Page 72 of The Flowers of Bay C
Kat passes the wolf fleece to Jodie. ‘You almost forgot this.’ Jodie gazes at it, then glances at Kane, chewing on the inside of her cheek. Then she quickly shrugs her jacket off and pulls the fleece over her head. The jacket is even more ill-fitting over the fleece, barely meeting in the middle, the howling wolf displayed in all its tacky glory.
‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘Can I have the Santa hat?’
I pass the West Ham hat up to Violet. Its wool is unravelling, more well-used than the Bristol Rovers one. She screws up her face but slips it over her head, saying nothing. She pulls out a pair of gloves from the pockets of her silver puffer jacket. They are black leather and look expensive.
Kane hovers near Violet, pulling a face at the wolf jumper. ‘You quite ready?’
‘Kane’s just gonna take a photo of us all,’ Jodie says. ‘Smile, everyone!’
Kane comes around to the front of us and stands with the phone held out in front of him and a sulk screwing up his face. We smile up at the camera and Jodie kneels next to me and throws herhands up in the air, then lowers them at the look of disdain written over Kane’s face.
‘Done,’ he grunts, turning on his heel and setting off back up to his minibus.
‘We made it,’ Jodie says, relaxing onto a patch of sand next to the blanket, which is too full of the four of us, and dusting the clingy sand from her feet. ‘We’re here. We’re at the seaside, Barbara!’
Barbara is alive with light. She looks around at us all, giggles, then looks around again, flinging her hand over her mouth. ‘You brought me.’
‘We did.’
‘I never thought you really would, you know.’
We edge closer to her and Kat lays her head lightly on her knee.
‘I want to feel the sand.’
Kat looks doubtful.
‘Let me feel it,’ Barbara says.
Jodie and Kat gently remove Barbara’s maroon slippers and her off-white support stockings, revealing wrinkled feet with purple blotches and discoloured, yellowing toenails curling around under themselves. Jodie places the shoes and socks up on Barbara’s wheelchair, behind us, just in case the tide comes in and catches us off guard.
Kat digs into a small bag she has on her lap. ‘Can I do this?’ she says to Barbara, holding up a tiny pair of nail scissors and some bright red nail polish.
Barbara stares at her, and then nods. ‘Yes. Yes, poppet.’
‘It’s quick dry stuff. Sixty seconds.’ Kat takes Barbara’s left foot and starts trimming the nails, slowly and carefully, and we watch in silence as she paints each toenail until they are all glittering with vibrant scarlet.
‘They match my gloves,’ Barbara says.
‘Leave them a minute.’ Kat clips her bag closed and sits with her legs drawn up to her, gazing out at the sea.
After a few moments Barbara stretches out her feet, splaying out her toes and pressing them to the sand, burrowing them in. ‘Now bury my feet,’ she says to Jodie.
‘Sand’s a bit chilly,’ Jodie says.
‘I don’t care.’
Jodie plucks handfuls of sand and gently pats them over Barbara’s feet, digging further in until two mounds of sand take shape, cutting off Barbara at the ankles. Barbara stares at them, her face serious, something dark crossing her eyes. ‘Bill used to do that. Only he’d bury me up to my neck, he would, and I’d be lying there pinned under this great mountain of sand, and he’d be there laughing at me. Then he’d say, you still look beautiful even under that lot. That’s what he’d say. Then he’d leave me right there, all up to my head in his sand cave, then he’d be back with ice-cream cones, saying oh no, looks like I’ll have to eat both of these seeing as you’re all tied up. And I’d leap up out of the sand and it’d fly everywhere, and we’d sit and eat ice-creams with bits of sand in them, and they were the best things ever.’
We sit there and feel the wind ruffling at our hair. It blows the fake fur on my hood into my eyes and I blink it away and wonder if the prick of tears is only my imagination.
‘He sounded lovely,’ Kat says softly.
Barbara stares out to the horizon.
‘You take your shoes off,’ she says to us. ‘You should all feel it, like me.’
‘But it’s cold,’ Violet says, shivering.
