Wishbones

I find Dad outside scraping some earth out of one of Houdini’s hooves. Sometimes I think he loves Houdini more than he loves anyone, including me and Mum.

‘Here, Houdini may as well have this,’ I say, handing him the plate of salad I made for Mum.

Dad lets go of Houdini’s leg and Houdini hoovers up the lettuce and the bits of tomato and pepper. His bell rings out through the village.

‘Mum didn’t want it?’ Dad asks.

I shake my head.

‘Give her time, love,’ Dad says.

I ignore his comment and take a piece of paper out of my pocket. ‘I’ve made a list, Dad.’ I hold it out to him. ‘Things I think we should do to help Mum.’

Dad pulls his reading glasses out of his overall pocket and holds the paper up to the light above the front door.

I watch him scan down the items:

1. Go to Slim Skills and get tips for making Mum healthy.

2. Get Mum to go to Slim Skills.

3. Get Mum and Dad to be happy with each other again.

I notice Dad pause after this one.

4. Get Mum and Steph to make up.

5. Take Mum for a walk around The Green every day, even if it’s only a few steps.

6. Look into alternative weight-loss programmes: hypnosis, acupuncture, Chinese medicine, diet pills, reflexology and gastric bands.

Dad hands the piece of paper back to me.

‘We should leave it to the doctors, Feather.’

‘The doctors aren’t going to do anything. They just gave her a bunch of leaflets. Leaflets won’t help. We have to help her, Dad.’

‘It’s complicated with your mum, Feather.’

I’m sick of hearing that word: complicated. And I’m sick of what it implies: that because something’s hard, we shouldn’t do anything about it. Or that because something’s difficult to understand, I won’t get it.

Dad takes off his glasses and puts them away.

‘And they’re expensive, Feather. Those things you wrote down.’

‘I’ve got some money saved up. And I’ll get a job. Plus, you’ve got so many call-outs at the moment, you must be making some money.’

‘I know you mean well, Feather…’

‘Of course I mean well,’ I say, ‘I want to help Mum. Don’t you?’

I want to shake him. Doesn’t he realise that Mum nearly died? That she might still die?

‘You’re acting like none of this has happened, Dad. Don’t you remember what it felt like to sit next to Mum while she was in a coma, not knowing whether she was going to wake up? I thought that if anyone would understand…’

He gives Houdini a pat and starts to walk up the ramp to the front door.

‘Do you love Mum?’ I ask Dad.

He looks up at me, his eyes dark and shiny. Houdini head-butts my shins like he’s trying to tell me something. His bell tinkles.

‘Of course I love her, Feather.’ His Adam’s apple slides up and down his throat. ‘Of course I do.’

And then I don’t say anything because I know that if I do I’ll regret it. I just get up and go back into the house.

Jake swipes the screen. His face glows.

We’re sitting on my bedroom floor using his mobile to surf the Internet. His dad gave it to him to make up for never being around.

‘It says you need to work out your BMI,’ he reads from the obesity section of the NHS website.

‘What’s that?’

‘Body Mass Index.’ He taps the screen. ‘Here, there’s a calculator. Your mum’s forty, right?’

‘Forty-two.’

‘And she’s what, five foot two?’

‘Yeah, roughly that.’ We’ve never measured Mum but she’s a bit taller than me and I’m five feet.

‘And her chart at the hospital said she was thirty-seven stone?’

I nod. My stomach churns. I’m not sure I’m ready to have a calculator tell me how overweight Mum is. Though I guess I’ve heard the worst of it from the nurses already.

Jake shakes his head. ‘Wow.’

‘What?’

‘She’s 97.2.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Well, put it like this: if your BMI is over 40, you’re classified as obese.’

‘Mum’s not obese.’ I’d seen pictures of women who were obese when I was doing research on the Internet the other day. Obese people have massive rolls of fat that hang over each other and tummies that swung between their legs and they have ten thousand wobbling chins and they can’t go on airplanes because they wouldn’t be able to fit on the seats. Mum isn’t like them.

‘I think she is, Feather.’