Just The Way You Are(87)

I nodded my understanding. When I’d driven into Nottingham for a meeting a couple of weeks ago, it had transformed into an alien planet, so much hurrying about and so little space. My senses felt suffocated.

‘Everyone will think I’m weird.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true.’

‘I will be weird! I’ll be like a wild rabbit forced to live in a tiny cage with 118,000 domesticated rabbits who think it’s all normal and fine and don’t understand why I can’t even breathe properly squashed into that smelly, polluted, ugly cage.’

‘We can ask Nana and Grandad to take you out into the countryside as much as possible. There’s probably a bus so you can go by yourself.’

I tried to restrain from adding platitudes about how she’d get used to it, and soon learn to love having shops and places to eat and all the other benefits of a small city on her doorstep. That she’d enjoy living in a lovely house, where everything worked, and she could see her grandparents every day. I didn’t even mention that one advantage of a big, new school would be that there were enough ‘weird’ kids there to find some who appreciated your differences, and she might have more friends to hang about with.

I didn’t say a single word about being a ‘normal’ teenager.

Joan, like all of us, was one hundred per cent her own person.

Unlike most of us, she knew who that was and she was completely happy with it.

Plus, how can you console a child having to leave her dog behind?

I would have let her take him, as much as it would have killed me to lose Joan and Nesbit in one go, but Peter was highly allergic to animal fur, and more than ten seconds in an enclosed space with Nesbit resulted in startlingly violent sneezes.

‘I’ll talk to your mum about how often you can come and visit, and I promise I’ll bring Nesbit to see you.’

‘He’d hate it in Chester.’

The phrase that stuck in my windpipe like a fishhook was that it might not be forever, or even for long – just until her mum was back on her feet. Leanne had closed down her business and handed in her notice to the landlord, with a payment from Peter to cover the rest of the rent. Carole spent an afternoon showing Joan the website to a private girls’ school with independent thinking and creating confidence as its key values.

‘Look, Grandad helped build the new arts centre. Isn’t it great?’

Joan nodded politely, but said nothing.

‘I know she’s sad about leaving,’ Leanne said one evening as we sat in the garden listening to the birds while Joan helped her grandparents pack up some of her things. ‘I’m sad about it. I’m not underestimating how big and scary this change is. But kids move all the time – Joan used to live in Liverpool, and she managed the transition to here fine. I know that leaving her dog is a tough one, but she’s only had him a couple of months, and we can get a guinea pig that can live in the garden away from Dad. I’ve said I’ll look into that dog-borrowing scheme once we’re settled.’

‘Sounds great,’ I replied.

Leanne sighed. ‘No it doesn’t, it sounds like I’m kidding myself. After all this, I’m uprooting her from everything she loves and plonking her down in a strange place, with no trees or streams or all the things that she loves. Don’t think for one second that I’m not in bits about it.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Excuse me?’ Leanne squinted at me sideways. ‘Just because I don’t show her or Mum and Dad how I feel.’

‘It’s not true that you’re taking her away from everything she loves.’ I gave her a nudge. ‘Not only you. She’s gained a family, which was her biggest dream. And besides, they have libraries up north, don’t they?’

She gave a wry laugh. ‘I think Dad’d buy her a whole bookshop if it made her happy.’

‘She will be okay. It might take time, but she’ll get there.’ I could almost believe it for Joan. Whether I’d be okay was a whole other matter. Which was probably what prompted me to keep talking. ‘But if she’s really not, and she’s… she’s not able to be Joan any more, well… this is probably crossing the line, but you know that she’s always welcome to stay here. I mean, for summer holidays or half-term or until I’ve died of old age, whatever works best.’

Leanne twisted around to face me, her movements still slow and careful. ‘Ollie, after everything that you’ve done, there is no line between you and me. Ever. Who knows how much worse this whole thing would have been without you barging your way over that stupid line I’d drawn to keep everyone out. You gave her a home.’ She looked me right in the eye. ‘Thank you. I appreciate the offer, but I’ve spent too much time away from her already, without packing her off here for a holiday. Although,’ she pulled a face, ‘Give it a couple of weeks back with Mum and Dad and I’ll be the one needing a holiday. Perhaps we’ll both come for a break.’

‘The door’s always open.’

‘When most people say that, they really mean that the door is sometimes open, for a limited time and only when convenient. The thing with you is, I know you mean it.’ She shook her head. ‘Fool that you are.’

Of course I meant it. I was holding it together for everyone’s sake, but as soon as they left I fully intended to dissolve into a complete wreck.