The Forever Whale. Sarah Lean

sink. It smells of damp. The sugar bowl is there, but it has tipped over the bags and bags of birdseed stuffed inside. I think about putting the bowl over by the kettle, but Jodie has come back and is watching me.

      “What’s that in there?” she says.

      I close the door, but Jodie comes over, so I push her away and sit with my back against the cupboard door with my arms folded and my legs crossed.

      “Actually, this is my place for hiding private things,” I tell her, “so leave them alone.”

      She stands with her legs either side of me and I make myself go all stiff, but it doesn’t work because she’s fifteen and five years bigger and stronger than me.

      “Don’t be a baby,” Jodie says.

      She holds my elbows, pulls me away and opens the door. She finds an old tube of sparkly lipstick, Grandad’s slippers and one of her books that went missing a few weeks ago. She leaves the cupboard door open and slides down to the floor, wiping sticky sugar crystals from her lipstick.

      “I put those things in there when I was sweeping,” I say.

      She holds the book in front of my face. The damp pages bulge.

      “Sure you did.” Jodie twitches her mouth to the side. “I know what you’re trying to do, but it’s not like we don’t all know Grandad’s getting worse.”

      I grit my teeth again and then take a minute because I want Jodie on my side. “I notice things more than anyone else. He’s tired today, that’s all. Can’t he just have a bad day like everyone else? He’ll be fine later, you’ll see.”

      Jodie twiddles with her hair and we sit in silence with my words still echoing in my own ears because I know they’re not true. It’s what I want to believe though.

      Jodie reaches inside the cupboard and finds four bars of chocolate.

      “Grandad’s still hiding his chocolate, like a squirrel hides nuts for the winter,” she says. She doesn’t want to fight either. “Even before he got Alzheimer’s he’d forget where he put it.”

      “Remember that time I ate so much of Grandad’s chocolate that I was sick?” I say.

      We laugh quietly together.

      I remember that night when Jodie and I had snuck around the house with a torch to look for Grandad’s hidden chocolate. We’d found loads and then hidden under the kitchen table. I ate far too much. Jodie knocked on Grandad’s bedroom door because we knew Mum and Dad would make a fuss, but Grandad would just put things right. He’d sent Jodie to bed and sat me on his lap in his high-backed chair with a bowl and a towel until I felt better.

      “Did you know your grandma liked chocolate when she was a little girl?” he’d asked me as he wrapped us both in a blanket and took the bowl away from under my chin.

      I shook my head through my tears. He smiled and his eyes crinkled.

      “She had a sweet tooth like you, that’s why I’ve always had to hide my chocolate.”

      “Did you marry her when she was a little girl?” I sniffed.

      He chuckled quietly. “No, but even then I knew she was the girl for me.”

      “How did you know?” I’d asked. He rubbed my back and I felt the sickness going and sleep on its way.

      “How did I know? Well, that’s simple. Because something great put us together, bound us together forever, and it will never be undone.”

      I remember tucking my head into his shoulder.

      “What was the great thing?”

      I remember feeling his wide chest heave as he took in a giant breath. I remember the dark and the quiet and the glimmer of light from the hall. I remember him saying, “Another time. Go to sleep now, little Hannah.”

      4.

      JODIE NUDGES ME. “HELLO? WHERE WERE YOU?”

      I was thinking about the story Grandad had been meaning to tell me, wondering if it had anything to do with Grandma. I want him to remember because August 18th is getting closer, but no matter how many times I’ve said it, he doesn’t know why he asked me to remind him. None of us have birthdays on that day, no anniversaries, nothing like that, I checked. I think it must be to do with a memory Grandad has, something important that scoops him up and takes him back to another time so he can feel those things that happened all over again.

      I think of how important it is for all of us, but especially for Grandad, to remember the bright things from the past. There must have been so many of them to make him so special, or maybe just one extraordinary thing. I hate that Alzheimer’s doesn’t always let him go back to times and places he loved the most, when I can, just like that, if I want to.

      I’m still on the kitchen floor with Jodie.

      “Do you remember Grandma?” I ask her.

      “Not much.” Jodie looks disappointed with herself for a moment. “She had soft cheeks, that’s what I remember, and she always had toffees in her cardigan pocket. You could hear the papers rustling.” She pinches my cheek and pushes a chocolate bar into my hands. “You’re little and soft like Grandma was,” she smiles.

      Grandad comes into the kitchen. “Time for breakfast,” he says.

      “I’ll make you some more toast, Grandad,” I say.

      I cut some more bread, put it in the toaster this time and turn the timer up high.

      “My class is going on a field trip down to the quay today,” I tell him as we sit to eat our toast. “The mayor is unveiling a statue of a lifeboat. They’ve put a big cover over it so nobody can see it until today. Would you like to go down at the weekend and see it too?”

      Slowly Grandad turns towards me. “We’ll hide my boat at Hambourne where nobody will find it.”

      Right then I feel as if I’m on my own in the boat at sea, and I can’t see solid land on the horizon, and there’s nowhere safe to go. I’m about to tell Grandad that his boat is in the garage, but sometimes when I correct what he says he gets confused and I don’t want to upset him.

      The dark edges of his toast crumble and fall into his lap. He doesn’t notice.

      “Hannah,” Jodie says, breaking the uncomfortable silence, “we’d better get going.”

      She picks up her bulging book and some photographs fall out from between the pages and scatter on the table. Three are of my grandma, Hannah Jenkins, who I never knew; three are of me, Hannah Gray. All of the photos are rippled and flaking from the dampness in the cupboard.

      Grandad’s eyebrows furrow as we all look at the photos.

      “Where’s Hannah?” he says. “I haven’t seen her this morning.”

      Jodie stares at me, chewing the pad of her thumb. I try to hide what feels like a stone dropping in my stomach. She doesn’t say what I know she’s thinking, that neither of us knows whether he’s forgotten that Grandma died over ten years ago or if he’s now starting to forget me.

      Jodie goes to the front door, but I can’t leave, not yet. I want to believe that when I come back this afternoon Grandad will be as he always was. I lean my hand on the table and kiss the white beard on his cheek.

      “We’re going to school now,” I say.

      His eyes brighten for a moment and he doesn’t know what he’s just said, but I see something unfamiliar in his face.

      “Grandad, please remember