Num8ers - By Rachel Ward Page 0,99

rocked backward and forward, backward and forward.

“I’ve been thinking, Jem. When you’re a bit better, we could take him there, to Weston. Say good-bye properly. Only when you’re better. No hurry, love.”

I didn’t notice anything getting any better. One day was much like the last to me: flat, empty, crushed under a huge weight. After a few weeks, though, everyone ’round me started saying they were pleased with my progress. I was able to string words together now, when I felt like it, and was managing to eat a few mouthfuls at each mealtime. I’d still wake up in the night, tormented by nightmares, too scared to scream or cry out, and would lie there for hours, unable to close my eyes again. During the day, the nurses encouraged me to draw, to start to let the feelings out. I didn’t mind that, sitting at the table with some paper and colored markers — I could do it for hours.

Karen was a regular visitor, too. Fair play to her, no matter how often I kicked her, she still came back for more. One day she said, “Jem, the doctor says you’re ready for a change. Come home, love. Come home with me. Let me look after you for a bit.”

She’d kept my old room free. “I’ll decorate it for you. We can start again. What color do you want?”

And so I went back to Sherwood Road, to walls painted “Crème Caramel,” warm and honey-colored, the color of Bath stone. I stayed in my room and listened to music and stared at the walls, until one day I heard Karen going out to take the twins to school, and I started drawing. The first one was by my bed, an angel watching over me, keeping me safe; and I worked outward from there until they were everywhere, walls and ceiling: creatures with wings, climbing up and falling down. Some of them had their faces missing, or an arm or a leg. One of them had ridiculously long limbs and springy Afro hair — I put him at the top, spreading his wings and flying across the ceiling. I did a little bald one right down by the skirting board, sort of hunched up, wrapping her wings around herself.

When Karen brought my dinner in, she dropped the tray. Spaghetti Bolognese splattered on the walls.

I grabbed a tissue and started wiping it off. “Look what you’ve done, you’re ruining my pictures, you silly bitch.”

I was back in the hospital after that, and when I came “home” again it had all been painted over—“Bluebell Haze” this time, more calming, apparently. Except that you could still see some of my angels faintly under the paint, and I found that comforting. I didn’t have so many nightmares, knowing that they were there.

It must have been five or six months later that we found ourselves at the end of the pier at Weston-Super-Mare.

We stood there awkwardly for a bit, then Val said, “Well, then.” She unscrewed the lid of the pot. “Do you want to do it, Jem?”

“Um, I dunno. What do you do?”

“Just tip it out. Hold it at arm’s length over the sea and tip it.”

Tears were stabbing the back of my eyes. I’d kept them away for a long time, but they were there now, like little knives. “I can’t. I can’t do it. You do it, Val.”

She pressed her lips together tightly, trying to keep herself together, and stepped forward. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Which way’s the wind blowing? We don’t want him…well, we don’t want it going all over us.”

Karen licked her finger and held it up. “It’s coming from over there. Hold it over this side, it’ll be OK.”

“Right.” Val took a deep breath. She had her body right up against the railing and held the pot out as far as she could.

“Good-bye, Terry, love. Good-bye, my precious boy.”

Her voice caught on her last words, and she gave a little sob as she tipped the urn over. Gray ash streaked out. Most of it fell onto and into the water, but a rogue gust of wind took some of it and blew it straight back at us. It went in our hair and on our clothes.

“Bloody hell, I’ve got some in me eye! Can you see it, Karen?” Val stumbled back from the railing, empty pot in one hand, the other rubbing at her left eye.

“Come here, Val. Let’s have a look.” While Val blinked and gasped, and Karen peered