Blood Family by Anne Fine Page B

saw him watching us as he went back to fetch the sugar and an extra mug to dump the tea bags in. I think he realized that I couldn’t think of anything to say, so he told Mum, ‘Look at what Eddie’s wearing. It’s his new school uniform.’
    She fingered one of my sleeves. ‘It’s very red.’
    ‘Isn’t it?’ Rob said. ‘I think it suits him. Gives him a bit of colour.’
    ‘One of the ribbons on my hat is red.’
    ‘I thought your hat was lovely,’ Rob said kindly and gently. ‘After we’ve had our tea, you can go back and finish it if you like.’
    She smiled so brightly that I realized that was all she wanted. So I drank my tea as fast as possible, though it was very hot. Rob stood up. So did I.
    She stared at us as if she couldn’t work out what was happening. Rob took her elbow and he sort of steered her back along the corridor into the room. They were all packing up their scissors and scraps and ribbons, but she didn’t mind. She hurried in without even saying goodbye.
    We went back to the car. As I was kicking at the gravel, Rob told me firmly, ‘I think your mother looks miles better. She’s put on weight, which makes her face look younger. That was a splendid Easter bonnet she was making. She still finds talking hard, but I think that she really liked your uniform. Don’t you think she looks better and seems happier?’
    I liked Rob, so I just said, ‘Yes.’
Rob Reed
    A lot of people just don’t grasp some aspects of this job. Take Harry. He leaned over the allotment fence and said he thought that my first raspberries would probably be ready by midweek.
    ‘Shame, that,’ I said, ‘because I’ll be on Tyneside, so the birds will get them.’
    ‘Tyneside?’
    ‘Taking a boy in care to see his great-grandmother,’ I explained.
    ‘You get about,’ he said. ‘Were the two of them close?’
    ‘As far as I know, they’ve never met – not since he was a baby, anyhow.’
    Harry gave me quite a look. ‘So what’s the point in taking him all the way up there?’
    ‘Family ties.’
    He snorted. ‘Your time. Your fuel. Though I suppose that it’ll be Joe Taxpayer who picks up the tab. And all to no real purpose.’
    How wrong can someone be? The drive was interesting. (I heard a lot about the way the Radletts run their life.) We stopped at Huddersfield, where Eddie tasted avocado pear for the first time – and mango, now I come to think. And when we finally reached the nursing home, the carer who showed us where to go told us that Mrs Lane had been ‘bright as a button’ until a few years before. ‘It was her daughter going first that knocked the stuffing out of poor old Dinah. That’s when she came to us.’
    We walked along the carpeted hall, and there in a room with a bay window and a spare empty single bed was Eddie’s great-grandmother – propped on a heap of pillows and snoring faintly.
    The carer leaned over her. ‘Dinah? Dinah? This is Eddie. He’s your great-grandson. He is Lucy’s boy.’
    Mrs Lane opened her eyes and smiled seraphically.
    ‘You know,’ persisted the carer. ‘Lucy. Your grand daughter.’
    Mrs Lane nodded hard, doing her best. ‘Is it tea time?’ she asked.
    Eddie was mystified. The carer said, ‘They love their piece of cake at tea time.’
    A bell rang fiercely down the hall. The carer looked towards the door. ‘Are you all right for a moment?’
    ‘We won’t stay long,’ I said.
    But she’d already gone. So I took up the reins. ‘Mrs Lane, here is Eddie. He’s come up to visit you and say hello.’
    She was still smiling. ‘Will you be having cake as well?’
    ‘I hope so,’ I said politely. And the whole benighted visit went on like that. But she was a member of Eddie’s family and so a part of my job. Everyone needs a sense of self, and it is up to me to find a Life Story for even the children with the blankest slates. A newborn baby dumped on a street corner will leave the hospital with heaps of cheery photographs of nurses