Part Two Chapter V

VAlison Jenkins, the journalist from the Yarvil and District Gazette, had at go bad established which of the human beingy Weedon househ oldishs in Yarvil housed Krystal. It had been difficult nobody was registered to vote at the address and no landline number was listed for the property. Alison visited Foley highroad in soul on Sunday, only when Krystal was unwrap, and Terri, suspicious and antagonistic, refused to say when she would be back or confirm that she lived at that place.Krystal arrived home a mere twenty minutes aft(prenominal) the journalist had departed in her car, and she and her mother had a nonher row.Why dint ya aver her to wait? She was gonna interview me abou the Fields an stuffInterview you? Fuck finish. Wha the ass for?The argument escalated and Krystal walked out again, off-key to Nikkis, with Terris mobile in her tracksuit bottoms. She frequently do off with this phone many rows were triggered by her mother demanding it back and Krystal dissembli ng that she didnt roll in the hay where it was. Dimly, Krystal hoped that the journalist might know the number somehow and diagnose her directly.She was in a crowded, jangling cafe in the shopping pith, say Nikki and Leanne all about the journalist, when the mobile rang.Oo? Are you the journalist, same(p)? os at erri?Its Krystal. Oos this? m your nt other ister.Oo? shouted Krystal. One finger in the ear non pressed against the phone, she wove her way between the densely packed tables to reach a quieter place.Danielle, utter the woman, loud and clear on the other end of the telephone. Im yer mums sister.Oh, yeah, verbalise Krystal, disappointed.Fuckin snobby bitch, Terri always say when Danielles name came up. Krystal was not sure that she had ever so met Danielle.Its abou your Great Gran.Oo?Nana Cath, verbalise Danielle impatiently. Krystal reached the balcony everywherelooking the shopping centre forecourt reception was crocked here she stop.Whas wrong with er? sai d Krystal. It felt as though her stomach was flipping over, the way it had done as a little girl, act somersaults on a railing corresponding the one in effort of her. Thirty feet below, the crowds surged, carrying p tolerateic bags, have-to doe withing buggies and dragging toddlers.Shes in South western General. Shes been in that respect a hebdomad. Shes had a stroke.Shes bin on that point a week? said Krystal, her stomach s process swooping. Nobody told us.Yeah, well, she stopt speak proply, exactly shes said your name twice.Mine? asked Krystal, clutching the mobile tightly.Yeah. I think shed like to examine yeh. Its serious. Theyre sayin she migh not recover.Wha screen is it? asked Krystal, her mind buzzing.Twelve. High-dependency. Visiting hours are twelve till four, six till eight. All righ?Is it ?I gotta go. I whole cute to let you know, in case you trust to see her. Bye.The line went dead. Krystal let down the mobile from her ear, staring at the screen. She pre ssed a button repeatedly with her thumb, until she saw the word blocked. Her aunt had withheld her number.Krystal walked back to Nikki and Leanne. They knew at once that something was wrong.Go an see er, said Nikki, checking the sequence on her own mobile. Yehll ge there fer devil. Ge the bus.Yeah, said Krystal blankly.She thought of fetching her mother, of taking her and Robbie to go and see Nana Cath too, but there had been a huge row a year before, and her mother and Nana Cath had had no contact since. Krystal was sure that Terri would take an immense amount of persuading to go to the hospital, and was not sure that Nana Cath would be happy to see her.Its serious. Theyre saying she might not recover.Ave yeh gor enough cash? said Leanne, rummaging in her pockets as the three of them walked up the road towards the bus stop.Yeah, said Krystal, checking. Its ony a quid up the hospital, innit?They had time to share a cigarette before the number twenty-s purge arrived. Nikki and Lean ne waved her off as though she were going somewhere nice. At the very last moment, Krystal felt scared and motivationed to shout Come with me But thusly the bus pul conduct away from the kerb, and Nikki and Leanne were already turning away, gossiping.The seat was prickly, covered in some old smelly fabric. The bus trundled onto the road that ran by the precinct and false right into one of the main thorough farthestes that led through all the risky-name shops. revere fluttered inside Krystals belly like a foetus. She had known that Nana Cath was getting former(a) and frailer, but somehow, vaguely, she had expected her to regenerate, to return to the heyday that had seemed to last so dour for her h stock to turn black again, her spine to straighten and her memory to taper like her caustic tongue. She had never thought about Nana Cath dying, always associating her with irritability and invulnerability. If she had considered them at all, Krystal would nourish thought of the def ormity to Nana Caths chest, and the innumerable wrinkles criss-crossing her causa, as honorable scars sustained during her successful battle to survive. Nobody close to Krystal had ever died of old jump on.