The Forever Whale. Sarah Lean

the road that leads down to the old town.

      Papers rustle and tumble along the cobbled street, blown by the sea breeze coming through an alleyway between the shops. At the end of the alleyway I stop to catch my breath and look both ways. I hear boat masts clanking along the quay like alarms. In the distance I see Grandad shuffling unsteadily away from the new statue towards Hambourne slipway. I keep running.

      Coming towards Grandad from the opposite direction I see Megan, Josh and Linus, who is on his scooter. As they pass Grandad, they speak to him. Megan watches over her shoulder, but Grandad doesn’t turn round so she stops and walks back to him. He looks down at the slipway, then out to sea.

      “Grandad?” I call as I reach him. “What are you doing here?”

      I hook my arm through his. He looks down at his other clenched hand. The ocean of nothing is in his eyes.

      “Come on,” I say. “You’ve walked all the way to Hambourne slipway. Let’s go home now.”

      I try to lead him away, but his arm is heavy. Megan, Josh and Linus stand uncomfortably nearby. “What’s wrong with him?” I hear Josh say to Linus.

      “Grandad?” I say. “Let’s walk home together.”

      “Do you want us to go?” Megan says.

      But they don’t go and I can’t think what to do.

      “Mr Jenkins,” Linus says. “Hannah and me will walk you home.”

      Linus lays down his scooter and tries to take Grandad’s other arm.

      “This way,” he says, but Grandad trembles.

      “Grandad, please, it’s me, Hannah,” I say as a tear falls from his eye. “You’re safe.”

      “Shall I get someone to help?” Megan says.

      He’s fine, I want to say. But I see the unstoppable grey-green tide rushing away from the slipway steps, in the same way that Alzheimer’s is dragging Grandad away from me. Grandad doesn’t know who I am.

      “Grandad, it’s me, Hannah. Remember, we’re going to go on a journey?”

      I see a flicker in Grandad’s eyes. “The whale … it’s coming,” he says. He tries to speak again, but a sore groan comes from his lopsided mouth. He opens his hand.

      Josh jumps back and falls over Linus’s scooter, tearing his knees on the pavement. Megan gasps and backs away. Only Linus stays beside me and stares at the robin, at the ounce of lifeless feathers in Grandad’s hands.

      7.

      “HOW LONG WILL GRANDAD BE IN HOSPITAL?” Jodie says that night.

      It was a stroke that took a whole chunk more of Grandad away from us. The blood supply to his brain had been interrupted and more brain cells had died. It made the symptoms of Alzheimer’s worse, like he’d jumped down a whole staircase instead of taking the disease step by step.

      Mum shakes her head. “We don’t know, love. He’s going to need some help to get him back on his feet again.”

      “And then he’s coming home,” I say, “so that I can look after him.”

      Mum and Dad glance sideways at each other.

      “We’re not sure what the process is just yet,” Dad says. “Grandad is going to need a lot of therapy over the next few months—”

      “Months?” I ask. He can’t be in hospital for months. I have to remind him of August 18th. I have to know what the story is so that we can go on our journey together.

      “Weeks,” Mum says, “it might only be weeks.” Again she glances at Dad.

      “Did Grandad say anything?” I ask. “Anything about me or anything at all?”

      Mum shakes her head. “I don’t know if he knew it was me,” she says quietly. “I don’t think he recognised either of us.”

      I push between Mum and Dad on the sofa, the only space I can see that feels safe.

      “Can we visit him?” Jodie says, squeezing on the other side of Mum.

      “Not just yet,” Dad says.

      Mum touches Dad’s arm. “He’s very confused and weak at the moment,” she says. “I’ll go in tomorrow to check how he is and let you all know. Then we’ll see when he’s up to having more visitors.”

      We know that nobody gets better from Alzheimer’s, but the doctor said it’s possible Grandad can recover from some of the symptoms of the stroke. But the way Mum described him sounded all wrong, like it was someone else in hospital, not my grandad. I keep thinking he’s still here, somewhere, only I can’t find him.

      I get up from the sofa.

      “I don’t want to see him in hospital,” I say. “But when he comes home, there’s something we have to do.”

      “What’s that?” asks Dad.

      They all look at me and I’m not sure now how to say what I’m thinking. Our journeys were about being together and discovering things, and seeing the world in front of us with bright eyes and open ears. I was going to take him out in the boat again. We wouldn’t go far – we’d stay in the inlets and quiet harbour waters. Because I’m sure, if we did, he’d remember everything he wanted to tell me.

      “We’re going to take a journey together,” I say, but don’t wait for them to ask questions because I can’t explain anything more. How can I tell them that I think we’re going to find a whale?

      I go out to the kitchen and rummage through the cupboards until I find the spray gun. I fill the bottle with cold water from the tap. I go out to the garden and shout into the night shadows, “Just you wait until Grandad gets back, Smokey! I know it was you that killed the robin.”

      8.

      “DID YOU THINK SOMETHING WAS WRONG WITH Grandad yesterday morning?” Jodie says when I meet her on the quay the next day on the way home from school.

      I feel guilty because I’ve been trying to cover up some of the things he did, and maybe I shouldn’t have done that.

      “Yes, but most of the time he was fine,” I say. It’s an effort to lie and makes my stomach hurt. “I wanted him to be fine,” I say quietly.

      Jodie knows I feel bad and I can trust her not to make me feel worse.

      We stare at the statue of the faceless people.

      “It’s weird how they didn’t give them faces,” Jodie says.

      “Mrs Gooch said it’s so we can all see something of ourselves in them.”

      Jodie pulls a face and I know what she’s thinking. Nobody’s faces are the same – they have different shapes and colours and ways that they are put together.

      “It’s not like a mirror or anything,” I say. “It’s just that it’s supposed to remind us of things like being safe or rescued or people we know, something like that.”

      I see Grandad and me in the statue. He’s the big brave figure in the boat reaching for the small one, to carry them safely back to shore.

      “What’s the greatest power on earth, Jodie?”

      “That sounds like something Grandad