Page 11 of The Flowers of Bay C
One of her sons stands up, stretching himself taller than before, if that were possible, his head almost touching the curtain rail. He stares hard at Violet. ‘What’s your problem with my mother?’
Violet does not seem troubled by his words or by the presence of the other three equally large young men. She pouts like a child and then huffs, ‘She’s one of them Islams.’
Nicki has the blood pressure cuff wrapped around Violet’s arm, and I’m sure she yanks it off harder than she should. ‘Stop it.’ She’s the formidable primary teacher to Violet’s stroppy five-year-old, scolding her for her petulant silliness. ‘That’s the end of that kind of talk in my ward.’
Surprisingly, Violet simmers down and says nothing more, just casts a disdainful glance over at Amina, and then, for some reason, turns and nods at me, curving her mouth in a kind of tortured smile. Jake laughs out loud. ‘You’ve made a friend, Mum.’
I hope not.
Amina’s sons gather around their mother’s bed and speak quietly to her. One of them grabs the curtain and yanks it along its rail, screening out Violet.
‘My boyfriend’s coming in today,’ Jodie announces, scuffing her bunny-slippered feet on the floor beneath her bed.
I don’t know what kind of response she wants, so I say, ‘That’s nice.’
‘You’ll love him. He’s wicked, really cool.’
Jake snickers. ‘No one says ‘wicked’ anymore.’
Jodie shrugs. ‘No one says ‘Boomer’ anymore.’
‘Boomer,’ Jake says.
A shaven-headed man as broad as he is tall with a tattoo of a snake crawling around one arm and an arrowed heart with ‘Jodie 4 eva’ inked on the other bicep struts into the bay wearing a grubby vest top and low-slung Adidas joggers. Jodie stands up, smoothing out her long blonde hair. ‘Everyone, this is Kane. My boyfriend.’
When she says ‘everyone’, she really means me and Jake. Barbara is snoring in her corner, without visitors once again,Amina is concealed behind her curtain, Kat is sleeping and Violet is lying back against her pillows, her face a picture of disapproval as she stares at Jodie’s boyfriend. He is oblivious, not because he’s drinking in Jodie with love in his eyes but because he is staring at his phone.
‘Hi, Kane,’ I say.
‘S’up,’ he says, or at least I think he does. It’s more of a murmured grunt, much like Jake’s preferred manner of communication. He slumps onto the chair by Jodie’s bed, splaying his legs out wide, and continues to scroll through his phone.
‘You on that game again?’ Jodie says.
Nothing.
Jodie sinks back onto her bed, her face fallen in on itself, as if all the hope she was storing up for his visit has been extinguished and she’s facing reality again. She pulls at his arm but he bats her away. ‘Just got to finish this level.’
‘Oh. Okay.’
Jodie is different with him. It’s as though with the rest of us she’s a rose in bloom, all opened out to the sun, but with him her petals wilt. The way she acts is a little familiar, a little uncomfortable. But I don’t want to think about that. I’m probably reading too much into it, anyway. Maybe Kane is just finishing a game off, and then he will sweep Jodie up in his heavily muscled arms and hold her tight and tell her he loves her and she is beautiful.
Violet is faffing round with her overhead TV system. I thought those things were obsolete, with their old-fashioned phone handsets, the coiled wire that snags your hair with its vicious grip. With the pointless little keyboard that was too tiny for the tiniest fingers and never quite succeeded in calling up the internet. When Jake was born I tried to announce his birth online using one of those things because my phone was out of charge, but it flickeredand froze until I slammed the wretched thing back in its cradle, my frustration mixing up with post-birth shock, leaving me a curled-up heap on my bed, staring at this tiny new life in his plastic crib beside me and wondering how on earth I was ever going to do this thing on my own if I couldn’t even work this stupid machine.
Violet is grappling with it now, stabbing at the keyboard, brows knitted together in vexation.
‘You. Young man,’ she shouts, gesturing to Jake with the phone, ‘can you make this work?’
‘Please,’ Jake mutters under his breath, but dutifully stands, lumbering over the bay to Violet and studying the unit, a sneer creeping over his features. ‘What even is this thing?’
‘I want to watchEastenders.’
‘You’ll be lucky.’ Jake takes the phone off her and hangs it up, then fiddles with the buttons on the TV. ‘This thing came out of the ark. Don’t you have an iPad?’
‘Don’t like those new-fangled things. They don’t have buttons to press.’
Jake raises an eyebrow and fiddles round some more. ‘You need to get a payment card for this, or use a credit card to pay for it. Damn! They’re ripping you off.’
Violet is unruffled. ‘Just get it working.’
