Ginger and Me by Elissa Soave

Author:Elissa Soave [Soave, Elissa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2022-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

19

GINGER STAYED AT MINE that night since she said she’d never get any sleep with all those people at Uncle Tam’s. For the next few weeks we saw each other most days, and she’d stay over quite often too, it was like she didn’t want to go home. I gave her a back door key so she could come even when I wasn’t there. I loved it when I finished work and there she’d be, lying on the couch flicking through the channels. She looked so happy and relaxed, as though she belonged there. Sometimes when I got off a backshift she’d be sitting at the kitchen table, with two bowls piled high with her speciality mincey pasta in front of her, waiting for me to come and eat. More often I’d bring in something for us both.

‘What’s on the menu tonight Wendy?’ she’d say, her hands already outstretched for the boxes or plastic cartons. If it was chicken pakora, or pizza from Enzo’s, her eyes lit up like I’d gifted her diamonds.

‘Oh Wendy,’ she’d say, ‘you’re brilliant, you know that?’

And after we’d eaten, I’d persuade Ginger to pick up whatever book we were working on and read me half a dozen pages from it. She was still embarrassed about reading children’s books but I was proud of the way she kept at it, she could be pretty determined when she wanted to be.

It wasn’t all about me helping Ginger though, she helped me too. She was the one who said we should make a project of doing up my house. I knew she was right. Doing up the house and making it feel more like home the way it used to would make me feel better, so we went round the house making a list of all the things that needed to be fixed or replaced, painted over or covered up. It was a long list.

‘I think we should start first thing tomorrow – with the living room,’ Ginger said. Apparently new coasters and the resurrection of Mum’s mouldy old rug didn’t quite cut it as far as she was concerned. I could see her point, and I was off the next day so I said, ‘Okay, let’s do it.’

Next morning, she knocked on the back door at half past ten. I stopped at the door when I saw her. She had her hair up in a high ponytail like a girl heading out to her exercise class. Her neck was thin and delicate, her cheekbones – normally covered by the thick waves of hair – were revealed to be high and prominent.

‘Something wrong?’ she said.

‘I … no, nothing,’ I said, dragging my eyes away from her jutting collarbone, and looking at what she was holding.

She grinned at me, and raised the two soft paintbrushes, their handles looped through two huge tins of paint she’d brought with her.

‘Uncle Tam comes in handy sometimes,’ she said, as she dropped them onto the kitchen floor.

‘I didn’t know he was also involved in the decorating business.

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