142 Manor Street

The house was narrow, with walls that hugged just a bit too close together. The crimson carpet was chunky and resplendent, with nylon strands thick as mini-ropes. The walls of 142 Manor Street, my childhood home, were warm to the touch; I know this because I used to run my fingers along their reddish velveteen wallpaper patterns. Bump-smooth-bump-smooth. When the mid-afternoon sun slipped through the front door, the air, too, became red.

Granddad closed the door behind us. 'Come on then, lassie,' he said, patting my head. I pulled my scarf tighter around my mouth, blowing frozen air into the wind. His veiny cheeks puffed in, out, with his roll-up cigarette. We walked at a brisk pace to the corner shop.

Granddad – or Arthur as grown-ups knew him – seemed to me the most benign but powerful man in the world. He bought me as many sweets as I wanted. Together we colluded in a silent, stealthy universe of licorice, chocolate and fizzy sour sweets. At the shop, I spun in greedy dizzy circles, collecting pink harps, gummy teeth, flying saucers, jelly bears, cola bottles. Granddad purchased his pouch of Golden Virginia tobacco. His mottled brown hands shook a little as he handed over the change. 'Thanks, me love,' he said to the lady, 'thanks love."

Arthur felt dizzy too today. It had been a few months since the diagnosis.
'Mr. McDermott, Parkinson's is manageable' – or at least he thought those were the words he heard amid the droning bleeps and beeps of the hospital. Arthur hadn't been able to breathe for the familiar smell of bleach-on-death. Death-on-bleach. How he hated hospitals.
The nurse was holding his hand – one of his traitorous shaking hands.
The strip lights were unforgiving, he thought, as he rolled his yellowed eyes to the ceiling. Mercy, mercy me.

Granddad and I walked perfectly in step on the way home. A still, conspiratorial silence, cut with the crunch of sherbet saucers and the pat pat pat of our boots.

A bloated red sun hung just above 142 Manor Street. Inside the house, illuminated floating specs of dust were suspended like mini stars. If you were to look at a star from billions and billions of miles away, they would look like this, I said, grasping through the air. Granddad and I looked at each other.

We heard the gasping first, and then the long, limping wail.

On the corner of the stairwell, Grandma's foot was facing us, the wrong way round. Blood splattered the walls and seeped into the red, red carpet. Her fat ankle was snapped in two; her bulby veins splayed out like an unusual blue flower. Help me, she gasped, God help your Nanna.

Granddad rushed to his wife. Her breathing was guttural. I turned away and picked at my bag of sweets, my legs were weak. Grandma's wig lay at my feet. I'd never known it wasn't her real hair. It seemed as if the walls really were seeping blood. Bump-smooth-bump-smooth.