Chapter 17

“Don’t be like this. Please. Don’t be like this.”

It was midnight on a Wednesday and I was trying to get a reaction out of Mum. She sat on her bed, a cold statue, immovable and unfathomable. She had the pallor of a statue as well, which was not surprising as she had refused to eat ever since she had heard about Dad. It was awful and I didn't know how to deal with it.

Miss Alcock gave me no help whatsoever in making Mum speak, and tended only to Mum's medication and trying to feed her.

Finally, Mum gave a sharp intake of breath and parted her lips.

"How could he?" she whispered, shaking her head, a curtain of hair shading her face. Silent tears fell down her papery cheeks, soaking her pale eyelashes.

I sat down next to her and held her hand. "I don't know, Mum. I don't know."

"But...I don't understand. How could he just disappear and leave us...leave you..." she let her head and limbs hang limply, like she was a rag doll. She made no move to wipe away the increasing tears she was crying.

“Oh, Mum. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about him. We’re fine...we’ll be fine...” I was trying to be brave, building up a stone wall through which sorrow and pain could not penetrate but there was no use. The bricks of my barrier were smashed, broken down and I couldn’t pretend anymore.

“I just can’t understand,” Mum sobbed. “How could he abandon us and give up? What kind of a person was he to do that?”

“I know, Mum,” I gasped between tears. “I know. It’s...it’s so hard.”

“It is,” she cried. “It is and it...it hurts, Amelia. It hurts so much and...and there’s no-one to hold us.”

Contradicting what she had just said, I put an arm around her, and slowly she did the same. We sat on the bed weeping, rocking backwards and forwards, trying to stop the pain.

Later that week, as I entered school and went into our tutor group for morning registration, I decided to approach Douglas. It couldn’t hurt, and as he was the only person at school who had shown me an ounce of kindness, I wanted to get to know him.

For a moment, I faltered in my decision, worrying about what he would think of my weight and my clothes, but finally I told myself it didn’t matter.

I walked up to his desk, where he sat reading quietly, as usual.

Ignoring the glares I was getting from the Mini-K entourage, I stood in front of him and said, “Hi.”

Short and sweet. But enough to show him I was willing to continue the unlikely alliance that we had formed the other day. I didn’t really expect him to say anything back, as I’d completely ignored him up till now, scared of the taunts that might follow from Kirsty.

But now that I had the reassurance of knowing that Ruby was my friend, I didn’t care. He glanced up from his book and looked surprised when he saw who it was.

“Oh...hi, Amelia,” he said, looking up from his book.

We grinned at each-other awkwardly, neither of us knowing what to say, so I attempted to break the ice by peering at the title of his book.

“What are you reading?” I asked.

“The Clockwork Orange,” he replied, with a devastatingly gorgeous smile.

“Really?” I said. “Oh my God, I love that book. Dad bought me a second hand copy about a year ago and I couldn’t stop reading it for months.”

“Yeah, this is about the seventh time running I’ve read it. Anthony Burgess, well, he can WRITE. He’s probably my favourite author.”

“Oh,” I said, settling down on the seat next to him and raising my eyebrows. “Mine’s Jane Austen.” I grinned. “She could beat old Burgess any day.”

“Oh could she?” smiled Douglas, a mischievous twinkle in his eye that reminded me so much of Dad. “Northanger Abbey was pretty good.” He looked at me, pretending to be all condescending and superior. I smiled as he continued to speak. “Pride and Prejudice was soppy as, and God, was it nitpicky. And Mansfield Park,” he mimed fainting. “That was the last straw. But then, each to his own. They’re okay for girls, you know.” He winked at me, and my insides melted like ice cream on a sun bed.

I suppressed a giggle. “You’re such a chauvinist.”

“You’re such a girl,” he retorted, his dreamy eyes sparkling, flecks of emerald and chestnut swirling around inside.

“And what’s so bad about that?” I laughed, teasingly prising his fingers off the page and making him lose his place.

“I see,” he said, pretending to look stern. “And you call yourself a reader.”

I couldn’t believe what I was doing. It wasn’t just that I was actually being friendly and chatting like a normal person to another pupil. It was that I was talking to one of the nicest, most gorgeous boys in the class and that I hadn’t even stuttered or blushed once. I’d even forgotten to worry about how I looked.

We chatted for the whole of morning registration, and then the bell rung for the first lesson. We were in different classes, so we didn’t see each other for the rest of the day.

When we had been talking, I’d noticed Kirsty staring at us out of the corner of her eye. She had trouble written all over her face, but what could she do now? I had Ruby and I had Douglas and I was invincible. She couldn’t stop me doing anything.

The next day, Douglas wasn’t at his desk, he was waiting for me as I came into our house room.

“Hello,” he said, and we sat down together on the table, legs swinging in rhythm.

“I heard, you know, about your mum, and that...” he started uncertainly.

I lowered my eyes, reddening. “Yeah?” I said, all my defensiveness coming out front. “And?”

He looked a bit slighted, so I softened my tone and said, “Um...you said...that day, you said you

knew...how I felt.”

“Well...yeah...,” he said, hesitating. “Yeah, I guess I do know how you feel. My mum has osteoporosis.”

I looked at him blankly. “Oh...I’m really sorry,” I said. “Is that when...?”

“Oh,” he chuckled, “Yeah, I didn’t expect you to know what it meant. It’s when your bones get all brittle and you can’t really do much for yourself. It...it gets hard, but sometimes I feel lucky that my dad’s here to help. Aren’t you?”

I looked down again.

He looked embarrassed. He sure did pick up feelings easily. “Oh...I’m sorry, Amelia. Is your dad...”

“Dead? No. He left...a while after my mum had the accident. I...don’t know why. He was finding it hard to cope...it was a struggle.”

“Right. So, Amelia, you mean to tell me you’ve been looking after your mum all this time without any help whatsoever?”

“Yeah...well...no. I mean, there’s a woman my dad pays, I think, though I don’t know how. She looks after Mum when I’m not in school. But...Douglas, I haven’t told anyone – I mean, mum’s carer knows, but...well...”

His eyes sparkled. “Go on. I can keep a secret.”

“Well...up till now, my mum hasn’t known who I am. She had something a bit like amnesia. She became like that because of the stroke. She didn’t think she was my mother. And then, a few weeks ago, she suddenly came back to her senses. I don’t know how or why, but...”

“That’s great. You must be so happy. I would be, if my mum had...woken up like that.”

He peered at my face. “Aren’t you happy?”

“Well...yes and no. Of course, it’s a lot better, and I’m less depressed now than I was but, her remembering, meant me having to tell her...about Dad.”

“That he had left?” “Yes. And...it was awful.” I shuddered. “Really awful. She’s...better now. I think. I don’t know but hopefully she’ll manage.”

“Hopefully,” said Douglas. He smiled. “If she’s anything like you she can do anything.”

I turned into mush there and then; seeing little Disney birds flying round our heads, adorning us with flowery garlands. I looked down to hide my obvious delight.

“Repetition there I see, Mr Atkinson," I remarked. " ‘Anything’ twice in a sentence. Our English teacher would kill you.”

He grinned. “Sometimes, there’s just no words. You know?”

Was it just me or when he smiled did the world stop spinning in its orbit?