Chapter 26 #2
There’s a bench running right across the shelter at the back and somehow, in a great providence I can’t quite take in, it has room for us all, with Barbara to one side in her chair.
I drape the blanket over Violet and Jodie, and find that it’s big enough to go round Amina as well as they huddle together into its fleecy warmth.
‘Could do with a nice hot water bottle,’ Violet says.
Jodie says, ‘We left the frog chair in the caravan. Kane won’t be happy.’
‘Wait, what is that?’ Kat says, peering closely at my neck. ‘That flash of white? Did you get snow in your coat?’
I unzip it slightly and the cat peeks its head out at them, blinking in the snow-glare and giving a tiny mewl.
‘What, what did you… you took his cat?’
I scratch the back of my neck and throw my gaze out to the driving snow.
Jodie whistles. ‘Woah.’
‘What if he sees and comes back?’ Amina says, her brow all puckered up. ‘He will be so angry. He scared me, with all those drugs.’
‘Drugs?’ Barbara murmurs.
‘He had a load of cannabis in there, all packaged up,’ Kat says.
‘He won’t come back,’ I say, maybe too confidently. ‘He was itching to be away to whatever he was doing. He won’t know, anyway, as long as he’s driving. Besides, he just wants to get as far away as he can, doesn’t he, I mean before we manage to get hold of the police.’
‘Let’s hope so,’ Kat says, rubbing her hands together. She’s wearing a mismatched pair of Jake’s goalie gloves.
Barbara stares at the cat with a wide-eyed gaze. ‘Bring him to me! Here, puss! Come to Barbara.’
I look around at the others, uncertain. Jodie nods at me.
I slowly bring the cat out and the others gasp.
It is strikingly beautiful, its coat fluffy and magnificent, even whiter than the snow outside.
Its eyes are a piercing blue, slicing through the shadowy gloom in the shelter.
I take it over to Barbara and she reaches for it, folding it into the top of her sleeping bag, where it curls into her shoulder and closes its eyes as if it has come home.
A few seconds later I hear a low purring sound.
‘It likes you,’ Kat says.
Barbara beams. ‘I am going to call him Snowy.’
‘I like that you took him,’ Kat says, turning to me. ‘I think you’re stupid, but I like that you took him.’
‘He was afraid,’ I say. ‘He was so scared. I could hardly leave him there.’
Barbara has her face almost buried in the sleeping bag, kissing Snowy and crooning loving words into his fur.
Kat and I squeeze onto the bench with the other three and we wrap the picnic rug around our shoulders. All we can do now is wait. I try not to think about how cold my feet are, my slipper socks and thin flats no match for the gathering snow.
‘Anyone want some brandy?’ Jodie says, reaching over to Violet’s walker where the flasks are stowed in the basket underneath. ‘It’ll give us a little warmth.’
Kat looks dubious.
‘I want some,’ Violet says. ‘An’ I want a fag too.’
‘Sorry,’ Jodie says.
Violet looks down at the floor. ‘Just wish I had better shoes.’ She kicks out her feet, shod in their pink slippers which look less fluffy and more bedraggled now. ‘My feet are like ice. That husband of mine, never thought to bring me proper shoes in, oh no.’
Jodie bends down and tugs off her Ugg boots. ‘Here. Mine are still kind of dry. And my feet aren’t ice like yours. See, I’ve got these great big socks on under here.’
Violet looks at her with wide eyes and a faltering mouth.
Jodie pushes the boots at her. ‘Go on. I’m fine.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Here. Get those silly things off.’ Jodie bends down and pulls them off Violet’s feet.
‘Flaming Nora. No wonder you was cold! These are wet through.’ Then she grins up at Violet.
‘No loss, really, is it, these horrible old things?’ She shoves them under the seat of the shelter. ‘RIP, hideous slippers.’
Violet’s eyebrows begin to knit together and then, after a moment, they relax as a tiny smile flutters at her mouth. ‘Why are you so kind to me?’ she asks, slipping her feet into the Ugg boots and sighing. ‘Why d’you put up with me after how I was?’
‘You’re an okay old stick,’ Jodie says.
Violet blinks and gazes out at the snow.
‘There will be someone along soon,’ Amina says. ‘We will get back. I know we will.’
‘Let’s just hope it’s not another Dodgy Caravan Dude,’ Jodie says.
‘Give us a nip of that brandy, then,’ Violet says, and Jodie takes a little swig herself and passes it on. We all sit there in a row passing the flask between us.
‘It’s a bit like communion,’ Kat says.
???
