The Shock of the Fall (Special edition) (28 page)

BOOK: The Shock of the Fall (Special edition)

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‘Your mum’s looking for you,’ Peter said, still pressing the handle. ‘She says we have to go outside. She says it’s time to plant the tree.’

Ha.

‘I’m coming,’ I said.

It’s still there. It’s really tall now. If you were to drive past my parents’ house today you’d see the top branches, stretching and swaying over the garage.

Aunty Mel brought it instead of flowers. CONTENTS: One sapling from our English Heritage Range; a growing-tube to protect your young tree through its first winter; and a personalized plaque, that Aunty Mel had left blank so that Mum could choose what words we wanted later, but that of course –
of course, Susan
– she would still like to pay for.

We took in turns to pat down the earth.

At bedtime I took Simon’s toothbrush from the beaker.

I figured he wouldn’t mind.

I could still hear the murmur of adult voices drifting from the living room, but they were quieter now; more like the sound of the next ten years. Those with farthest to travel had already left. Sam had been carried out to the car asleep. Peter shook my hand because that’s what we’d seen our dads do.

Simon’s bristles felt funny in my mouth.

Even with a gob-full of paste, he’d keep on talking, chewing at his brush so that he got through twice as many as the rest of us.

In the long stone shower block at Ocean Cove – with the dark at the windows and the spindly daddy-longlegs and chunky moths, half flying, half stumbling against the florescent tubes – we’d stood one sink apart, brushing our teeth before bed, when this fat man wrapped in a tiny white towel took the sink between us, and started plucking the hairs in his nose.

I guess you had to be there, but it was so funny. We kept looking at each other, then looking at the man, his head tilted back, his fingers deep in his nostrils.

I can’t say for sure which one of us started laughing first, but once we’d started, we couldn’t stop. Simon’s toothpaste froth was spitting onto the mirror – and that made us laugh even harder.

Whatever everyone knew, no-one knew that.

‘Hello? Matthew? Darling?’

‘Will you unlock the door, please? Please, Matthew. I’m worried about you.’

Time can fly when you’re brushing your teeth, eh? I mean, seriously. It can disappear.

‘What have you done?’ My grandmother was standing in the doorway. Mum’s mum, the one we call Nanny Noo. I knew it would be her. I opened my hand, and felt a warm throbbing around the little purple crescents.

Nanny held them to the light.

‘You’ve broken the skin,’ she said quietly.

And if you knew her, then you would know she’s the sort to keep a tube of Germolene in her handbag – just in case. She carefully dabbed the pink paste on with the side of her little finger, and said how she’d always loved the smell.

I didn’t know what to say, so I just said the truth.

‘I held his toothbrush too tight.’

‘Oh my darling. My poor darling.’

It took nothing for these grown-ups to cry.

About the Author

Nathan Filer is a registered mental health nurse. He is also a performance poet, contributing regularly to literary events across the UK. His work has been broadcast on television and radio.
The Shock of the Fall
is his first novel.

Copyright

HarperCollins
Publishers

77–85 Fulham Palace Road,

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollins
Publishers
2013

Illustrations: Charlotte Farmer

Nathan Filer asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Source ISBN: 9780007491438

Version 1

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Typographic design by Lindsay Nash

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