The Other Side of Summer (21 page)

It wasn’t like the Christmases I remembered from when I was little. For a start, what woke me up was a combination of the sun blazing through my window like a hot iron on the side of my face, and Dad cranking up the lawnmower.

‘Perfect! Merry Christmas!’ shouted Wren in a mocking voice from across the hallway.

I giggled and shifted into the shady part of my bed. ‘Merry Christmas to you too!’ I yelled back. Bee was stretched out in the patch of sun on my bed, snoring, and I gently held one of her huge paws.

My phone bleeped twice and I reached for it without getting up. It was a Merry Christmas message from
Becky, who was spending the summer holidays in Perth with her family. She’d used every single Christmas and celebration emoji she could find, and finished with a prawn. Typical of lovely, funny Becky.

I heard pitter-patters and Wren appeared in the doorway, all thick wild hair and smudged eye make-up. She wore an Emily the Strange t-shirt that said ‘Get Lost’, but she smiled with her whole face.

‘Well? What did you get?’ she said.

‘What?’

‘In your stocking!’ She brought hers from behind her back and pointed to the end of my bed.

‘I didn’t know we were getting stockings again. We haven’t had them since you told me Father Christmas wasn’t real and Mum decided there was no point.’

‘You needed to know the truth.’

‘You told me I wasn’t real, either, and that everyone was just pretending to see me.’

‘Wow, Old Wren was funny. Anyway, you’re real, aren’t you? Ergo Father Christmas is real too. Except here he’s called Santa.’

I raised one eyebrow and patted a space for her to sit down.

I was nervous about today. Christmas had been packed away in a box for two years. The first year, we couldn’t even open the lid because of Floyd. The year
after that we would have tried had the Shadow not visited Mum. Although that second year we’d flown back home for a Christmas we could recognise –
cold
, I mean – London had just been a signpost on the motorway that we’d passed by on our way to Gran’s. We’d holed up in Cornwall for two weeks, ignoring everything festive apart from eating a lot. That part wasn’t, and still isn’t, optional at Gran’s. But this year she’d decided to go on a cruise. And I was ready to see what Christmas was like in our new home.

Some people called Mum’s Shadow a black dog, a demon, or a dark place. The way I saw it, it was like a tall cloaked figure that would creep up on Mum and wrap her up so tightly that she couldn’t move or even look up to see our faces.

The Shadow meant depression. Sometimes it was better to call it that instead. It came and went. Mum had pills for it and mostly they worked. We still didn’t know how to carry on without Mum in the times she wasn’t quite with us, but we were getting better at it.

She was with us today, though, in all the ways she could be.

This December, the Christmas box had been opened and we’d dug deep inside. I worried that the lights would be too tangled to be unravelled, or that all the shiny baubles might have cracked like eggshells,
showing us that whatever Christmas magic had once been inside them was long gone. But then I told myself that this Christmas didn’t have to be exactly like old times to be a happy one. Just as long as there were a few old things to remind us.

Chocolate coins, for one. Wren and I ripped open a big net of giant ones. Dad had called a temporary ceasefire in his war against junk food. We teased open the foil of the biggest coins and shoved them in our mouths, then we rummaged around the things we’d tipped onto my bed.

‘New eyeliner. Thanks, Mum,’ said Wren, with the chocolate going all gooey in her teeth.

I looked at my little gifts one by one: a beautiful leather pickholder, a new guitar strap, a book, a three-pack of lip balms, and something that looked a bit like a coat hook.

‘What’s this?’ I asked Wren.

‘Oh, I know! Remember Floyd had one? You screw it into the wall and you can hang your guitar on it.
Or
your little sister …’ She looked guiltily out of the window, smirking, and a memory came to me of Wren and Floyd hooking the label of my jumper over the guitar hanger so that when I tried to walk away I was trapped. I slapped her leg and took one of her chocolate coins.

‘Wait, there’s one more thing,’ I said, digging deeper into the stocking. ‘A mandarin!’ We giggled. ‘Of course. Dad has to make sure we get our five a day.’

