Sep 26, 2016

Ahoy again, Awayers.

This is a little sneaky peek of a chapter that hasn’t been released.

As shit as I am at selling myself, I’d just say that if you’re intrigued at all, if you like what you read, if you take the time to get involved in this story and it draws you in, then please do go make a pre-order, or make a recommendation. The likelihood of me making my target is tiny, but the joy I will get from knowing that someone out there in the world likes what I’ve written will be enormous.

So... 

Ever wonder why Jeanie and her mum have such a tense relationship? Well, this goes some way to explaining it...

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JEANIE

The day Mum went shopping with our life savings is one of the few vivid memories I have. It was so early as to still be dark when she appeared in my bedroom doorway, her eyes shining and wild and her hair inexplicably pulled into two short plaits, something I had never seen her do. As I came to, woken by her presence, and saw her looming in the half light, I thought I must be dreaming. She looked so different, I hardly recognised her. There was a steely look in her eye and she held herself straighter than normal. She looked taller. She looked fierce.

“Come on.” she said “We’re going shopping.”

My Mum hadn’t left the house by choice in six years - since the day at the beach with my Dad in a jar. For her, every day was a version of the one before and it mostly consisted of sitting on the sofa in her dressing gown, doing crosswords and drinking tea, while occasionally crying. Up until quite recently, our food came from supermarket deliveries, ordered over the internet, so that she didn’t have to go out and face the world, cruel and terrifying as it was to her. I couldn’t imagine why she suddenly wanted to go shopping before the sun was even up, but I followed her out of curiosity as well as childish obedience.

It was winter and our breath formed clouds in front of our numb faces as we drove out of the dark village, going as quickly as the frosty roads allowed. I was wrapped up in my thick winter coat, a long striped scarf and a bobble hat, but still my teeth chattered. Mum only had on a thin cardigan over a vest top, but she didn’t seem to notice. I turned up the car’s ancient heater so that streams of scorching hot air blasted our toes.

“Mum. Where are we going?”

She reached forward and wiped a circle of visibility in the condensated screen with the sleeve of her cardigan.

“We need to buy things. Food, water, gas.”

I watched her closely. A patch of red had bloomed on her neck where she had been scratching, her knuckles were white and taut on the steering wheel and she leaned forward in her seat. She felt me looking and turned towards me, her jaw set, her brow furrowed.

“Jeanie, I know it sounds crazy and I know it’s scary, but we have to prepare for the worst. We can’t just pretend nothing’s happening, like everyone else. We have to act now or we’ll drown with the rest of them. I won’t let that happen, Jeanie. I will not let that happen.” I nodded to appease her and continued to watch her, fascinated and horrified in equal measure.

After half an hour, we drove through an industrial estate and pulled into a car park full of trucks and vans. “Stay here.” she said and strode purposefully towards a dilapidated grey portacabin. I stared after her, confused.

Ten minutes later, she emerged, followed by an obese bald man in a bad suit. They circled a small lorry together, then he handed Mum some keys and some papers. She marched back to our car and opened my door.

“Come on.” she snapped. I stepped out, dream-like. I had decided to just go with the flow. It was all so surreal, it was now just intriguing, like watching the plot of a detective film unfold.

I followed her to the truck and she helped me climb up into the passenger seat. I liked being up in the cab, high above everything. Mum climbed in and started the engine and I wanted to ask her what was going on, (did she even know how to drive a lorry?) but I kept quiet and watched her with amazement. This was a different Mum I was seeing: confident, capable, fearless. I was totally enthralled and determined not to break the strange spell that had settled over her.

She took out her phone, tapped on it for a moment and handed it to me.

“I need you to navigate. Just shout out the directions.”

I was twelve years old and I had never had cause to use a sat nav, but I wasn’t going to argue with her that day.

The lorry trundled along, growling and coughing out huge plumes of white smoke as we flew down the motorway. My directions were the only breaks in the silence and eventually we pulled into a car park in front of a huge, ugly box of a building.

The enormous automatic doors swooshed apart to reveal what looked and felt like an aircraft hanger, but with shelves stacked full of food as far as the eye could see.

“Okay. We need food that will last a really long time. We’re talking years, not months. So, tinned food, dried food. Sugar and salt, bottled water. Oh and alcohol. Lots of alcohol.”

I knew in that moment that my Mum had finally lost the plot.

“Check the expiration dates on everything. Make sure we get the stuff with the longest shelf life possible.”

We quickly filled a trolley with pasta and rice. Mum left it by the tills and we filled another with tinned tomatoes and tuna.

“It’s nowhere near enough.” she muttered, scratching at her neck.

She dashed off, leaving me with the heavy trolley, and returned with a uniformed man.

