Artichoke Hearts (3 page)

‘Open it then,’ she orders.

As soon as I see her bare wrist, I know what’s inside.

For as long as I can remember Nana has always worn this silver bracelet. It’s a delicate silver chain with just one charm on it, in the shape of what I always thought was a flower, but now
I look closer I see that it’s actually some kind of vegetable.

‘What is it?’ I ask Nana, inspecting it closer.

‘An artichoke. Uma! Haven’t you ever cooked up an artichoke for them?’ Nana calls out to Mum.

‘Probably not!’ Mum calls back wearily.

The artichoke charm is the size of the nail on my little finger. It has layers and layers of silver leaves, painted at their tips with green enamel. Each leaf gets smaller and more delicate
until it reaches the centre . . . a tiny blood-red heart. I look down at Nana’s bare wrist, where this charm bracelet has always lain against her skin, until today that is.

‘This hand is past adornment,’ she sighs, lifting her bony wrist up to the light and staring at it as if she doesn’t recognize it as her own.

I walk into the bathroom to get changed and I lean hard against the door so Krish doesn’t barge in. There is no lock; Nana doesn’t believe in them. There are lots of things my nana
believes in or doesn’t believe in.

I look in the mirror. The skirt is too pretty but it’ll be all right with jeans underneath and some Converse, I suppose. I fumble to close the catch on Nana’s bracelet, but
it’s tricky to hold it together and seal the clasp at the same time.

‘I can’t do up the bracelet,’ I tell Nana, coming out of the bathroom.

‘Ah! You’re a vision,’ she whispers, swirling me around.

I hold my wrist out for her to fasten the clasp.

‘No, no, no, no!’

At first I don’t understand why she’s got herself worked up into such a state, but then she holds the two pieces of broken chain apart, one in each hand, as the artichoke heart rolls
on to the floor.

‘Isn’t that typical? I’ve worn this bracelet forever, and it has to go and break, today of all days.’

The charm rolls towards Laila. Her beady eyes are following its path across the wooden floor as her crab-like fingers reach out to grab it, but I get there first so, of course, she sends up one
of her blood-curdling screams.

‘Never mind, you can always replace the chain,’ Nana sighs, sliding the charm back into the little purse. ‘It’s the heart that matters.’

She’s upset. I can tell she’s upset and trying to hide it. It matters to her that the chain is broken, and it matters to me, and you can tell by the way no one knows what to do or
say next that somehow all this means more than it should. Birthdays are like that, aren’t they? Too much pressure.

Aunty Abi draws the curtains. We’re in the half dark now. It’s a bit embarrassing but I have to admit the flickering candles still make me breathless with
excitement. Everyone sings ‘Happy Birthday’. It’s one of those ‘Happy Birthdays’ where people start off slightly after each other and in a different pitch. Krish sings
‘crushed tomatoes and poo’, as usual, but the rest of them plough on, willing a harmony that never quite happens in our family . . . it’s a relief when they get to the final
‘you’.

Aunty Abi, who is brilliant at baking, has made me a heart-shaped cake with pink icing (of course!) and white marshmallows on the top. Mum can’t bake because she doesn’t use weighing
scales and she’s not precise enough. But Aunty Abi’s cakes always look so pretty – prettier than you could buy in a posh cake shop – and they taste even better.

Before I have the chance to get a closer look, Laila dives at the marshmallows, burning her podgy fingers on the candles and sending up an outrageous screech as Mum pulls her clenched fist away.
There is no way she’s going to let go of those marshmallows. Now that the spongy sweet goo is safely stored in her hamster cheeks, she scrunches her eyes closed tight and wills it to melt on
her tongue.

I blow out my candles in one go. I like to get it over and done with as soon as possible. Krish loves all the attention on his birthday, not me.

‘Make a wish,’ says Mum as I slice into the cake.

I close my eyes and start out wishing that this wasn’t my birthday . . . that it could all be over, but then I end up wishing . . . well, thinking about Jidé. The truth is I
can’t get his smile out of my head. Wishes are like that, aren’t they? Sometimes you don’t know what to wish for and then something or, in this case, someone just springs into
your mind . . .

‘Be careful what you wish for.’ Nana breaks the spell and I open my eyes. ‘It might just come true.’

I hope so.

We all take a slice of cake, except for Nana, who promises she’ll have some later, but I know she won’t. Inside the pink icing, the cake is chocolate goo, not just spongy, but thick
puddingy chocolate. There’s a moment’s silence while we pay our respects to Abi’s cake. I watch Nana bobbing Laila up and down on her knee and stroking her little plump wrists -
‘fat bracelets’, Nana calls them.

