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‘He was all drugged up – it was quite peaceful.’ She takes a swig. ‘The whisky reminds me of him. I was giving him shots on the little sponges he had to moisten his mouth. Teacher’s, mind. He was too tight to buy owt flash.’
‘That must be the weirdest – to know someone for a short time like that, and then watch them die?’
‘It’s funny, you feel nothing and something at the same time. It’s like, I’m not grief stricken, right? I hardly knew him.’
‘But you had those few weeks, that must have been intense.’ I feel suddenly ridiculously jealous of this experience.
‘Like I said, I learnt as a kid how not to get attached.’
‘So that’s your defence mechanism?’ Shades of Mum coming through here but seems about right.
‘Yeah, whatever,’ she says dismissively.
‘That’s me in my place.’ I reach for the bottle.
She looks thoughtful as she adds, ‘Well, I’m not exactly feeling nowt. Just don’t know what the heck I am feeling. I’m more fighting the stuff popping up about my mum.’
‘Your real mum, is it?’
She pauses. ‘I always knew she died when I was little. She was a druggie which was why I was fostered. I’d never thought a lot about it, but listening to Ken made it more real, I guess.’
‘So, you literally had your father talking about your dead mother while he was, er, dying?’
She pulls something out of her inside pocket, hands it to me. ‘He gave me a picture of her.’
I lean towards the fire to get some light on it. A blurry close-up of a young woman. Tiny face in a halo of piled up blond hair. A little pointy chin. I look at Jez biting her pouty lips. It’s hard to see anything of her in this image.
‘Wow,’ I say softly. ‘That must have been something, to see her actual face, like for the first time?’
Jez leans forward, crosses her arms to clutch her thighs and rocks on the balls of her feet.
‘Thing is, I thought I had a memory of her, from the access visits before she died. But it’s not, it’s not the same as the photo.’ She gulps the air and buries her head in her hands, her body shakes with a suppressed sob.
‘Hey, it is OK to cry, you know?’
‘Like maybe I’ve remembered the frigging social worker all along? And now I keep thinking about how she died.’ She rocks as she allows another sob, then she stiffens, pulls herself in tight. I move to give her a hug. Then I’m not sure, reposition myself on the sleeping bag.
She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand and pushes her hair away with a weak hint of a smile. She’s like a lost little girl and the sadness of it is overwhelming.
‘It’s like a hole inside me that she never occupied, and the flash of her face… Proper grief might be easier to deal with, right?’ She bites her lip again.
‘Come here,’ I pat the sleeping bag. ‘Let me give you a hug.’
She stares at the fire, takes a sharp breath. Shit, she thinks I’m hitting on her.
‘I don’t mean,’ I start.
‘It’s OK.’ She smiles her little smile and sits down next to me. She leans towards me and I put my arm round her shoulder, feel the soft weight of her body against mine as I tighten my grasp, trying to ignore the horny stirrings.
‘So that’s why you’re belting around Scotland on an impressively cool illegal bike?’ I try gently teasing.
‘Ken left me some gold, told me to have an adventure. What could I do?’ She looks up, eyes widened in mock innocence.
‘Gold?’
She shifts to rest her head on my shoulder, and I tense up against my hard-on.
‘He left me a kilo bar of gold bullion,’ she says slowly, like for maximum effect.
