Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind (12 page)

Toniah stops listening. She notices a foetus in the front row, row A. It moves as though it’s shadow-boxing. She can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl, but it has hair already. She remembers the photograph of the boy sitting on Nana Stone’s knee. His hair was brushed back off his high forehead, like Nana Stone’s forehead—and hers and Poppy’s,
and
Eva’s—but the shape of his face was markedly different, squarer, an alien intervention among all-too-familiar features.

“I’d visit the ward with you once or twice a week,” says Toniah. And she imagines Carmen sitting in the second-trimester ward, her hand resting on the baby bottle—a modern-day Madonna and Child.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

London, 2015

Her dad coaxes the log-burning stove towards optimum combustion by cutting the cold air feed and increasing the hot air circulation. The flames no longer flicker. They roll around and lick the smouldering logs, a miniature aurora over a miniature landscape. It’s the perfect welcome, Toni feels, for Natalie—her favourite auntie, her mum’s younger sister. A fire makes a house feel like a home. Cosy.

He picks up the television controller from the coffee table by Toni’s side.

“Don’t change the channel, Dad. I’m watching that.” She pulls out one of her earpieces.

“You’re writing on your laptop and listening to music.”

What’s the point in stating the obvious? she thinks. “So? I’m waiting for the best bit when Amy Pond—”

“Is that homework, young lady?”

She tips her head to one side. “I’m doing something easy. As in
half-a-brain-cell
easy.”

“So . . . listening to music, doing your homework, reading messages no doubt, watching television.”

“It’s completely straightforward. I’m making a questionnaire for my history project.”

Toni rolls her eyes as her dad turns to leave the room. Multitasking—that’s a major problem for her dad, she thinks. If she’s in the car with him and they’re listening to music, he actually turns down the volume when he starts a conversation. Even if it’s just a question. Yesterday, on the way to school, he turned the volume down and asked, “Are you happy to have yesterday’s leftover curry for dinner?” She said, “Yes,” and immediately turned the volume
up
.

Her history project—now she’s sorted out her ideas—will be a cinch. All she needs to do is ask her friends a few simple questions. The questions
must
be simple; if they demand more than thirty seconds’ attention, her friends won’t bother answering. And it’s got to sound dramatic.

Do you have a relative who died in a major disaster or war? Did this relative die before ever having children? Please tell me his or her name, age (roughly) at death, how he or she died and one interesting thing that you know about this person.

Is that asking too much? she muses.

She’ll ask her friends to forward the questions to anyone they know in Costa Rica or India or New Zealand, or anywhere interesting—that is, outside England. Global reach will get extra marks—it’s more data. It’s not exactly scientific, but then this is a history project.

Toni looks up as Amy Pond says, “I think that’s the first time I’ve laughed in thirty-six years.” It’s a brilliant line. Toni hits Rewind and presses Play again. She listens to Amy’s laugh—the first in thirty-six years. It’s so convincing. She wonders if she got it right the first time or if she practised thirty-six times. Toni laughs at her own joke, which she knows isn’t cool.

“The Girl Who Waited”—it’s the tenth episode of the sixth series, with Matt Smith, her favourite, as the Doctor—though he doesn’t appear much in this episode. He’s had the bright idea to take Amy Pond and her boyfriend, Rory, on a holiday to this planet Apalapucia. To Toni’s eyes, Amy Pond is almost impossibly beautiful. And she looks convincing as a warrior with her shield and her club. If Toni could choose to be anyone in the universe, she’d choose to be Amy Pond.

Back to the project. Toni has already decided that she’ll use the Historypin app to put all the dead relatives on a map and share it with everyone, including her teacher, Mrs. O’Brien.

On reflection, she realizes that most of these dead relatives will be men, because so many men died in wars. So she changes “died in a major disaster or war” to “died in a natural disaster, an accident, war, epidemic or childbirth.” That makes it clear that Spanish flu is included, and all her friends have now studied Spanish flu. It could include being plain unlucky—death by lightning strike, crushed by a falling tree—but she doesn’t want any car accidents in her project, so she deletes “an accident.”

