Queenie(48)

“Hi,” I said quietly, not wanting to look at her.

“I didn’t get to talk to you properly yesterday. How are you, darling?” My mum put a hand on my leg. Even though I couldn’t feel it through all of the blankets, I moved it away sharply.

“Sorry, I know that you don’t like touching.” She pulled her hand away quickly. “Maggie told me that you and Tom are on some sort of break. How are you doing?” She paused for an answer she knew she wouldn’t get. “And Diana says you’re living in a shared house! You must hate that. You know, if I had the room—”

“I’m fine, Mum,” I sighed, tired of Christmas already.

“It’s okay to suffer, you know,” she said to me quietly. “It’s okay to be in pain, and be hurting, Queenie.”

“I said I’m fine, Sylvie,” I repeated, rolling over to face the window so I couldn’t see how much me calling her by her name hurt her.

“This isn’t like you, Queenie, to be so robotic about things,” my mum said. I heard her stand up.

“Maybe I’m not me anymore.” I closed my eyes, feeling the tears that were about to come.

“Sylvie?” Maggie called from the kitchen. “Can you come and help me, please? The turkey needs a final baste, and my hands are full with the macaroni cheese!”

“Well. You’ll always be my Queenie,” my mum said, leaving the room and closing the door behind her.



* * *



After a ten-minute grace led by Maggie that my granddad drifted in and out of sleep for, we would have eaten Christmas dinner to the soundtrack of BBC News had it not been for Maggie reeling off the list of cosmetic treatments she’s been saving up for and was planning to have done in the new year.

“. . . and then my doctor, and he is a lovely doctor, Dr. Elliot, what he’s going to do is take some of the fat from my stomach, and then he’s going to inject it in this empty part of my bosom, here.” My granddad choked on his turkey.

“Maggie, please, we’re all eating.” My grandmother put her fork down. “Tek water, Wilfred!”

“I’m only saying!” my aunt said, spearing a roast potato on my mum’s plate with her fork. “You’re being quiet,” Maggie said to my mum, shoving the stolen potato into her mouth.

“Oh, I’m okay,” my mum muttered.

“You’re not eating, Sylvie,” my grandmother said. “You get smaller every time we see you.”

“She’s always been small, though. She’s the lucky one,” Maggie said, nudging my mum so hard that all 110 pounds of her almost fell off her chair.

“Nothing lucky about being big or small. You’re all beautiful. All sizes.” My grandmother looked pointedly at me and my aunt. “But still, Maggie, I want you and Queenie to go and get your blood pressure checked. And your cholesterol.” She picked up her fork and began to eat again.

“Granddad, can we put something on the telly that isn’t news?” I asked. He finally looked away from the television and stared at me for a million years.

“As you all know, I do not like anything that is fictitious,” he announced, turning the news up and facing the screen again. “The only thing we should be watching is what’s happening in the world around us. It’s a horrible state of affairs, and you, young as you are, need to stop being so ignorant.”

“Granddad, you know I work at a newspaper. I know what’s going on in the world,” I said.

“You work at the magazine, Queenie, it’s all opinion pieces and clubbing, not real news,” he replied swiftly.

“Wilfred. Don’t start. Nuh even badda start on Jesus’ birt’day. Han’ me the remote,” my grandmother said through tightened lips.

My granddad sighed and pushed the remote across the table to her. She passed it to me, and I scanned the channels as my mum and Maggie went to sit in the front-front room, the one with plastic covers on the sofas and dust sheets on all of the best furniture. Nobody is allowed in there. I still have to clean it every time I come here, though. On my way to the kitchen to get dessert, I stopped by the door to eavesdrop.

“She’s fine, you know she’s tough,” I heard my aunt say.

“She’s not that tough, Maggie. And I appreciate you looking after her when I couldn’t, really I do, but she’s my daughter, not yours.” My mum was crying gently. “And I know her! She’s good at pretending. But I’ve let her down, I should have been better to her, that way she might have been better to herself.” Maggie mmm-ed softly in the pauses as my mum spoke. “I shouldn’t have left her. I shouldn’t have been so controlled by that devil man and left her all alone.”

I heard Maggie sigh quietly. “What’s the point in thinking like that, Sylv? You did it, you can’t change that now. All you can do is move forward with her. Build back the relationship. You and Queenie were close, that doesn’t just go away.”

“But what if it has?” my mum asked softly, fear in her voice.

“Stop worrying about Queenie, Sis, and focus on yourself. Trust me, your daughter is all right. She’s a brave one.”

“Being brave isn’t the same as being okay,” my mum said quietly.

“You have to look after yourself, Sylvie. You need to recover. Why don’t you come to church with me?” Maggie suggested. I was surprised she hadn’t offered the prospect of divine healing sooner.