room being slim-to-none – I knew for certain I was precisely where I was meant to be.
I moved my eyes down and focused on the first photo.
It was Livvie’s playschool photo, Jo – Mrs B – beaming from the side of the group.
Looking at the faces of the children, I could immediately hazard a guess at which boy had paid Livvie’s price for his stick-poking due to the sullen but slightly sheepish look on his face.
Discovering this fresh detail about my sister and being able to picture this interaction in my head for the first time felt like time travel.
Next in the pile was an article from the Western Daily Press from the year Livvie had competed in her first eisteddfod contest with her cello. There was a photo of her playing on stage, her face turned away from the camera, but her hair giving her away, as always.
Then I came to a small clipping of a letter she’d written to the editor of the paper a year or so later, a vague memory of which shimmered on the edge of my recollection:
‘Sir’,
I’m writing in relation to the article you published last week – ‘IS THIS SCARNbrOOK ALLEYWAY THE MOST DEPRESSING PLACE IN brISTOL?’ – about the ongoing vandalism issues in the alleyway next to Scarnbrook Community School.
The reporter claimed to have spoken to several local residents, and come to the wild yet completely unfounded conclusion that ‘loitering pupils’ from the school must be responsible for the state of the pathway.
However, surely the lack of sufficient street lighting in the alleyway in question, the constant overgrown brambles that pupils like me have to battle our way through each day, plus the lack of upkeep of the tarmac (which, frankly, is an accident waiting to happen) means that the real responsibility for this sad state of affairs actually lies with our local council, who are failing in their duty to maintain it to a reasonable standard?
May I suggest that is where you direct your ‘journalistic’ focus in the future?
I also have it on good authority that a) the school itself was not approached for comment by the reporter b) one of the interviewees gave a false name, which was not acknowledged in the piece and c) your offices are probably way more depressing.
Yours (mine),
Livvie Allister, age 12
I snorted at Livvie’s mic-drop final line, baffled as to why the paper had not only printed it in what appeared to be its original state, but also awarded it Letter of the Week.
Local journalism at its finest. I leafed through a few other clippings of various prizes she’d won and concerts she’d performed in, noting in the back of my mind that they were ordered vaguely chronologically, and That Year was fast approaching the top of the pile. Should I continue?
If not now, then when? The silent question appeared involuntarily, as if it hadn’t come from myself. I glanced up.
‘Are you infiltrating my mind, Marmalade?’
He just looked at me. The question may not have come from a partially stuffed vintage toy, but it had come from somewhere . And I felt a kind of weird duty to keep going, even though I knew it’d be devastating.
I moved Chippie off my lap and thumbed through some irrelevant clippings before coming to a front page of the Western Daily Press , which had been folded in half.
SCARNbrOOK GIRL DIES IN TRAGIC ROAD ACCIDENT
Accident . That word had always felt so insufficient. Despite the fact that it was Livvie’s misjudgement that ultimately caused the fatal collision, everything that had led to that moment had been anyone’s fault but her own.
If I’d been a better sister. If Josh hadn’t been late. If she’d never started playing that cello. If, if, if…
I quickly leafed through the following clippings without reading any of them until I got to an article about Livvie’s funeral. Never in my life had I read these articles or seen any photos from this day. And there was one image that took my breath away.
Because there was Josh, carrying the coffin alongside other family members, his face utterly consumed with a raw anguish that I didn’t realise he was capable of.
Compared to the rest of us, Josh had always appeared to be less grief-stricken by Livvie’s death.
He was angry, that’s for sure, but he directed most of that towards the police, as he believed they should have been prosecuting the van’s driver.
Me, Mum and even Dad had openly wailed for days, barely able to function, yet Josh had bottled everything up, even maintaining his training regime at the gym throughout.
This photo was the very first time I’d seen his pain.
How on earth had he managed to keep it hidden from us – then and since?
Josh and the other coffin bearers were flagged by Livvie’s two best friends from orchestra club, who’d played their violins as the procession entered the church.
The wicker coffin itself was artfully draped with all manner of colourful blooms. I remembered thinking at the time that it was way more beautiful than any coffin deserved to be.