Wishbones Read online

  Praise for Virginia Macgregor

  ‘Undobutedly a future classic’ (Clare Mackintosh, author of Sunday Times Top Ten bestselling I Let You Go)

  ‘A life-affirming read… Warm, wise and insightful’ (Good Housekeeping)

  ‘Sharp, funny and hugely moving, this is a must read’ (Fabulous)

  ‘It is impossible not to fall in love with nine-year-old Milo in this touching novel’ (Stylist)

  ‘The characterisation and dialogue make it easy to feel empathy for the family and readers will cheer Milo on to achieve his goal’ (Sun)

  ‘[An] understated and likeable tale that just might restore your faith in human nature’ (Bella)

  VIRGINIA MACGREGOR is the author of What Milo Saw, The Return of Norah Wells, Before I Was Yours and, most recently, the young adult novel Wishbones. Her work has been translated into over a dozen languages. After graduating from Oxford University, she worked as a teacher of English and Housemistress in three major British boarding schools. She holds an MA in Creative Writing, and was, for several years, Head of Creative Writing at Wellington College. She is married to Hugh and they live with their daughter, Tennessee Skye, in Concord, New Hampshire.

  For my darling Hugh and my dearest little Tennessee Skye: thank you for teaching me, each day, what it means to be truly beautiful – and truly lucky.

  Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul

  And sings the tune without words And never stops at all.

  Emily Dickinson

  Contents

  Cover

  Praise

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  New Year’s Eve

  Chapter 1

  January

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  February

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  March

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  April

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  May

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  1 June

  Chapter 37

  September

  A Word from the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  I was born seven weeks premature. An incubator baby. Tubes stuffed up my nose, eyes screwed shut, looked like a tiny wrinkly vole.

  I wasn’t meant to survive.

  When the nurse put me into Dad’s arms for the first time, he said: She’s light as a feather. That’s how I got my name.

  Kids at school think it’s funny, the boys especially.

  Featherweight champ, they say.

  Quack quack, they chant, waddling with their feet turned out.

  Tweet tweet, they chirp, flapping their arms.

  I was so small that doctors came up from London and peered at me through the incubator walls and journalists sneaked onto the ward to ask questions and take photos.

  I wonder whether that was what made Mum hospitalphobic – the scare she got from me being so small. And then I think about her other phobias too and where they came from, like her leaving-the-house phobia and her swimming phobia and her running-out-of-food phobia.

  You were the tiniest baby Willingdon had ever seen, Dad’s told me more times than I can remember, like I’d won a prize. Anyway, it’s all turned out to be what Miss Pierce, my History teacher, calls ironic, because people say the same thing of Mum now – except the opposite: that she’s The Biggest Woman Willingdon Has Ever Seen. People sometimes ask me if I’m adopted. I know what they’re thinking: how can someone so small belong to someone who takes up as much space as Mum?

  People are still really interested in Mum and her weight and the fact that she hasn’t come out of the house in years. Last summer, I found Allen, a reporter from the Newton News, hiding behind our hedge with his camera angled at Mum’s bedroom window. He said he’d give me twenty quid if I let him take a photo. I told him to get lost, obviously.

  Anyway, Mum’s been chubby ever since I’ve known her, it’s just the way she is. What’s more important for you to know is that she’s the best mum in the world. A mum who’s funny and clever and always has time to listen and doesn’t obsess about stuff like homework and being tidy – or eating vegetables. And although she’s a little on the large side, she’s beautiful, like proper, old-fashioned movie-star beautiful: long, thick, wavy hair, a wide, dimply smile and big soulful eyes that change colour in different lights – sometimes they’re blue and sometimes they’re green and sometimes they’re a brown so light it’s like they’re filled with flecks of gold.

  Whenever I think about Mum and how awesome she is and how close we are, I realise that there can’t be many daughters out there as lucky as me.

  So Mum being overweight has never mattered to me. As far as I’m concerned, there are a million worse things a mum can be.

  That is, it never mattered until last night, New Year’s Eve, when everything went wrong. Really, horribly wrong.

  New Year’s Eve

  1

  ‘You sure you don’t want to come out?’ Jake asks. ‘Rock the town together?’

  Jake’s the only guy I know who can be cool and geeky at the same time. We’ve been best friends since we were a week old. My mum and Jake’s mum were pregnant with us at the same time and they went to this baby group, so we were destined to be together. Mum and Steph are really close too. Or they were until this Christmas when they had a blazing row. Now, Mum doesn’t want Steph coming round any more.

  ‘Rock the town in Willingdon?’ I ask.

  Willingdon is the smallest village in England. Population 351 – blink and you’ll miss it. Jake and I are the only kids here.

  Jake laughs. ‘Well, rock the village then.’

  It’s 11.30pm, New Year’s Eve, and we’re lying on Jake’s bedroom floor, staring at the glow stars on his ceiling and listening to one of his Macklemore albums. Before his parents got divorced, Jake used to listen to hip-hop with his dad. He doesn’t really see his dad now so I guess listening to those albums is a way for Jake to feel like they’re still close.

