Goose Read Free Page B

another thing that makes me wonder why the hell we are supposed to get together with a person of the opposite sex, when men and women clearly have to force themselves to get on. Even Nana and Pop, who were married for sixty years, had to take a deep breath every time they started a conversation. When Pop died last summer, and Aunty Jo told Nana he had gone, Nana did this really long exhalation and then smiled. The next thing she said was, ‘After lunch I’ll make the horse fire up the escalator.’ A totally random statement that means absolutely nothing. There are no escalators on Guernsey, and Nana has only ever been on one once at Gatwick airport.
    It is odd how the mind of someone with dementia works. It’s so random. Nana’s seemed to go full throttle as soon as Pop got diagnosed with cancer last year. Three months later he had gone, and now she is so many million miles away from reality that I think she might oddly be the happiest she has ever been. There is a horrid time with dementia where people who have it still half know what is going on and half don’t. So they go in and out of their new madness and get embarrassed and frustrated. I hated that part with Nana. I never knew what to say and I kept having to leave her on her own so I could go and cry. It all happened so fast. If she ever saw me cry she would cry too, and then ask me why we were crying. How could I tell her it was because she was losing her mind and that she would never get it back? But it’s different now, because Nana hasn’t a clue about reality; she’s mad as a box of frogs and says the funniest things, like that thing about the escalator. It’s strange, Nana never seemed happy. But then how could you if you were married to someone like Pop? He controlled her completely. Now she smiles all the time. Wherever her mind has taken her, she likes it more than she did when she was here.
    It is here in the lay-by that we smoke loads of Marlboro Red and eat crisps and sausage rolls from the canteen. A few people bring their cars round from the car park so we can squeeze in when it’s cold, and occasionally the boys play chicken, which terrifies the life out of me. Chicken is when two drivers race towards each other in their cars and at the last minute someone pulls to the side so they don’t have a full-on collision. I am sure the boys must be having us on with how dangerous it actually is – surely they have a secret nod that says who will turn and who will keep driving straight? They must do, otherwise they would all be dead by now. I can’t even watch – my imagination can’t control itself in moments like that.
    I find that I am quite brave when it comes to emotional stuff. Well, that’s what Aunty Jo tells me anyway. She says I am brave in the way I think about Mum dying, and brave in how I coped with moving schools. But I am not brave when it comes to anything involving physical danger.
    I used to be – I used to jump off high walls into the cold sea – but the older I get the more aware I feel of how mortal I am. I can barely ride a bike without being terrified these days, and even when I drive along the really thin lanes in Guernsey I hold my breath every time a car comes in the opposite direction and play out the entire accident in my head. I have had two really close people to me die and I’m only eighteen. It’s hardly surprising I’ve developed such a strong sense that I am not invincible. So I refuse to do things where I might get killed. Emotionally and socially, however, I am just as ridiculous as I always was. I haven’t learned much in the way of self-control.
    As I squish my foot over my second cigarette, Meg Lloyd, a regular in the lay-by, asks me for one. For fear of looking uncool I light another, even though my lungs retract at the thought of it.
    I really like Meg. She seems pretty cool. Because her entire social life is outside of school she