Summerween Chapter 2

‘Not this again.’ My mum was reluctantly engaging in conversation with me while preparing what she had promised would be a home cooked meal.

‘We haven’t discussed this before. Honestly, if you’d pay attention.’ I said, exasperated.

‘Funny because I’m having an extreme sense of deja-vu.’

‘I’d appreciate if you’d take me seriously, Mother.’

‘What makes you think I’m not taking you seriously?’ She handed me a giant metal dessert spoon, that she only ever used for tablespoon measurements in cooking. In later life, I would wonder if this was the source of all her culinary issues. ‘Three. Over the carrots.’ She nodded at a bag of caster sugar.

I obliged her, sprinkling 3 dessert spoons of caster sugar into a pyrex dish. The carrots had been brutalised into angular abominations – I don’t know how many times she peeled them, but she went round and round in thick heavy strokes with a paring knife until they were narrow with sharp angles. ‘This time isn’t going to be like last time.’ I said.

‘So there’s going to be a this time, is there?’

‘You need to do your roots.’

‘I know.’

‘Can I do them?’

‘If you behave yourself.’

I wandered over to the inbuilt microwave as it dinged, got up onto my tip toes to peek in. Another pyrex dish. She took it out, replacing it with the carrots. I dropped into a dining chair at the table full of her covered dinner creations. I hoped it would be like in a fancy restaurant where they lift a silver dome to reveal a delicious meal – was I wrong about that.

‘It looks like you’ve gone to a lot of trouble for dinner.’ I said, smiling. She ignored me. ‘And it smells great.’

‘Um-hmm.’

‘Are we all having it?’

‘You’re having chips.’ I always had chips. 99% of my diet up to age 14 was chips and peanut butter sandwiches.

‘She could try it.’ A man’s voice interrupted us. Fresh soap wafted into the room as Dad leaned on the doorframe. I never did meet a man that looked after himself as well as my dad. Clean and ironed, no matter what. Growing up poor, near where Cola lived, made him that way. Even if you don’t have much, you can be clean and well presented.

‘You wouldn’t like it.’ She told me, leaning in like I was a baby.

‘Maybe I could just have a bit on the side, if there’s any left over? It’s a shame not to try it. It looks so good.’

‘Who are we having for dinner love, the Brady Bunch?’ Dad asked her.

‘Just her friend, Nicola. And the rest of us.’ She said.

‘If she’s allowed.’ I clarified. Cola’s mum always acted like it was a huge inconvenience for us to feed another mouth. Like having her over at all was a huge chore. My mum would spend time convincing her she was doing us a favour having her here to keep me entertained and out of trouble.

I went to check on her in the corner of the living room. She’d been on the phone to her mum for ages and was rolling her eyes at everything she said. Nan and Grandad were watching TV on the highest volume imaginable on the other side of the room, by the patio doors. It was a big room, stretching from the front to the back of the house.

‘Ian Botham!’ My nan shouted at the gameshow they were watching.

‘Are you winning, Nan?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know where they get these idiots for TV shows.’ She said.

‘They look for idiots. I’ve seen them put ads in the bloody paper.’ Grandad said. ‘Idiot wanted. Must be terrible at general knowledge and have an outgoing personality.’ He rummaged down the side of the sofa for his newspaper.

‘That’s for the holiday place recruiting down the road.’ Nan said, clarifying.

‘Is it hell.’ He said, then continued going up in pitch, ‘it’s for shows like this lark here.’ He pointed at the TV so hard, he almost came out of his seat. ‘For our benefit it is. It’d be boring if we were on it. They’ve got to put these half-wits on that think they’re God almighty.’ Half standing, he waved his newspaper at the TV, beset with enthusiasm.

‘It’s OK.’ Cola called over to me, putting the phone down. ‘So, what’s for dinner?’

The three of us eyed her with sympathy. ‘Don’t ask.’ I said.

In the kitchen, Dad had a plate prepared for me that was half chips, half carrots.

‘She won’t eat them.’ My mum said, as I approached the plate.

‘There’s so much sugar on, they’re practically sweets.’ He said. ‘What would you like love?’ He held out a fresh plate offering to prepare Cola’s meal for her.

‘Just the same is fine. I don’t want to be any trouble.’

Once my grandparents had helped themselves, we all started to dig in with decreasing appetites. There was even something off about my staple food – chips. Cola tucked in regardless. Nan tried to help her at least. ‘You don’t have to eat anything you don’t want you know. Just eat what you can.’ She said to her, then turned to my mum. ‘This is very rich.’