What else? Definitely photographs—because this app is all about pinning photos with a shortish comment. Pictures say a thousand words, et cetera. Is that another aphorism? she wonders. Probably not. Doesn’t sound very spiritual, very Buddhist.

Toni knows she should give an example with the history questions, so she’ll send out the invitation when she thinks of one. Maybe she should invent one. Also, she needs a good title for the project. “Dead Ends on Your Family Tree.” “The Missing Families.” “The Families That Never Were.” Not bad. “Toni’s History Project—Missing Persons.” That’s better. She jumps up from the sofa and swipes the air with an imaginary club. She’s got it: “Toni’s History Project—Persons Unknown.” Yes, then it’s clear that she’s really interested in the people who were never born, and it sounds a bit like
The X-Files
.

Rory’s mad, and he’s screaming at the Doctor back in his Tardis. This is the bit she’s waiting for, so she pauses the programme, gathers herself for total concentration and presses the Play button. Rory shouts at the Doctor, “This is your fault. You should look at a history book once in a while. See if there’s been an outbreak of plague or not.”

That’s it. She knew someone mentioned
plague
in this episode. The planet of Apalapucia is under quarantine because of a deadly virus, Chen-7. Anyone with two hearts, like the Doctor, will be dead within an hour. That’s why Matt Smith is staying put in the Tardis. And Amy has accidentally stepped into an accelerated timeline, so there are now two versions of Amy Pond. One Amy is her usual gorgeous self, and the other Amy is ageing, fast. She’s been waiting thirty-six years for the Doctor and Rory to save her, even though
they
think she’s been waiting a few hours. Old Amy, all wrinkled but still lovely, is talking to Rory through the closed door of the Tardis. She tells him to leave her behind on Apalapucia. “Tell your Amy I’m giving her the days, the days with you.”

Toni hasn’t watched this episode since her mum died. Her stomach knots. Poor Old Amy. She died before she had a child. A log slips within the stove, and the fire sparks. Toni decides to pin a picture of Amy in her project. She’s a TV character, but Toni can borrow her; like her dad says, you can borrow anything you like these days. Anything goes. But where should she pin her?

Somewhere in Scotland; she speaks with a Scottish accent. She types a search question:
Where does Amy Pond live?
Answer: The
English
village of Leadworth. Is that a real place? Google Maps says . . . it isn’t.

Toni does another search, this time on Leadworth, and the search result brings up a
Doctor Who
fan who has trawled—unbelievable—the entire British Isles on Google Maps and Street View to find Amy Pond’s home as it appears in several
Doctor Who
episodes. In the real world, Leadworth is Llandaff—a village in Wales.

Toni pins Old Amy Pond in Llandaff and adds a few lines of text:
Old Amy Pond stayed behind on the planet of Apalapucia in an act of heroism so that Young Amy Pond could live out her life with Rory (“The Girl Who Waited,” Episode 10, Series 6,
Doctor Who
).
Teachers like references.

There’s a mechanical screaming from the kitchen, and Toni knows her dad is blending the tomato sauce for the pizzas. It’s her favourite meal, and she thinks she’s lucky having a dad who makes home-made pizzas. She slams down the lid of the laptop, folds her arms and, between fingers and thumbs, pinches the skin in the crooks of her elbows until it hurts. She feels bad; if she had to choose between her mum and dad, she imagines she might have chosen her dad. She shuts her eyes and concentrates hard on her mum’s prawn risotto.

The weird thing is, she didn’t think about her mum too much in China. Now that she’s home, she thinks about her all the time.

She leaves the sitting room and pulls the pizza toppings from the fridge. Pineapple, ham and mushrooms for herself, and ham, mushrooms and olives for her dad. Her mum liked anchovies, and there’s still a flat tin of anchovies in the fridge. It’s been there over a year, and neither Toni nor her dad has felt like moving it. Toni touches the tin for several moments, as she does every time she goes to the fridge.

Toni hears the back door open, and she spins around expecting to see Natalie, but it’s Anna Robecchi carrying a dish.

