Broken Soup (8 page)

To bring someone home in a coffin you have to get permission, and it costs you your savings and a big loan from the bank. The dead person you love has to be embalmed and put in a lead-lined coffin so they don't spill out all over the plane. Mum and Dad didn't tell me that. I looked it up on the internet while they were gone.

Stroma was the kind of kid you never had to remind to say thank you. You never had to elbow her in the ribs because someone had said hello and she was still deciding whether or not she could be bothered to speak to them. If you even noticed she was there, it was a bonus for Stroma. She expected nothing. Everything she got was extra.

Bee and I took her and Sonny to the library one Friday after school because Carl was smothered in paperwork and it was too wet for the park. Stroma got her first library card. It might have been the key to a magic portal, the way she was acting. She couldn't believe her luck. She was astonished we didn't have to pay. There's no way she'd expected to get all that for free.

Sonny was using the books to make towers and knock them over. I was trying to build one taller than
him, but he kept smashing it and saying, “Again.”

“What else is free?” Stroma said.

When I said “School,” she dropped her books on a little red table and plonked down into a white wooden chair, like her legs just wouldn't hold her. The sides of the chair were the shape of a swan. Her mouth fell open and she said, “That is
not
true.”

“It is,” Bee said, laughing. “The government pays for our schools; the council pays.”

“For everyone?” Stroma said. She looked like one of those people on the TV who've just been told their teapot's worth more than their house.

“For everyone,” we said.

You could see this warm glow travel through her, this pleasant surprise. She said, “Isn't that kind of them? What nice people.” She was leaning back in her swan chair and smiling like all was suddenly right with the world. I guess she suddenly felt looked after.

That was the Friday we went back to Bee's and things started to unravel.

Carl was still smothered, upstairs in his room, and Bee said she'd make us a smoothie and a sandwich. Stroma wanted to help. Sonny and I were kind of in the way due to lack of space, so we left them in the kitchen stuffing bananas in the blender, buttering bread.

Sonny was into stairs. He climbed them carefully, on his hands and feet with his bum in the air. I fol
lowed him up to Bee's room. He wanted to open and shut her cupboards and make piles of her clothes on the bed. He was having a great time.

I sat down on her bed and picked up a book she'd been reading. I've no idea now what it was called, but I remember this dog-eared paperback with a monochrome cover, the colors of the bookmark sticking out of it.

A postcard. Technicolor.

I wasn't snooping. I just needed to know where it was from. I thought I was seeing things.

I heard Stroma wailing and Bee's voice in delay, and she crashed into the room before I had the book fully open. She was pale as a ghost and she said I had to come “Right now, now!” because Stroma had cut herself.

She was panicked and so was I. But not just about my sister.

Because even with the book half shut I'd seen Jack's lake with the island in the middle, the hills all around, the coarse orange sand.

I had no time to think about it. Carl came out of his room and hit the stairs the same time as me. The banana smoothie was pink with Stroma's blood. The blades had got clogged and she'd tried to free them up with her fingers. Sonny started crying because Stroma was. They were filling the house with noise.

Bee said, “I turned my back for a second. I'm so sorry.”

Carl held Stroma's hand up in the air, wrapped in a reddening tea towel, and we waited for the bleeding to stop. Stroma's eyes were wide and glassy and she was screaming and she couldn't look at the towel.

“I'm so sorry,” Bee said again. “I can't believe I let that happen.” She was bouncing Sonny on her hip to try and make him be quiet.

Carl loosened the towel from the tiny wet mess of Stroma's fingers. Her screaming got louder. “Mmm,” he said, his voice quiet and light so she'd have to stop screaming to hear him. “I think I can fix that with my magic kit.”

Bee took Sonny upstairs to calm him down. Stroma leaned against me with her hand propped up on my shoulder to slow the blood flow. She soaked up all of Carl's attention. He gave her some sticky things that work like stitches and a bandage. He told her she was brave about thirty times and did a lot of patting her on the head. He was brilliant. Stroma's volume levels went right down. She was fine, of course.

Dad phoned at about five. “Where are you?” he said. “I said I might come around. I'm outside the house and there's nobody in.”

