‘Near Ashby de la Zouch,’ she said.
‘Ashby de la Zouch,’ Mum repeated. And then, her hand in her hair, ‘Ashby de la Zouch. I know. I’m really sorry. The journey didn’t quite go as I planned and our driver got sick and my phone ran out and with all the … What?’ She glanced at Tanzie. ‘I don’t know. Probably not before Tuesday. Maybe even Wednesday. It’s taking longer than we thought.’
Tanzie could definitely hear him shouting then.
‘Can’t Chelsea cover it? I’ve done enough of her shifts … I know it’s the busy period. I know. Des, I’m really sorry. I’ve said I –’ She paused. ‘No. I can’t get back before then. No. I’m really … What do you mean? I’ve never missed a shift this past year. I – Des? … Des?’ She broke off and stared at the phone.
‘Was that Des from the pub?’ Tanzie liked Des from the pub. Once she had sat outside with Norman on a Sunday afternoon, waiting for Mum, and he had given her a packet of scampi fries.
At that minute, the door to the caravan opened, and Mr Nicholls pretty much fell in. ‘Lie down,’ he muttered, pulled himself briefly upright, then collapsed onto the floral sofa cushions. He looked up at Mum with a grey face and big hollow eyes. ‘Lying down. Sorry,’ he mumbled.
Mum just sat there, staring at her mobile.
He blinked at her, registering the phone, and muttered, ‘Were you trying to reach me?’
‘He’s sacked me,’ Mum said. ‘I don’t believe it. He’s bloody sacked me.’
17.
Jess
She wouldn’t have slept much anyway, given that she now had to worry about having lost her job at the Feathers, as well as everything else. But Jess spent most of that night looking after Mr Nicholls. She had never seen a man be so ill without actually coughing up a kidney. By midnight he was a shell. There was literally nothing left in him. ‘I feel better, I feel better,’ he would insist, trying to sound reassuring. And then half an hour later he would grab at the bucket she had pulled from under the sink and cough up a thin string of green bile.
The night took on a weird, disjointed quality, the hours running into each other, fluid and endless. She gave up trying to sleep. She stared at the caramel-coloured, wipe-clean walls of the caravan, read a bit, dozed. Mr Nicholls groaned beside her, occasionally getting up to shuffle backwards and forwards to the toilet block. She closed the kids’ door and sat waiting for him in the little caravan, sometimes dozing on the far end of the L-shaped sofa, handing him water and tissues when he staggered in.
Shortly after three, Mr Nicholls said he wanted a shower. She made him promise to leave the bathroom door unlocked, took his clothes down to the launderette (a washer-dryer in a shed) and spent three pounds twenty on a sixty-degree cycle. She didn’t have any change for the dryer.
He was still in the shower when she arrived back at the caravan. She draped his clothes from hangers over the heater, hoping they might dry a bit by morning, then knocked quietly on the door. There was no answer, just the sound of running water, and a belch of steam. She peeped around the door. The glass was clouded but she could make him out, slumped and exhausted on the floor. She waited a moment, staring at his broad back pressed against the glass panel, an oddly beautiful, pale inverted triangle, then watched as he lifted his hand and ran it wearily over his face.
‘Mr Nicholls?’ she whispered, behind him, then again, when he didn’t say anything. ‘Mr Nicholls?’
He turned then, and saw her, and perhaps it was the water, but she wasn’t sure she had ever seen a man look more defeated. His eyes were red-rimmed and his head sunk deep into his shoulders.
‘Fucksake. I can’t even get up. And the water’s starting to go cold,’ he said.
‘Want me to help?’
‘No. Yes. Jesus.’
‘Hold on.’
She held up the towel, whether to shield him or herself, she wasn’t sure, reached in and turned off the shower, soaking her arm. Then she crouched down, so that he could cover himself, and leant in. ‘Put your arm around my neck.’
‘You’re tiny. I’ll just pull you over.’
‘I’m stronger than I look.’
He didn’t move.
‘You’re going to have to help me here. I’m not up to a fireman’s lift.’
His wet arm slid around her, he hooked the towel around his waist. Jess braced herself against the wall of the shower, and finally, shakily, they stood. Usefully, the caravan was so small that at every step there was a wall for him to lean on. They made their way unsteadily to what would have been the living room and he collapsed onto the sofa cushions.
‘This is what my life has come to.’ He groaned, eyeing the bucket as she placed it beside the bed.
‘Yup.’ Jess viewed the peeling wallpaper, the nicotine-stained paintwork. ‘Well, I’ve had better Saturday nights myself.’
She made herself a cup of tea. It was a little after four. Her eyes were gritty and sore, and she felt light-headed. She sat down and closed them for a minute.
‘Thanks,’ he said, weakly.
‘What for?’
He pushed himself upright. ‘For bringing loo roll out to me in the middle of the night. For washing my disgusting clothes. For helping me out of the shower. And for not once acting like it was my own fault for buying a dodgy doner from a place called Keith’s Kebabs.’
‘Even though it was your own fault.’