“Smells good in here, guys,” she says.

“Anna, you’re too busy to look after us like this,” says Toni’s dad. Anna places the dish—baked peaches in custard—on the kitchen island and looks towards Toni, eyebrows raised, inviting a response.

“Look!” Her dad points to a hardback book on the island. “I’ve bought some pudding recipes. You’ve inspired me.”

Toni is impressed. Her dad always uses the Internet to find recipes, so he’s bought the book purely to make the point to Anna. And that’s why he left it lying around; he usually keeps his kitchen tidy.

What’s more, he wouldn’t make the point if anything were actually going on between them. Toni feels relieved, but embarrassed, too. So, by way of apology to her dad, she says, “Thank you, Anna. Looks awesome.”

Then her dad goes too far. “Stay and have pizza. Natalie’s coming round in ten minutes. We’ll make it a party.”

“No. That’s kind, but I’ve made plans. I can’t stop.”

He gives Anna a friendly hug, and she leaves.

He removes tea towels from three baking trays to reveal his pizza bases—he always lets them rise for half an hour after he’s rolled them—and he starts to spoon on the tomato mix. Toni tears up the mozzarella into small pieces.

“That wasn’t tactless, was it? I didn’t sound ungrateful?” says her dad.

“You were fine.”

She keeps her face down, hiding her blushing cheeks, and feigns total attention for her pizza construction.

Happiness is . . . Happiness is a lovely dinner with her dad and Natalie. Natalie raises her glass of wine and says, “To the chef. One of your best, Dominic.” They all clink glasses—Toni with her sparkling water.

Her dad and Natalie are chatting about work. Toni’s pleased she doesn’t have to join in. She can look down at her plate and imagine her mum is sitting at the table—her voice was identical to Natalie’s.

Natalie says, “I’m so jealous of your trip to China.” It sounds, to Toni, as though her mum is talking to them from
the other side
. She imagines her mum would be fed up, missing the trip. But then, if she hadn’t died, her dad would have made the trip on his own.

“Toni? I thought I’d look through some more of your mum’s things this evening,” says Natalie. “Would you like to help? There might be some clothes you’d like to keep.”

She likes how Natalie barges in; doesn’t worry about broaching things carefully. Some of her dad’s friends tiptoe around her as though she’s standing on thin ice.

“You’ve already had a sort-out, haven’t you?” says Toni.

“I only went through the drawers.” Toni knows Natalie means her mum’s underwear and T-shirts. “She had a thing for multiple purchases, didn’t she?”

Toni laughs lightly. “Three or four of everything, in different colours.”

“I think she caught that habit from me,” says her dad.

“Some of her nicer clothes could be collectibles in twenty years, Toni. You might wish you’d kept them. I’m thinking ahead. You know, the vintage of tomorrow.”

“I suppose I could reuse any nice fabrics. Recycle bits.”

Natalie grins, but her eyes fill up with tears. “That’s a lovely idea. I hope you never throw away your DIY jackets. If you have a daughter someday, she’d love to wear them.”

Toni’s eyes widen. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

Natalie has this way of making her feel like an adult. When she arrived this evening, she took one look at the baked peaches and said, straight out, “We need to watch that woman next door, Toni. I think she’s taking a shine to your dad.” It made her feel better about making such a scene in Suzhou.

“Come on. Let’s get started, then,” says Natalie. “I’m kinda looking forward to finding all your mum’s shopping mistakes.”

Natalie peeked in Connie’s walk-in wardrobe a few months back—wanting to spend a few quiet moments with her sister’s clothes while Toni was out of the house. It certainly didn’t look anything like this. The clothes are now organized by colour, whereas before they were grouped, as she groups her own clothes, by type—blouses and shirts, trousers and skirts, cardigans and sweaters, jackets and coats, with dressy clothes in the smallest section at one end. Dominic has evidently spent time setting out some colour palette. Black clothes transition through charcoal grey, light grey, purples—which always suited Connie—through to greens and yellows, creams and, finally, whites.