First Aid by Janet Davey Read Free Book Online Page B

her grandmother’s wisesaw was shocking. The burden of choosing bore down on her, not just the first, but the next and the next. As if potential lovers and husbands appeared in a kind of identity parade and when you messed it up they lined up again. God, not him again. Did anyone get better at it?
    â€˜You fetch in the pie, Dilys. I’ll clear away,’ Geoff said.
    Jo heard them moving about, the clatter of plates, the oven door opening and shutting. They came back to the table. Dilys put the dish down and the pie breathed out hot fruity vapours.
    â€˜I forgot the cream,’ Dilys said.
    Jo watched her go back to the kitchen. There was one step down between the two rooms and Dilys stopped on the edge, as if contemplating a precipice. Soon, she’ll be afraid of the stairs, Jo thought. Then what will happen?
    They were all sitting down again. Dilys looked happier. It had offended her that they had had to eat different things. Choice for pudding was acceptable, though, in this case, there wasn’t any, because she hadn’t had warning.
    â€˜You’ll have some pie?’ she said.
    â€˜Just a small piece. No, smaller than that,’ Jo said.
    â€˜Rob?’
    â€˜No.’ It came out too loud. ‘Thanks.’
    â€˜Well, you can change your mind if you want to. Cream?’
    â€˜No, thanks, Gran,’ Jo said.
    â€˜It doesn’t harm you, you know, darling.’
    â€˜No, I know that.’
    â€˜You have a bit, Rob, in the middle of the dish.’
    â€˜No, Gran.’
    â€˜Please yourself. I’m not forcing you.’
    Geoff lifted the jug of cream in the approximate gesture of a toast.
    â€˜It’s lovely to have you all here. Under one roof.’
    â€˜No Ella, though,’ said Dilys. ‘It’s not the same without Ella.’
    There was a pause while they all thought of her. She was almost conjured up. She would have glared at them and disappeared behind her hair. Rob looked across at his mother, but she avoided his eye.
    â€˜Where did you say she was?’ asked Dilys.
    I didn’t, Jo thought, and aloud she said, ‘She wanted to stay behind with her friends.’
    â€˜As long as she’s all right,’ said Geoff.
    â€˜She’s got some nice friends, has she?’ asked Dilys.
    â€˜Just normal kids. You know.’
    â€˜She helps out at Lois Lucas’s too, you were saying,’ Dilys said.
    â€˜Every now and then.’
    â€˜She seems young to be working,’ Dilys said.
    â€˜It’s only informal, a bit of pocket money. Nothing to get excited about. It gives me a lie-in at the weekend.’
    Jo pushed back her chair. She had left most of the pie.
    â€˜Rob and I’ll do the washing up,’ she said.
    â€˜No,’ said Geoff, ‘That’s my job. You sit and talk to your grandma. She doesn’t often see you. Rob will give me a hand.’
    Dilys smiled and patted Jo’s arm. ‘That will be nice. We’ll go and sit in the other room.’
    â€˜I’m fine here. Really. Let’s not move,’ Jo said.
    The idea of relocating and stimulating a new, more vigorous line of questioning appalled her. More of the same seemed simpler and, with any luck, shorter. She knew where her grandmother’s edginess came from. Dilys had a nose for ruin.
She
would rather have been dead, than sit on a train looking wretched. The grubby child on the floor, the bag-lady luggage, the fresh scar down the face, the attitude so detached that a girl – one of her great grandchildren – had jumped out between stations. Even recalling the scene seemed dangerous, as if Dilys would get a glimpse of the train compartment through the back of her head.
    Jo thought, what has happened to me would never have happened to her.
She
would have known, for a fact, that behaving as I started to behave six months earlier – and behave would be exactly the word she’d have used – would lead to being