Read Online Tarnished by Julia Crouch - Free Book Online Page B

tried to push their way up.
    ‘Hold on, Meggy,’ Aunty Jean says, and she makes a perfect, high-speed turn at the bottom of the slope. The trolley’s side wheels lift up and thump down and we’re hurtling along, the sea on our right, to Whitstable.
    This was the first day of my regular holiday visit. It’s the Easter holidays before the summer I went to live full-time with Nan and Aunty Jean, but of course I didn’t know it at this point.
    I had no idea what was coming for me.
    Old bags and silly bitches tut as we pass them. I know they’re old bags and silly bitches because that’s what Aunty Jean calls them. She says they don’t like the handicapped having fun, and she’s out to prove them wrong.
    When we get to our café, I go in and get the boy and, as usual, he makes out like it’s a big problem to open the double doors to let Aunty Jean and her trolley in. The first time we went there he said it couldn’t be done and she argued with him and said that he had to because it’s against the law to discriminate against the handicapped.
    ‘We’ll have our usual, darling,’ she says to me, handing me a tenner. I go up to the counter to get our fish and chips.
    She has large with lots of vinegar and I have normal with no vinegar, but she always helps me out because I can never finish my chips and I don’t like the skin part of the batter. Aunty Jean does. She says it’s the best bit. I also get her a can of lager and me a can of shandy, which has real beer in it, she says. It makes me feel a little bit squiffy.
    ‘So, how’s Mummy doing, darling?’ Aunty Jean asks me as I bring the food over to our table. We’re right in front, in the window, because it’s the only place you can fit the trolley in. The tide is out, far, far out, and there are old twits milling around the sandbanks with their metal detectors. The smell of mud, a bit like river mixed with stink bombs, is everywhere.
    ‘She’s all right,’ I say. ‘I think.’
    ‘She looked a bit peaky when she dropped you off. A bit thin.’
    ‘Perhaps she’s been on a diet,’ I say.
    ‘Doesn’t suit her. Fellas prefer a bit of meat on a woman,’ Aunty Jean says, slapping the ketchup bottle so that a big dollop of red lands on her chips. ‘Look at that.’ She points at a lady walking past with big bosoms wobbling under a tight white T-shirt. ‘Lovely.’
    I agree even though she just looks chilly to me. It’s a day when you should be wearing an anorak. ‘I do prefer Mummy when she’s more cuddly.’
    I dip my chip into Aunty Jean’s ketchup.
    ‘Oy, get your own!’ She reaches over and tickles me with her greasy, salty fingers.
    Later, we trundle along the front to the far end of Whitstable, me walking alongside the trolley and Aunty Jean leaning back, steering with one hand and smoking a ciggy with the other so that she looks like the bad guy in a Western. We reach the point where we can’t go any further because the flood defences are up – big bits of wood they slot into the gaps in the sea wall when there’s storms or big high tides. Sometimes, Aunty Jean brings her crutches and we struggle up and over the steps and go to this old wooden pub on the beach, where they let me buy the drinks at the bar like a grown-up because Aunty Jean has to sit down. I always get a lemonade for me and a port for her and we sit outside at the old tables and chat about this and that. My favourite things Aunty Jean tells me are about when she and Daddy were little, and the naughty things they did.
    But Aunty Jean hasn’t brought her crutches with her today, and, in any case, the weather’s looking a bit iffy to sit outside the pub. You can see the clouds getting together over the sea and I spit on my finger and hold it up to the wind. A storm’s coming. I’m quite pleased because I’m pretty pooped. I only stopped school yesterday and Mummy got me up really early to drive me down here because she’s got somewhere she’s got to be in London