“We want fifty of these cases of tuna and a hundred of the tomatoes for starters.” she barked. He nodded, only giving me the quickest of questioning glances.

I watched with a growing detachment as four men loaded our lorry with boxes. It was almost full by the time they were finished. A greasy looking teenage boy added everything up while I leaned against the counter. It came to over fifteen thousand pounds.

Even at thirteen, I knew that this was an incredible amount of money. I tugged gently at Mum’s sleeve, my mouth hanging open. She ignored me.

“I’ll give you twelve.” she said.

The assistant stared at her blankly.

“Our prices are fixed.”

“Get the manager.”

She got the lot for thirteen thousand pounds. She paid for it with four different cards and a large stack of cash that she pulled from her bag, neatly wrapped in silver foil.

We chugged home, the tins and bottles clanking dangerously behind us. She seemed calmer now, a hint of doubt occasionally clouding her features as I watched her. She no longer seemed to know I was there, she was so lost in her thoughts.

The lorry only just fit down the narrow single-track lanes of our village. People stared and waved when they recognised us, questions forming on their lips as we passed. By the time we stopped outside our house, a small crowd had gathered.

“Not moving, are ye?” shouted Mrs. Collins from number five.

“No.” was all my Mum said. She ushered me into the house without opening the truck, feigning a friendly wave to the rubber-necked neighbours as she shut the front door.

We spent the rest of the day noiselessly clearing out the spare room. Mum took apart the bed, attacking it with power tools until it gave up and collapsed into a pile of scrap. She emptied the wardrobe and the chest of drawers and stuffed everything into bin bags. Amongst the chaos, I spotted a jacket of my Dad’s, a brown tweed blazer that I recognised as his, though I didn’t remember ever seeing him in it. I resisted the strong urge to pull everything out of the black bags and hide it in my room.

Mum vacuumed (something I had not seen her do in a very long time) while I was sent to the cellar to cram the rest of our lives into boxes. Old cans of paint, a discarded set of exercise equipment, a doll’s house. By the time the sun set, most of our possessions were piled up in the garden, packaged up and already forgotten.

Sleep came easy that night, the exhaustion of strangeness taking me under quickly and deeply and I was relieved to end that unsettling day in the hope that the next would be normal again. The next thing I knew, I was awake and it was pitch black. Everything was silent, that particular muffled quiet that only comes with snow, and as the room came into focus, I flinched at the unexpected sight of my mother’s face looming over me. I rubbed my eyes, irritated and feeling like my brain was made of cotton wool.

“Mum, what are you doing? What time is it?”

“It’s two o’clock. Come on, I need you to get up.”

“In the morning?”

“Yes, now come on, get dressed.”

“What’s going on?”

“We need to empty the lorry.”

“At two in the morning?”

“It needs to be a secret.”

“But why? I don’t get it.”

“For god’s sake Jeanie, will you just listen to me. I’m your mother and I know what I’m doing.”

I stared into her eyes, glossier and wider than normal, like she was drugged. Her hair now stuck up around her head, greasy and dry at the same time. I hated her.

“Do you? Really?” I spat, sitting up to face her. “Because you’re acting like a maniac.”

And almost before I’d finished the sentence, there it was, her hand hard on my cheek, a split second in time where the impact and the pain pulsed through me like an electric shock and my Mum became something else again.

She stared at me, then focussed on the cheek that she had just slapped, reaching out her fingers shakily to touch it, then changing her mind. I just sat there, frowning, my half-awake brain trying to make sense of what had just happened. The tears that came were emotionless, a pure physical reaction. More than anything, I was surprised.

“Get up.” she said, deadpan, standing up straight and setting her shoulders determinedly before she left the room.

I put my own hand to my now throbbing face and let the strange sensation sink in for a while before doing what I was told.

Mum was waiting for me by the front door, holding my thick winter coat. I wrapped up, then she opened the door to a snow scene bathed in yellow from the single street light, the snow newly settled, soft and expectant, still falling lightly.  I stepped outside and looked upwards and the falling flakes seemed to form a tunnel above me, making me feel like I was hurtling through space. It made me dizzy. The quiet felt close and intimate and the snow cushioned the sound of Mum opening the lorry doors. I marveled at how many versions of my Mum I’d seen today. She was no longer My Mum; she was just a human being from whom I happened to have been born, who hadn’t asked for any of this and who wasn’t prepared for it, who was scared and confused and imperfect and had once been a baby, a child, a teenager. It was terrifying.

It took us until sunrise to unload the lorry, moving slowly and quietly, bit by bit, trying not to arouse any neighbours. I’d given up trying to understand it all. The sting in my cheek, made sharper by the freezing night air, kept my mind empty, like a kind of meditation.

At six in the morning, I crawled into bed. We never talked about that night again.