Wren made a mandarin sandwich with a chocolate coin as the filling, and popped it into her mouth whole. ‘So. Excited about who’s coming later?’ she said with her mouth full.

‘Sure,’ I said, in a small voice.

She kicked me and smiled, and just then Mike Witkin’s hedge-trimmer started up.

‘Excellent!’ yelled Wren. ‘So festive!’ We laughed again, and rolled around on my sunlit bed like a pair of happy cats.

Downstairs, Dad had gone completely overboard. There were flashy decorations inside and out. We had a seven-foot tree inside and he’d put a huge blow-up reindeer in the front garden. Its nose glowed.

In the old days, Mum would have banned the whole lot. She’d never liked the tacky side of holidays, only the stories and the symbolism and the way it brought families together. She’d gather winter twigs into vases and hang dried orange slices and cinnamon sticks on their branches; she’d string fresh holly and mistletoe all around the house, and if anyone suggested fake snow on the windows she’d only have to give them a look.

But this year Mum must have been able to see that Dad had never been more at home. This was a Christmas that made sense to him. He’d been preparing food since last week. Opening the fridge was risky because there was so much crammed in there that taking out any item was like playing Jenga. Dad had been wearing a Santa hat for three days solid. He’d probably been sleeping in it. It got worse: he was making Bee wear one too.

But she put up with it, so maybe we all could.

It was only if you looked really closely and at exactly the right moment that you would ever see a flicker of sadness on Dad’s face. I knew it happened at the times he wished Floyd was here, joining in, behaving like a Christmas fool. But Dad never liked to show his grief and you had to respect that was his way.

This was how we all were, now. We’d learned to live with each other again. It was a new kind of happiness that had taken us a while to get used to.

At midday the doorbell rang. Mum, who looked so gorgeous in a flowing purple dress, her hair piled up, and some flashing Christmas tree-earrings that I teased her about later, gave me a look I recognised. It meant that the Witkins were here. Mum did
not
like Julie Witkin. I’d overheard her arguing with Dad in their bedroom a few weeks ago:

‘Why do we have to have
them
here? For
Christmas
?’

‘I just thought it would be nice. They were going to spend it at their beach house but it got termites.’

Mum had laughed so loudly that I’d jumped back from the door and switched ears.

‘Cece,’ said Dad, quite seriously, ‘they’ve been good to me.’

I left after that. And the next thing I knew it was back on with the Witkins coming for Christmas lunch.

‘Come in, come in!’ Mum sang, in that old way of hers, because when she was well she was still the best at putting on a show and making people feel special in her house.

‘Cece, you look
divine
,’ said Julie Witkin.

‘Gosh, well, you look simply
stunning
,’ Mum replied.

That was how they always spoke to each other. It was pretty funny because I was sure Julie didn’t like Mum either.

At that moment, Sophie held out the skirt of her dress, went on her tiptoes and dropped again.

‘And you look adorable too, Soph,’ said Mum. ‘Why don’t you tell Summer all about what presents you got?’

‘You won’t believe it, Summer!’ said Soph.

Poor Soph. She was who she was. I shuddered to think of how horrible I’d been to her, especially because she was improving. I smiled and patted the floor next
to me. Sophie tiptoed over with her arms floating out as if she were auditioning for
Swan Lake
. (Okay, she was improving a tiny bit.)

‘Guess what I got,’ she said.

‘Um … An iPod? A scooter? A … cuddly unicorn?’

‘A unicorn? I’m eleven!
Wrong
. A guitar.’ She assumed the air guitar position and pretended to be rocking out, making
nuh-nuh-nuh
noises. ‘And guess what else?’

‘You’re … going to give us a concert later?’ Sophie was famous for her post-barbecue concerts.

‘No, silly. I can’t play it yet. It’s that Mum says you can teach me!’

‘Oh! Right!’ I dared not look at Wren or Mum in that moment, or I’d never be able to keep up the bizarre zombie grin I had on my face in place of a genuine smile.

‘Thank you, Summer, that would be darling of you,’ said Julie. ‘Milo, have you said hello to everyone yet?’ She nudged him forward.

