Wishbones

As the three of us stand watching the last of the fireworks petering out in the dark sky, I make the most important resolution of my life:

If Mum wakes up, I say to myself, to the sky and the stars and anything out there that might be listening, if she lives, I’m going to look after her better. I’m going to make her well again – for good.

January

2

I stand at the door and look at all these grown-up people sitting on tiddly chairs in the Year 4 classroom of Newton Primary.

‘I’m sorry we have to be in here.’ I recognise the man at the microphone. He helped the paramedics with the stretcher. He’s doing up Cuckoo Cottage next door.

Taped to the wall behind him, there’s a poster of a woman in a red dress with curly writing running up her body: Slim Skills: The Key to a Whole New You.

I’ve been reading up about being overweight on the NHS website and it said that joining a weight-loss group was a good first step, so I found the one closest to Willingdon and this is it: my first Slim Skills meeting.

I look around for Jake – he’s meant to be here for moral support – but there’s no sign of him.

‘There was a booking clash with the assembly hall,’ the man goes on. ‘I’ll make sure it’s sorted for next week.’ He spots me and juts out his chin. ‘It’s Feather, isn’t it?’ he asks.

Everyone turns to look at me.

There are a whole load of people from Newton that look vaguely familiar and then I notice Mr Ding, the owner of the Lucky Lantern Takeaway Van, which sits in the middle of Willingdon Green. He smiles at me and wobbles on his tiny Year 4 chair.

I’d never thought of Mr Ding as needing to lose weight. I mean, you’d be suspicious of someone in the Chinese-takeaway business being skinny, right?

A couple of places along from him sits Allen, the reporter from the Newton News who I found in our back garden a while back.

‘Are you lost?’ asks the microphone guy.

‘No…’ I begin.

I know what they’re thinking: what’s a scrawny kid doing at weight-loss meeting?

Be brave, I tell myself. If you’re going to take this resolution seriously, if you’re going to have everything in place for when Mum wakes up, you have to be proactive.

I take a breath. ‘No, I’m not lost.’

A door bangs somewhere in the corridor. A few seconds later, Jake rushes in. He smells of fresh air and Amy’s perfume.

‘Sorry… got caught up,’ Jake says, breathless.

Which means that Amy wouldn’t let him go.

Jake and I go and sign the register at the back of the room and then we sit down. I can feel people looking at me and I know it’s because they’ve heard about Mum. The day after she got taken to the hospital, there was an article in the Newton News with a fuzzy picture someone must have taken on their phone: it looks a polar bear under a green sheet is being stuffed into the back of the ambulance. I bet Allen took that photo.

Anyway, Jake does the paper round so he nicked all the copies he could get his hands on and we made a bonfire in the back garden.

‘You bearing up?’ Jake asks.

‘I’m fine.’ I squeeze his hand. ‘Now you’re here.’

The guy at the front clears his throat. ‘As I was saying.’ He smiles out at the room. ‘I’m Mitch Banks, your Slim Skills Counsellor. And I’ll be with you every step of the way.’

What if she can’t take steps yet? I think.

He walks away from the microphone, grabs a pair of scales off the floor and holds them above his head.

‘At the heart of every meeting is the weigh-in.’ He bangs the scales. ‘They’re our nemesis, right?’ He pauses for dramatic effect and then leans forward and eyeballs us. ‘Our truth teller?’

Half of the people in the room nod. The other half look like they’ve been asked to take their clothes off and run around Newton naked.

‘Well, these scales are about to become your best friend.’

‘Mum won’t fit on those in a million years,’ I whisper to Jake. Even if she did manage to get both feet on the standing bit, the digital numbers would go berserk. Mum’s in a whole other league.

‘We’ll work it out,’ Jake says.

That’s another reason I love Jake: he’s fixes stuff.

Mitch goes on. ‘So we start from where we are.’ He thumps the scales with his left hand. The numbers flash. ‘We’ll make a note of our weight in our personal journals. Charting our progress is a key part of the Slim Skills method.’

I’ve already made a weight chart: it’s on my bedroom wall. I’m aiming for Mum to lose twenty pounds a month. The point isn’t to get her all gaunt looking – I still want her to look like Mum. I just have to make sure she gets better. Once she wakes up, that is. Which she will.

The room’s so silent you can hear the Year 4 chairs creaking under all those grown-up bums.

