doesn’t seem to hear her and shuffles back outside, leaving a trail of seeds behind him. I hear the sparrows twittering, waiting for him.
“How is he this morning?” Mum says, sniffing at the bitter smell of burnt toast on her sleeve.
“He’s fine,” I say. “I heard him get up in the night so he’s probably just tired.” Mum frowns. “I can sweep that up,” I say, jumping down and reaching for the broom.
Mum holds on to the handle for a moment. “Hannah …” she says, but I don’t want her to say what everybody in our house has been saying recently, that they’re worried about the way Grandad is behaving.
“He’s fine,” I say again. “I forgot about the toast. It’s my fault.”
Mum sighs a little and says, “Go and help Grandad, love.”
“Mum!” I point to the toast on fire in the cooker behind her.
Mum steps down from the chair and uses the barbecue tongs to pick up the flaming toast and fling it out of the back door, and while she isn’t looking I close the door to the cupboard under the sink because I’ve noticed that there are things inside it that shouldn’t be there.
3.
“WHAT WAS THAT ALL ABOUT?” MY SISTER JODIE says, when Mum has gone to work. “And what’s that disgusting smell?”
I’m on the floor with a brush, but the seeds keep bouncing back out of the dustpan.
“I forgot to watch the toast,” I mutter.
Jodie pretends she doesn’t see me sweep some of the seeds under the doormat.
“Why don’t you just use the toaster like everyone else?” she says, painting gloss on her lips.
I bite my teeth together. “Why can’t Grandad have it how he likes it?”
Jodie doesn’t say anything. She’s more interested in smudging her lips and watching her reflection on the edge of the cooker.
“Why are you putting on lipgloss before you’ve had your breakfast?” I say.
She rolls her eyes and pours some cereal and milk and mutters to herself, “Where’s he put the sugar bowl now?”
Jodie sighs and goes out of the kitchen because the last time the bowl wasn’t by the kettle we eventually found it in a drawer in the sitting room. These things are Alzheimer’s fault, not Grandad’s.
I crawl across the floor and open the cupboard under the sink. It smells of damp. The sugar bowl is there, but it has tipped over the bags and bags of birdseed stuffed inside. I think about putting the bowl over by the kettle, but Jodie has come back and is watching me.
“What’s that in there?” she says.
I close the door, but Jodie comes over, so I push her away and sit with my back against the cupboard door with my arms folded and my legs crossed.
“Actually, this is my place for hiding private things,” I tell her, “so leave them alone.”
She stands with her legs either side of me and I make myself go all stiff, but it doesn’t work because she’s fifteen and five years bigger and stronger than me.
“Don’t be a baby,” Jodie says.
She holds my elbows, pulls me away and opens the door. She finds an old tube of sparkly lipstick, Grandad’s slippers and one of her books that went missing a few weeks ago. She leaves the cupboard door open and slides down to the floor, wiping sticky sugar crystals from her lipstick.
“I put those things in there when I was sweeping,” I say.
She holds the book in front of my face. The damp pages bulge.
“Sure you did.” Jodie twitches her mouth to the side. “I know what you’re trying to do, but it’s not like we don’t all know Grandad’s getting worse.”
I grit my teeth again and then take a minute because I want Jodie on my side. “I notice things more than anyone else. He’s tired today, that’s all. Can’t he just have a bad day like everyone else? He’ll be fine later, you’ll see.”
Jodie twiddles with her hair and we sit in silence with my words still echoing in my own ears because I know they’re not true. It’s what I want to believe though.
Jodie reaches inside the cupboard and finds four bars of chocolate.
“Grandad’s still hiding his chocolate, like a squirrel hides nuts for the winter,” she says. She doesn’t want to fight either. “Even before he got Alzheimer’s he’d forget where he put it.”
“Remember that time I ate so much of Grandad’s chocolate that I was sick?” I say.
We laugh quietly together.
I remember that night when Jodie and I had snuck around the house with a torch to look for Grandad’s hidden chocolate. We’d found loads and then hidden under the kitchen table. I ate far too much. Jodie knocked on Grandad’s bedroom door because we knew Mum and Dad would make a fuss, but Grandad would just put things right. He’d sent Jodie to bed and sat me on his lap in his high-backed chair with a bowl and a towel until I felt better.
“Did you know your grandma liked chocolate when she was a little girl?” he’d asked me as he wrapped us both in a blanket and took the bowl away from under my chin.
I shook my head through my tears. He smiled and his eyes crinkled.
“She had a sweet tooth like you, that’s why I’ve always had to hide my chocolate.”
“Did you marry her when she was a little girl?” I sniffed.
He chuckled quietly. “No, but even then I knew she was the girl for me.”
“How did you know?” I’d asked. He rubbed my back and I felt the sickness going and sleep on its way.
“How did I know? Well, that’s simple. Because something great put us together, bound us together forever, and it will never be undone.”
I remember tucking my head into his shoulder.
“What was the great thing?”
I remember feeling his wide chest heave as he took in a giant breath. I remember the dark and the quiet and the glimmer of light from the hall. I remember him saying, “Another time. Go to sleep now, little Hannah.”
4.
