The Things I Know(84)

The sound of his crying became their wordless farewell.

She was unsure how long she sat on the sofa in quiet thought, but it was long enough for her tears to wane, the ache in her chest to subside and her thoughts to calm. She wiped her palms on her jeans and sniffed, placing the phone in her pocket. With one hand on Buddy’s head, she rubbed her sore eyes.

‘Enough tears now, Buddy. Enough. I don’t need tears. I need plans. I need to figure out what to do next.’

These are the things I know . . .

I know my name is Thomasina Waycott.

I know I’m not like everyone else.

I know I was born a little bit different, as if someone held the instructions upside down or lost a part when they opened the box.

I also know that words are powerful things and they have weight.

I know certain words have sat in my stomach for as long as I can remember and weighed so much that when I was in a crowd or I met someone new they pulled my shoulders down and made my head hang forward so I could only look at the floor.

Tard.

Fuckwit.

Rabbitmouth.

But not any more.

I know I want to see other countries.

I know I want a boyfriend.

I know I want my own kitchen.

I know I want to paint my nails instead of having them caked in mud.

I know I want to own clothes that are pretty.

I know I want to own sparkly red shoes that I will never get to wear but I can look at whenever I want . . .

What I don’t know is how different I am, and I also don’t know how I can find this out.

And I know that some days I’m happy and on other days I’m sad, but that’s the same for everyone, isn’t it?





FOURTEEN

It hadn’t felt much like Christmas. Their last one at Waycott Farm, as the sale drew nearer, and the second one without Jonathan at the table. Her brother’s gift-wrapped scent bottle had arrived, and she had been grateful for it. The decorations on the tree and the cut boughs of holly that traditionally sat on top of the mantelpieces brought her no joy. Carols on the radio did no more than irritate. In truth, it all felt a little pointless. She had got drunk with Shelley and both had ended up crying on the sofa in the flat above the pub, drinking vodka cocktails until they were sick in the tub where Daphne had once laid her feathery head. Yes, Christmas this year was no more than a red-ringed date on the calendar. There was no flutter of anticipation the night before the big day at the prospect of the fat, bearded man squeezing down the fireplace and leaving her new slippers, bath salts, thick socks and chocolate. Even the prospect of overeating and then pausing only to walk to the kitchen to re-stock and eat some more held no allure. But then, for the last few weeks, seven weeks to be precise, since that last phone call with Grayson, Thomasina had felt as if the joy had been sucked out of just about everything.

And it was all because she was stuck.

Her dreams of travel were, she realised, near impossible without the cold hard cash for a ticket, and her ideas for a chicken-focussed business felt a little foolish in the light of no enquiries and without the money to tell the world she was here. She struggled to think of a plan B, but her cogs kept turning, knowing a solution was out there somewhere.

For the first time in her life she found it hard to fall asleep and even harder to stay asleep. The problem was threefold. Firstly, her parents were on edge, worrying now about her mental as well as her physical condition, in a state of agitation she could never have envisaged for them in their own home. If they realised she had caught one of their furtive glances, they would break instantly into false and crooked smiles, as if this lifting of the lips might make everything feel better, reassure her that everything was going to be okay . . . It might have worked when she was little, but right now it had the opposite effect. The three of them were reticent, unusually polite with each other and a little ill at ease.

Secondly, life was tough without Emery’s labour in the cold winter, when the ground was hard and unforgiving; frost turned the softest mud to iron and darkness fell ever earlier in the cold bite of a sharp wind. The Waycotts were worked to the bone. The chores took longer, work was harder, the lifting heavier. Thomasina’s time with her chickens was minimal – it was all about getting through her list of jobs without the luxury of being able to linger with them or, God forbid, have a dance. She suspected that her parents, like herself, fell face down on to their mattress at night in a state of near collapse, only to be woken what felt like a short time later by the pipping of the alarm that was set a little ahead of the needs of the animals. And in her case, she was lucky if sleep was possible at all.

Thirdly, and finally, Thomasina was in a state of grief, bewildered by the longing she felt for Grayson Potts. Her thoughts whirred on an endless loop about all the things they might have done differently. Again and again she saw herself saying goodbye to him at the entrance of Barts Hospital, unbeknownst to her the last time she would see him; holding him tightly, kissing his face and reassuring him that his mum would be fine, that it would all blow over quickly, and he would soon be hotfooting it back to Austley Morton, where they would continue to get to know each other in a state of bliss. And although a little distracted, he had held her tightly, and she could still remember the feel of his arms around her, his fingers digging in. She had clung to him, happy in the knowledge that their parting was not a chosen thing but a forced thing, he was simply doing his duty, and still she had believed, deep down, that their future was rosy. She had, in spite of the serious nature of his mother’s condition, sung loudly all the way back to Waycott Farm from Bristol Parkway Station with a kernel of happiness in the centre of her gut.