‘So, who’s going first?’ Mitch scans the room.

Everyone stares at their feet, like we do at school when we don’t want to answer a question. I’m no expert but this guy doesn’t seem to be going about things quite the right way. I mean, if it took guts for me to come here, and I’m not here for me, think about how all the overweight people are feeling.

‘I’ll go,’ Mr Ding says, which I think is really brave.

‘I hope this doesn’t mean he’ll stop making those amazing spring rolls,’ Jake whispers.

People come all the way from Newton for Mr Ding’s spring rolls. Dad gets them for us as a treat when he’s had a long day and is too busy to cook.

Mitch stands up and walks to the front and, one by one, Mr Ding and the other people from Newton heave themselves out of their Year 4 chairs and go and queue for their weigh-in.

‘So, what are your names?’ Mitch Banks stands over me and Jake, holding up a Sharpie and a white sticker.

‘Feather,’ I say, ‘Feather Grace Tucker.’

Mitch writes FEATHER in big capitals. ‘That’s a nice name.’

I shrug.

He turns to Jake.

‘And you?’

‘Jake.’

Mitch hands us our name stickers.

‘So, why are you here?’

‘You know why I’m here,’ I say.

‘I do?’

‘You helped Mum – on New Year’s.’ My cheeks are burning up.

‘Oh… yes.’

‘You live next door to us.’

‘Right.’ He scrunches up his brow. ‘Forgive me, but I still don’t understand.’

‘We need to get help for Feather’s mum,’ Jake says. ‘We thought you could help.’

‘She’s in a diabetic coma,’ I add.

It’s better to say things straight, that’s what Mum’s taught me. What she means is – it’s better not to be like Dad. Dad thinks that dodging things or joking about them will make them go away. Like Mum being overweight – and look how that worked out.

‘Oh… I’m sorry,’ Mitch says.

‘That’s why she went to the hospital. She had a fit. But it’s okay, she’s going to wake up,’ I add. ‘Isn’t she, Jake?’

Jake nods. ‘Of course she is. Mrs Tucker is the toughest woman I know.’

Mum and Jake get on really well. She sees him as the son she never had.

‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Mitch scratches his forehead. I guess his Slim Skills manual didn’t prepare him for this kind of situation.

‘And when she does, I’m going to help her lose weight. That’s why I’m here,’ I say.

‘That’s a kind thing to do, Feather,’ Mitch says. I can hear the but sitting on his lips. ‘A very kind thing indeed.’ He smiles. ‘Do you think she might need a bit more help… I mean, medical help?’

‘You get people to lose weight, right?’ Jake blurts out.

Jake feels just as strongly as I do about Mum getting better.

‘We help people help themselves, but Feather’s mum…’ Mitch says.

‘You’re discriminating against Mum because she’s too big?’ I ask.

‘No… not at all…’

‘She hates doctors and hospitals. When she wakes up, she’s going to freak out,’ I say.

He nods. ‘Well, maybe, once she’s back home and feeling stronger, you could come with her and then we can have a chat.’

‘She won’t be able to do that. Not at first, anyway.’

‘She won’t?’

‘Mum doesn’t leave the house.’

‘Oh—’

‘I thought I could learn stuff and tell her about it. And that maybe it would help her to know that other people are struggling too.’ I take a breath. ‘I’m coming here on her behalf. And Jake’s my best friend, so he’s going to help me.’

My plan was to pick out a few people who Mum might like and then invite them over to the cottage to show her that there are people who understand how she feels and can help her as she tries to get to a healthier weight.

Besides me and Dad and Jake and Jake’s mum, Mum hasn’t had a visitor in thirteen years. But if I’m going to keep to my resolution of helping her get well again, that’s going to have to change.

Mitch lets out a sigh and sits on one of the low tables next to the little chairs.

‘Even if Slim Skills can help your mother… she’s going to have to do this for herself.’

Mum can’t do anything for herself. She can’t get out of her chair or put on her clothes or clean her face or walk. Dad and I work on a rota to make sure she has everything she needs. Which was what led to her not being able to get any help the other night when she collapsed on the carpet. No, Mum needs someone to help her take the first steps.

‘The philosophy of the Slim Skills programme states that a person has to want to get better.’ Mitch smiles like he’s on a TV ad.

