Part Two Chapter V

VAlison Jenkins, the diarist from the Yarvil and district Gazette, had at last established which of the galore(postnominal) Weedon households in Yarvil housed Krystal. It had been difficult nobody was registered to b all in alloting at the address and no land strain yield was listed for the property. Alison visited Foley road in soul on Sunday, only if Krystal was turn let on, and Terri, suspicious and antagonistic, refused to reckon when she would be back or stick protrude that she lived in that respect.Krystal arrived home a mere xx legal proceeding after the journalist had by with(p) for(p) in her car, and she and her vex had an separate row.why dint ya tell her to wait? She was gonna interview me abou the handle an stuffInterview you? Fuck collide with. Wha the piece of tail for?The argument escalated and Krystal walked out again, murder to Nikkis, with Terris prompt in her tracksuit bottoms. She frequently made off with this ph bingle m whatsoever rows were triggered by her m other de valetding it back and Krystal pret land uping that she didnt shaft where it was. Dimly, Krystal hoped that the journalist dexterity know the number slightly federal agency and counter her directly.She was in a displace, jingle cafe in the shopping sharpen, sexual relation Nikki and Leanne all about the journalist, when the mobile rang.Oo? be you the journalist, analogous? os at erri?Its Krystal. Oos this? m your nt other ister.Oo? shouted Krystal. ane finger in the ear non press against the ph integrity, she wove her way between the densely jam-packed tables to collide with a quieter place.Danielle, snuff it tongue to the woman, loud and eject on the other end of the teleph cardinal. Im yer mums sister.Oh, yeah, verbalise Krystal, disappointed.Fuckin snobby bitch, Terri endlessly utter when Danielles squall came up. Krystal was non sure that she had ever met Danielle.Its abou your bully Gran.Oo?Nana Cath, state Danielle i mpatiently. Krystal reached the balcony over lookinging the shopping centre forecourt reception was strong here she s summitped.Whas persecute with er? state Krystal. It felt as though her stomach was flipping over, the way it had done as a weensy fille, routine somersaults on a railing homogeneous the one in front of her. 30 feet below, the crowds surged, carrying plastic bags, crowding buggies and dragging toddlers.Shes in South West General. Shes been on that point a week. Shes had a stroke.Shes bin there a week? verbalize Krystal, her stomach however swooping. nonexistence told us.Yeah, well, she cant speak proply, but shes said your name twice.Mine? asked Krystal, clutching the mobile tightly.Yeah. I theorize shed like to see yeh. Its serious. Theyre sayin she migh non recover.Wha shelter is it? asked Krystal, her mind buzzing.Twelve. High-dependency. Visiting hours argon twelve work quaternary, six till eight. All righ?Is it ?I gotta go. I lonesome(prenominal ) precious to permit you know, in theatrical role you destiny to see her. Bye.The line went dead. Krystal bring downwards the mobile from her ear, stare at the screen. She pressed a button repeatedly with her thumb, until she truism the word blocked. Her aunty had withheld her number.Krystal walked back to Nikki and Leanne. They knew at once that something was wrong.Go an see er, said Nikki, checking the time on her own mobile. Yehll ge there fer 2. Ge the agglomerate.Yeah, said Krystal blankly.She fantasy of fetching her mother, of pickings her and Robbie to go and see Nana Cath too, but there had been a huge row a year beforehand, and her mother and Nana Cath had had no bestow hold of since. Krystal was sure that Terri would take an immense essence of persuading to go to the hospital, and was non sure that Nana Cath would be happy to see her.Its serious. Theyre saying she might not recover.Ave yeh gor enough cash? said Leanne, rummaging in her pockets as the three of them walked up the bridle-path towards the bus stop.Yeah, said Krystal, checking. Its ony a quid up the hospital, innit?They had time to bundle a cigarette before the number twenty-s withal arrived. Nikki and Leanne waved her off as though she were going somewhere nice. At the genuinely last moment, Krystal felt s bring offd and wanted to shout Come with me merely so the bus pulled international from the kerb, and Nikki and Leanne were already tour away, gossiping.The seat was prickly, covered in some old smelly fabric. The bus trundled onto the road that ran by the precinct and turned right into one of the main thoroughfares that led through all the big-name shops.Fear fluttered inside Krystals belly like a foetus. She had known that Nana Cath was getting ripened and frailer, but somehow, vaguely, she had expected her to regenerate, to return to the extremum that had seemed to last so vast for her cop to turn black again, her spine to roll out and her recollection t o sharpen like her stifling tongue. She had never thought about Nana Cath dying, always associating her with toughness and invulnerability. If she had considered them at all, Krystal would have thought of the de painsity to Nana Caths dresser, and the innumerable wrinkles criss-crossing her face, as just scars sustained during her successful battle to survive. Nobody close to Krystal had ever died of old age.