“I couldn’t lose you again,” she says.
“Mum,” I say, trying to undo what I’ve done.
Too late. She’s gone.
She stands, goes to the bookcase against the far wall. I watch as she finds the darkest spine on the shelf, lifts it out, brings it back to the table. She tightens her dressing gown around herself, sits down, opens the photo album to the first page.
A baby, pink and blind, in a clear plastic crib, white bands on its ankles. Its head lies to the side, a puff of dark hair on its scalp.
“Eight pounds,” she says. “You were a good weight. Healthy. You came out at two in the morning. Like a purple mole, you were. But, Christ, you screamed the place down. Me and your dad in floods.”
She touches the photograph.
“No medication at all. I took the pain, every bastard bit of it.”
More pictures. Dad holding the baby. Aunt Laura and some other boyfriend, Granny Carol with tears in her eyes. Stronger and bigger before the cancer broke her.
The baby grows, gets longer in the limbs, fatter. The eyes open, first blue, then deep green. A helpless thing, held in someone’s arms, then sitting up and smiling, pink gums. Then one tooth. Then the single photograph of the child clinging to the edge of an armchair, standing, turned to the camera, grinning with that one tooth.
Then still and pale in a box, a white gown, flowers all around.
Mum weeps.
I want to leave the table. I can’t. Not now. Her tears smack the plastic that covers the photograph.
Finally, she sniffs. Exhales. She reaches across and squeezes my arm.
“Thank God you came back,” she says.
They sing “Happy Birthday” in the front room. The school things, the blackboard and the desk, have been cleared away. Mum sets the cake in front of me. I blow. Twelve flames die.
“What did you wish for?” Granny Carol asks.
“Can’t tell you,” I say.
Can’t. Won’t.
Mum would slap me around the ear if I said the wish out loud. Then she would go to her bedroom and wail loud enough for me to hear through the burn and the sting.
The cake is from Sainsbury’s. It’s not bad. The use-by date was yesterday, but it isn’t dry.
Granny Carol has a sherry. She asks to see the photo album. Mum says not now, maybe later. Granny Carol goes quiet and faraway.
Aunt Laura’s new boyfriend is called Trevor. He is very polite, always apologising and stepping out of people’s way. Always offering to carry things, or tidy things away, or give up his seat.
I think he wants everyone to know how polite he is, which means he’s not really polite at all.
The talk has gone on for an hour, and I am half asleep, when Trevor says, “I was sorry to hear about your first child . . .”
His words trail off like someone falling. I look up, a sudden hollowness in my middle.
Everyone is quiet for a moment, then Mum says, “Thank you. We don’t talk about it much.”
Aunt Laura’s face is pale, her mouth a perfectly straight line.
Trevor shifts in the hard chair. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to . . .”
His apology dies in his mouth.
Granny Carol clears her throat and says, “I’d like to see the photo album, please.”
Mum nods. She stands, goes to the kitchen and the bookcase there, and returns with the leather-bound album in her hands. She places it in Granny Carol’s lap.
Granny Carol takes a breath, then opens the album. She stares at the first photograph, her lips rubbing against each other.
“Such a wee dote,” she says. “So content. Most content child I ever saw in my life. She hardly cried at all.”
She touches the picture, just like Mum did earlier.
She turns the stiff pages, one picture after another. She cries.
Mum watches me.
I say nothing.
Aunt Laura hugs me before she leaves. She hugs me hard, like she means it. I go upstairs. Angus follows, nuzzling my heels.
Mum and Dad argue. I hear them barking at each other from below.
I lie on my bed, grab Dad’s iPod from the bedside locker. He hasn’t noticed it’s missing yet. It usually takes him a week or two before he comes looking for it. I push the earbuds in as far as they’ll go. I choose a Led Zeppelin album.
They’re from the olden days, but I like them. The singer has a squeaky voice. The song is called “Black Dog.” Angus is black, apart from the white patch on his chest. He curls up at my feet.
Melody sits on the end of the bed.
I ignore her.
I sing to myself, a hoarse whisper about big-legged women and their lost souls.
Melody stares. And stares.
“Piss off,” I say.
She does not.
I kick her lower back. Angus hops off the bed. She stares harder.
I groan and pull the earbuds out.
“What?”
She smiles. “Happy birthday.”
I turn over on my side, face the wall. But I still feel her there.
“What do you want?”
She lies down beside me, her back against mine. Her bare toes seek the gaps between my jeans and my socks. They tickle, but I don’t tell her to stop.
“Just to say happy birthday. No need to be a pishmire about it.”
I think about getting up and leaving the room. Maybe see if Dad will let me use his computer. Instead I say, “You’d be fourteen by now.”
“Thirteen and a half,” Melody says. “You can’t count.”
“Mum doesn’t really do sums.”
“It’s called maths.”
“Whatever. We just do reading.”
Melody asks, “Do you wish you could go to proper school?”
“Sometimes,” I say. “The other kids would pick on me, though.”
“They might not.”
“They would. Definitely.”
I had a friend once. Just for a few days, summer before last. His name was Dale. He used to walk past our house when I was playing in the front garden. One time he stopped and asked what I was doing.
“Building a fort,” I said.
Four chairs from the kitchen arranged in a square, and a tablecloth over the top.
“Can I come in?” he asked.
We played all day until Mum realised I’d taken the chairs. She would’ve slapped me if Dale hadn’t been there. She asked his name. She asked who his parents were.