I brush my fringe out of my eyes. I’m beginning to feel that coming here was a mistake. Mitch doesn’t understand. But it’s okay – Jake and me have got a whole list of other things to try.

‘I think we’ll go,’ I say.

‘Feather…’ Jake starts. ‘We’re here now, let’s see how it goes…’

‘It’s not working!’ I snap.

Mitch stands up and says, ‘Feather—’

‘If you can’t help Mum, I’ll find someone else. Someone who understands.’

‘I do understand, Feather. I was just trying to make clear that it’s your mother’s journey—’

‘She’s not on a journey. She’s in hospital, in a coma – and it’s our job to help her.’

Mitch definitely doesn’t get it. He’s probably just doing this because he can’t get a proper job. What kind of guy runs a weight-loss group anyway?

I peel off my name sticker, hand it to him and head out of the door. Jake runs after me.

‘Hey, what happened in there?’ he asks.

I keep walking down the corridor.

‘We’ll try something else…’ I say.

‘I think you should give Mitch a chance.’

I ignore Jake. It’s one of the ways we’re different: when things aren’t going well, he thinks it’s worth waiting things out, whereas I just cut loose. Take Amy, for example: I think he should have dumped her ages ago.

As we walk past the assembly hall, I stop and stare at a poster by the swing doors:

THE WILLINGDON WALTZ, SUNDAY 1ST OF JUNE.

June 1 is Willingdon Day and the waltz competition is like the icing on the cake. Willingdon Day isn’t that big any more but everyone still looks forward to it. It’s my birthday too.

‘Hey, it’s Mrs Zas,’ Jake says. ‘Cool.’

Everyone calls her Mrs Zas because her real name is too long for anyone to remember. She’s only been in the village for a couple of months. She set up Bewitched, the fancy dress shop next to the church. Apparently, when I was too small to remember, there was this amazing dance teacher who more or less taught the whole village to dance, only she got ill and so had to stop working. There weren’t any dance classes for years and years and then Mrs Zas stepped in. People in the village are still adjusting. Willingdon is kind of old-fashioned and Mrs Zas goes around in these loud wooden clogs and brightly coloured headscarves – and she’s always in costume, which is a good form of publicity for her shop, but still a bit out there. Today, she’s got a black-and-red dress on with a million frilly bits and she has castanets tied to her wrists and she’s darting around the dance floor, straightening people’s backs and arms and giving them instructions in her gravelly Russian voice.

‘You must flow… floooow…’ Jake imitates her, sweeping his arms through the air like he’s painting on a gigantic canvas.

We watch Mrs Zas clip-clopping around in her clogs.

Dad said the Willingdon Waltz used to be so big that, one year, the BBC came to film it for a documentary. You were too young to remember, Dad said. It’s not really fair how all the good things seem to have happened when I was too young to remember.

‘Maybe your mum will come out and watch this year…’ Jake says. ‘If she’s feeling better.’

‘Maybe…’

Mum loves watching Strictly so much, you’d think she’d be really keen to see the Willingdon Waltz, especially as she’s got the best view of the Green from the lounge window. But it’s like she’s got a thing against Willingdon Day as a whole. Every year, when it comes round, she gets antsy and tells me to draw the curtains and to turn up the TV and, once we’ve had some birthday cake and I’ve opened my presents, she goes to bed early.

I take the flier and put it into the back pocket of my jeans.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ I say.

3

They put Mum in a single room and pressed two beds together so she’d fit. Dad’s asleep in the seat next to her, wrapped up in one of those white, holey hospital blankets. While I’ve been staying at Jake’s, Dad hasn’t left Mum’s side, which is a good thing. If Mum’s going to get better she needs to see how much Dad loves her. And how we couldn’t live without her.

‘She looks so peaceful,’ Jake whispers.

Steph dropped us off. She’s waiting in the car park. I told her to come in, that after everything that’s happened Mum will have forgotten all about the row they had at Christmas, but Steph said it was best not to crowd Mum.

I’m glad I’ve got Jake with me at least.

As I look at Mum’s sleeping face, I imagine what it must be like to lie there, my heart beating, my blood pumping, my brain sending its Morse code messages from synapse to unconscious synapse, and yet to be unconscious – being there and not there. Being both at once.

Jake’s right. She does look peaceful. Though, with her hospital-phobia thing, she’s going to be anything but peaceful when she wakes up.

