The Accident by Katie McMahon

Author:Katie McMahon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction

Chapter Seventeen

GRACE

Spring

The best thing about this school was that Emma seemed just that little bit happier, and the worst thing about it was its ridiculous pick-up arrangements. One-way streets. Huge cars, small cul-de-sacs, tense intersections. Grace manoeuvred her car past a hatchback being piloted by a teenager, and wondered if, next year, and depending on her health, Emma could perhaps start catching the bus home every day.

‘How was school?’ Grace asked when Emma got in, and for perhaps quite literally the ten-thousandth time. (At some point, she’d have to do the maths. How many days, multiplied by how many weeks, multiplied by how many years, had she been asking Emma that question?)

Emma peered down at a hair elastic she’d found in the side of the door. ‘It was okay,’ she said.

In fact, Grace wondered why she still felt disappointed when Emma replied, ‘Fie-yun!’ or ‘Okay’ or (at best) ‘Good, thanks, Mother-dear.’ What was Grace expecting? ‘Well, Mum, even though I appear to be coping with maths, it’s reducing my self-esteem because I’m worse at it than some of the others, and also I wish I was in the cross-country despite the fact that I didn’t try out for it, and on a scale of one to ten I’m hovering at about six-point-five in terms of accepting that I’m not one of the prettiest or most popular girls in my year group, but I suspect I’ll develop better self-acceptance and more wholesome priorities as I mature, and in terms of having my actual, legitimate needs met, such as making some friends, there’s not much progress on that, but at least I’m still eating and menstruating and my BMI is almost back in the healthy range’?

‘How was poetry club?’ Grace tried again. She kept her voice casual, the way she’d done since Emma was small. ‘How was maths?’

‘Ha! Good,’ said Emma. ‘Maths, we’re doing trigonometry, so crap, and English was good, and we found out about the end-of-year production, and yeah, Ms Peters says I can be in the ensemble. Which will be good. Because Amy is probably going to be the stage manager or at least the assistant stage manager.’

‘Really?’ said Grace. Emma hadn’t told her she was trying out. More sedately, she added, ‘That all sounds pretty good.’

‘Yeah, and her mum could drop me off, Amy said, if we have late rehearsals, and I could maybe have dinner at her house sometimes. What is for dinner?’

‘Roast lamb.’ Grace had to work to keep the delight out of her voice, for so many reasons, but mainly because Emma had forgotten. A few weeks ago, they would have been negotiating about the fat content of the meat, about the kilojoules in potatoes. Emma would have been saying, So, Mother-dear, about this roast lamb you’re suggesting? and then, minutes later, screaming, How can even you think that’s reasonable?

‘With salad? Or steamed veggies? What do you reckon?’ Grace said.

She shouldn’t have mentioned salad. Any minute there’d be an irritated shrug and a ‘Calm down,

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