The bell rings, making us all jump. Dad goes to answer, with Piper yapping and hurtling up the garden path after him. Dad walks slowly back down the path and whispers to Nana, very gently.

Well, go on then, show him in,’ orders Nana, setting Laila down on the floor and slowly pulling herself up off the sofa. She’s quite out of breath, but you can see how keen she is to
greet this visitor. She’s expecting . . . him.

A ridiculously tall man strides down the path, chased by Piper leaping up into the air, all four paws off the ground at the same time, but even his highest jump only brings him to the
man’s knee.

‘A Norfolk terrier,’ he says fondly, bending down and scooping Piper up into his arms.

‘That’s right,’ Nana laughs. ‘My faithful guard dog!’

I can see Nana instantly likes this crane-like man who has to stoop to get through her door.

‘I’m Josie. You must be Moses.’ Nana smiles and shakes his hand as her words come tumbling out. ‘Thank you so much. I wasn’t expecting express delivery, but
I’m delighted because I’ve got to crack on with this thing now. You see I want to paint it myself, but I’m afraid if I don’t do it soon I’ll run out of energy, or
time, or both.’

‘It is my privilege.’ The man called Moses bows and flashes Nana, Mum and Aunty Abi, especially Aunty Abi, a smile full of white teeth. He turns to Dad and nods. I know exactly what
Dad’s thinking: You can’t trust anyone with teeth that good.

Dad always says that.

This is my son, Sam,’ says Nana, gesturing to Dad.

Moses holds out his hand for Dad to shake, but he doesn’t exactly shake it, not properly, like he’s taught Krish and me to do. He doesn’t look Moses in the eye either. Instead
his attention is caught by the state of Moses’ feet. Moses has sawdust stuck to the bottom of his floppy pink shoes. They’re handmade, like the ones Nana wears.

Moses looks as if he thinks Dad’s being a bit rude staring at his feet.

Nana coughs.

‘And this is my daughter, Abi . . . and Uma.’ Nana points to Abi, then Mum.

‘We spoke, on the phone,’ Abi reminds Moses.

‘Of course, I remember your voice.’

‘It’s her profession, her memorable voice,’ chips in Nana proudly.

‘You are a singer?’

Actress,’ Abi mumbles, shooting Nana her ‘Mum, did you have to bring that up?’ look.

But it’s true. Aunty Abi does have a beautiful low velvety voice.

And these are my grandchildren, Mira and Krish.’

I nod. Krish says ‘Hi!’ and Laila makes a high-pitched screechy noise, throwing both her arms into space, demanding to be picked up.

‘Oh! And not forgetting Laila, of course.’ Nana laughs at the spectacle of Laila’s desperate outstretched arms.

‘Pleased to meet you all.’

Moses talks slowly and just a bit too quietly, so you have to lean forward to hear him.

‘Where are you from?’ asks Nana.

‘Denmark.’

‘I knew it,’ Nana laughs, patting Moses on the shoulder. ‘It’s a hobby of mine, accent spotting.’

‘Usually people think that I am from Germany,’ Moses says, flicking his long fringe away from his eyes.

Moses has a thick mane of blond hair flowing right down to his shoulders. He’s a definite hippy. From the back he looks like a girl, with his green linen shirt and white baggy trousers,
and his collection of woven friendship bracelets and rings. Round his neck he’s wearing a white stone with a hole in the middle on a leather strap. Moses is the sort of hippy you always meet
round Nana’s.

‘Ah! A fellow lover of holey stones.’ Nana claps her hands together in excitement. ‘I have quite a collection of those at my cottage in Suffolk.’

‘This is certainly a coincidence,’ Moses smiles, holding up his holey stone. ‘That is the exact place I found it, on a beach in Surf-folk.’ That’s how he pronounces
it, with an ‘L’ in folk. ‘The ladies in the museum told me they call them “hag stones”. If you hang them in the doorway they keep those evil spirits from your
door.’

‘Nonsense! I don’t believe in all that. I collect them because I figure, if they’ve got a hole in them, they’ve already had a long and interesting life. I often wonder
how many human lifetimes it takes to make a hole in a stone,’ Nana babbles on.

You can always tell when Nana’s nervous, because usually she chooses her words quite carefully.

