‘Like what?’ I demanded. ‘Going on donkey rides?’
Lizzie had shrugged and looked at Dad with her jelly brown eyes.
‘Or making sand castles,’ I persisted, but I didn’t remind her that I was fourteen and not into buckets and spades. She didn’t remind me that she was twenty-one and not into being anyone’s mother, let alone mine.
Lizzie and I were as careful of each other as brain surgeons confronted by an unexpected lump.
‘What’s wrong with sand castles?’ Dad asked. ‘I used to love that beach at your age. People made brilliant things with sand.’
‘Sure!’ I quipped. ‘Like concrete.’
‘That’s not what I meant. I meant sand sculptures, and…’ Dad isn’t into arty things but he tried, because he knew I was. ‘And sand pictures and…’
‘Wow.’
Dad swallowed. Lizzie shrugged again. She blinked slowly, like a lizard in the sun, then went into their room to pack their bags.
‘It’s OK,’ I shrugged as well. ‘I’m going, aren’t I?’
‘You certainly are!’ Dad was brisk although his glance was anxious.
My friend Stubby was unsympathetic too. He said that family visits were rarely fatal, and never in a week, but he did agree they were a dreadful bore.
Stubby was wrong. We all were. It was boring. It was boring like I’ve never known boring could be, but I didn’t die. I didn’t even sicken. I loved it. I sucked up each gently stretched-out minute and rolled it round my tongue. The boredom was as delicious and chewy as those 2p sweets I used to buy at the newsagent’s on my way home from school, and I wanted more.
It was years since I’d actually seen my grandparents: well, three and a half, to be exact. They mentioned this the moment I got off the train. It was awkward. I hung my head and muttered the dreaded word divorce. I always do that in tight spots. People shut up straight away. They didn’t. They shook their grey heads and laughed. It wasn’t Mum and Dad’s divorce that had stopped them from visiting. It was the dog, Jasper. Jasper had a bad heart now, and other problems.
He didn’t look like he had a bad heart, but he was big. In fact, when Gran opened the front door and we had all clambered over him, I appreciated their point of view. Jasper was gigantic. If he hadn’t found the three flights of stairs up to Dad’s flat a problem, the stairs definitely might. I’ve made them creak and I’m not huge at all.
Later, as I was edging round the bed in the tiny spare room and wondering how to unpack, Grandpa called out. I left my bag on the bed and hurried down, but Jasper had beaten me to it. He was flopped out in the sitting room, drooling chocolate on to the carpet and looking pretty satisfied with life.
The odd thing was, that I was happy too. Even after I’d noticed that the family photos on the mantelpiece were all of Jasper, I wasn’t put out. I examined them with Gran. We admired Jasper as a pup in his basket, as a young dog with a big stick, and in massive middle age, with a loud tartan collar, and I didn’t mind at all.
‘He’s done all right,’ Gran folded her arms and smiled to herself. Grandpa nodded and I nodded too. Fleetingly, I remembered Dad in his new black jeans, with Lizzie at his side.
‘Come on then, lad.’ Grandpa had suddenly got up. I jumped to my feet, expecting a walk down to the sea or at least a tour of his greenhouse, but he turned his back.
‘It’s only Jasper,’ Gran confided as the dog lumbered past. ‘He’s got to be reminded to spend a penny now.’
‘Oh.’ I was glad they hadn’t visited. Old dogs wouldn’t have been Lizzie’s thing at all.
That evening Gran turned up the TV, then fell asleep. Grandpa went in and out with Jasper and that was it. Sometimes Gran snuffled and woke up to watch a bit, and sometimes Jasper snored, but nobody spoke to me at all.
It was such a relief. Nobody noticed me and I hardly knew I was there.
I had cornflakes for breakfast then a small white egg like a stone. When I’d made my bed, I cleaned my teeth with care. I even combed my hair. As I came down Gran was at the bottom of the stairs.
‘I’ve made fish paste and jam.’ She was holding up a polythene bag of neat, white sandwiches, with the crusts cut off. Jasper sulked. ‘And I’ve put in squash. You like squash, don’t you, Chris?’
‘Actually—’
‘Good. I thought you would. Now dear, don’t hurry back. We know what young people are like.’
‘I—’
‘We don’t have supper till six. After Jasper’s had his. So ’bye dear, until then.’
I was so surprised I tripped on the step.
I didn’t head for the beach, but kept it for last, like the crispiest bite of a Chinese. Killing time, I idled along the silent, neatly gardened street and on into town. A sea breeze swung B&B signs gently to and fro. Bedroom windows opened and lace curtains and the melody of vacuums unfurled.
My heart began to beat faster and louder than before. I felt like a hero, a first traveller in an unknown land.
If I’d wanted to, I could have leapt from that pavement and walked upon the peaceful air. But I didn’t because later, I saw the mirrored garden and went in.
I had dawdled through the shabby high street, which smelt of vinegar from the chippies and old, unwashed clothes. Mum would have adored it: there were charity shops from end to end. I glanced at this and that, then drifted down towards the sea.
I leant over the railings and stared at families on the beach. Their white shoulders were going red, their plastic seaside stuff was piled around on the sand. No sign of Dad’s sculptures, but I saw his donkeys, waiting in a row. If I hadn’t had the sandwiches in my hand, I’d have asked how much, and climbed up.
I wandered along the promenade, biting into the warm, fishy bread and then the jam. As I tipped back my head and put Gran’s bottle of squash to my lips, I saw something flash, and for once I didn’t turn away. I walked across.
The mirrored garden was in the space between a pink bungalow and the last terraced house. Two children with sandy legs, stood on the pavement and stared.
‘Come on,’ their mother, or somebody like one, nagged. ‘You don’t want to look at that!’ But they did so she grabbed their hands, and dragged them past.
I drained the bottle and went in.
There were no flowers in the garden or anything that grew with roots and stems and fluttering green leaves. Instead, someone had gathered up the remains of all the broken and shattered things in the world: ends of green wine bottles, triangles of blue willow pattern with pagodas and stick-like trees; pebbles and shells and thick fragments of pottery soaked in an old, yellow glaze. Someone had collected these thousands and thousands of smashed and abandoned bits together and cemented them into place. Then they’d built towers and spires and houses the size of shoe boxes and paths and a mountain with tea-cup white peaks of snow above a turquoise tiled sea. Everywhere, mirrors and bits of mirrors had been set into the concrete and they sparkled and flashed and blazed.
It was ugly and beautiful and it must have taken someone years and years.
‘Oh, it did,’ said a voice at my elbow as if I had spoken aloud. ‘Twenty-eight, to be exact. And I’m not finished yet.’
I nodded. I understood what he meant.
‘Like it, do you?’ He was a small, sun-burnt man with a thin mouth and wild, wiry hair.
I nodded again. In a cracked