Split Second - страница 15

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‘Did you see him last night?’ Louise said.

‘No, not since Wednesday.’

‘Do you know where he was?’

‘Some Christmas do, from college. A meal, I think,’ he told her.

‘He never said.’ And I fed him bangers and mash at six. ‘He say where?’

‘A tapas place – near Deansgate.’

‘This lad, Jason Barnes,’ she asked, ‘did you know him? Did Luke?’

‘No, no, never heard of him.’

She promised to let him know about visiting, thinking it shouldn’t be like this, sixteen-year-olds having to deal with hospital visits. One minute they were invincible, full of life and cheek, and then bam! Parallel universe.

A meal in town after a tea at home. Typical. He could eat like a horse and not put on an ounce; he had that sort of metabolism. Live wire, her grandad had called him. Wick, Grandma said, which Louise didn’t understand at first. A Yorkshire word apparently; meant he was quick and lively. Grandma had a cleft palate; people who didn’t know her found it hard to follow her. Even at home she was sparing with her words. Her husband made up for that.

Luke, live wire. Walking at nine months, climbing like a little mountain goat too, and then prone to running off. Louise took him to the park every day for a kick-about and a clamber on the playground, or to the meadows where he could run himself ragged. Sometimes she thought he was born in the wrong century, that he’d have been better living somewhere outside, wild and unfettered, where physical activity was a way to make a living, not just a valve for letting off steam. They’d done what they could, getting him on to the five-a-side team, sending him to Woodcraft Folk, where he could go camping and the like without all that ‘royalist authoritarian scouts crap’, as Grandad put it. Most of the other kids were better off, middle class, big houses, went skiing in the winter and the like, but that was okay. Their house always had a weird mix of people passing through: dockers and welders rubbing shoulders with university lecturers and doctors – shared ideals, loyalty to the cause, the Party bringing them together. They kept the local branch banner at Grandad’s. Louise had helped to make it. Winter nights when she was thirteen or so, cutting out silk and embroidering round canvas letters. Listening to the conversation, which ranged far and wide but included a great deal about the struggle and feminism and housework and the best way to advance women’s liberation.

Grandma and one of the other women had done the design: a frieze of figures along the bottom, holding symbols: flowers, sheaves of wheat, paintbrushes, a kite, tools. The words unity, freedom, peace repeated around the edges of the cloth, and in the centre the name of the branch, each dot above the ‘i’ a small hammer and sickle. Along the bottom they had sewn thick, gold-coloured upholstery fringing. Carried on dark wooden curtain poles up either side, the banner was so heavy when it was done that they needed harnesses to strap round the waists of the bearers. It was beautiful.

Louise carried on sewing for a few years. Her grandma had always done it; even Louise’s mother, who couldn’t boil an egg, could turn her hand to alter a dress, tart it up with a nip and a tuck and a sprig of lace or fresh buttons. Louise made cot quilts each time she was pregnant. She didn’t bother with sewing now, not beyond a bit of mending or the odd costume for Ruby’s school plays and fancy-dress parties, though she still had the rag-bags shoved in the roof space and the old Singer taking up space in the under-stairs cupboard. Nowadays it cost more to dress-make than getting something new. Clothes were that cheap. Unless you recycled stuff. She quite liked the idea. Some people made a living doing it, creating unique clothes, but Ruby wouldn’t wear anything second-hand.

She got to her feet and the floor pitched, her head swam; she used the furniture to balance until the vertigo eased. They should get back to the hospital. She went to wake Ruby and put some bread in the toaster. The smell made her mouth flood with saliva and she thought she’d retch, but she breathed carefully, resisting the impulse. She buttered a slice for herself; she had to eat something. She’d be no use to anyone half starved.