Red Ink by Julie Mayhew Page B

in the Fourakis family to die young. So if we’re not supposed to be sad about Granbabas dying, Mum must be doing all that crying for a different reason.
    Pamela’s house is the same as ours but the other way round. When you walk in our door, the stairs are in front of you and you turn right to go into the living room. In Pamela’s house, you turn left. I’m worried that I’m going to get up in the night for a wee and walk smack into the wall with the window instead of going the right way along the landing for Pamela’s bathroom.
    Pamela has short white hair that doesn’t move. It stands up from her head in one big wave. I’m looking forward to finding out how she makes it do that. One of her front teeth is twisted and pops out of her lips when she smiles. She has lots of wrinkles on her neck, which get filled up by all the tiny, gold chains she wears. Pamela’s son and daughter are both grown up and have moved out, that’s how come she has room for me to stay. The daughter is called Sophie and she lives in Canada. Pamela often shows us the postcards Sophie sends when she chats to Mum over the back garden fence. Pamela’s son is called Brian. He still lives nearby and visits lots. When Mum bumps into him outside the house, she says, “All right, Brian,” and he just nods his head and does this weird little salute. I’ve never heard him speak. Brian does Pamela’s garden for her and sits around with a grumpy face drinking her tea. I wish it had been Brian who had moved to Canada rather than Sophie, but I suppose Pamela prefers it this way because her garden stays tidy.
    In Pamela’s house there is no wall between the kitchen and dining room. This is because she has ‘knocked through’. I try to imagine Pamela with a sledgehammer bashing through the bricks and then decide that Brian must have done it for her. Mum sometimes says she would like to knock through our kitchen wall. I worry that I’ll wake up one morning and come downstairs to find that she’s done it in the night, just because she felt like it.
    The other walls in Pamela’s kitchen and dining room are covered in plates. There are kings and queens on them, flowers, ones that say ‘mother’ and ‘sister’ and ‘friend’ and ones with dogs. Pamela has a Westie called Ernie who yaps at Kojak through the wire fence that separates our gardens. Kojak just ignores him. I wonder which of the plates Pamela will take down off the wall for us to eat on come tea-time.
    Once she’s let us in, Pamela goes, “Why don’t you go and watch a bit of telly, lovie, while I have a chat with your mummy in the kitchen.” So I turn left into the living room and Mum and Pamela go straight on to the kitchen. Pamela’s sofas have extra pink covers on the armrests and headrests. On top of her TV set there is a pottery milkmaid looking embarrassed while a pottery boy whispers in her ear.
    Even with the sound up on the TV, I can hear bits of their conversation, because there is no wall between the dining room and the living room either, just an archway. I don’t think this is because Pamela has knocked through. The living room and dining room are all one in our house too.
    Pamela is asking Mum about her flight and whether she will be okay and Mum is telling Pamela that Granbabas had a good life and was lucky that his heart lasted so long and it is the fate of everyone in the Fourakis family to die young, so we shouldn’t be sad. Still, I can hear that Mum is crying a bit. I wonder if this is because she is leaving me behind. We’ve never been apart for a night my whole life, except for when I sleep over at Chick’s house, but that doesn’t count because I know Mum is only a few streets away. I said this to Mum when she was rushing around packing my case and she said to me, “No, silly, we spend many weeks apart before this.”
    I don’t remember that at all. So I asked, “When? When were we apart that long?”
    Mum stopped folding clothes and stared at me for