“Sorry, Dad, I forgot,” I said.

“Great. Where are you?”

“At Bee's house.”

“Bee? Who's that?”

“She's a friend from school. We're at her house. I'll come now.”

“No,” Dad said. “Don't bother. Not if you're having fun.” There was this silence on the line, and then he sighed and said, “As usual I don't know where your mother is.”

“Mum? She's at yoga,” I said, and Carl and Stroma looked at me. “We can be there in five minutes, Dad, it's no big deal.”

I thought about getting another look at the postcard. I thought about asking Bee a few questions. I got a rush of nerves in my chest.

“I don't think so,” Dad said. “Not now. It's getting late. I need to get back, anyway.”

“OK,” I said. “Saturday, then.”

“Are you coming too?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Maybe.”

And then we ran out of things to say.

 

Even before he moved out Dad and I didn't do a lot of talking.

Once, we had this conversation about something I'd done in history class. My teacher said that in Nazi Germany (or Cambodia or Rwanda or Bosnia), if the people who were safe had stood up for others instead of being glad they were safe and trying to blend in with the wallpaper, history would have been different.
She said that doing nothing while others suffered was a crime in itself. It stuck in my head and I wanted to talk about it. But Dad just laughed and said that apathy was underrated and I had no idea how hard it was doing nothing. He said I'd learn to be more cynical when I grew up. He said that more than a million people marched against the war in Iraq and it happened anyway because ten people had already decided it would.

I said, “Who decided Jack would die and we would never get over it?”

He didn't say anything to that. He just left the room, which was Dad's answer to everything.

It's both of our faults. I should have asked him for help, and he should have known without me telling him. He should have opened his eyes instead of pretending a couple of fun afternoons a week was enough parenting for anyone.

When we got home, Stroma watched TV in the sitting room and tried to get Mum to notice her hand. I went upstairs and ransacked my drawer for Jack's postcard. I pulled the whole thing out and dumped all it held on my bed, shoved half of it onto the floor while I was searching. I knew it was in there. And I knew before I found it that I was right. It was exactly the same as Bee's. I turned it over and my heart stalled a little at the sight of Jack's handwriting, black and erratic, like something crawling across the page.

I wanted it to be a coincidence.

I imagined turning Bee's postcard over and seeing someone else's note, someone else who'd been there and thought about home. Subject closed, mystery over. That's what I wanted.

Jack's picture was against the wall by my pillow, resting on the baseboard so you couldn't see it even if you looked under the bed. I pulled it out and stared at him. I willed him to tell me what the hell was going on. I pictured him in the room, breathing and thinking and talking and helping, not staring me out in black-and-white, perfect, elsewhere, full of secrets.

At first after it happened I pretended to myself that Jack was still away. He was skiing and scuba diving and climbing Machu Picchu. He was working for a relief organization in Sudan. He was living a wild and dangerous and knife-edge life because he had nothing left to fear.

I almost fooled myself. Sitting there on my bed trying to get his photo to talk to me, I wished I could start pretending all over again.

When Stroma came up and started pushing on my door, I dragged myself off the bed to help her open it. I stapled a smile on my face and listened to her jabbering on about bandages and clapping games and some kid who pushed her in the line last week and wouldn't they be sorry.

Mum was still in the sitting room with the door closed. I let Stroma in my room for a bit and then I ran her a bath. She made a big deal about keeping her bandage dry. I had to prop it up on towels. The soap was too big for her to roll it around in one hand.

I read her a quick story and stayed to listen to a couple of lullabies. Then I went back to sitting in my room, missing Jack, wondering about Bee, feeling like someone had just turned all the lights out.

Dad and Harper met by accident.

He'd come to pick up Stroma. We'd had one of those mornings. I had to make sure Mum got dressed. Everything was a bit tense because I needed it so badly to look normal. Stroma was sitting on the arm of a chair, chewing a piece of toast, staring dully through the sitting-room window. She started making faces at me, jerking her bandaged hand around.

“What are you doing?” Dad said, and then I looked out and saw Harper, getting out of his van, crossing the road.

I stood up too fast and said, “I'm just popping out quickly.”

Dad said “Now?” like I was spoiling a priceless family moment.

