“Thanks, Mum!” she’d say, as she rolled up into the back of the Transit. “Look! I can do it one-handed …!”
Actually that isn’t true.
Or rather: it isn’t true any longer.
Amy used to be able to wheel her way easily up the ramp into the van, but not any more. The problem wasn’t with her, or the van: it was with her wheelchair. For some time now, the right wheel had not pointed in the same direction as the left wheel. Which meant that Amy sometimes felt like she was trying to get around in a supermarket trolley. And not just any trolley: one that’s been separated from all the others on the edge of the supermarket car park because, as soon as any shopper sees it, they know that its wheels will stick.
I’ve maybe gone a bit far with the trolley comparison. Although it was a comparison Amy herself would use a lot while complaining to her mum about her wheelchair. She was doing exactly that when this story begins, as they drove into Lodlil, the cheaper-than-most superstore near where they lived.
“That one,” said Amy, pointing out of the window. “Mum. The rusty one. With the soggy newspaper in it. And the wonky front wheel. That’s the kind of trolley my wheelchair is like.”
“Yes,” said Suzi, carefully backing into a space between two cars, into one of which a family was loading a huge amount of shopping. This was hard to do, as the van was large and high in the back, and Amy and her chair were in the way.
More in the way than usual, in fact, as Amy was pointing, with both arms, at the rusty trolley. “Can you see it?”
“No. But I know the one you mean.”
“You do?”
“Well. I know the kind of one you mean. Because you’ve pointed one like that out every time we’ve come to the supermarket this month.”
“Because, Mum,” said Amy, “my wheels have been that wonky for a month!”
Suzi sighed, and switched the van engine off. Life is as perfect as you want it to be, she thought to herself. Amy’s mum was very keen on “inspirational quotes”: positive things people have said about life that you can find all over the internet, normally backed by an image of a sunset. She repeated these to herself in times of stress. Often, though – like now, as she watched the man from the car next to her trying again and again to slam the boot down over a stuck bag containing mainly eggs – they didn’t seem to have much effect.
Suzi got out of the driving seat, went round the back of the van, opened the back doors (on which Amy had stuck an ironic “HOT ROD” sticker that she’d got from a car magazine called Fast Wheels) and pressed a button.
The ramp folded out for Amy to wheel down. Amy turned the chair round to face her mum. But then she carried on turning it, away from her, in a circle. And then another circle. And then another (when she wanted to, Amy could turn her chair very, very fast).
“I can’t stop it, Mum!” she called out. “The wheels are doing it by themselves. Help me! Help me! Help me!”
Suzi watched her, with an eyebrow raised. She wondered about just letting her daughter get very, very dizzy and sick. But eventually, after six turns, and no sign of either the pretend screaming stopping or the circling slowing down, she said:
“All right! OK! You win, Amy! I’ll talk to your dad. We’ll get you a new chair.”
Amy stopped and smiled. She reached into her pocket and took out a piece of paper, on which was printed a picture from the internet.
“Thanks, Mum!” she said excitedly. “Here’s the one I want!”
“It’s brilliant!” said Amy, going up the ramp into the van a few days later.
“I’m glad you like it,” said Suzi.
“I love it!” said Amy.
“Great. You can write a letter to your dad, thanking him maybe.”
“I already have! I sent him an email telling him how amazing it is. Look!” Amy turned the wheelchair all the way round, inside the van, and came back down the ramp. “It’s like a dodgem car!”
She came off the ramp and turned round again, twisting the control lever on her new, black, shiny and, most importantly, motorised wheelchair.
Her mum had parked the van in their drive and opened the back doors, so that Amy could practise going up and down the ramp. Which she had been doing for a while.
Quite a long while.
“It’s like a dodgem car …” echoed Jack, Amy’s fourteen-year-old brother, who was standing – or at least slouching, his back against the door – in their front garden, pretending not to be interested.
It was one of the things he did all the time now, repeating back anything that anyone said, in a bored, taking-the-mickey voice. Amy sometimes wondered if, when he was about twelve and a half, her brother had been secretly replaced in the night by a sarcastic echo chamber.
“Well, it is, a bit,” said Amy. “Remember when Dad took me on the dodgems, Mum?”
“Of course! He took both of you in one car. You both drove it.”
“Yes, but he let me do the steering wheel by myself after a bit. And I swerved through all the other cars. We didn’t even bump once!”
“Ha. Yes, that’s right! What age were you then?”
“Seven. And then he bought us candyfloss!”
Suzi nodded, and looked down. Amy’s dad, Peter, didn’t live with them any more. He lived a long way away, in Scotland.
“He said I was a natural driver, didn’t he, Mum? ‘You’re a natural, Amy,’ he said!”
“You’re a natural, Amy …” said Jack. In his bored, taking-the-mickey voice.
“Yes. Unlike his son, who always loses to me when we play Formula One: Grand Prix!”
Jack made a rude gesture at her. “Grand Prix,” he echoed sarcastically.
“Anyway, Amy …” Suzi said, coming out of her little trance, “is that enough practice now?”
“Not quite, Mum …” Amy said, turning round again. “I do love it, but I just want to see if I can do a bit more with it … just want to see how it corners … how it steers … what’s its top speed …”