Coming Home (8 page)

In a dusty corner, balanced on the beams near the other toys, I spotted the old wooden doll’s house Dad had made for me when I was six. I went over—it was smaller than I remembered but, even under a coat of dust, it was still lovely. Looking at it now, as an adult, I couldn’t believe the attention to detail Dad had put into it: different rooms were sectioned off, each with hinged doors and each wallpapered a different colour; there was tiny home-made furniture; a pipe-cleaner family for whom Mum had made wool bodies and tiny clothes; and there were even electric lights.

Feeling like a giant, I slid my hand inside the living room and clicked a tiny switch—long ago, the lights had even worked. Running my fingertips over the neatly painted window frames, I understood for the first time what a labour of love making this house must have been for Dad. I’d played with it countless times as a child, assuming that everyone’s fathers hand-crafted wooden doll’s houses for them. It was only now—too late—that I realised how special it had been; how much Dad must have loved me. I looked up at the rafters and whispered, ‘I loved it. Thank you.’

Reluctantly, I turned back to the attic. By the door was a messy pile of empty boxes—the box that the new retro phone had come in; the new DVD-player’s box; the bread-making machine’s box. My mother hated to throw anything away—she must have tossed these boxes up into the attic without actually coming up the ladder; she can’t have been up for years. As I started to stack the boxes neatly away from the door, I noticed a camp chair and a small table set back behind the door, in a corner where you wouldn’t naturally look when climbing into the attic. On the table, there was a lamp, crudely wired into the mains supply, a couple of books and an opened jumbo packet of Minstrels—Dad’s favourite sweets.

After stepping carefully past the door, I went over. Surprisingly, the chair, table and books weren’t covered in the dust that veiled everything else in the attic. The thinnest book was a school exercise book. My breath caught as I saw Graham’s careless writing scrawled on the front: ‘NEWS’. I flicked through the book, dipping in and out of Graham’s accounts of our weekends, written for Monday morning ‘news’ at school.

‘On Saturday we went to Greenwich Park,’
he’d written.
‘Me and Evie played hide n seek in the adventur playground. I won. We had Mr Whippy 99s. Evie dropped hers so I shared mine.’
He’d drawn a picture of two children holding huge ice creams. He’d put us in identical outfits, but made me smaller and scribbled me some mad brown hair. I sank into the chair and flicked through the book, absorbed in the events so crudely described: our childhood on the page.

Next I pulled the thick book towards me—it was a photo album and, even before I looked, I knew what I’d find inside: Graham. Hundreds of pictures of Graham. His whole life, lovingly tracked out in pictures, with captions written in my father’s neat handwriting. I hugged the album tightly to my chest, and squeezed my eyes shut. So this is how Dad coped with Graham’s death? He came up to the attic and sat, alone, remembering his dead son? I sat there for some time, imagining how Dad must have felt, the sounds of family life, such as it was, drifting up from the house below as he—as he what? Remembered? Cried? Blamed himself? Talked to Graham?

‘Oh, Dad,’ I whispered. ‘I didn’t know. I would have talked to you. Why didn’t you talk to me?’

Taking a deep breath, I put the photo album and the News book carefully back into their places and turned to face the attic.

The first brown box I came to was thick with dust. I brushed the label. ‘Dresses’ it said. Now that was exciting: could they be Mum’s? I still remembered the days before the accident when Mum had dressed up every day, following the trends in magazines and trying out different looks. Things had changed when Graham died, and I’d always wondered what had happened to Mum’s glamorous wardrobe.

The box was a good weight, tightly packed. I opened it, picked out the top dress and shook it open. It was a powder blue and silver lurex minidress. Holding it to my face, I inhaled, catching—or maybe imagining—a faint whiff of a perfume that triggered memories of Mum and Dad
all dressed up and ready to go out: Mum squealing ‘Mind my hair!’ as she stooped to hug and kiss Graham and me goodnight, her hairdo rigid with lacquer and her shiny white boots reaching well above her knees; Dad, with a twinkle in his eye, taking Mum’s hand as they headed out of the door; the crunch of the car tyres on gravel and Lily from next door hustling us up the stairs to bed. Happy memories. Excited to think Mum’s dresses had survived all these years, I shoved the box towards the door and moved on.