I said something about the fridge being practically empty, which was true, and I got to the door maybe
three seconds before Harper did. Another one and he would've been reaching out to knock. He grinned, and my stomach clenched and flipped and I grinned back. I put my finger to my lips to tell him not to speak. I could hear Stroma ferreting around in the coats and then she was in the hallway shouting, “And me! And me!”

Dad was coming out of the room behind me. He said, “Rowan, you don't have to—” And then he stopped dead in his tracks and stared at Harper. “Who's this?” he said, and he sounded scared or angry or both, I couldn't tell.

I looked at Harper and for a second I saw what Dad could see—this tall, skinny, scruffy guy with a shaved head and a broken smile. I saw Trouble.

Trouble held out his hand, smiled his best smile, and said, “Hello, Mr. Clark. I'm Harper Greene.”

Dad wasn't sure what to do. He shifted a little on his feet and cleared his throat. He didn't smile when they shook hands. Stroma and I looked at each other.

“Are you taking us to Sainsbury's?” Stroma asked, flaunting her bandage to be sure Harper saw it, stroking it like a little mouse.

He wavered for less than an instant. “Yes, yes I am.”

Dad said, “Are you the one with the van?”

“Ambulance,” Harper said. The smile was still glued on his face.

Dad looked at me and back at Harper. He told Stroma she wasn't going, and she turned away from him and made a face, but there wasn't a lot she could do about it. He said, “We're going out now anyway, Stroma. That's why I'm here, remember?”

Then he said to Mum, “Is this friend of hers OK, then? Have you met him?”

I counted to ten and I could picture Mum looking at Dad like she barely knew who he was, never mind what he was talking about. God, I thought. Anything could happen.

“I'm just helping Mum out,” I called from the hallway. “She's worn out. She does everything around here.”

Mum came out of the room and she looked pretty normal with her hair brushed and clean clothes on and everything. Dad was behind her. “You're a good girl, Rowan,” she said. And then to my dad, “It's fine.”

“Come straight back,” he said. “Phone me when you do.”

I could have kissed Mum. Except that would have given the game away because she wouldn't have taken it well.

Harper and I walked to the van. We drove past Stroma and Dad holding hands, on their way to the playground. Harper wound down the window and asked Stroma if she got in a fight with a shark.

“No,” she said. “A smoothie.”

He watched them disappear in his rearview mirror and laughed.

“Can you believe my mum?” I said. “She hasn't said anything nice to me for months. She hasn't actually said much at all.”

“Like you say”—Harper smiled at me—“she's in there somewhere.”

“Yep. So nice to get a glimpse.”

I said he really didn't have to take me shopping and he told me not to say another word and how long would it take, anyway? When we stopped in the underground parking lot, I handed him my postcard.

“What's this?” he said, turning it over, scanning Jack's handwriting, reading his name. He looked at me and then again at the picture.

“Bee's got one,” I said quietly. “I saw it. Exactly the same.”

“From Jack?” Harper said, and I said I didn't know, I hadn't seen the back of it, but what were the odds?

“Have you spoken to her?” He turned around in his chair to face me. I shook my head. “You have to ask.”

“She can't have known him. That would be too weird. She'd have said something. She'd have told me.”

“You'd think,” he said, reading the postcard, putting it back in my bag.

 

Sainsbury's was too orange and shiny and loud and full. I felt like we were playing at being grown-ups. I felt uncomfortable. Harper kept trying to put things in the cart for Stroma—gingerbread people and Barbie spaghetti shapes (a handbag, a high heel, a heart, some lipstick). I snapped at him. I said I had no idea where his money came from, but I didn't have enough to give her a taste for TV tie-in junk food. I said all we had was what Dad put in the account every month and I had to make it last.

“Just kidding around,” he said, holding his arms in the air like I was threatening to shoot him. He came back with some budget toilet paper to make up for it and said, “I saved it, by the way. It's mine.”

“What?” I said.

“My money. I worked for three straight summers dragging rocks and burning leaves and mowing lawns. Since I was fifteen. I didn't take a break and I didn't spend a cent. I earned it all.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm in a bad mood.”