‘I wish someone would tell me what’s going on,’ I say.

I asked the doctor to explain and he said I should ask Dad and Dad said that it was complicated, which basically means he thinks I’m too young to handle it. If Mum weren’t in a coma, she would have stood up for me. She says I’m more mature than most of the grown-ups she’s met.

So, I grab the clipboard at the end of Mum’s bed and flip through the notes.

‘Feather…’ Jake starts. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

‘If I’m going to help Mum, I’ve got to have the facts.’

I scan down the page. It’s mostly random scribbles from the doctors and nurses who’ve been doing her obs, notes on medication and blood pressure and temperature and stuff. And then I see it.

Weight: 37st 2lb.

‘What is it?’ Jake leans in.

I drop the clipboard. It clatters to the floor.

Dad stirs in his sleep.

Jake picks up the chart and puts it back in its holder.

‘Feather?’

‘We’ve never weighed Mum,’ I say to him. ‘I mean, I knew she was big, but thirty-seven stone? Can anyone even get that heavy?’

No wonder she got sick.

I look at Mum. It’s like she’s floated away in that big body of hers and I worry that maybe she won’t ever find her way back to me.

I go over and kiss her cheek and feel relieved: it’s warm and soft and alive.

‘We’re going to get you better, Mum, I promise,’ I whisper by her ear.

And then I put my arms around Mum’s body and give her a hug, because that’s what she always does to me when I’m feeling tired or sad or ill. Mum’s hugs are the best: her arms are so big they fold you up and make you feel like you’re in the safest place in the world. I’ve often thought how rubbish it would be to have to hug one of those bony, skinny mums I see sitting in their cars outside Newton Academy.

‘Here,’ says Jake, handing me the photo frame we picked up from home.

It’s basically the only photograph in the whole house. Mum hates photos just about as much as she hates water and hospitals and running out of food. She says that we should remember the past in our heads and in our hearts, rather than being frozen into bits of shiny paper or screens. She doesn’t seem to mind this one though. It’s of me sitting in the middle of The Green, hugging Houdini. I’m about ten and I’m wearing a pair of faded dungarees and I’ve got loads of freckles and Pippi Longstocking plaits and I’m grinning from ear to ear.

It was Jake’s idea to bring it. He said that even though Mum was unconscious and even though her eyes are screwed shut and her brain’s far away, it’s important to surround her with things she loves.

As I place the photograph on the bedside table, I hope that maybe in middle of the night, when none of us are here to notice, her eyelids will flicker open and, if they do, she’ll see my grinning, freckled face looking back at her and it might help her remember I’m here and that I want her to come back to me.

Before Jake and I leave the room, I take Mum’s brush and run it through her hair. I’m relieved to see that the nurses washed it. Like Mum’s eyes, Mum’s hair is beautiful. It’s a goldy-blonde and smooth and shiny and, when she lets it down, it goes all the way down her back. In all the time I’ve known her, Mum hasn’t had a single haircut. When I was little, it made me think of Rapunzel and I got this picture of Mum hanging her hair out of the lounge window and Dad dressed up as a prince scaling the side of the house to save her.

My hair’s like Dad’s: brown and straggly.

For a few minutes I get lost in brushing Mum’s hair. I think of all the times I’ve brushed it back home, mostly late at night, before I go to sleep, while I tell her about my day. One of the good things about having a mum who doesn’t ever leave the house and doesn’t have a job or anything to do except watch re-runs of Strictly is that she always has time to listen.

‘I love you, Mum,’ I whisper, and put the brush down.

‘We’d better go,’ says Jake, ‘Mum’s waiting.’

I nod. Though, if I could choose I would curl up next to Mum on the bed and stay with her until she wakes up. I want to be the first person she sees when she opens her eyes.

As Jake holds open the door for me, I hear a couple of nurses chatting in the corridor. We saw them on our way in, an old one with a square jaw and a young one with a sharp black bob. They were sitting at the nurses’ station drinking their tea and filling in their charts and listening to slushy stuff on the radio. I should lend them Jake’s Macklemore albums.

‘Done her meds?’ the old one says.

A rustle of paper.

‘Yeah. Crazy doses,’ the young one says.

Ever since Mum got to be the size she is now, she’s had to take triple-strength medicines: her body’s so big and it’s got so much blood in it that she has to overdose on paracetamols just to make a dent in her headaches.