(Death came to the young in her mothers circle, sometimes even before their faces and bodies had become atrophied and ravaged. The body that Krystal had found in the canroom when she was six had been of a broad young man, as washrag and lovely as a statue, or that was how she remembered him. But sometimes she found that memory confusing and doubted it. It was hard to know what to believe. She had often heard things as a child that adults later contradicted and denied. She could have sworn that Terri had said, It was yer dad. But then, much later, she had said, Don be so silly. Yer dads not dead, es in Bristol, innee? So Krystal had had to try and reattach herself to the liking of Banger, which was what everybody yelled the man they said was her father.But always, in the b ackground, there had been Nana Cath. She had escaped foster care because of Nana Cath, ready and waiting in Pagford, a strong if uncomfortable safety net. Swearing and furious, she had swooped, equally assertive to Terri and to the social workers, and taken her equally angry great-granddaughter home.Krystal did not know whether she had love or hated that little house in Hope Street. It was gamey and it smelt of bleach it gave you a hemmed-in feeling. At the same time, it was safe, entirely safe. Nana Cath would only let approved individuals in through the door. in that respect were old-fashioned bath cubes in a glass jar on the end of the bath.)What if there were other people at Nana Caths bedside, when she got there? She would not recognize one-half her own family, and the bringing close together that she might come across strangers tied to her by blood scared her. Terri had several half-sisters, products of her fathers multiple liaisons, whom even Terri had never met but Nana Cath tried to keep up with them all, doggedly maintaining contact with the monolithic disordered family her sons had produced. Occasionally, over the years, relatives Krystal did not recognize had turned up at Nana Caths enchantment she was there. Krystal thought that they eyed her askance and said things about her chthonic their voices to Nana Cath she simulated not to notice and waited for them to leave, so that she could have Nana Cath to herself again. She especially disliked the idea that there were any other children in Nana Caths life.(Oo are they? Krystal had asked Nana Cath when she was nine, pointing jealously at a framed photograph of two boys in Paxton High uniforms on Nana Caths sideboard.Thems two o my great-grandsons, said Nana Cath. Thas Dan and thas Ricky. Theyre your cousins.Krystal did not want them as cousins, and she did not want them on Nana Caths sideboard.An whos tha? she demanded, pointing at a little girl with curly prospering hair.Thas my Michaels li ttle girl, Rhiannon, when she were five. Beauiful, werent she? Bu she wen an married some wog, said Nana Cath.There had never been a photograph of Robbie on Nana Caths sideboard.Yeh dont even know who the father is, do yeh, yer work? Im washin my ands of yeh. Ive ad enough, Terri, Ive ad it you can look after it yourself.)The bus trundled on through town, past all the Sunday afternoon shoppers. When Krystal had been small, Terri had taken her into the centre of Yarvil nearly every weekend, forcing her into a pushchair vast past the age when Krystal needed it, because it was so much easier to hide nicked stuff with a pushchair, push it down under the kids legs, hide it under the bags in the basket under the seat. Sometimes Terri would go on tandem shoplifting trips with the sister she radius to, Cheryl, who was married to Shane Tully. Cheryl and Terri lived four streets away from each other in the Fields, and petrified the air with their language when they argued, which was frequen tly. Krystal never knew whether she and her Tully cousins were supposed to be on speaking impairment or not, and no longer bothered keeping track, but she rung to Dane whenever she ran across him. They had shagged, once, after splitting a bottle of cider out on the rec when they were fourteen. Neither of them had ever mentioned it afterwards. Krystal was hazy on whether or not it was legal, doing your cousin. Something Nikki had said had made her think that maybe it wasnt.The bus rolled up the road that led to the main entrance of South West General, and stopped twenty yards from an enormous long rectangular grey and glass building. There were patches of neat grass, a few small trees and a forest of signposts.Krystal followed two old ladies out of the bus and stood with her hands in her tracksuit pockets, looking around. She had already forgotten what miscellanea of ward Danielle had told her Nana Cath was on she recalled only the number twelve. She approached the adjacent signp ost with a casual air, squinting at it almost well-timed it bore line upon line of impenetrable print, with words as long as Krystals arm and arrows pointing left, right, diagonally. Krystal did not read well being con nominal headed with large quantities of words made her feel intimidated and aggressive. After several surreptitious glances at the arrows, she decided that there were no numbers there at