Harper said, “It's OK.” He paid for Stroma's gingerbread people himself. “I've checked them.” He grinned like a Cheshire cat, like a kids' TV presenter. “They're product-placement free.”

 

Sometime that day I got three texts from Bee. A
WHERE R U
and a
U OK
? and a
CALL ME
. I found them when I went, too early, to bed.

When I phoned, she was at Waterloo station, on her way back from somewhere with Sonny and Carl. I didn't ask where. I could hear announcements and the sounds of infinite people moving around her. I was angry with her. I didn't want to be and it was making me more angry.

“How are you?” she asked.

“Fine,” I said. “You?”

“Is Stroma OK?”

I said, “Yes.” Just yes.

“How was your day?”

“We need to talk,” I said.

She couldn't hear me. I could tell she was walking. I pictured her in a crowd, keeping up, weaving in between and past other bodies. I had to say it again.

“Talk?” she said. “OK—when?” She didn't ask about what. I noticed that.

“Tomorrow,” I told her. “As soon as possible.”

“Is everything all right?” Bee asked.

“No idea,” I said, and I must have sounded more like I didn't care.

We arranged to meet at the shop. The shop where Rhea worked, where it started, where I first met Harper. I couldn't sleep that night for the hope it would all come to nothing.

In the morning we were late because Stroma left this drawing behind that she wanted to give to Bee
and we had to go back and get it. My saying it wasn't that important was apparently one of the seven deadly sins, which made us even later. I didn't want to take her with me. I couldn't see how this talk would amount to anything with Stroma there, but I didn't exactly have a choice. We were rushing up the hill, four of Stroma's footsteps to every two of mine.

I heard the ambulance before we could see it, the growl of its woolly engine getting closer until it drove up alongside us and Harper called out, “In a hurry?”

We stopped walking, got our breath back. I asked if he was stalking us.

He said, “God, no, I was going to Portobello. The guy over there is stalking you,” and he pointed at an old man in a straw hat and made Stroma giggle. He said to me, “Have you done it yet?”

I said, “No, that's what I'm late for. You couldn't give us a lift to Regent's Park Road, could you?”

We drove slowly up the street, toward the shop. I saw Bee waiting for me outside. She was sitting at the picnic table with her back to the road, sipping something hot from a takeaway cup. Little clouds of steam rose up as she breathed.

“There she is,” Stroma said, and then she yelled out the window, “Bee!”

Bee turned and waved and smiled. She said something I couldn't quite hear, pointing inside the shop,
and then she picked up her cup and her bag and went in through its yellow door.

Harper had stopped to let us out. He suddenly looked pale, and kind of shaken. “Was that her?” he asked, switching off the engine. He was still looking, like she'd left a trace of herself on his retina. I got this stabbing thought that he might have noticed how beautiful she was, how much nearer his age, that he might be processing that right now.

I opened the door. “Yes,” I said. “That's Bee.”

“That was her,” he said.

I didn't get it. “I just told you that.”

“No, Rowan, listen,” he said, putting his hand on my arm to stop me from getting out, pulling the door back in. He looked so serious, like he was trying to explain something important to a child. He turned to Stroma. “Jump out and straight onto the sidewalk, right? Climb over me.”

I looked at him. “What are you doing?”

“That bag,” he said when Stroma was safely out and trying to push the heavy shop door open to get to Bee. “The one she's carrying—the red bag with the girl's face on it. It's not yours, is it? You don't have one the same?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“You never borrowed it?”

“No.”

“OK,” he said, and he had the flat of his hand against his forehead, remembering. “I was crossing the street. I saw you drop something and go inside. I picked it up.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, maybe it wasn't you.” Harper said.

“What?” My voice was dry, like half of a whisper. “What are you saying?” My heart banged like I'd been running. All the glow of the morning leaked out of the day and into the ground.

“I'd forgotten about that bag,” Harper said. “The person I thought was you had that bag.”

“You're sure?”

He put his hand out and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. He touched the side of my face. “I think it was Bee.”

“Oh God,” I said. “She told me she was there. I didn't see her. I didn't think about it.”

It was Bee who dropped Jack's picture.

Harper gave the negative back to the wrong girl.