Crow Stone. Jenni Mills

tools and dozens of compartments for nails and screws and nuts and bolts. He would let me sit on the top step–‘No nearer, mind, while I’m working’–and I used to stay there for hours on end, as he measured and sawed, planed and trimmed, nailed and glued. Most of the time I had no idea what he was doing. Because I was so quiet he used to forget I was there and never bother to explain. Now I edged round the door so I could peer down at him as he worked, too absorbed as usual to notice me.

      On the bench lay the photograph of my mother in its damaged gilt frame, the sidepiece twisted and splintered like a broken limb. It was a studio portrait, carefully posed. The photographer had sat her sideways, and she was turning her head to look over her shoulder at the camera with the half-smile of a cut-price Mona Lisa. She wore her dark hair in a short, urchin style like Audrey Hepburn, feathered on to her cheeks. From where I stood it looked as if her eyes were on my father as he worked to repair what he had broken.

      I guessed he had tried to fix the old frame and given up. He was making a new one out of pale, sanded pine, measuring the final piece against the half-assembled frame to be sure it fitted. His back was half turned to me, his concentration intense, his fingers careful and precise. Satisfied, he picked up a spatula, dipped it into the pot of glue, coated the mitred corners and slotted the piece into place. He searched along the shelves and selected a couple of tiny nails, holding them against the wood to check the length. Then he used a lightweight hammer to drive them in and secure the joints. Tap tap tap. A nail hit by my father always drove straight into the wood. He fitted picture clamps to the corners, checking the angles with a carpenter’s try square, screwing each clamp nut the exact same number of turns to hold the joint under pressure while the glue set.

      My father had not taught me woodwork, but I had learned the principles by watching him. There was no way those joints would come apart.

      He picked up the photo in its old frame. The hardboard backing was still in place, and he began to pull out the tacks that held it to the frame. He caught his finger on one, and put the picture down quickly, sucking the torn skin. A droplet of blood had fallen on to my mother’s face, and he took out his hanky to wipe it carefully away. I felt my eyes sting, and slipped away across the yard before he saw me. It was starting to rain, big fat drops that pressed like thumbs through my nightdress to my skin.

      I lay awake in bed for a long time, listening to the downpour and the dark mutters of thunder. I wondered where my mother was now, and whether she knew how much my father still loved her.

      I saw Trish as I came up the hill on Monday morning. She was just ahead of me, lolloping along with her satchel slung over her shoulder like an afterthought, books tripping over each other to escape.

      ‘You’re going to lose your Aere Perennius,’ I said, puffing a bit with the effort of catching up. Trish whirled round, startled, and the Latin book fell out on to the road. A passing cyclist swerved and shouted.

      I stepped into the road and picked it up. ‘You’ll have to dry it out.’

      ‘Who cares?’

      I wiped it on my sleeve. The pages were already crinkling. ‘How was Poppy’s party?’

      ‘Gross. Helen Mansell was sick in the pool. We had to get out.’ Trish shoved the book into her satchel and started walking again. ‘Where were you, anyway?’

      At least they’d noticed I wasn’t there.

      ‘My gran was ill,’ I lied. My gran was more than ill; she’d been dead twenty years.

      ‘I thought she lived in Blackpool?’

      ‘Oh, yes,’ I said. My fingers nibbled at a seam of fluff in the bottom of my pocket. ‘We had to drive up there. Didn’t get back until four in the morning.’

      ‘Is she very ill?’

      ‘Pneumonia.’

      ‘Oh, Katie, that’s awful. Is she–you know?’

      ‘Dying? No, I don’t think so. Dad said the crisis was over, and she’ll probably pull through.’

      I’d never known her, or any of my grandparents. My father’s mother was not even sixty when a heart-attack had taken her, still mourning a husband who died in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. Like him, my mother’s parents had been killed in the war, in one of the bombing raids on Bristol, and my mother had been brought up by my great-grandmother.

      I hated people being sorry for me. When I first got to know Trish, I couldn’t bear the look of pity on her face when she realized my mother had left. So I gave myself a living granny, conveniently located at the other end of the country so there would never be any danger of having to produce her.

      ‘She must have weak lungs, your gran–didn’t she have pneumonia last year as well?’

      My fingernail popped right through the lining of my pocket. ‘Dad always says she should stop smoking.’

      ‘Anyway,’ said Trish, ‘you didn’t miss much. I don’t blame Helen for honking. Rather too much showing off–“How do you like our pool? Don’t drop ice-cream on our lovely, lovely patio furniture.” Poppy’s parents are a bit–you know. Nouveau.’

      ‘New?’

      ‘Nouveau. As in gold-plated bath-taps.’

      ‘Oh.’ As so often with Trish, I wasn’t quite sure I followed, but it seemed easiest to pretend I did. Anyway, I didn’t much like Poppy’s mother myself. She always looked sideways at me when I went round there for tea as if she expected me to eat with my fingers.

      We were coming up to the Ministry of Defence offices now, where Poppy’s father worked, with the rolls of barbed wire topping the fences and the sentries in their dark uniforms and white spats at the gate. A car was just drawing up to the barrier, a big grey one. A sentry strolled over to check the driver’s pass. Trish started waving. The passenger door opened and Poppy got out as we drew level.

      ‘Great party,’ said Trish. ‘I was just telling Katie. Really great.’

      ‘Shame you weren’t there,’ said Poppy, blowing a kiss to her dad and slamming the car door. ‘We missed you.’ I looked at her closely. She really did seem to mean it.

      During Latin, Poppy passed me a note.

       We’re going shopping in town after school. Want to come?

      Yes, I wrote underneath, and passed the note back, wondering when they’d planned this.

      ‘Nonne,’ said Mr Clayton, the Latin master, pointing with the chalk to the two words he’d written on the board. ‘And num. Two different ways of introducing a question. Can anyone remember what they mean?’ There was a silence. No one raised a hand.

      ‘Surely,’ said Mr Clayton, ‘surely someone wants to take a guess?’ Surely, no one did.

      ‘Nonne means “surely”,’ he said, strolling between the rows of desks, holding his hands in a steeple as he always did to indicate deep thought. ‘In other words, it’s a question expecting the answer yes. So num …’ He stopped and looked expectantly round the class, his hands still a steeple, waggling his little fingers at us. But none of us was very interested in Latin. ‘Num introduces a question expecting the answer no. Trish, what on earth happened to your textbook? It looks as if you took it swimming with you.’

      While everyone laughed, I found myself wondering whether Poppy would have prefaced the question in her note with nonne or num. She couldn’t have known that my dad had promised me a clothes allowance. She must have been expecting me to say I wouldn’t go.

      Well, too bad. I didn’t have the money yet, but I could choose what I’d buy. I looked at Poppy, with her fuse-wire plaits, her neat, freckled face. She gave me a quick grin and a thumbs-up. I wasn’t fooled.

      I had been in Top Shop before, by myself, but it was different today, knowing I would soon