Angel Kiss - Laura Jane Cassidy [12]
‘Yeah, me and all the other Capricorns on the planet.’
‘You’re so sceptical,’ said Mum in exasperation.
‘I don’t see a problem with that,’ I said, adjusting my pillow. ‘Have you got any other magazines?’
‘No. But I do have this.’ She threw a copy of the local newspaper on to my lap.
I flicked through the pages, spotting some people I recognized from the village in the ‘Out and about’ section. There were photos from an eighteenth birthday party, and it looked like the birthday girl had been snapped mid-sentence, because her face was weirdly scrunched up. It reminded me of the photo of Hannah and me that Sophie had put online a few months ago. We’d been laughing at something, and hadn’t realized there was a camera around. As a result we both looked deranged and very unattractive. Sophie was terrible for not censoring her photos and just putting anything up. At least the paper would be in everyone’s recycling bin next week but those photos were online forever. There were a few planning notices at the back of the paper and then a list of anniversaries. My eyes were drawn to the last one.
CULLEN – Birthday remembrance of our dear daughter Beth Cullen, late of Miner’s Way, Avarna, whose birthday occurs on 16 July. Always remembered by your loving family.
I wondered if she was related to Jim Cullen, the man who’d just died. Avarna was a small village so it was possible. The notice didn’t say when the daughter had died but if it was the same family then they’d been through a double tragedy.
Later that evening, Mum put on her long grey cardigan and stepped into her pink wellingtons. ‘I’m just going out to the house for a minute,’ she said.
‘I’ll come with you,’ I offered.
Mum took the torch with her as the evening light was fading and the electricity wasn’t connected in the house. I closed the caravan door and followed Mum up the front garden. When we’d first visited the house, the garden had been my favourite part. The house had been shabby and rundown but the garden was overgrown and beautiful. It was full of wild flowers and reminded me of the gardens in Jane Austen adaptations that my mum and I used to watch on TV when I was little. Right now it was in a bit of a mess because of all the work that was going on, but the house was coming along nicely. The new windows and doors had been fitted, the gable had been painted and the broken roof tiles had been replaced. I couldn’t wait until everything was finished and we could move in. I had convinced myself that once we moved into the house my recurring nightmare would stop and things would start to fall into place. At the moment we were in a kind of limbo. The caravan was a capsule, suspending us between our old life and our new one.
There was a quarter of an acre of barren ground at the rear of the house, surrounded by a rotting wooden fence and an overgrown hedge. It was full of building materials and rubbish and I tried to imagine it with nice paving and potted plants. On a bright day you could see the beautiful mountains in the distance and I was sure it would be a nice place to sit once it was cleaned up.
We went in through the back door. Mum tidied up some plates and cutlery that the builders had left. The kitchen units had all been ripped out and the space they once occupied was now a blank grey canvas. The linoleum had been taken away and the wooden floorboards were being restored to their original glory. Mum was excited about our new kitchen arriving in a couple of days.
‘Jacki,’ she said, ‘remember you have to pick out a colour for your room.’
‘I think I’ll go for purple,’ I said as we stood in the centre of my new bedroom with Mum shining the torch against the bare wall in front of us. As an only child I was used to having space to myself, but this was amazing. Or maybe it seemed huge because it was completely empty. I began to imagine where my bed would go. I’d definitely like it to face the bay window that looked