Chapter 16
Sixteen
GRANDMA PICKED ME UP from the station.
‘Your dad said to come and get you. He’s on a late one at work and your mum’s not feeling so well.’
I kissed her cheek through the open window and lifted my suitcase into the boot.
After spending ten minutes telling me about her electrician’s cruise and the terrible food poisoning he and his wife had on the third night, she glanced over. ‘You’re awfully quiet, missus.’
‘I’m just tired,’ I said, resting my head against the window.
And I was – exhausted, in fact. I felt scooped out.
Ever since Abigail’s party, I’d been avoiding my classmates.
As soon as that day’s assessments were over, I’d scurried to the library, the supermarket, anywhere, home.
I didn’t want to see any of them. I was sick of the drama that seemed to circle our little clique and of Victoria, always seemingly at the centre of it.
And then there was Crits. I looked at the fingerprint bruises dotted up my arm. Apparently everyone had gone to the pub straight afterwards to discuss how it had gone. I went back to my halls and slept a fitful twelve hours. I only found out what had happened because Toby posted on Facebook.
Toby Grant posted 3 hours ago
Hi all, I didn’t get to see everyone on Friday so I just wanted to let you know I won’t be coming back next term.
As most of you already know by now, during Crits I was asked to leave the course.
Being an actor is all I’ve ever dreamed of so I was understandably upset.
I’m still devastated. But you guys made me feel so loved and so supported and I just wanted to say thank you.
I’m going to do some travelling then reapply to drama schools next year (although not RLSDA – fuck you, Frida) and I’m not going to give up on my dream.
This place might not have seen my potential but I know somewhere else will.
Anyway, just wanted to say goodbye and hope you all have a good Christmas/NY.
Let’s keep in touch, yeah? And I’ll definitely try to see your final third-year shows. Love you all. Toby x
‘You should’ve called more, you know,’ Grandma said, gently slapping my knee.
‘Grandma, keep your eyes on the road.’
‘Oh, live a little,’ she said, chuckling and swerving the car towards the pavement.
‘You’ll kill someone someday, you know.’
‘Still a drama queen then?’
People always described my grandma as a ‘character’.
She’d lived her entire life in the house she grew up in on Saddleworth Moor.
Her mum had died when she was a baby, so she was raised by her father.
Once, when I slept over as a kid, she told me how, as a girl, she’d stood in the doorway and watched torch beams comb the moorland, searching for the small, ruined bodies of children returned to the earth too soon.
Grandma believed in ghosts. She said they walked among us until their dealings were done.
When I asked her what the ghosts wanted, she said it was none of our business, but that we should be kind to them and let them pass on in their own time.
At age nineteen, Grandma married a man from Huddersfield.
He died in the Falklands and she was left, like her father, to raise a child alone.
She joined the CND and went on anti-war protests, making it her mission to stamp out hatred and violence in all its many forms. She had a monthly standing order to the Socialist Workers Party, weak eyesight, a suede jacket laden with badges and pins that clicked as she moved, two cats, skin like crepe paper, and the biggest heart of anyone I knew.
‘I’m just saying, your mum and dad, they’ve barely heard a peep from you in weeks. What, your fancy school doesn’t let you ring home? Did they confiscate your phone or something?’
‘I’ve just been busy.’
‘Too busy to call your mum and wish her happy birthday?’
‘I sent a card,’ I protested.
‘I sent a card, I sent a card,’ she repeated. ‘Anyway, I’ve said my piece. I won’t say another word.’ She flicked the indicator and popped a Fruit Pastille in her mouth. ‘It’s just, I know your mum and dad. They won’t say anything.’
‘I thought you said you were done?’
Grandma held her palms up in surrender.
‘Hands on the wheel, Grandma!’
She replaced them, her eyes twinkling. ‘They’ll be so happy to see you.’
‘And you’re not?’
She chuckled. ‘Oh shush, of course I am. Anyway.’ She twisted the dial on the radio. ‘Last Christmas’. ‘I’ll say no more about it.’
We turned the corner and the cemetery gates reared into view. I looked away, averting my eyes like I’d trained myself to do since childhood.
Grandma noticed. ‘I was there last week,’ she said. ‘We could just stop by if you wanted to, get some flowers—’
‘No,’ I said, cutting her off. ‘Not today.’
WE DID ALL THE usual stuff that Christmas: we saw Dad’s sister’s brood in Halifax and went to the carol concert at the minster; we visited the German market in Leeds; we filled the cupboards with crisps and crackers, chocolates, nuts, and a shrink-wrapped platter of dried fruits we knew no one would touch.
