Chapter 52
Poppy
Despite her attempts at jollity, you could see that she was in pain, and her casual references to hospital stays were heartbreaking. We should have been there, helping her through it. It’s like watching a replay of a horrific car crash, knowing what is going to happen but being unable to stop it.
We’re at Euston Station, sitting up on the balcony looking at the departures board, waiting for Joe’s train to Liverpool to be announced. Then the two of us are off to St Pancras to get the Eurostar to Paris – because it’s time for the most mysterious letter of all, P.
I’m feeling extremely nervous about it all, and I suspect Rose is too – because she is wittering on like a mad woman, making sure that Joe knows all the house rules, has enough money, remembers to eat, goes to bed on time, and doesn’t burn the street down.
He, to be fair, is looking resigned and tolerant in the face of her tirade.
‘Simon says he’ll pop round tonight, and keep an eye on you. Plus you can actually go and stay at his if you prefer.’
‘I know, Mum,’ says Joe, doing an awesome job of not rolling his eyes, ‘you’ve already told me. I’ll be fine, honest. I’ll ignore any knocks on the door, and won’t invite drug dealers round, and make sure I take my vitamin pills. I’ll be okay, don’t worry.’
‘I think,’ I say, half an eye on the board and half on my sister, ‘that Simon likes you.’
‘Well, yes,’ replies Rose. ‘He’s a nice bloke, he probably likes most people.’
‘No, I mean he like likes you.’
‘Like likes me? What are you, sixteen?’
‘Excuse me!’ interrupts Joe, holding his hand up in the air. ‘I’d like to point out that I am actually sixteen, and even I wouldn’t say that. But … I think she might be right, Mum. It makes me a bit sick in my mouth, but Simon does look at you in a like-like way.’
Rose gapes at us both for a moment, then shakes her head so hard her curls bobble around her face.
‘Rubbish. And anyway, I’m too old for that kind of stuff.’
Joe gives me a look, finally doing the eye-roll, as if to say: ‘See what I have to put up with?’
There is a sudden movement in the herd of people down below, a group exodus towards a platform that lets us know that the train has been announced, and we all stand up and grab our bags.
We walk with Joe to his train, and Rose insists on staying until the very last second, until its bright-red Virgin logo has disappeared off into the distance. She has tears in her eyes, and I’m not sure it’s only about her son leaving us.
After we stopped laughing at the YouTube clip, the one of mum prancing round stark-bollock-naked on the fairground horse, we were both a little melancholy.
‘It was quite tasteful,’ she’d said, after warning Joe not to look unless he wanted his retinas burned out by his bare-butted Granny. ‘The way they draped her hair over part of her boobs?’
‘Yeah,’ I’d replied, looking through the comments section and recoiling in horror at how much of a fan base my own mother had in certain circles, ‘she looked a bit like the Khaleesi from Game of Thrones, didn’t she?
I bet she’d have been in that if she’d still been acting.
She could have nailed that Diana Rigg part. ’
‘But … the other video. She didn’t look too well in that one, did she?’
‘No,’ I’d replied, feeling the same myself. ‘She looked … vulnerable. I don’t think I’ve ever known her to look vulnerable before. It wasn’t nice to see. Maybe it was the thought of doing P that was getting her down as well. That must have been difficult.’
So difficult, in fact, that in the end she’d chickened out yet again – not of telling us, but of telling us herself.
Instead, she’d passed all the information on to Lewis, who had typed up a series of notes and memories to get us started.
And being Lewis – my mother’s sworn protector – he’d added his own spin on it all.
We’ve read the letter, which has shaken us both up – I know I was only just about holding it together for Joe’s sake, and I was 100 per cent sure that was the case for Rose as well.
There were some uncomfortable truths in there, and I’m beginning to think that a fantasy version of our father might be altogether less distressing than the real version.
Now we have our journey to look forward to, and a new cassette recording full of answers to our questions – or at least the questions that Lewis, an elderly gay man, thinks we might want answering.
We’re going to have to listen to the tape on an ancient Walkman Rose has dredged up, sitting next to each other on the train with one headphone each, just like we did when we were kids and Mum could only afford to buy one between us.
That invariably used to end up with us punching each other. I can only hope the same doesn’t happen while we’re on our way to Paris, to potentially meet our dear old dad. Rose hasn’t said as much, but after reading Lewis’s letter, she must also be wondering if this might be a terrible mistake.
We amble towards the exit, irritating the commuters with our slow pace, pulling our wheelie cases behind us as we start the walk to St Pancras.
‘Poppy,’ says Rose, as we emerge into the noise and bustle of Euston Road.
‘Yes?’ I reply.
‘You do know, don’t you, that that letter means our dad definitely isn’t Dumbledore?’
I nod. She’s right, sadly. Not unless there was a much darker side to Dumbledore than we all suspected.