The sky hangs low in foggy ribbons of all the colours of grey and the snow tumbles outside the shelter in great cascades of whiteness. We sit, bundled up and huddled together for warmth, and we wait. The brandy sits warm in my belly and releases a tiny ball of something like happiness in me.
‘We’re like a nativity scene,’ Jodie says.
Kat raises her eyebrows in a question. ‘Well, I mean, this could be like the stable, and then you’re in an animal costume, right, so you’re like the ox or the donkey or whatever, and Violet could be like the shepherd in her dressing gown, and Barbara’s a Wise Man ’cause of that bright orange thing, like a cloak or something, and Amina’s Mary with her blue headscarf and all that. And Snowy is the little lamb.’
‘So who’s Joseph?’ I say.
‘That’s you because of that stripy blanket.’
‘You must be the angel, then,’ Kat says. ‘With that halo of blonde hair poking out of your Santa hat.’
And with the magic she has somehow wrought among us today.
‘I wish I had some wings to fly away and bring us back home,’ Jodie says.
Violet says, ‘I don’t think a Star Wars bear and Santa Claus were present at the first Christmas.’
No cars come by. The road stretches out in infinite snow-numbed silence, the winter trees silhouettes of writhing bone stark against the sky.
I wonder what the time is, but DCD took Kat’s phone and nobody has a watch.
I wonder what they are thinking, back at the hospital, and if they have called the police.
I think about how stupid we were, to not tell them what we were up to, and it makes me think about how Marcus always told me I was a loser who could never do anything right.
Yet through the dark haze of my thoughts a new light is poking through, like the ethereal luminosity of the falling snow, shining on my insecurities and highlighting them for what they are.
I think about Kane and how Jodie shines without him, and I know that I want to shine, too.
‘Are you okay?’ Kat says to me.
I realise that tears are crawling down my cheeks and I blink at the strangeness of them. ‘I never cry.’
‘It’s okay to.’
‘It’ll be the brandy,’ Violet says.
‘I just… I was thinking about my ex. How he didn’t really love me at all.’
Kat finds my hand under the blanket and squeezes it.
‘I think Kane was the same,’ Jodie says. ‘It’s like, he told me he loved me, and all that, but he didn’t really act like it, did he?’
‘No, he didn’t,’ Kat says.
Jodie rubs her face. ‘No man’s really loved me.
My dad ran away when I was young, just like your Jake, Penny.
He beat my mum around and I was glad to see the back of him.
My mum was different when he left, but she always said he loved her, really, that he just got a bit angry sometimes.
Kane said I was his princess, but it was on his terms, I suppose. ’
‘You’d hardly had a good role-model for a loving partner,’ Kat says.
I nod. ‘It was the same with Marcus. It was always on his terms, as long as I did what he asked of me and became the person he wanted me to be, it was fine. But as soon as I said no, it wasn’t fine anymore.’
‘He hurt you,’ Kat says softly.
‘He hurt me more in here.’ I point to my heart.
‘You should never have to become somebody you are not to please another,’ Kat says. ‘Especially when they are subjecting you to emotional abuse.’
It feels right to me, somehow, that the first time I am confiding all of this in its raw candour to others is here, in a frozen wasteland, with five people I have come to love.
I taste the unfamiliar saltiness of tears on my tongue and think it tastes a bit like all the colours in the world.
‘But how do I move on? It’s like… like he still has a hold on me.
Like I look at myself and still see that person he wanted to change, and I keep trying to please people to cover it all over.
I don’t have any strength in me, not like you, Kat, or you, Jodie. ’
Jodie shakes her head. ‘I don’t have a lot myself. I didn’t have the strength to bin him off.’
‘I have less than you think,’ Kat says, staring out at the snow.
‘You will, though, Jodie. You will find the strength,’ Amina says.
Jodie lifts her chin and I notice the blue tinge around her lips and the translucency of her skin and the dark shadows around her eyes. ‘I won’t have him back. Not after this.’
I pick at a loose thread on one of my gloves and think about what Kat said, about not having to become someone different, and wonder where I went wrong, and how I can find a better path.
‘So how do we? I mean, how do we get out of this… I don’t know, almost this like ticker-tape thing that keeps going round and round in my head.
It’s like I can never escape from the words, like they just keep on squeezing me tighter and tighter. I don’t know how to get out.’
‘But you are getting out,’ Kat says.
I gaze at her, and wonder if she might be right.
‘I’ve heard it described as graffiti on the heart,’ she says. ‘When words get written on us for many years, and it’s really hard to scrub them off. I’ve often found it’s about forgiveness. Setting yourself free from bitterness.’
‘But I can’t ever forgive him,’ I say.
Violet leans forward. ‘I can never forgive my dad, neither. There’s some people you just can’t forgive.’