Dust lay thick on the tops of all the boxes; the cardboard was cold and damp to touch; a fusty smell hung around them all. I slid tatty string over the edges of another box, opened it and gasped in surprise as my old dolls looked up at me, their nylon dresses as bright as the day they were bought.

Since the accident, I’d mastered the art of not dwelling on the first eight years of my life; it was too painful to remember what life had been like with a brother. I’d not given a moment’s thought to these dolls since Mum had packed them up, but seeing them brought memories flooding back: the day I threw ‘Pattie’ at Graham, accidentally smashing the glass lampshade in the living room; the time I threw a dolls’ ‘pool party’ in the bath—a pool party that Graham had gatecrashed with his Action Man; ‘Rosie’—a pretty little doll Mum had bought me to keep me occupied on my first ever flight, aged six.

I still remembered that flight; I saw it in snapshots. I’d been wearing a denim skirt that Mum had bought for me—my first denim skirt—and I’d felt so grown up. Graham and I had begged to sit together in the two seats in front of Mum
and Dad. Mum had worried what we’d do if there was an emergency, but Dad had pulled rank and Graham and I had spent the flight pretending we were travelling alone as we ordered our apple juice from the cabin crew. I ran a hand through my hair. While I’d gone on to enjoy plenty more flights, Graham had flown just one more time.

Perching on a beam, I put Rosie carefully back and picked out the other dolls in turn, unwrapping them from the crumbling pages of the local paper in which they’d been cocooned. Carefully, I moved their arms and legs, touched their shiny hair and remembered the contours of their plastic faces. Then I rewrapped them all, one by one, closed the box and pushed it to one side. I’d no idea what to do with them.

The next box was packed with old books, teddy bears, games and wooden jigsaws that I remembered bickering over with Graham. As I turned the toys in my hands, half-formed memories chased through my mind like beagles on the hunt. At the bottom was an old radio: Dad’s. Wiping the dust from it, I remembered cuddling on his lap while he listened to dreary voices talking about the news. The radio was tarnished now, decades from its prime, but I could still smell Dad on it, the clean scent of his fresh cologne. Sighing, I stood up and pulled my hair into a messy bun: at this rate, it was going to take me days to get through the attic. I’d have to learn be less emotional.

An hour or so later, I straightened up, pleased with the size of the ‘throw out’ pile I’d managed to make of things
that obviously had to go. In the far corner of the attic, a glint of metal caught my eye. Stepping closer, I realised it was Dad’s old bike. The last time I’d seen it was when the police had brought it back from the accident site. Sitting in the living room, Dad and I had heard the rumble of a truck engine outside.

‘Delivery for you,’ the driver had said, indicating the two bikes on the back of the truck, one pristine, one a twisted and broken frame. ‘You don’t have to take them. Some people want them … everyone’s different … closure …’ he tailed off.

Mum had come barrelling down the stairs. ‘What is it?’

Dad had pointed wordlessly to the truck. The driver shuffled on the doorstep. ‘Well?’

Mum was silent.

‘Yes, please. Unload them,’ said Dad eventually.

We’d watched as the driver had taken down Dad’s bike first, propping it up by the side wall, then he’d reverently lifted out the mangled remains of Graham’s bike and placed it gently on the gravel.

I’d watched silently as Dad had signed the delivery papers and the truck had driven away. When we were back in the house, I’d cowered against the dresser as Mum had fallen on Dad, pummelling his chest with her fists and screaming, ‘How
could
you? It’s all your fault!’

Dad had tried to pull her off, tried to hug her. ‘Carole, please. You’re emotional. Think about it. We’ll bury it with him. What else can we do with it? I refuse to let it go for scrap.’

What I hadn’t realised was that Dad had kept his own
bike. Somehow, he must have hidden it from Mum; got it up to the attic himself. I brushed dust off the saddle now, and squeezed the brakes. The tyres were flat and the brake pads felt like concrete, but there appeared to be nothing a bit of oil wouldn’t cure; ditto with the chain. It was a nice bike; I remember it had been expensive, one of the first things Dad had treated himself to when his first book was published. Not daring to get onto it in the attic, I stood next to it appraisingly as I squeezed the brakes and imagined myself riding it. Dad had been tall but it was still a manageable size. I stared down at my hands on the handlebars Dad would have gripped and thought,
Could I?

