zucchini. You can poke your finger in me and what's underneath the skin is a rancid, gooey mess.
I watch as Tilly swigs from a carton of coffeefl avoured milk.
'So, how's the battle on the internet going, Els? Have we finished off the enemy once and for all?'
I just shove the clean crisper back in the fridge and brush past her. A couple of mouse clicks and she'll find out soon enough. Just like the rest of the world.
'Eleanor? Hello? Did you do what I said, or what?' Her voice echoes down the hall after me.
I don't know what to say, or think. Why can't I just be like laughing Lily Cameron and string beads onto thread, make pretty bracelets and necklaces instead of having to wrestle with all these jumbled words and thoughts?
Sunday. 3 pm.
PM. AW.
Another Sunday afternoon and a classic roast dinner with Nan. I only picked at a few of the edges of the crunchy potato (my fave bits). Thinking about everything that's happened, my stomach was still doing tumble turns. Thankfully, Mum and Dad decided to lay off nagging me to eat and went for a walk to St James Park to burn off their Yorkshire puddings.
I'm helping Nan with the washing up in her funny old kitchen. The dark green paint on the cupboards is cracked and peeling, the red paint on the wooden benchtops is faded and the walls are a soft old yellow. She's got a row of plain white plastic pots with blooming pink geraniums on the windowsill. I love this place, and as the spring sunshine lights up the room, I think there's no place on earth I'd rather be.
As long as I can remember, Nan's kitchen has been exactly the same as it is this afternoon. There's the chair with the carved kookaburra on the back. There's the old biscuit tin with pictures of wattle on the lid. There's the wooden dresser where the teacups all dangle in a row from their little metal hooks. I feel like I'm still a baby girl when I'm at Nan's and today I think it would be good to go back to being small enough to sit on her knee.
It's not like Nan's really old – she's not quite seventy yet. Grandpa Pickering is eighty-two! But Nan is proud of being old-fashioned. She's lived in the same house here in Port Britannia since after she was married. It's where Mum and Auntie Marg were raised. Dad thinks she might like to get away from the noise of the coalloading terminal and the hoot of the tugboats and go to a retirement village that has a pool and golf course. Nan says the silence would drive her mad! (And she's always hated golf.)
Her little house is perched at the top of the street and looks as if it might roll down the hill any moment. It's the same steep hill that Pop walked down to go to work on the docks for almost forty-five years. I wonder if Nan sometimes imagines that he might walk in the door one day, covered in coal dust and carrying a bag of prawns and oysters for tea.
It was Pop's lungs that gave out in the end. He would sit for hours on the front veranda, smoking and watching the supertankers being loaded at the dock, but he barely had breath to walk to the gate. I used to bring in the mail from the letterbox. Sometimes there were letters from his cousins back in Manchester, England, and I used to sit on the step and read them to him.
Nan and I are standing at the sink. She doesn't have a dishwasher, so I'm using her Royal Golden Jubilee memorial tea towel to do the drying up. She's had this tea towel for seven years. I don't know whether this means that Nan doesn't have that many dishes to dry, or that this is a very well made tea towel.
I'm slowly wiping a saucer with Queen Elizabeth II's nose when Nan pulls the plug on the soapy water and turns to me. The sun's shining through her silver perm and she looks like she's wearing a crown. Her name's Elizabeth too, after the Queen Mother. And that's funny, 'cos Nan's the mother of my mother who's named Elizabeth after our Queen! Her smiling face is on this tea towel that I'm now mashing into a bread and butter plate.
'I got a letter from
I watch as Tilly swigs from a carton of coffeefl avoured milk.
'So, how's the battle on the internet going, Els? Have we finished off the enemy once and for all?'
I just shove the clean crisper back in the fridge and brush past her. A couple of mouse clicks and she'll find out soon enough. Just like the rest of the world.
'Eleanor? Hello? Did you do what I said, or what?' Her voice echoes down the hall after me.
I don't know what to say, or think. Why can't I just be like laughing Lily Cameron and string beads onto thread, make pretty bracelets and necklaces instead of having to wrestle with all these jumbled words and thoughts?
Sunday. 3 pm.
PM. AW.
Another Sunday afternoon and a classic roast dinner with Nan. I only picked at a few of the edges of the crunchy potato (my fave bits). Thinking about everything that's happened, my stomach was still doing tumble turns. Thankfully, Mum and Dad decided to lay off nagging me to eat and went for a walk to St James Park to burn off their Yorkshire puddings.
I'm helping Nan with the washing up in her funny old kitchen. The dark green paint on the cupboards is cracked and peeling, the red paint on the wooden benchtops is faded and the walls are a soft old yellow. She's got a row of plain white plastic pots with blooming pink geraniums on the windowsill. I love this place, and as the spring sunshine lights up the room, I think there's no place on earth I'd rather be.
As long as I can remember, Nan's kitchen has been exactly the same as it is this afternoon. There's the chair with the carved kookaburra on the back. There's the old biscuit tin with pictures of wattle on the lid. There's the wooden dresser where the teacups all dangle in a row from their little metal hooks. I feel like I'm still a baby girl when I'm at Nan's and today I think it would be good to go back to being small enough to sit on her knee.
It's not like Nan's really old – she's not quite seventy yet. Grandpa Pickering is eighty-two! But Nan is proud of being old-fashioned. She's lived in the same house here in Port Britannia since after she was married. It's where Mum and Auntie Marg were raised. Dad thinks she might like to get away from the noise of the coalloading terminal and the hoot of the tugboats and go to a retirement village that has a pool and golf course. Nan says the silence would drive her mad! (And she's always hated golf.)
Her little house is perched at the top of the street and looks as if it might roll down the hill any moment. It's the same steep hill that Pop walked down to go to work on the docks for almost forty-five years. I wonder if Nan sometimes imagines that he might walk in the door one day, covered in coal dust and carrying a bag of prawns and oysters for tea.
It was Pop's lungs that gave out in the end. He would sit for hours on the front veranda, smoking and watching the supertankers being loaded at the dock, but he barely had breath to walk to the gate. I used to bring in the mail from the letterbox. Sometimes there were letters from his cousins back in Manchester, England, and I used to sit on the step and read them to him.
Nan and I are standing at the sink. She doesn't have a dishwasher, so I'm using her Royal Golden Jubilee memorial tea towel to do the drying up. She's had this tea towel for seven years. I don't know whether this means that Nan doesn't have that many dishes to dry, or that this is a very well made tea towel.
I'm slowly wiping a saucer with Queen Elizabeth II's nose when Nan pulls the plug on the soapy water and turns to me. The sun's shining through her silver perm and she looks like she's wearing a crown. Her name's Elizabeth too, after the Queen Mother. And that's funny, 'cos Nan's the mother of my mother who's named Elizabeth after our Queen! Her smiling face is on this tea towel that I'm now mashing into a bread and butter plate.
'I got a letter from
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