Angels

Your cheeks have not yet sunk. When your face sinks - I should know by now - it is the first sign that you will die for the winter period.

I don’t mean properly die, of course; but you will have a mini-death, the SAD syndrome.

You’ll stay in bed most of the season and the jut of your cheekbones will leave small arcs of sweat on your pillow. They won’t be washed away until Spring.

‘Alicia,’ you bark from your supine position on the sofa. ‘Alicia! Come here. Where are you going?’

Your voice is demanding as usual, but there is a softness in your tone that comes only before winter; about October-time, when the leaves fall, cluttering the garden path right up to the front of the house. Nobody sweeps them.

‘Mum. I’m off to college.’

‘What? Where?’

‘Basingstoke. I’m taking money off the side for the train.’

‘What? Why you going to college? You said you were going to the sixth form, you’ve got your bus pass for that and it’s free.’

‘Mum,’ I paused, weary, ‘I’m doing A levels, in the space of one year, remember. I need to go to Basingstoke.’

‘What? Why you going there? You never told me this. It’s always bloody money with you. Bloody money.’ Her Croat accent grew thicker as she got more excited. She stood up from the sofa, ‘it’s always take, take, take. Bloody money,’ she repeated, squinting on cigarette smoke as she waved her hands too close to her face.

I took the ten pounds off the side and closed the door behind me, leaving her to listen to Radio 2 and read her bible, which she had bound in old gift paper for privacy. I don’t know why, it’s not like she took it anywhere and I already knew exactly what book it was.

I’d grown used to her eccentricities - the tapes that blared ’Shine Jesus Shine’ at all hours of the night and the Virgin Mary bookmarks that sprung out like phantoms from every corner of the house, anywhere but in books - there was even one tied to the car’s rear view mirror, and she would complain when it got in the way - ‘Bloody thing. Bloody stupid thing’ - before making off with a huge roar of the engine, causing the pebbles in the drive to go flying.

It was always cold in the house and the living room windows were not double-glazed, unable to fend off the choke of wind that rushed in from the surrounding open fields.

The room had a Victorian fire place that had once roared with hearty logs that burned for hours. But Mum didn’t know how to make a fire and neither did I, so we made do with a two-bar electric heater with a dodgy plug.

‘Your dad used to make a good fire,’ she said.
‘Mmm,’ I nodded, hoping the conversation would end there. I dreaded the pinball syndrome. The ball of conversation that bounces from a spring, any spring, but always ends up in the same hole. Again and again and again.

My father did make a good fire, it was true. And when it was up and running in full flame, we used to sit and watch the sparks fly up into the chimney. They were angels, he said, dancing angels