Milo did his usual awkward windscreen-wiper wave. Then he plonked down next to Wren without saying a word. Only I saw the tiny nudge that meant hello. Wren and Milo were a lot cuter than they thought. They were really private, especially around Dad and Mr Witkin. I still had no idea if they were a couple or not but I knew it was special, whatever it was.

Sometimes I think that what Wren told me that day on the porch was so huge for her that she had to back off for a while. I hadn’t figured out how to make a moment like that happen again, but that didn’t mean I’d given up.

‘Is it too early for champagne?’ said Julie, brandishing a bottle.

‘I’d say it’s exactly the right time!’ said Mum, and she winked at me as she passed on her way to get the champagne glasses.

Half an hour later, the doorbell rang again. All of a sudden I felt self-conscious about my face, as if I’d suddenly remembered I had eyes, eyebrows, a mouth, and that they needed not to betray the way I was feeling inside.

It was Gabe.

Every time we saw him I wondered if this would be the day that he’d remember me and us. Only, as much as I hoped for it, I was scared of it, too.

Gabe’s memory of life before and even after the bomb – up until the second time he’d woken up in hospital and we’d been there – was like a shattered glass. There were a few large pieces that he could pick up in his bare hands, hundreds of tiny shards that were too dangerous to go near, and other bits that had been cast so far away that they still hadn’t been found.
This had been hard for me to take but even harder to watch.

The holes in his memory weren’t exactly empty, they were full of pain. First of all, he had to relearn how sick his mum was. And then he had to confront what it meant that his dad had left him alone in London, at fifteen, and hadn’t been seen or heard from since. As if that wasn’t enough, he must have sensed, no matter how hard we tried not to let it show, that all of us Jackmans wanted him to remember that last day with Floyd.

He almost had.

One evening, we’d been having dinner in the garden when one by one we’d noticed that Gabe had stopped moving. He was staring into a space that none of us could see. The whole table went still. When Gabe started speaking, I think we all understood where he was taking us. Some of us held onto each other. Mum held onto Gabe.

‘First it’s black, and then suddenly I’m there in the station. I’m by myself. I don’t know where we’d been earlier that day. But we’d said goodbye and I wasn’t standing with him when it happened.’ Gabe swallowed. ‘Floyd is walking away from me. He’s with a girl, actually. But I can’t remember how he knew her. I remember her face; she’s pretty, with short black hair. I don’t know if you knew about her?’

We all shook our heads, but far in the back of my mind I realised I
had
known that, just not in a way that I could have remembered on my own.

‘They are way off in the distance. I can just see them underneath the clock, and I call out to him and say, “Hey, mate, you left me with the wrong guitar!” Floyd turns around and I can tell even from far away that he means for it to be in my hands.’

Gabe looked me in the eyes and it reached inside to squeeze my heart. I felt sure he must be remembering us in that moment. But then he said, ‘Floyd was so kind. Well, you all knew that,’ and the moment was gone. He was back in the station.

‘The next thing I remember is a noise and white light and everything flying. I’m lifted off my feet, thrown backwards, and I must have smashed my head against something. I get up quickly – or at least I think I do – and everyone is screaming. I realise I’m screaming too, and I’m still holding his guitar. I’m gripping it so tightly, and staring deep into the sound hole. It’s as if it’s pulling me inside, somewhere safe.’ He cupped his hands into a circle. ‘Sorry, that must sound strange when you know what was going on around me.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t.’

‘I can’t … I can’t talk about everything. I can’t say the words for the things I see.’

‘It’s all right, Gabe,’ said Mum.

‘From that point on it’s like I’m watching myself do things on CCTV, but it’s not me. It’s some other kid. I see him putting the guitar down. He looks at it for a long time – or maybe just a second, I have no idea. He picks up his bag. A woman comes towards him and she’s shouting at him and she looks frantic but he can’t hear a word she’s saying. There’s smoke everywhere, and small fires, but he sees some daylight that he wants to walk towards. So he just pushes her aside and he goes.