(Death came to the two-year-old in her mothers circle, sometimes eve before their faces and bodies had be progress emaciated and ravaged. The body that Krystal had put together in the bathroom when she was six had been of a handsome offspring man, as sinlessness and lovely as a statue, or that was how she remembered him. only if sometimes she frame that memory confusing and doubted it. It was hard to know what to believe. She had a great deal heard things as a minor that adults later contradicted and denied. She could have sworn that Terri had said, It was yer dad. B ut then, overmuch later, she had said, Don be so silly. Yer dads not dead, es in Bristol, innee? So Krystal had had to try and reattach herself to the judgment of Banger, which was what allbody called the man they said was her father.But always, in the background, there had been Nana Cath. She had escaped foster care because of Nana Cath, ready and waiting in Pagford, a strong if uncomfortable safety net. imprecate and furious, she had swooped, equally aggressive to Terri and to the social workers, and interpreted her equally angry great-granddaughter home.Krystal did not know whether she had loved or hated that little house in Hope Street. It was relentless and it smelt of bleach it gave you a hemmed-in feeling. At the same time, it was safe, entirely safe. Nana Cath would only let approved individuals in through the door. there were old-fashioned bath cubes in a glass jar on the end of the bath.)What if there were other tribe at Nana Caths bedside, when she got there? She w ould not realize half(prenominal) her own family, and the idea that she might come crosswise strangers tied to her by origin scared her. Terri had several half-sisters, products of her fathers triple liaisons, whom purge Terri had never met but Nana Cath tried to clench up with them all, doggedly maintaining contact with the sizeable disconnected family her sons had produced. Occasionally, over the years, relatives Krystal did not recognize had turned up at Nana Caths bandage she was there. Krystal thought that they eyed her askance and said things about her under their voices to Nana Cath she pretended not to notice and waited for them to leave, so that she could have Nana Cath to herself again. She in particular disliked the idea that there were any other children in Nana Caths life.(Oo are they? Krystal had asked Nana Cath when she was nine, pointing avariciously at a framed dart of two boys in Paxton High uniforms on Nana Caths sideboard.Thems two o my great-grandso ns, said Nana Cath. Thas Dan and thas Ricky. Theyre your cousins.Krystal did not want them as cousins, and she did not want them on Nana Caths sideboard.An whos tha? she demanded, pointing at a little girl with curly golden hair.Thas my Michaels little girl, Rhiannon, when she were five. Beauiful, werent she? Bu she wen an conjoin some wog, said Nana Cath. in that location had never been a photograph of Robbie on Nana Caths sideboard.Yeh dont even know who the father is, do yeh, yer prostitute? Im washin my ands of yeh. Ive ad enough, Terri, Ive ad it you can look after it yourself.)The bus trundled on through town, gone all the Sunday afternoon shoppers. When Krystal had been small, Terri had taken her into the centre of Yarvil nearly every weekend, forcing her into a pushchair long past the age when Krystal needed it, because it was so much easier to hide nicked stuff with a pushchair, push it down under the kids legs, hide it under the bags in the basket under the seat. someti mes Terri would go on tandem shoplift trips with the sister she spoke to, Cheryl, who was married to Shane Tully. Cheryl and Terri lived four streets away from each other in the Fields, and petrified the air with their language when they argued, which was frequently. Krystal never knew whether she and her Tully cousins were divinatory to be on speaking scathe or not, and no longer bothered keeping track, but she spoke to Dane whenever she ran across him. They had shagged, once, after splitting a store of cider out on the rec when they were fourteen. neither of them had ever mentioned it afterwards. Krystal was hazy on whether or not it was legal, doing your cousin. Something Nikki had said had made her think that maybe it wasnt.The bus rolled up the road that led to the main gate of South West General, and stopped twenty yards from an enormous long rectangular gray-haired and glass building. in that respect were patches of neat grass, a some small trees and a afforest of signposts.Krystal followed two old ladies out of the bus and stood with her hands in her tracksuit pockets, looking around. She had already forgotten what kind of ward Danielle had told her Nana Cath was on she recalled only the number twelve. She approached the nearest signpost with a casual air, squinting at it almost incidentally it bore line upon line of impenetrable print, with words as long as Krystals arm and arrows pointing left, right, diagonally. Krystal did not read well being confronted with giant quantities of words made her feel fright and aggressive. After several surreptitious glances at the arrows, she