7

Cara

It was Jakey, talking about his computer game and the creep in Hong Kong that made my memory crack, slotting together again like a jigsaw. I stare at the rain streaking against the window and remember Mum’s last birthday. It was February and the plan was to have cake and tea at Mum’s but Meg said Grace was having a bad day. She’d started on some new medication and had been up with diarrhea and vomiting all night. I always found it strange how Grace’s body had its own set of rules, like the sensitivity used for others didn’t apply—it was always “diarrhea” for Grace, never “upset stomach” like it is for the rest of us.

“Well, if you two can’t come to the cake, then we’ll bring the cake to you,” Mum told Meg in a sparkly voice. So over we went, Mum carrying the elaborately iced cake Zara had made with the same reverence as a sculpture on a plinth, Zara and Sylvia chatting behind her. Number 52 smelled ripe, the air stale and queasy, but none of us said anything. Meg hugged us all in turn.

“Am I glad to see this one!” she said, pulling me towards her. I’ve got you, her strong muscles seemed to tell my weaker ones. No matter what, I’ve got you.

“Hi, Meg,” I said over her shoulder, but I don’t think she heard.

“Mouse was saying just earlier how much she hoped you’d be coming.” Meg grinned at me, her pretty round face soft and sweet as cake mix. She cupped my cheeks briefly between her warm palms, still smiling. I could never help but smile back at her.

“I’ve just got Mouse out of bed. Will you go and find where she’s hiding, Car?” I nodded, before Meg added, “And tell her off if her nose is back in that computer, will you?”

Grace’s bedroom was like a kid’s room—Harry Potter posters, an army of stuffed toys on the duvet—and simultaneously like how I remember my granddad’s: the oxygen canister, the pills by the bed, the fixed-arm supports, the commode tucked discreetly beside a bookcase. I felt nervous suddenly. I always felt nervous seeing her those days. I felt like a bad person around her. Grace was in her chair, wearing a blue knitted bobble hat, her back towards me, absorbed in her computer which sat on a little desk against the wall. She didn’t turn straightaway, but I saw her back flex and knew she’d sensed me standing in the doorway. Her computer screen flashed as she closed the page she was looking at, but she wasn’t quick enough for me. I saw a message board and a cartoon avatar, a lanky, long-limbed, shaggy-haired kid called GoodSam. Whatever they were saying to each other, Grace didn’t want anyone else to see.

“Mum, OK, OK, I know, I’m turning it off,” she said before she spun her chair around to the left, to face me.

“Cara!” she said, her eyes light, surprised behind her round glasses.