all, so she followed the two old ladies towards the double glass doors at the front of the main building.The foyer was crowded and more confusing than the signposts. There was a bustling shop, which was separated from the main hall by floor to jacket crown windows there were rows of plastic chairs, which seemed to be full of people eating sandwiches there was a packed cafe in the corner and a kind of hexagonal counter in the middle of the floor, where women were answering enquiries as they look into their computers. Krystal headed there, her hands still in her pockets.Wheres ward twelve? Krystal asked one of the women in a surly voice.Third floor, said the woman, matching her tone.Krystal did not want to ask anything else out of pride, so she turned and walked away, until she spotted lifts at the far end of the foyer and entered one going up.It took her nearly fifteen minutes to find the ward. Why didnt they put up numbers and arrows, not these obtuse long words? But then, walking along a ghastly green corridor with her trainers squeaking on the linoleum floor, someone called her name.Krystal?It was her aunt Cheryl, big and broad in a denim skirt and tight white vest, with banana-yellow black-rooted hair. She was tattooed from her knuckles to the tops of her thick arms, and wore multiple gold hoops like curtain rings in each ear. There was a can of Coke in her hand.She ain bothered, then? said Cheryl. Her bare legs were planted intemperately apart, like a sentry guard.Oo?Terri. She din wanna come?She don know ye. I ony jus eard. Danielle called an tole me .Cheryl ripped off the ring-pull and slurped Coke, her tiny eyes sunken in a wide, flat face that was mottled like corned beef, scrutinizing Krystal over the top of the can.I tole Danielle ter call yeh when it appened. Three days she were lyin in the ouse, and no one fuckin found er. The assert of er. Fuckin ell.Krystal did not ask Cheryl why she herself had not walked the short distance to Foley Road to tell Terri the news. Evidently the sisters had fallen out again. It was impossible to keep up.Where is she? asked Krystal.Cheryl led the way, her flip-flops making a slapping noise on the floor.Hey, she said, as they walked. I ad a call frm a journalist about you.Didja?She give me a number.Krystal would have asked more questions, but they had entered a very quiet ward, and she was on the spur of the moment frightened. She did not like the smell.Nana Cath was almost unrecognizable. One side of her face was dreadfully twisted, as though the muscles had been pulled with a wire. Her m outh dragged to one side even her eye seemed to droop. There were tubes taped to her, a needle in her arm. prevarication down, the deformity in her chest was much more obvious. The sheet come up and fell in odd places, as if the grotesque head on its scrawny neck protruded from a barrel.When Krystal sat down beside her, Nana Cath made no movement. She simply gazed. One little hand trembled slightly.She ain talkin, bu she said yer name, twice, las nigh, Cheryl told her, staring gloomily over the rim of her can.There was a tightness in Krystals chest. She did not know whether it would hurt Nana Cath to hold her hand. She edged her own fingers to within a few inches of Nana Caths, but let them rest on the bedspread.Rhiannons bin in, said Cheryl. An John an Sue. Sues tryin ter get hold of Anne-Marie.Krystals spirits leapt.Where is she? she asked Cheryl.Somewhere out Frenchay way. Yknow shes got a baby now?Yeah, I eard, said Krystal. Wha was it?Dunno, said Cheryl, swigging Coke.Someone at school had told her Hey, Krystal, your sisters up the duff She had been excited by the news. She was going to be an auntie, even if she never saw the baby. All her life, she had been in love with the idea of Anne-Marie, who had been taken away before Krystal was born spirited into another dimension, like a fairy-tale character, as beautiful and mysterious as the dead man in Terris bathroom.Nana Caths lips go.Wha? said Krystal, bending low, half scared, half elated.Dyeh wan somethin, Nana Cath? asked Cheryl, so loudly that whispering guests at other beds stared over.Krystal could hear a wheezing, rattling noise, but Nana Cath seemed to be making a definite attempt to form a word. Cheryl was leaning over the other side, one hand gripping the alloy bars at the head of the bed. Oh mm, said Nana Cath.Wha? said Krystal and Cheryl together.The eyes had moved millimetres rheumy, filmy eyes, looking at Krystals smooth young face, her open mouth, as she leaned over her great-grandmoth er, puzzled, eager and fearful. owin said the cracked old voice.She dunno wha shes sayin, Cheryl shouted over her shoulder at the timid couple visiting at the adjoining bed. Three days lef on the fuckin floor, snot surprisin, is it?But tears had blurred Krystals eyes. The ward with its high windows dissolved into white light and shadow she seemed to see a flash of bright sunlight on dark green water, staccato into brilliant shards by the splashing rise and fall of oars.Yeah, she whispered to Nana Cath. Yeah, I goes rowin, Nana.But it was no longer true, because Mr Fairbrother was dead.