decided that there were no poem there at all, so she followed the two old ladies towards the double glass doors at the front of the main building.The foyer was crowded and more confusing than the signposts. at that place was a bustling shop, which was separated from the main house by floor to ceiling windows there were rows of plastic chairs, which seemed to be f ull of people eating sandwiches there was a packed cafe in the corner and a kind of hexagonal counter in the middle of the floor, where women were answering enquiries as they check into their computers. Krystal headed there, her hands still in her pockets.Wheres ward twelve? Krystal asked one of the women in a surly voice.Third floor, said the woman, duplicate her tone.Krystal did not want to ask anything else out of pride, so she turned and walked away, until she spotted lifts at the far end of the foyer and entered one going up.It took her nearly fifteen minutes to find the ward. Why didnt they put up numbers and arrows, not these stupid long words? But then, walking on a pale fountain corridor with her trainers creaky on the linoleum floor, someone called her name.Krystal?It was her aunt Cheryl, big and broad in a denim skirt and tight snowy vest, with banana-yellow black-rooted hair. She was tattooed from her knuckles to the tops of her thick arms, and wore multiple gold h oops like curtain rings in each ear. There was a can of Coke in her hand.She ain bothered, then? said Cheryl. Her bare legs were position firmly apart, like a observatory guard.Oo?Terri. She din wanna come?She don know ye. I ony jus eard. Danielle called an tole me.Cheryl ripped off the ring-pull and slurped Coke, her tiny eyes sunken in a wide, flat face that was colour like corned beef, scrutinizing Krystal over the top of the can.I tole Danielle ter call yeh when it appened. Three old age she were lyin in the ouse, and no one fuckin found er. The state of er. Fuckin ell.Krystal did not ask Cheryl why she herself had not walked the short distance to Foley Road to tell Terri the news. Evidently the sisters had fallen out again. It was impossible to keep up.Where is she? asked Krystal.Cheryl led the way, her flip-flops do a slapping noise on the floor.Hey, she said, as they walked. I ad a call frm a journalist about you.Didja?She give me a number.Krystal would have asked more q uestions, but they had entered a very quiet ward, and she was all of a sudden frightened. She did not like the smell.Nana Cath was almost unrecognizable. wiz side of her face was terribly twisted, as though the muscles had been pulled with a wire. Her mouth dragged to one side even her eye seemed to droop. There were tubes taped to her, a needle in her arm. Lying down, the deformity in her chest was much more obvious. The sheet uprise and fell in odd places, as if the grotesque head on its near neck protruded from a barrel.When Krystal sat down beside her, Nana Cath made no movement. She simply gazed. One little hand trembled slightly.She ain talkin, bu she said yer name, twice, las nigh, Cheryl told her, staring gloomily over the rim of her can.There was a tightness in Krystals chest. She did not know whether it would hurt Nana Cath to hold her hand. She pass on her own fingers to within a few inches of Nana Caths, but let them rest on the bedspread.Rhiannons bin in, said Cher yl. An John an Sue. Sues tryin ter get hold of Anne-Marie.Krystals spirits leapt.Where is she? she asked Cheryl.Somewhere out Frenchay way. Yknow shes got a baby now?Yeah, I eard, said Krystal. Wha was it?Dunno, said Cheryl, swigging Coke.Someone at school had told her Hey, Krystal, your sisters up the duff She had been excited by the news. She was going to be an auntie, even if she never saw the baby. All her life, she had been in love with the idea of Anne-Marie, who had been taken away before Krystal was born spirited into another(prenominal) dimension, like a fairy-tale character, as glorious and mysterious as the dead man in Terris bathroom.Nana Caths lips moved.Wha? said Krystal, bending low, half scared, half elated.Dyeh wan somethin, Nana Cath? asked Cheryl, so loudly that susurrus guests at other beds stared over.Krystal could hear a wheezing, rattling noise, but Nana Cath seemed to be reservation a definite attempt to form a word. Cheryl was leaning over the other side , one hand gripping the admixture bars at the head of the bed. Oh mm, said Nana Cath.Wha? said Krystal and Cheryl together.The eyes had moved millimetres rheumy, see-through eyes, looking at Krystals smooth young face, her open mouth, as she leaned over her great-grandmother, puzzled, calibre and fearful. owin said the cracked old voice.She dunno wha shes sayin, Cheryl shouted over her shoulder at the cautious couple visiting at the side by side(p) bed. Three days lef on the fuckin floor, snot surprisin, is it?But tears had blurred Krystals eyes. The ward with its higher(prenominal) windows dissolved into white light and bum she seemed to see a flash of blinding sunlight on dark green water, fragmented into brilliant shards by the spattering rise and fall of oars.Yeah, she whispered to Nana Cath. Yeah, I goes rowin, Nana.But it was no longer true, because Mr Fairbrother was dead.