Dad raises his eyes to the sky and smiles at Mum, but I agree with Moses: it is a real coincidence about the holey stones, because they are one of the things that Nana’s obsessed with.
We’ve got our collection in Suffolk, and she always carries one in her pocket and she’s given me one of her favourites, which I never take off, even at school (well, it’s not
strictly speaking ‘jewellery’, is it?). Nana says a holey stone can tell a better story than a whole one. She talks like that, my nana. You’re never quite sure you’ve
understood exactly what she means.

Moses is still grinning from ear to ear. He casts his eyes around the flat at all Nana’s objects and paintings. He especially likes the half-finished painting on Nana’s easel, the
one with the baby Indian elephant standing on a giant pink lotus leaf.

‘These are your paintings?’ Moses asks, walking over to take a closer look.

‘A spattering of them,’ Nana says, following Moses’ eyes around the room.

He smiles and bows to her admiringly. Then he turns to Dad.

‘I’ll need some help carrying it in from the car.’

‘Of course,’ mutters Dad, looking as if he’d rather not.

Dad and Moses walk out into the garden together.

‘This garden is beautiful,’ Moses declares.

I hear Dad telling him that we used to live here but that, since we left, Nana has transformed the garden. It’s true – when we lived here, it was a real mess.

This is the flat we were born in, me and Krish. You walk in through a wooden gate in a tall brick wall, which in summer is covered in roses, like you’re in a secret picture-book garden.
Once you’re inside, you step on to the sloping brick path – the ‘herringbone path’, Mum calls it. When we lived here, the garden was all overgrown with trees, and the grass was
mud because we used to wheel our bikes all over it, but Nana has made the garden grow. These days, as soon as you walk in you get blasted by the smell of cherry blossom, hyacinths and the sweet
scent of straggly old honeysuckle, which Nana says just goes to prove that beauty is more than skin deep. I wish we still lived here.

Nana follows Dad and Moses up the path. Mum whisks Laila off the floor and we parade up the herringbone path together, through the tall wooden gate in the wall and out on to the street. Moses
has double-parked his car, although he doesn’t seem to be in a particular hurry. He has one of those long blue Volvos that can fit everything in the back – children, dogs and luggage – except
this car doesn’t have any of those things in it.

A queue of traffic is building up behind the car. A woman in a brand-new shiny black Jeep throws her hands up in the air, beeps her horn and starts shouting at Moses, who walks slowly round to
her window.

‘I am so sorry to make you wait. I won’t be so very much longer,’ he says in a polite and patient voice.

Now she looks even more annoyed, and the other cars start beeping too, as if to echo how angry she is.

‘Take your time!’ she yells back at Moses. He ignores her.

‘Why don’t you just bog off!’ Dad spits at her under his breath.

‘Sam!’ Mum always tells Dad off for swearing, even though, like Nana, he’s got a whole repertoire of made-up not-quite swear words.

Then Charlotte, Lizzie’s mum from across the road, appears on the front steps of her house.

‘This is turning into a bit of a spectacle,’ Nana laughs.

‘Everything all right?’ Charlotte asks Mum, looking worried.

‘Well, we’re trying to get
this
-’ Mum points into Moses’ car – ‘into the flat. Ideally we could do with a parking place.’

Charlotte peers into the car. I watch the blood slowly drain from her face as it finally dawns on her what’s inside.

‘I see,’ she nods, staring back at Nana, her eyes filling up with tears, before she pulls herself together and springs into action. ‘Of course. I’ll move my car.
They’ll all just have to back up.’

Charlotte is redirecting the traffic, running into her house for car keys, reversing, forcing all the other drivers to back up so that Moses can park his car right where she was parked, outside
Nana’s flat. It’s like one of those puzzles where you have to move the pieces around in the right order to make the pattern work.

By this time Jeep Woman’s face has turned purple, there are car horns blasting off all down the street and Nana Josie, Krish and me have got the giggles.

‘I’m glad you find this so funny! Some of us are in a hurry,’ Jeep Woman screams out of her window.

Nana is suddenly seriously not amused. She can do that, Nana . . . just suddenly turn from sunny to steely in a few seconds. Now she’s walking over to Jeep Woman and sounding out every
word as if she might not quite understand English.

‘That is my coffin, in the car in front. And if you don’t calm down you’ll be getting straight out of your big fat Jeep and into one of those yourself. Now concentrate on your
breathing and calm yourself down. We share the same air, you know . . . if only you weren’t set on poisoning us all.’