‘Ever seen one this big?’ the young nurse says.

I hear Jake gasp beside me.

Blood rushes to my cheeks. Nurses shouldn’t be allowed to talk about patients like that. No one should be allowed to talk about anyone like that.

‘Come on, Feather, let’s go.’ Jake takes my arm.

I shake him off and yank open the door. I’m standing in the middle of the corridor now. The nurses don’t notice that I’m staring right at them and that I can hear every word they’re saying.

‘How long do you reckon she has?’ the younger nurse adds. ‘I mean, when she wakes up?’

My body freezes.

‘Feather…’ Jake says.

‘Shhh!’

‘Six months – if she’s lucky,’ the older nurse says. ‘I mean, at that size, any number of things could get her.’

‘Don’t listen to them, Feather. They don’t know what they’re talking about.’

‘They’re nurses, Jake,’ I hiss. ‘They know exactly what they’re talking about.’

I charge to the nurses’ station and stand in front of them, my hands on my hips. Jake hangs back.

‘What did you say?’ I look from one nurse to the other.

‘Oh!’ The younger nurse steps back like I’ve trodden on her toes.

The older nurse shoots her a glance. Then she turns to me. ‘Nothing, my dear.’

‘It didn’t sound like nothing.’

‘Sorry we disturbed you,’ the older nurse says.

‘You didn’t disturb me. You were saying, about Mum—’

‘Feather, let’s go,’ I hear Jake say from behind me.

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ I say. ‘I want you to explain why you said those things about Mum.’

‘It’s okay, dear,’ the older nurse says, smiling one of those fake, there, there, dear smiles. I’m beginning to realise why Mum hates hospitals so much.

‘No. It’s not okay. You said…’

The older nurse looks down at me. ‘You look tired, dear.’

‘I’m not tired. I want to know about Mum not making it.’

The young nurse goes red.

The older nurse puts her hand on my arm.

Jake’s standing beside me now.

‘Maybe you should talk to your dad.’

And then a call bell buzzes from one of the other rooms and the older nurse says, ‘Excuse me’, and then the younger one says, ‘Sorry’ and walks back to the nurses’ station and I’m left standing there.

I feel Jake taking my hand. ‘Come on, Feather, let’s get out of here. Like they said, you can talk to your dad. We’ll come back tomorrow morning.’

But I don’t need to talk to Dad. I know what they meant: that it’s lose–lose. That even if Mum wakes up from her coma, she’s going to die anyway. And that, if we don’t do anything about it, and fast, she’ll be gone in six months.

4

After swim practice, I go to the Willingdon Mobile Library to use the internet. The day after Mum went into hospital, I ripped the Wi-Fi router out of the wall in the lounge and hid her laptop in the garage. Stopping her from being able to do online food deliveries is the first stage of my get-Mum-well plan.

I scan through the NHS website looking for articles on gastric bands. I’m worried Mum’s got too big for them to even be an option. Apparently the NHS pays for dangerously overweight patients to have bands fitted around their stomachs so they feel full and stop eating as much. Only Mum’s never wanted to see a doctor about her weight so we didn’t even get that choice and now I’m worried it’s too late.

My phone buzzes. It’s one of those cheap ones that only calls and texts.

‘Mum’s woken up.’ Dad’s voice is all choked up.

Steph’s at work and Jake’s with Amy, so I get the first bus to Newton Hospital. I run into Mum’s room and throw my arms around her and hold her so tight she gasps.

‘Steady on, Feather, or you’ll send me into another coma…’ She gives me a tired laugh. I can tell she’s trying to hold it in, how freaked out she is by being in hospital.

Dad sits on the other side of the bed, grinning.

‘We missed you, Josie,’ he says.

Mum’s eyes dart around the room. The drips. The white walls. The heater hissing under the window. I can feel her nerves fizzing.

‘It’s okay, Mum,’ I say and lean over and kiss her cheek.

Mum’s eyes focus on me and she seems to calm down a bit. ‘It’s good to see you, My Little Feather.’

Dad and I spend ages sitting on Mum’s bed holding her hands and stroking her hair and giving her hugs. I know Dad’s thinking the same as me: that this time we’re going to be more careful; that we’re going to grasp onto her so tight that she never slips away again.

‘What was it like?’ I ask. ‘Being in a coma?’