Foxglove Road - Chapter 1.1

1

Brugmansia

Here’s how I know I’m home. Nobody asks for my name.

They don’t ask at the B&B. It’s a squat place, hunched so close to the station that the windows rattle whenever a train passes, dislodging dust motes and old spiders. The man behind the desk takes cash only, and raises an eyebrow when he catches sight of the plastic in my wallet. The card’s facing upwards. I forgot to turn it around.

“New to the place?” he asks.

I have to follow his lips closely, because his voice is quiet.

“Grew up here, actually,” I say.

The other eyebrow goes up. “Must’ve been gone a while.”

Not long enough, I almost say, but think better of it. Dun folk can be proud of anything. They’d rather die in the boat than acknowledge the leak, Mum used to say.

So I just nod. The man stands up in a waft of tobacco and sweat and musty old-man clothes, leading me up the narrow stairs to my room. He gives me a warped key and leaves without saying goodbye. The room is small, with bells dangling from the curtain rail and a plate of fruit bread on the sill.

I look out. Grass, brambles, woods. Foxgloves and foxgloves and foxgloves, nodding in the breeze.

Let’s get this over with.

-

Gran’s house is further away than I remember. Some bugger recognises me as I’m walking through the village – they stop and tilt their head and start with the ‘hey, did you…?’, so I fake a vaguely European accent and tap my (watchless) wrist like I’ve got somewhere to be.

I have got somewhere to be. Violet said to get there for half past four. I’m as late as I can get away with, rapping on the door at a little after five. Train delays, trouble with the room. I’ve got excuses lined up like soldiers.

The door opens. I try to smile.

“Oh, thank god, thank god,” Violet says, beckoning me inside. She’s got flour down her front, which means I’m probably going to have to endure a courgette cake. “What took you so long? No, never mind, don’t explain – just get in there. Hold the fort.”

“She’s being a pain?”

“I think she knows something’s up.” She runs a hand through her black hair, streaking white through it. “Try and get her in a good mood.”

“How?” I say, but Violet’s already halfway down the corridor, disappearing back into the kitchen.

I take off my shoes as slowly as possible. Gran’s house isn’t much like I remember, which makes things easier. The floors are swept and neat and most of the family photos have been taken down, leaving only the watercolour landscapes she painted herself. But it smells the same. Old wood. Lavender.

Gran’s waiting for me in the living room. She looks the same, too: like a strip of pale leather left in the sun too long.

“Oh, there he is,” she says, from underneath her mound of blankets. “Finally thought you’d show up, did you?”

I add some pins into my smile. “The train was delayed.”

“Bugger it was,” she says. Then, with a sigh: “Go on, then. Give us a kiss.”

She’s a stickler for pleasantries. I kiss her on her left cheek, because her right is mottled black with bruises. Another fall. The fourth one this year, apparently, not counting the one at New Year after she necked too much gin. She keeps forgetting to leave bread out, as well, even with how close she is to the Road.

But my job is to get her into a good mood, so I don’t mention any of this. Conversations go best with Gran when they’re as one-sided as possible. I let her complain about my degree for a good five minutes (‘nine grand a year to learn about a load of dead bastards?’), then let her complain about my hair for a few more (‘why’ve you let it get so long?’). By the time she gets onto my jeans (‘are you paying extra money for them to rip great holes into them?’) she’s sitting up much straighter, her eyes bright.

I hear about one word in three, because she’s got The Chase on and Bradley Bastard Walsh drowns out almost everything. When Violet finally comes back in, laden with a tray of tea, she sees the look on my face. She sets the tray down and mutes the telly.

“Don’t be doing that,” Gran says, while Bradley mouths soundlessly on the screen. “This is my house. You don’t do that.”

“It’s just so he can hear, Gran,” Violet says, handing out cups of tea.

“He’s got his hearing aids in, hasn’t he?” Gran says. “Don’t encourage him. He’s got to learn to bloody listen.”

“Well, I think it’s best we leave it quiet for a bit, anyway.” Violet sits down in the armchair opposite, leaning forward in the way you do when you’re beckoning a skittish cat. “There’s something we want to talk to you about.”

“I don’t want to talk. I want to watch The Chase.”

She definitely knows something’s up, but Violet keeps hold of the remote so she can’t snatch it back. “Please, Gran. We just want to talk about – about the future, and what’s best for you.”

Gran’s eyes narrow under a shelf of brow. “What’s best for me?”

At least I think that’s what she says; she’s got her hand up near her mouth, and her voice has gone dangerously quiet. Violet takes a deep breath.

“You keep falling down, Gran. And it’s getting hard for you to move about – and there’s all this stuff with forgetting the bread, loads of times now. I can’t keep coming down to keep an eye on you, not while keeping on top of the dresses as well—”

“Make them down here.”

“She can’t make them if she’s rushing after you,” I say.

Gran’s head jerks. “And what would you know about it, swanning off to London like you have? I’ve not seen hide nor hair of you for months.”

“Gran,” Violet says.

“Don’t you ‘Gran’ me.” Her face is flushed – stained leather, now. “He doesn’t get to come back after god knows how long and shove me in a bloody nursing home.”

“Nobody said anything about a nursing—”

“You think I was born yesterday?” Gran snaps. Her eyes flick to me again. “The bloody cheek of it - saying I forget things. It was your mother’s birthday this week. You remember that?”

I dig my nails into my palms. “’Course I did.”

“But you didn’t bloody show up for it, did you? You won’t show up for your own mother’s birthday, but you’ll come to bully me out of my own bloody house.”

“Gran!” Violet says, and clutches the remote so hard that she unmutes the telly. Bradley Walsh’s voice booms back into the room, announcing that the chase is on. Gran turns around to look.

“There, good,” she says, nodding. “That’s much better.”

She settles back into her blankets to watch, chuntering to herself – something about me, but I can’t hear what. Violet looks adrift, her eyes wide and helpless. I drain my tea.

“Well,” I say, “I need the loo.”

I duck out into the hall. On my way upstairs, I bump my shoulder against one of the watercolours, almost deliberately, but it doesn’t fall.

-

I don’t need to piss, but I do anyway. After, I sit on the toilet lid, thumbing through Facebook. It’s a bad thing to do in a village like this. Thousands of names on show, brazen and bolded, stacked up like bars of gold. It took me four weeks to psych myself up to get an account. I made out to my flatmates that I was some social media-hating hipster, because it was better than admitting I was scared shitless of it.

The group chat’s dinging away now. Lewis asks how I’m getting on in the savage North.

Fine, I type. Gran’s a crabby old bitch as always.

I delete the last bit. They’d ask for details.

Ten minutes have passed. I slip my phone in my pocket and get to my feet, splashing my face to try and wake myself up, fire myself up, waste more time. Over the sputtering water, I almost miss it.

The tinkling of the bells.

The sound slips like ice down my back. They’re hanging from the rail above the window, both willow-patterned and weighed down by dust, ringing in a quiet, constant way that reminds me of tinnitus. When I was growing up, I never noticed the noise – barely looked up from my homework – but London has no sounds like this, and I’ve forgotten how to feel used to it.

So I look towards the window, my heart beating.

First, I see only rearing grass and wildflowers, a fence half-swallowed by hawthorn. The foxgloves sway in ragged lines. Then something moves under the oak tree – something human-shaped and half-hidden, which is gone when I blink.

I wait until the bells fall still, until my pulse eases. Then I open the door and go back downstairs.