Page 33 of The Fall I Fell

Three years ago

‘Granny?’ I said quietly from the living room door. She sat by herself in her armchair, tapping her foot along to the radio as she crocheted.

She didn’t hear me at first, so I observed her. She never knew the words to any of the songs, not even ones from when she was young, but that never stopped her from singing along in her own musical jibberish. She knew the words to all of the old rhymes and lullabies, though. She used to sit at the end of our beds and sing them to us quietly until we fell asleep.

The open fire crackled by her side, as she soaked in this moment of peace, where she must have believed the rest of the house was busying themselves elsewhere. Her hair was red once. She’d shown me photos, some of them black and white, others faded, but her hair was still bright in all of them. It was white when I watched her then. She always braided it over one shoulder when she went to bed, and I’d always felt that if you caught her plait in the right light, at the edge of the fire’s flames, you could still see a glimmer of her old colour. I got my dad’s hair – dark, thick, all the curls sitting in a heap that’s impossible to control. I’d have liked to have looked like Granny when she was young.

‘Oh Christ, you frightened me.’ She must have caught a glimpse of my reflection in the TV. Granny watched my mirror image through the screen, her hand pressed to her heart as though to try and steady it manually.

‘Sorry,’ I muttered guiltily, moving fully into the room.

‘What you lingering for, eh?’ She set down her crochet on her knee, and folded her hands in her lap, awaiting my story.

‘Did you always know you loved Grandad? From the first time you met him, I mean?’ I flicked the corner of my shirt back and forth across my palm until the tickle turned into an itch.

She pondered for a moment, only the hum of her radio filling the room, and I couldn’t bring myself to meet her eye. ‘You have boy troubles.’

I snapped my eyes to her wrinkled smirk and my cheeks flushed so dark I’m sure I blended in with her scarlet rug.

As I turned to leave, she grasped me by the wrist with her soft fingers. ‘I hated your grandfather when we first met.’

Relaxing at her touch, I kneeled beside her, resting my chin on the arm of her chair. ‘Really?’

‘Yep. He was my best friend’s big brother. He teased us mercilessly. Laughed at us when we would get all dressed up to go dancing, or roll his eyes when we’d giggle at the dinner table. I thought him the rudest boy in the world.’ She scowled at the memory, though it couldn’t cover up the ghostly smile on her lips. ‘Then one day, I’m out at the dance hall, having a lovely time, and there’s your grandfather.

‘Now, let me tell you something. I don’t think I’d ever seen him in anything but his wellies, anywhere but the farm. But there he was, dressed in his Sunday best, hair combed, face shaved, looking like a true gent. He’d come out with the only intention of asking me for a dance. He didn’t dare ask me to go with him. You know what I said?’

‘No?’ I chuckled.

‘Absolutely not. I left him right there at the bar and found someone else to dance with instead.’ She raked her fingernails through my hair as she spoke. Had her story not been so interesting, I could’ve been tempted into a nap. ‘He tried for weeks after that. Would go to that dance hall every Friday, stand by the bar, ask me to dance, then inevitably have to watch me dance with someone else. Looking back now, I was a bit of a cow, but I still hadn’t forgiven him for pulling my hair when we were ten.

‘Then, one week, he didn’t come. I couldn’t rest all night, thinking about where he could be. I went all the way back to the farm to look for him, and found him in the barn, teaching himself to dance, resting on the single thread of hope that I’d be nosy enough to find him. And that was that, I suppose.’

‘And your friend?’ I tilted my face to look at her. ‘She didn’t mind that you married her brother? It didn’t ruin your friendship?’

‘She couldn’t understand it at first. To her, her big brother was just some sweaty, hairy monster set on this earth to torment her. I was distraught. I’d fallen for Harry, but she’d always been my best friend, and I didn’t want to lose her. But I think your grandfather spoke to her, just those two, and after that, she became my sister.’

‘I wonder what Grandad could have said.’

‘I’ve wondered the same thing too.’ She hummed. ‘But he’s always refused to tell me, and sometimes, a little secret is good.’

With that, the sound of a tractor at the front window stirred us from our moment and the core of an apple hit the glass in summons.

‘I think that’s for you.’ Granny raised a stern eyebrow. ‘But you tell that Thorogood boy that he can come back here and clean my windows.’

Clambering to my feet with a smile, I planted a kiss on the crown of her head. ‘Will do.’

‘And Ava?’ she called as I reached the door. ‘I’ve seen the way that boy smiles at you. You don’t have anything to worry about, love.’

Though I headed for the door, I had the urge to turn back and ask her what she meant. Did she mean Jacob? But Jacob hardly smiled, and if he did, it was probably at the sight of a dormouse, or a hare hopping across the fields. She couldn’t mean that Jacob liked me? Not like how Grandad liked her, all of those years ago?

‘You okay, Kitty?’ Jacob asked as I opened the door. My face must have mirrored my inner turmoil, and I couldn’t bring myself to look at him, to notice his smile.

Shaking myself out of my thoughts, I forced a grin as I finally met his gaze. ‘Sorry, away with the fairies.’ He had his hair pushed back from his face, as though he’d run his fingers through his fringe so many times that he’d trained it to stay in place.

‘The best place to be,’ he replied with complete seriousness. ‘You fancy picking some apples?’

‘Go on then.’ I hopped up into the cab of the tractor and Jacob climbed in beside me. ‘Oh, and by the way, Granny will probably kill you if you mucky her windows again.’