‘So far so good,’ Kerry whispers as we sit at the bottom of our parents’ garden. It’s been a week without the tablets and I feel more like my old self.
Nessa arrives as I straighten myself and walk into a hug.
‘You look good today, new meds?’
‘Um yeah. New meds. Dr Popescu thinks we might have cracked it, I see him twice a week now.’
‘So he’s helping?’
I nod.
‘Is she here?’
I shake my head and smile, ignoring the loud crunching sound as Kerry bites into an apple. She stops chewing, her eyes widening and her hand covering her mouth. Kerry swallows a large chunk of apple and mouths ‘Sorry’ to me.
‘Look what your mum found!’ We walk towards the bench and I pull up my collar against the sharp breeze. She places another box of Kerry’s notebooks beside me and passes one into my hand.
‘Kerry Hargreaves 2001 The Bubble Gum Experiment.’ The pages are brittle with time but inside, Kerry’s writing is perfectly preserved.
‘Aw, she was only six. Gosh, she was meticulous, wasn’t she?’
‘Yep. One obsessive quest to another.’ We continue turning pages, returning to the warmth of the kitchen as we go through the next volume.
‘Do tulips prefer Atomic Kitten or Pink?’
I turn the pages: ‘The Best Assault Course Ever’. The page was broken into steps. Step one, decide on the number of activities . . . three activities was too easy, ten too many. Then each activity was broken down into effectiveness in terms of excitement, challenge, etc.
‘You should do that with the kids,’ Mum says, wiping her hands on her pinny as she leans over my shoulder.
‘What, an assault course?’
‘Why not?’ Dad adds, from behind his newspaper. ‘You used to love all of that as much as she did. Just make sure you’re wearing suitable underwear,’ he adds under his breath.
‘Did I?’
I turn the page onto ‘The Perfect Orange Squash’, where a list of measurements and a score of 1–5 is listed.
‘Do you remember the walking on your hands one?’ Mum asks Dad.
They start to giggle. ‘That one took days to practise and when you finally got the right momentum, Kerry caught her feet in the washing line and sent the laundry flying!’ Dad is grinning. ‘We tried to make her go next door and fetch my Y-fronts back, but she refused. Stubborn little monkey. You did it in the end, brought them back into the house dangling from a stick.’ He peers over his half-moon glasses at me and winks.
‘Is she . . . is she here?’ Mum asks. I don’t look over to where I can see her arm stacking plates onto the draining board.
‘No. I haven’t . . .’ I clear my throat. ‘I haven’t seen her for a few days now.’
Mum breathes out a long sigh and gives a short smile in Dad’s direction. ‘Well. That’s great news, love. Isn’t it?’
‘It is.’ He turns the page of the newspaper. ‘It truly is.’
Chapter Sixty-Five
Ed
I want to believe it. I want to believe that she is finally coming back. I’m trying not to let her see how I’m looking for signs of her sister hovering in the background. How every time she laughs, I’m waiting for her to throw a look of shared amusement to thin air. But she hasn’t.
The kids are opening their presents from her, both of them wearing brand new uniforms for the beginning of term, shining shoes, new backpacks. Jen is perched on the edge of the sofa next to me. I want to reach out and hold her knee but I’m afraid I could break the spell. The wrapping paper is discarded onto the floor, shining pink for Hailey, glittering blue for Oscar. Oscar’s face drops, in complete contrast to the rise on his sister’s.
‘It’s a notebook,’ he says as though he’s holding a piece of dog poo.
‘It’s a special notebook. I bought it from a magic shop. A shop so magic that when I went back to get another one for Daddy . . . it had disappeared.’ Their eyes widen, but Hailey’s quickly adjust to the rationality that seems to take away the magic of childhood and replace it with the realism of adulthood.
‘But what are we supposed to do with it?’ He turns it over in his hands and flicks through the blank pages.
‘I thought we could do some more of our own experiments, like Aunty Kerry did when she was little. She would do the most amazing things and write them down. I thought we could do some of her crazy things.’
It comes from nowhere, the image of Jen jumping from Lovers’ Leap, and it takes my breath away.
‘What types of things?’ I ask. There is caution and fear in my voice, but I don’t try to correct myself. Jen has to know that we aren’t all out of the woods yet.
‘Well . . .’ She smiles at me and then each of the kids in turn. ‘She wrote down her secret recipe for getting the biggest bubbles. Kerry said adding Juicy Fruit to bubble gum worked the best. So . . .’ Jen reaches into her bag again and pulls out two small rectangles in glittering paper. Passes two to me, and two each to the kids, then pulls out her own supply. ‘Right, let’s write it into your books then. Daddy will help you with yours, Oscar.’
‘I don’t need help . . . I got my pen licence last week.’
‘Pen licence?’
‘We get a pen licence at school now when we write neatly. Oscar’s is a provisional licence . . . mine is a full one,’ Hailey explains.
‘Well then. Let’s get started.’
Jen shows them Kerry’s pages listing the ingredients at the top, the number of chews before blowing commences. We copy it and then tear the Juicy Fruit in half and begin chewing.
My wife’s eyes meet mine and for the first time in a long time, I can see a glimmer of light behind them, not a shard of euphoria, but real happiness. I begin blowing my bubble; Hailey is in hot pursuit and Jen follows. Hailey begins making ‘uuuuhhhh!’ noises, flapping her arms and pointing to the bubble growing bigger; I mimic her actions as Oscar tries and fails to make his gum into a bubble. Instead, his gum flies out of his mouth and smacks onto the TV screen. My bubble pops as I start laughing. Hailey turns her face towards Jen and they both continue blowing, the bubbles getting bigger and bigger. Oscar comes and sits on my knee, chanting ‘Hail-ey-Hail-ey!’ Jen’s eyes widen, as do our daughter’s, and then with a defeated pop, Jen’s shrinks into a blob of pink covering her nose. Hailey stands and flexes her muscles like she’s Rocky, the bubble bobbing up and down in victory.
And for a moment . . . hope flickers inside me like a flame. I’m not a man prone to fanciful talk, but I swear I can feel heat from it; I didn’t even know I had been cold.
Chapter Sixty-Six
Jennifer
I wait for them all to leave, running my finger along my bottom lip where I can feel Ed’s kiss lingering, the warmth of it, and I know I have made the right decision.
‘Jen! Help me with this, will you?’
Mum’s pink-slippered feet are standing on the rungs of the ladder. ‘I’ve found another box of Kerry’s notebooks.’
I reach up and take the cardboard box from her and carry it downstairs.