  ‘I’ve got to get back to Mum.’ I get up and brush bits of popcorn off my jeans. Popcorn was the only thing that kept me going through Jake’s zombie invasion film.

  Jake rolls over. ‘So you’re letting me go out all on my own?’

  ‘Why don’t you call Amy?’ I ask.

  He shakes his head. Amy’s meant to be Jake’s girlfriend but he seems to spend more time avoiding her than actually going out with her.

  At New Year, most people prefer to be in crowds: everyone pressing in, counting down, filling up their champagne flutes, music blaring. I like it quiet, just me and the person I love most in the whole world: Mum. I love Dad too, but he’s so busy zooming around on emergency plumbing jobs that he doesn’t have time to talk. Even on New Year’s, he’s out repairing people’s blocked loos and leaky drains and frozen pipes. So Mum and I see the New Year in together. In those last few seconds before the clock ticks over, we hold our han
ds and our breaths and send wishes out to the New Year.

  I love it. The magic of it. The stillness. The feeling that anything could happen.

  ‘I’ll call you,’ I say to Jake.

  ‘At 12:01,’ he throws back.

  That’s a tradition too, my 12:01 post-New Years Eve phone call to Jake.

  ‘12:01. I promise.’ I lean over and kiss his cheek – a bit too close to his mouth, which makes us both jolt back and stare in opposite directions. ‘You can tell me all about your resolutions,’ I say quickly.

  Jake raises his eyebrows. ‘I’m not perfect already?’

  ‘Perfect’s overrated.’

  He smiles.

  The thing is, beside his bad taste in films, Jake’s as close to perfect as it gets. Next to Mum and Dad, he’s the best thing in my life.

  There are loads of people out on Willingdon Green, standing on their front lawns with plastic champagne flutes looking at the sky. Behind the fireworks, droopy Christmas decorations hang from people’s houses and the shops on the parade, which makes the village look tired.

  When I get to our cottage, which sits bang opposite St Mary’s Church, it’s the same as always. Dad’s Emergency Plumbing Van is missing from the drive and a blue light flickers through the lounge windows. It’s been Mum’s room ever since she got too large to manage the stairs. And to share a bed with Dad.

  We’ve had to build ramps everywhere and to make all the doors bigger so that she can fit through them. Including the front door. Which is all a bit pointless because Mum hasn’t left the house in thirteen years.

  So, the lounge is basically Mum’s world.

  I’ve thought about ways to get her out of the house or to help her with a diet, but whenever I suggest going for a walk, she finds an excuse not to move from her armchair, which has the telly dead in front of it and the window that looks out to The Green to the right of it, so she can alternate between looking at a made-up world and a real world she’s left behind.

  I suppose she’s happy enough. And if you love someone, you have to accept them how they are, right?

  Alongside the extra-wide doors, Dad ordered Mum a supersize wheelchair. It came in a container ship from America and I sometimes take Mum for rides around the ground floor of the house in it. The wheelchair is so wide it nearly touches the walls. Mum’s so wide she nearly touches the walls.

  If Willingdon is the smallest village in the UK, then our cottage must be the smallest house in the UK. When I was five, Steph, Jake’s mum, gave me this pop-up Alice in Wonderland book. One of the pop-ups is of Alice when she’s eaten the cake and got really, really big: her legs and arms and head stick out of the doors and windows and it looks like any moment now, her house is going to burst open. I’ve still got that book and every time I look at it, I think of Mum and how big she is and how little our cottage is and how maybe, one day, the walls and doors and windows will fly off and there’ll be nothing left but Mum sitting in her chair in the middle of Willingdon watching a re-run of Strictly Come Dancing.

  On the way up the drive, I see Houdini, our pet goat, straining on his lead. He’s come out of the kennel Dad made for him, and he’s staring up at Mum’s window – and he’s screaming his head off.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I say, patting his belly. ‘The fireworks will stop soon.’

  Houdini’s a local celebrity: people from the village come and rub his horns for luck. The vet reckons he’s about seventy years old but we can’t be sure. A few years before I was born, Dad found him wandering by the motorway that runs just outside Willingdon and brought him home and he’s been living in our front garden ever since.

  ‘It’s going to be the best year ever,’ I whisper into Houdini’s ear.

  Houdini stops bleating, but he doesn’t take his eyes off Mum’s window.

  ‘You want to come in?’

  He bows his head like he’s nodding.

  ‘Okay, just don’t chew anything.’

  Houdini and Mum have one big thing in common: they’re always hungry. I reckon that if Mum ran out of food, she’d start chewing flowers and inanimate objects too.

  I kiss the top of Houdini’s head, untie his lead from the post Dad drilled into the floor of his kennel, and take him inside.

  He lets out a croaky bleat and his bell tinkles. It’s a huge cow-bell Dad ordered from Switzerland to help us find Houdini when he goes missing. Which happens about once a week. We usually find him in Rev Cootes’s garden or at the empty Lido in Willingdon Park.

  I open the front door.

  ‘Mum!’ I call out.

  No answer. Which is weird. Mum always answers. She’s got one of those deep, rich voices that make people stop and listen.

