Wishbones

That’s a tradition too, my 12:01 post-New Years Eve phone call to Jake.

‘12:01. I promise.’ I lean over and kiss his cheek – a bit too close to his mouth, which makes us both jolt back and stare in opposite directions. ‘You can tell me all about your resolutions,’ I say quickly.

Jake raises his eyebrows. ‘I’m not perfect already?’

‘Perfect’s overrated.’

He smiles.

The thing is, beside his bad taste in films, Jake’s as close to perfect as it gets. Next to Mum and Dad, he’s the best thing in my life.

There are loads of people out on Willingdon Green, standing on their front lawns with plastic champagne flutes looking at the sky. Behind the fireworks, droopy Christmas decorations hang from people’s houses and the shops on the parade, which makes the village look tired.

When I get to our cottage, which sits bang opposite St Mary’s Church, it’s the same as always. Dad’s Emergency Plumbing Van is missing from the drive and a blue light flickers through the lounge windows. It’s been Mum’s room ever since she got too large to manage the stairs. And to share a bed with Dad.

We’ve had to build ramps everywhere and to make all the doors bigger so that she can fit through them. Including the front door. Which is all a bit pointless because Mum hasn’t left the house in thirteen years.

So, the lounge is basically Mum’s world.

I’ve thought about ways to get her out of the house or to help her with a diet, but whenever I suggest going for a walk, she finds an excuse not to move from her armchair, which has the telly dead in front of it and the window that looks out to The Green to the right of it, so she can alternate between looking at a made-up world and a real world she’s left behind.

I suppose she’s happy enough. And if you love someone, you have to accept them how they are, right?

Alongside the extra-wide doors, Dad ordered Mum a supersize wheelchair. It came in a container ship from America and I sometimes take Mum for rides around the ground floor of the house in it. The wheelchair is so wide it nearly touches the walls. Mum’s so wide she nearly touches the walls.

If Willingdon is the smallest village in the UK, then our cottage must be the smallest house in the UK. When I was five, Steph, Jake’s mum, gave me this pop-up Alice in Wonderland book. One of the pop-ups is of Alice when she’s eaten the cake and got really, really big: her legs and arms and head stick out of the doors and windows and it looks like any moment now, her house is going to burst open. I’ve still got that book and every time I look at it, I think of Mum and how big she is and how little our cottage is and how maybe, one day, the walls and doors and windows will fly off and there’ll be nothing left but Mum sitting in her chair in the middle of Willingdon watching a re-run of Strictly Come Dancing.

On the way up the drive, I see Houdini, our pet goat, straining on his lead. He’s come out of the kennel Dad made for him, and he’s staring up at Mum’s window – and he’s screaming his head off.

‘It’s okay,’ I say, patting his belly. ‘The fireworks will stop soon.’

Houdini’s a local celebrity: people from the village come and rub his horns for luck. The vet reckons he’s about seventy years old but we can’t be sure. A few years before I was born, Dad found him wandering by the motorway that runs just outside Willingdon and brought him home and he’s been living in our front garden ever since.

‘It’s going to be the best year ever,’ I whisper into Houdini’s ear.

Houdini stops bleating, but he doesn’t take his eyes off Mum’s window.

‘You want to come in?’

He bows his head like he’s nodding.

‘Okay, just don’t chew anything.’

Houdini and Mum have one big thing in common: they’re always hungry. I reckon that if Mum ran out of food, she’d start chewing flowers and inanimate objects too.

I kiss the top of Houdini’s head, untie his lead from the post Dad drilled into the floor of his kennel, and take him inside.

He lets out a croaky bleat and his bell tinkles. It’s a huge cow-bell Dad ordered from Switzerland to help us find Houdini when he goes missing. Which happens about once a week. We usually find him in Rev Cootes’s garden or at the empty Lido in Willingdon Park.

I open the front door.

‘Mum!’ I call out.

No answer. Which is weird. Mum always answers. She’s got one of those deep, rich voices that make people stop and listen.

‘Mum!’ I push Houdini into the kitchen. ‘Stay there – and don’t eat anything.’ I close the kitchen door and go to the lounge. ‘Five minutes till midnight, Mum!’

I hear a groan.

I run to the door and throw it open.

‘Mum!’

And then I see her – lying on the carpet, packets of prawn cocktail crisps and Galaxy chocolate wrappers and sticky tins of pineapple strewn around her.

When I look closer, I see that her mouth is foaming and that her eyes are rolling behind their flickering lids.

You know that expression? The bottom fell out from under me? Well, I get it now, how, in a second, your whole life, everything you thought was safe and solid, just disappears and leaves you grasping at thin air.

I kneel down beside Mum’s body, shaking.

Mum’s re-run of Strictly Come Dancing is playing on the TV. A long-legged blonde and an old, squat, B-list celebrity are waltzing around the dance floor – they’re spinning and spinning and spinning under the glare of the studio lights, their mouths stretched into those manic smiles people put on for TV.

My attention shifts back to Mum. Apart from the fact that she’s massive, the woman lying in front of me doesn’t look anything like Mum. She’s one of those bodies the camera pans over after an invasion in Jake’s zombie movies: her limbs are sticking out at weird angles and her mouth is slack and her skin pale. When I touch her brow it’s sweaty but her skin feels cold.

Come on Feather, think.

I did a life-saving course at the pool, though most of the stuff was linked to pulling people out of the water.

Before I can do anything, I have to clear a whole load of Max’s Marvellous Adventures books that have fallen around Mum. She must have been reaching for one before she collapsed. They’re these old-fashioned, American stories about a boy who walks around in a red superhero outfit with a goat as his sidekick. I reckon that it’s a sign – that Houdini stepped right out of one of those books and started wandering alongside the motorway outside Willingdon because he was meant to be with us. Anyway, Mum loves those stories.

I snap back into the present.

Mum’s wheelchair is lying on its side.

Yanking Mum onto her back takes all the strength I’ve got. I have to use the weight of her body to get some leverage. I feel a thump in my chest when her back hits the carpet and I worry I’ve winded her.

For a second she opens her eyes.

‘Mum!’

She’s still there. Thank God.

She stretches out her hand. I grip it and hold it to my chest.

‘You’re going to be okay, Mum,’ I say. ‘Everything’s going to be okay.’

But her eyelids drop closed again and her hand goes limp.