‘That’s the word for it.’ Grandad said. ‘Rich. Too rich.’ He continued eating, but in slow motion.

‘It is rich. Nice though.’ My dad said shoving something green and mushy down his gullet. ‘Where’d you get the idea for all this from? It’s very inventive.’

‘I got a new recipe book. Mandy recommended it.’ Mum said looking up from her toddler-sized portion.

‘Oh yeah? Let’s have a gander?’ My Dad got up and took the new book from the breakfast bar and flicked through it, eyebrows slightly raised. ‘That’s a unique way of doing things.’ He smiled at Mum. ‘You must be exhausted from all this.’ He put his hands on her shoulders and gave her a little massage, like she’d been down the mines all day. ‘If you’re finished, why don’t you go and run a bath? I’ll clean all this up.’

As her three mouthfuls of dinner were complete, she got up and made her way out of the room, ‘I really could do with a hot soak.’ She said as she left.

‘Put your feet up, don’t you worry about a thing.’ He shouted after her, before turning the book cover round to face us. We all shook our heads at the unappetising gelatinous mush on the cover of Microwave Madness: Creating the Convenient Feast. Dad threw the book in the bin along with his dinner. ‘Pizza for the girls and I’ll do a quick spag bol for the rest of us, sound OK?’

The flat roof above my bedroom window stuck out above the garage, giving us the perfect viewing platform for the neighbourhood and beyond, including the industrial cooling towers in the distance. We’d taken the stripey padded beach mats my family got in the algarve up onto the roof. Cola was more of a climber than me, she got the radio up there no problem. My brother once got a double mattress up there and sunbathed all day with friends. That was before I got that bedroom. We switched bedrooms every couple of years because Mum liked to change her mind and decorate a lot. It was still matching pink-white floral and white-pink floral from her last attack on the place. It wasn’t my taste and Dad said I could change it if I didn’t grow into it as Mum had expected me to.

It was still sunny up there with just a hint of night-time trying to set in. We lay back with the summer at our feet smoking our candy stick cigarettes, like we sometimes did. I don’t know if we did it to get ready to go through the motions for the day when we would smoke, or if it was just to try and look cool. Regardless, we worked our way through a whole pack by the time our pizza arrived.

‘The weird thing is, I don’t even remember her putting decorations out any other year.’ I blew invisible smoke into Trip’s face, as we mulled over Mrs Crinkle’s lawn which was now cluttered with spooky ephemera.

‘Maybe she’s doing a yard sale.’ Cola said, sitting up and checking out the lawn next door. By this point, Mrs Crinkle had covered almost all of my brothers hard work mowing with a range of elaborate decorations around a central pentagram of thick orange ribbon with a flowerpot at each point, holding it in place. All the other decorations seemed to be facing it like some kind of altar, but that was only visible from our birdseye view.

‘We should investigate closer.’ I said.

‘You know who does need investigating? That pedo over the road.’

‘Yeah.’ I nodded in agreement, not knowing what a pedo was, but she sure did.

‘We’ve got a whole summer we could investigate all the crazy stuff going on around here.’

‘All the stuff we don’t have time for in the regular holidays.’ I mused.

‘Definitely. These are supposed to be the best years of our lives, you know.’

‘I’m not sure, it seems a bit shit.’

‘No way. You just wait. One day you’ll have bills to pay and kids you didn’t want that you have to feed and a job draining your soul from you. You’ll never have time to be a person again. Not like now. Not like this long summer.’

‘The longest of summers.’ I agreed. ‘We should make it our best summer ever. Regardless.’

‘No homework. No parents – well for me anyway. No worries. Most importantly, no school for three whole months.’ She held up her bottle of pop and I clinked it with mine in a celebratory cheers. You see, for one reason or another our school had ceased to be, for the next three months anyway. They talked about redistributing us to schools out of town, but the logistics were too much hassle for civil servants to be bothered with. The parents didn’t care too much, but the kids ran wild that summer and some of them even died.

A lot of the trouble had started months before, but we were only just starting to realise that now we had the time to process it, and notice just how off our little town of Port Eventide was. What really made me sit up and listen was what rolled down our driveway that night. Little did we know that was a whole lot of trouble all wrapped up into one giant shit wad of danger. And we were about to get stuck in it.

We stood up as it approached my driveway, to see who or what it was. We couldn’t believe our eyes. Then I saw my brother, Trick. ‘Where on earth did you get that?’ I called over to him, open mouthed.