  ‘Mum!’ I push Houdini into the kitchen. ‘Stay there – and don’t eat anything.’ I close the kitchen door and go to the lounge. ‘Five minutes till midnight, Mum!’

  I hear a groan.

  I run to the door and throw it open.

  ‘Mum!’

  And then I see her – lying on the carpet, packets of prawn cocktail crisps and Galaxy chocolate wrappers and sticky tins of pineapple strewn around her.

  When I look closer, I see that her mouth is foaming and that her eyes are rolling behind their flickering lids.

  You know that expression? The bottom fell out from under me? Well, I get it now, how, in a second, your whole life, everything you thought was safe and solid, just disappears and leaves you grasping at thin air.

  I kneel down beside Mum’s body, shaking.

  Mum’s re-run of Strictly Come Dancing is playing on the TV. A long-legged blonde and an old, squat, B-list celebrity are waltzing around the dance floor – they’re spinning and spinning and spinning under the glare of the studio lights, their mouths stretched into those manic smiles people put on for TV.

  My attention shifts back to Mum. Apart from the fact that she’s massive, the woman lying in front of me doesn’t look anything like Mum. She’s one of those bodies the camera pans over after an invasion in Jake’s zombie movies: her limbs are sticking out at weird angles and her mouth is slack and her skin pale. When I touch her brow it’s sweaty but her skin feels cold.

  Come on Feather, think.

  I did a life-saving course at the pool, though most of the stuff was linked to pulling people out of the water.

  Before I can do anything, I have to clear a whole load of Max’s Marvellous Adventures books that have fallen around Mum. She must have been reaching for one before she collapsed. They’re these old-fashioned, American stories about a boy who walks around in a red superhero outfit with a goat as his sidekick. I reckon that it’s a sign – that Houdini stepped right out of one of those books and started wandering alongside the motorway outside Willingdon because he was meant to be with us. Anyway, Mum loves those stories.

  I snap back into the present.

  Mum’s wheelchair is lying on its side.

  Yanking Mum onto her back takes all the strength I’ve got. I have to use the weight of her body to get some leverage. I feel a thump in my chest when her back hits the carpet and I worry I’ve winded her.

  For a second she opens her eyes.

  ‘Mum!’

  She’s still there. Thank God.

  She stretches out her hand. I grip it and hold it to my chest.

  ‘You’re going to be okay, Mum,’ I say. ‘Everything’s going to be okay.’

  But her eyelids drop closed again and her hand goes limp.

  ‘Mum… please – wake up!’

  Outside, the fireworks bang. It feels like explosions detonating in my skull.

  I tilt Mum’s head and check her airway.

  This isn’t happening. That’s all I keep thinking. This can’t be happening.

  I put my ear to her mouth, but my blood’s pounding so loud I can’t hear anything.

  Leaning in closer to her mouth, I wait to feel her breath against my cheek, but there’s nothing.

  I get out my mobile and speed dial Dad. It goes straight to answerp
hone.

  ‘Dad – you have to come home. It’s Mum.’

  As I hang up, I realise I’m on my own. And if I don’t save Mum, it’ll be my fault.

  I put one hand on top of the other, splay my fingers and place them on her sternum. I don’t even know whether this is what I should be doing and Mum’s so big I can’t tell whether I’ve found the right place, but I have to do something.

  I push my hands up and down: one two three… I breathe into her mouth… one two three…

  This is hopeless.

  I grab my phone again to dial 999.

  And then I pause.

  Mum would hate it: the ambulance pulling up outside our house, everyone from the village staring at her being carried out on a stretcher. That is, if the stretcher will even hold her.

  I don’t want to be gawped at, Mum says whenever I suggest we go out to the cinema or to the shops or for a walk in Willingdon Park. She won’t even come to watch me in my swimming galas. I tell her it doesn’t matter what people think, that she’s way prettier and cleverer and funnier than any of the stupid people who make comments. But I get why she finds it hard – when you’re as large as Mum, people can be mean. Really mean.

  And then there’s her whole hospital-phobia thing.

  But she’s dying. She’s actually dying. Why am I even considering not calling an ambulance?

  I dial.

  ‘I have to do this Mum,’ I whisper. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘We’re going to have to call the Fire and Rescue Service,’ says one of the paramedics.

  I was right about the stretcher. There was no chance Mum was going to fit on it.

  I look over the paramedic’s shoulder. Everyone on The Green has forgotten all about New Year’s Eve and the fireworks: they’re huddled in clumps staring at the ambulance with its flashing lights.

  ‘They’ll have better equipment to get her out,’ he adds.

  I wish Dad would come home.

  And I wish they’d hurry up and get Mum to hospital. The paramedic said she’s stable but he won’t explain why she’s not waking up.

  Plus, I’m angry that the 999 woman didn’t listen when I told her that they’d need extra manpower, that Mum wasn’t like a normal emergency patient. And because she didn’t listen, only two paramedics turned up. So they had to get help from Mr Ding, the owner of the Lucky Lantern Takeaway Van, and this other guy I don’t know who’s recently moved into the cottage next door. And even then they couldn’t lift Mum.