The Square Root of Summer(41)

“This will sound stupid,” I whisper.

“You’re talking to me, remember?” His blinks take longer and longer, slow-motion eyelashes, and his usual frenetic dialogue is playing at 33 rpm.

I should be in my room, working on a telescope theory. Thomas should be asleep in Grey’s room, dreaming of superheroes. We have to wait for the cake. We could have baked it much earlier. But we did it like this, because some secrets are easier to tell in the dark.

“I don’t think I did it right,” I confess. “When Grey died.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know they give you a leaflet, at the hospital? When somebody dies. A to-do list. Ned was getting ready to move to London, and Papa was—he sort of tuned out.” Papa drifted into rooms and stood there not moving for ten minutes at a time. He locked the keys in the car. He cried doing up his shoelaces and forgot how to be my daddy. “So I read it.”

I pause. This is the most I’ve spoken about how it was, when my grandfather died. It’s the most I’ve spoken about anything. All those times Sof came tap-tap-tapping, and I told her I had homework. All those silent baked-potato-and dinners after Papa tuned back in, but I didn’t, till he stopped trying.

When we went to Munich at Christmas, Oma and Opa gave us Glühwein and sang carols and quietly suggested to Papa that he could move back. Unspoken was their real meaning: there was no reason to stay in Norfolk, now that Grey was gone. There was no connection to my mum anymore. In response, I don’t think Ned knew what to do except get drunk. He smashed a glass in his hand and left blood in the sink, and I cleaned it up and didn’t mention it.

“I did the things it said to do. I called the registry office and I wrote an announcement for the paper. I ordered flowers.” I tick off items on my fingers as I whisper the list. “I recorded a new message for the answering machine. I canceled his subscriptions. I cleaned his room. But Papa kept buying Marmite.” My whisper reaches hysteria pitch, and I take a deep breath. “Grey’s the only one who likes it. And Papa kept buying it. It’s not as though we’d ever run out—no one’s eating it—but every few weeks, I see it on the list on the blackboard and wipe it off. And he buys it anyway. We have thirty jars of Marmite.”

“I’ll eat the Marmite.”

“Thank you.” I sigh. “But it’s not that … It’s—I did everything the leaflet said! I talked to the funeral director. I chose the hymns.”

“You did the rituals,” says Thomas. “You poured the whiskey.”

My throat aches with uncried tears. Papa buys Marmite and Ned’s throwing a party, but I follow the instructions. I do the rituals. So how come I’m the one who’s haunted by wormholes?

“I didn’t cry at the funeral,” I confess. There was a wake afterwards, in the village pub—all Grey’s friends, beards and corduroy. We drank ale and ate quiche, and people told funny stories that they didn’t finish, breaking off halfway through, upset. But I didn’t cry then, either. I didn’t deserve to. The first time I cried wasn’t till October, the day Jason finally texted me back. What kind of a person cries over a boy, but not their grandfather?

I don’t tell Thomas that part.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” I say.

I’m lost. After remembering swimming with Jason in the canal, how it was its own kind of love—I thought I was okay. I came back to the world, and it dazzled. But this morning, I wasn’t even doing anything memorable, just writing on the blackboard that we needed washing-up liquid—and a black hole of emptiness hit. It’s as though every time there’s a moment like that, where I think I’m better, there has to be something sad to balance it out.

“I don’t think it’s meant to make sense.”

We’re shoulder-to-shoulder, arm-to-arm, leg-to-leg, all the way down to our toes. His sock has a hole in it. Even though he’s so clean, his socks always have holes. And I think, from nowhere: I’m going to buy Thomas a new pair of socks.

I turn to look at him, and he’s already looking at me.

“Thank you—”

His kiss interrupts me, sudden-short-sweet. Unquestionable. It feels like reading a favorite book, and falling for the ending even though you already know what happens.

It’s different from last night. That was a few giddy, unbelieving seconds before we sprang apart, wondering. This is a squash of his glasses against my cheekbone and a tentative warmth of his mouth on mine. This is my hands curled tight around the neck of his T-shirt, twisting it in my fingers, tugging him closer. This is noses and faces and chins bumping, tongues not sure whether to talk or kiss or all at once, hands on faces, hands everywhere, clumsy and new.

Then it’s suddenly floodlights and noise blaring. The oven timer, shrieking through the garden.

We jump apart, looking at each other wildly, then squinting towards the kitchen.

Ned’s leaning out the window, lights blazing.

“All right, children,” he calls over to us. “Say bye-bye.”

“You’re sending me to bed?” Unbelievable.

“Thomas and I have things to discuss.” Ned beckons him from the window. “Let the menfolk talk cake.”

I glance at Thomas, who looks like he’s swallowed a bee. I kiss him on the cheek and whisper, “Ignore him.”