‘He walks for ages. His head is pounding. It’s as if he’s the only one going in that direction. Everyone else is running towards where he’s just come from. And no matter how far he walks he can still hear screaming.’

Gabe looked at Mum suddenly. ‘I’m so sorry. Should I stop?’

Mum was crying but she smiled and stroked Gabe’s hair over the long silver scar that his hair wouldn’t grow over, where they’d found a blood clot. First they thought it was from being knocked down by a car when he landed back in Melbourne, but later they figured it would have been from the blast. Head injuries don’t always tell you they’re there. Sometimes damage can be done deep inside and it takes a while to bring you down. Gabe made it to the airport, cleaned himself up over a washbasin at Gatwick, and boarded a plane using
the official letter that allowed him to fly on his own. That whole time, he didn’t say a word to anyone about what had just happened to him.

The driver of the car they thought had knocked him down just a few blocks from home had sworn that she hadn’t hit Gabe hard. The whole time Gabe was in a coma, she was trying to convince the hospital that there was more to his injuries than they knew. She swore that Gabe had stumbled onto the road and hit the ground, that her car hadn’t been travelling that fast, that there was no way she could have caused all of Gabe’s injuries. In a way, the car accident had saved him because it got him to the right place. If he’d collapsed somewhere else, they might not have got to him in time.

So destiny was beautiful and ugly. We had all lost, and we had all found. Gran had said to me once that new seeds have to start out in a dark place. It’s the light you give them afterwards that makes them grow healthy and strong.

Sometimes my family seemed to have all the answers we needed: that Floyd had died happy, and that he
had
definitely died. I know that much had been obvious to everyone else but there had always been a part of me that had tried to write myself a different story.

When the dust had settled, Mum and I had fought a few times over what I knew about Gabe and why I’d
been so sure that we needed to find him. I wouldn’t tell her. It wasn’t a story for everyone to know. Only me, Bee, Floyd, and one other, for now.

Of course, Gabe had been curious, too.

‘What made you come looking for me?’ he’d asked, the second time we’d visited him in hospital. ‘I hadn’t known your brother very long, and I never met you. Or did we meet? Have I just forgotten?’

I felt sure that the whole truth had to be a place Gabe got to in his own time. Truth was clearer and brighter if you found it yourself.

‘We didn’t meet, but I knew you must have meant a lot to him. He wouldn’t give his Ibanez Artwood to just anyone, you know.’

‘But you didn’t know he’d done that, did you?’

‘Oh. Not exactly. But he’d written something on some song sheets he left for me: “Gabe. Ibanez Artwood.” And I got curious, that’s all.’

Gabe frowned, as if something I’d said had jogged a memory. ‘Which songs were they?’

I told him the names of the five songs.

‘Can you look in my stuff?’ Gabe asked. ‘I think he gave them to me, too.’

I opened the small cupboard by the side of his bed. There they were, folded in half and half again. An exact copy of the ones I’d once had.

‘But my name isn’t on these,’ he said.

I wanted to tell him the truth so much but instead I said, ‘Maybe we could play them together one day.’

Gabe nodded and smiled, then he looked nervous. ‘I don’t know if I can say this.’

‘You can say anything to me,’ I told him.

‘Well, it’s just … I know Floyd was your family, not mine, and we hadn’t known each other very long, but he still felt like …’

My mouth was dry and I could hardly get the words out. ‘A brother?’

‘Yeah. Is that okay for me to say?’

‘He was a really good brother. So I get it.’

Gabe was back in school now, repeating a year. The Child Protection Service had found him somewhere to live because his mum needed someone with her all the time and, despite Gabe’s begging, they wouldn’t let it be him. Mum and Dad wanted to become Gabe’s legal guardians but it wasn’t that easy. It didn’t matter, though. In our heads I think that’s how we all saw ourselves, anyway. We were all guardians for each other.

Dad walked in with a big grin on his face and his arm around Gabe’s shoulder. He had to stretch for that because Gabe was now taller than him.

‘Hey, it’s our main man Gabe!’ said Dad.