Lifesaving for Beginners

in you. Adults say weird things.
    Last year, Dad came to the house for a couple of hours on Christmas Day but I reckon he won’t be able to make it this year, because of the baby. Dad says he has to be there for that. I will be a half-brother. A half-brother means that Celia is not my mam.
    Faith says that Mam can hear me and see me and when the sun shines, that’s Mam, smiling. Faith is my sister but she’s an adult. That’s because she was born a long time ago.
    There’s a bit of cobweb in Faith’s hair when she climbs down from the attic. She’s got papers in her hand. I ask her if she found the rosary beads but she shakes her head and says, ‘Go and tidy your room or something.’ She doesn’t even look inside my room to see if it’s messy.
    I pick up the clothes on my bedroom floor and put them all in the linen basket. Then I go and call for Damo.
    He says, ‘Look at this,’ when he opens his front door. He sticks his tongue out and pushes the tip of it into his nose. He can make his eyeballs shoot up inside his head too.
    I wish it were Wednesday. I’d be going to lifesaving class after school, if it were Wednesday. I might be getting my brown badge next week, if I know all the answers.

 
    I check the calendar. It’s 16 October. Four months. Four months since the accident. Four and a half, I suppose. And only three months since Thomas left. It seems a lot longer than that.
    Not seeing Thomas is like giving up cigarettes. I’ve never given up cigarettes but I imagine it would feel like this. There are triggers. Triggers that make me think about Thomas, and maybe even wish he was here. Like I’d wish for a cigarette if I hadn’t had one for an hour or so.
    Stress. That’s a trigger. When I feel stressed, I think about Thomas. That’s probably why I’ve been thinking about him so much lately.
    Or, oddly, when I’m happy. When something makes me smile. Or even laugh. Something funny, I mean. Or weird. Or one of those strange road signs. Like BEWARE – BLIND PEDESTRIANS. Something that makes me feel sure that when I look at Thomas, he will be smiling too.
    Four months.
    That’s all it takes.
    Four months for everything to fall apart.
    I’ll be forty soon. January. That’s when. And Christmas to get through before that.
    I’m nearly forty and I should be dead.
    I should have died in a pile-up. The newsreader would have described me as a thirty-nine-year-old woman. A thirty-nine-year-old woman was killed this afternoon in an accident on the M1.
    A thirty-nine-year-old woman. That would have got people’s attention. Would have given them pause. Might have prompted them to look up from their dinners, shake their heads, say something like ‘Tragic’, or ‘Such a waste’, or ‘You just never know, do you? When your time is up?’
    That didn’t happen. Instead, I’m a nearly-forty-year-old woman who has been the victim, it seems, of a miracle. That’s what everyone called it. I’m supposed to be grateful, apparently.
    Instead, I’m alone and I haven’t written one word in four months.
    And I’m nearly forty. It sits on my horizon, wobbling like one of those horrible jellies Mrs Higginbotham used to make for our birthday parties when we were between the ages of four and eight. Nine, according to Mrs Higginbotham, was too old for jelly-on-a-plate. Thank Christ.
    I say, ‘I hate being nearly forty.’
    Minnie says, ‘Consider the alternative.’
    ‘At least I’d make a nice corpse.’
    ‘A forty-year-old corpse. You’d still be forty, dead or alive.’
    ‘Nearly forty,’ but Minnie’s not listening anymore.
    I’m going to be forty.
    Soon.
    I suppose the other stuff is bad too. The stuff about the writing and Thomas and the fact that I could have died. Everyone said I could have died. Thomas said it most of all. He said it was a miracle I walked away with hardly a scratch. I said there’s no such thing as miracles. He said it didn’t matter if I believed it or not.
    One bloody miracle and everything falls apart.
    ‘We want different things.’ That’s what Thomas said the day he came back for his stuff. I suppose that’s true. We were very different, me and Thomas. I didn’t mind how different we were. I even miss it, sometimes. Like the other day, when I was doing my impersonation of the weather girl on the telly (I can do a near-perfect imitation of her accent, even though she’s from Longford, which is one of the trickier ones), I smiled at the place on the couch