Page 40 of Things We Never Said
‘Tomorrow?’ Sean says, frowning. ‘Isn’t it supposed to be raining tomorrow?’
‘Nope. Sunny all day. So, what do you say? I’ll bring my secateurs. It’ll do me good ... take my mind off things.’
Sean shrugs. ‘Sure. Why not? If you’re sure. But tomorrow afternoon, maybe?’ He wants to reserve the morning for his next dose of Catherine.
Snapshot #12
35mm format, colour. A pale, blonde woman sits on a green bedspread. Beside her is a thin tabby cat, rolling on its back, offering its tummy to be tickled. The light in the room, filtered through curtains, gives to both the woman’s face and the cat’s fur a distinctly green tinge.
Cassette #12
Hi Sean.
I’m so happy I found this one. A rare photo of Green Donna!
This must have been our final year in Wolverhampton because Theresa had moved out to live in her Buddhist community and Donna had moved in to replace her.
Theresa had asked us to take Donna in because she was depressed and needed what Theresa called a ‘nice happy house’ to live in.
The trouble was that by the time we had swapped Donna for Theresa the house wasn’t that happy, was it? Because no matter how chirpy and friendly we all tried to be, none of us could really help Donna with her sadness.
I’d go as far as to say that Donna’s sadness ended up winning that round. It oozed out of her room and drifted down the stairs like mist, enveloping us all. Even April went quiet when Donna was around – though, often enough, we took that as a blessing.
The first thing she did when she moved in was to paint her room green, and while she was doing that she slept in the lounge, which irritated us all. Once the paint had dried, I can’t recall ever having seen her for any length of time in any of the shared parts of the house again. She was always in her room.
One good thing about Donna was that she got me reading. She started me off with Fay Weldon, which I loved, and then gave me Lynne Reid Banks and Sylvia Plath. She even tried to get me to read Virginia Woolf at one point, but though I could see that the words were lovely, that they had a special kind of rhythm to them, if I’m telling the truth, Woolf was always a bit beyond me.
I used to worry about Donna so much, though. I’d come home from my shift at the shop and you’d be out somewhere with April, and Donna would either be listening to Dead Can Dance or Echo & the Bunnymen. Other times the house would be in absolute silence, so I would creep up to Donna’s door and take a deep breath and knock. I was always scared that she wouldn’t answer. I was terrified that she had slit her wrists or taken twenty bottles of paracetamol or attached a rope to that beam in her room. But no. She was always there. Always in her room, sitting in that strange green light, reading some book or other for her course, looking utterly, utterly miserable.
Do you remember how funny I was about leaving April with her? Well, I don’t think I ever stated clearly why that was. I’m not certain that I was ever even quite sure why myself. But looking back, I reckon that I was afraid that she’d top herself. And I was afraid she would take April with her when she went.
I always thought that something terrible must have happened to Donna before she came to us. I do hope I’m wrong. And I do hope that she sorted herself out eventually.
Before she moved in, Theresa and I went to see her acting in a shopping centre. She was studying humanities and specialising in drama, and as part of her course she had to participate in a play in a public space.
They had organised this happening in the Wulfrun Centre, and Theresa took me along so that we could meet.
Now, Donna, believe it or not, was playing the role of a mushroom cloud. There were five people with horror make-up playing the dead and dying and a girl dressed as a rocket – she was supposed to be a cruise missile, I think. There was a Grim Reaper with one of those grass hooks you hold in one hand – I don’t think anyone had a scythe available. And Donna, well, she was the mushroom cloud.
Oh, Sean, it was so awful, it was hilarious. You have no idea ...
After the cruise missile had shouted ‘boom’ and the five horror make-up victims had fallen down, Donna, who had a big white sheet over her head, appeared, waving her arms around and whistling. I think the whistling was meant to represent the wind or the fallout or something.
She looked like a five-year-old pretending to be a ghost. It was so, so bad, Sean. I wish you had been there to see it.
Theresa, who took the whole nuclear disarmament thing very seriously, got angry with me because I got a fit of the giggles, and once I started I just couldn’t stop. One of the dead people even sat up to tell me to be quiet at one point, and in the end I had to leave. I thought I was going to wet myself.
I assumed, based on Donna’s performance in the sheet, that she would be great fun to live with, so I told you and Alistair that we should let her move in. But I had got that wrong. Donna wasn’t a laugh to live with at all, was she?
The day she moved in, she asked me what I had thought of their play and, because I didn’t know what else to say, I told her it had left me speechless.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I got so into the part I was weeping under my sheet. All those dead people, you know?’
I almost burst out laughing, Sean, but instead I managed to say, ‘Yes, it was very moving.’ I had tears in my eyes, so I think I got away with it.
I missed Theresa so much once she was gone. I had never imagined that her moving out would be the end of our friendship. I had thought that she was one of my closest friends and assumed it would be that way forever.
But I only ever saw her twice after that, and even then it was only because I bumped into her – it was only ever by accident. All she talked about, even then, was how amazing her new housemates were and how wonderful Buddhism was. Not a mention about any of us. Theresa was very self-sufficient, I suppose.