Although the bike was veiled in tragedy, I liked the continuity of me riding it. The bike was a connection to Dad and I really needed that right now. I’d been unable to say goodbye to him and my hopes of us becoming close again had been obliterated overnight. What little I’d ever had of my father was slipping away from me. Like the sky needs the stars, I needed to feel close to him; the ache was almost physical. But what would Mum say? The accident had been twenty years ago and the bike was nondescript, black; maybe she’d even forgotten what it had looked like. If I got it down without her seeing, could I pass it off as a friend’s? I wheeled it carefully towards the attic door then turned back. What next?

‘S
o how are things with your dad?’ Miss Dawson asked. Today she’d brought sweets and I sucked on a sticky Drumstick, softening it up before I bit into it, while I thought about what to say. Graham wasn’t the only person I’d lost in the summer
.

‘He doesn’t play Mastermind with me any more,’ I said
.

‘Oh? Is that something you used to do a lot?’

‘Yep. He stopped reading with me as well.’ I thought about the books we used to read together at bedtime. The way he did the silly voices
.

‘Have you tried to speak to him? Properly?’ Miss Dawson’s voice was gentle
.

‘He’s never home. He’s away on lecture tours. It’s “very important” for his “career”.’ I mimicked the way Dad said it
.

The truth was, Mum and I hardly saw Dad these days. He worked long hours and started going away on lecture tours a lot of the time
.

‘Why won’t he speak to me?’ I said, a sob catching in my throat. ‘I’m still here. It’s like he thinks I’m dead, too.’

‘He must be at home sometimes?’

‘He locks himself in his study.’

‘Working?’

‘Huh.’ Usually he was writing papers and books and whatever else historians did, but sometimes—and I knew this because I’d peeped around the door—Dad just sat with his head in his hands. ‘He’s really busy with work,’ I said. ‘He’s really famous. He’s in the papers, magazines and everything. Once he was on the radio. And the telly.’

‘Wonderful. You must be proud of him. What does he do?’

I knew she knew. ‘He’s a historian. He writes papers. And books, and he’s made TV shows and everything. He’s just finished a series of books for children. He’s been on TV.’

People talked about how my dad managed to make history ‘come alive’ for children. Mum’s friends stopped mentioning Graham when they came to the house; they stopped asking how we were. All they wanted to do was meet Dad; you could see it in the way they looked past me and Mum. Everyone talked about the way Dad could ‘connect’ with his students. I didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded nice. I wished he could ‘connect’ with me
.

‘I just want him to notice me again,’ I said. ‘I want it to be how it was before.’

‘Oh, Evie. It will get better. Everyone deals with tragedies differently. Your dad lost his son. It’ll take time.’

‘But I’m still here,’ I said. ‘Can’t he see that? I’m still here.’

I
t wasn’t easy getting the bike down from the attic but, somehow, I managed. I was keen to do it before Mum got back and, somehow, after a struggle that broke two of my nails, gouged out a small section of wallpaper and left a smear of oil on the paint of the attic door, both the bike and I were on the landing. I bumped it down the stairs and into the kitchen, where I examined it more thoroughly, remembering the do-it-yourself tutorials Dad had given Graham and me in this very room; the reluctant (on my part) Sunday afternoons spent learning how to oil our chains, flip off the tyres and change the inner tubes. The bike needed a bit of a service, a good re-grease and a couple of new tyres, but, aside from that, it was in good shape. I lay newspaper over the kitchen floor, dug out the toolkit and the oilcan from under the stairs and, cranking up the radio, got to work.

I didn’t hear Mum come in, not until she snapped off the radio, causing me to jerk up from where I was slowly dripping oil into the chain. I was starting to wonder if I’d actually have to take the bike for a professional service; the chain was more dilapidated than I’d originally thought, and the brake blocks definitely needed changing.

Mum was breathing heavily, her basket of shopping dropped at her feet, Richard hovering behind her. ‘What are you doing?’ Her voice was quiet, but a red spot high on each cheek belied her calmness.

‘Oh hi!’ I said, realising at once that I’d underestimated her. Woefully underestimated her. Of course she would remember Dad’s bike. I looked at the floor, my cheeks burning in shame. I could have handled it so much better. How could I have been so stupid to think she wouldn’t recognise the bike?