A week before Christmas, Mum tasked me with decorating the tree.
It was a job I usually enjoyed. I liked unwrapping the glass nativity figures from their nests of tissue paper and arranging them in the manger: Mary, Joseph, the Christ Child, the ass – every actor knowing their part.
I liked hanging the glitter-dusted candy canes I’d made in primary school and finally, placing the beautiful fiery-haired doll we used as an angel on top of the tree.
But this year, looking at the looming six-foot structure of wire and plastic squashed behind the telly, I felt only a bone-deep tiredness.
Every night I lay awake in my room, staring at the dark shapes of my girlhood and contemplating the term ahead.
We’d done Chekhov; Shakespeare’s comedies were next.
There was a stack of textbooks and plays by my bed which I knew I needed to get through before the first day back.
But as each day passed, I found it harder and harder to even contemplate picking one of them up.
What was the point? Frida had already confirmed my worst fear, that I was an imposter who should never have been accepted to the school.
I wasn’t like the Victorias of the world.
My future wasn’t written in the stars. It was scratched into the dirt.
Another term would roll around, more difficult this time.
I’d work my arse off and then, on the final day, they’d summon me like they had done Toby, and turn me out onto the street.
AS FAR BACK AS I could remember, I’d always spent New Year’s Eve with Grandma.
It was tradition. Mum and Dad would go to the big house down the road which laid on fireworks and karaoke, while Grandma and I would ring in the new year with a quiet night in front of the telly.
Grandma liked the small man with the piano, and I liked sneaking snifters of brandy when her back was turned.
I was watching theHootenanny with my hand in a tube of Pringles when the doorbell went.
I glanced across at Grandma. She was asleep, her head on one side, her mouth open.
Marx, the grey cat, was curled up in her lap.
I wiped my hand on my jeans and crept from the room.
‘Surprise!’
I blinked rapidly, not believing my eyes. They were a mirage, an illusion, ghostly apparitions that had wandered down from the moor.
‘God, it’s freezing,’ Jolly said, clapping his hands together and squeezing past me. ‘Where’s your loo? I’m busting for a piss.’
‘Erm, top of the landing,’ I stammered.
‘We brought Bolly,’ Victoria announced, holding the bottle aloft. ‘Where’s the fridge?’
‘Far end of the corridor—’
Obi was next. ‘Hello Shannon,’ he said, pulling me into a bear hug. ‘Happy New Year.’
Then, after throwing the butt of his still-glowing cigarette over the hedge, Stefano. ‘Madame,’ he purred, lowering himself into a bow and planting a kiss on my hand.
‘Hi.’
He brought himself up to his full height, winked and followed the others inside.
Stunned by the sudden materialization of my classmates, I shut the door and tiptoed down the hall.
I pulled back the beaded curtain. Grandma was still asleep in her chair.
On the television, a mute Jools Holland slammed his fingers against the keys of a piano.
I let the beads fall and went to join the others in the kitchen.
‘What are you all doing here?’ I whispered. ‘You could’ve called or something.’
‘No time,’ Jolly said, walking in behind me and zipping up his fly. ‘It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. We’re carpe-ing the diem, bitch.’
‘But how did you know I’d be here?’
‘Because I’m a regular Jessica Fletcher,’ he replied with a sly smile. ‘In the last week, when I was waiting in reception to sort that bloody student loan thing, I went through everyone’s emergency contacts. I tried your dad. He said you’d be here.’
‘But why?’
‘Because no one had heard a thing from you in weeks.’
‘We assumed you’d died,’ Victoria said, tearing foil from the champagne.
‘Really?’ I said, alarmed.
‘Yeah, V wanted to pick through your pockets. Find out where the family gold was hidden.’
‘Fuck off, Jol,’ Victoria said.
‘But, it’s New Year’s Eve. Don’t you all have plans?’
‘Well, we did,’ Victoria said, hoisting herself onto the countertop. ‘I had fabulous plans until my brothers got pulled away to some bacchanal in fucking Berkshire, or something.’
‘My flight to Milan got cancelled,’ Stefano said.
‘Terrence bailed on me,’ Jolly said, then added, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m seeing a guy called Terrence.’
‘And I got fired from my weekend job,’ Obi finished.
‘You got fired?’
‘Yeah, but it’s OK.’ He glanced uncertainly at Victoria. ‘I’ll make things work.’