Will moved his head in a half shake, half nod.
Martha waited.
Finally, he worked his tongue around inside his mouth. “Mum and Dad aren’t getting along at the moment.”
“Oh.” Martha thought about putting on a cheery face, of thumping his arm and telling him to keep his chin up. But she fought against the urge, not saying or doing anything.
“She likes everything to be perfect.” Will sighed. “I can’t leave socks on the floor or eat food in front of the TV. If she says I’ve got to be home at nine o’clock, god forbid if I’m even a minute late. Now she’s asked me to make a note of everything we do this weekend, so she knows what’s gone on. It’s going too far. It’s so crappy, trying to please her all the time.”
Martha gave his arm a brief rub. She knew what it was like, trying to please a demanding parent. “Your mum likes to be organized,” she tried to explain. “She’s just trying to show an interest in you.”
“It’s more than that,” Will said. “She’s obsessed. It’s like she thinks that someone is going to show up with a clipboard and give her marks out of ten for everything she does... everything we do.”
“Your granddad liked everything done in a certain way, too. Perhaps it’s rubbed off on your mum.”
Will leaned back on the mattress and it squeaked beneath his elbows. He glanced around the room. “Gran wasn’t that old when she died, was she? My mate at school has grandparents in their nineties.”
“Zelda is almost ninety, too.” Martha stopped talking, not wanting to let it slip to Will that she was his great-grandmother. “Your gran was only in her midsixties. I don’t think she knew how to live without your granddad.”
“What? She died of a broken heart?”
Martha mused on this. “Something like that.”
Will folded his arms. “I remember them sitting around the dining table. Granddad gave us chocolate when Mum wasn’t looking, and his hair was really black, like a vampire’s. He liked flowers, didn’t he? There was always a vase on the table.”
“Yes, freesias. He bought them for your gran each week.”
Will nodded. “Gran looked after us. She wore nice colors, like an exotic bird. Though she was always nervy.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you know those horror films where there’s a woman on her own in a spooky house, and she’s walking along a dark corridor to investigate a strange noise in the kitchen? Like no one would ever do in real life. Well, Gran was like that, like she always expected something to jump out at her.” He looked down. “I kind of miss them both.”
Even though her parents had shaped her life, Martha also missed them. “Me, too,” she said. She hesitated before she draped her arm around his shoulder, not sure if a thirteen-year-old boy would appreciate a hug.
Will pressed himself against her for a couple of seconds before he moved quickly away. “Cheers,” he muttered.
Rose and Zelda entered the room again at the same time. Zelda lifted her nose and sniffed the air. “Is everything okay? Have I missed something?”
Will and Martha shared a brief smile.
“Nothing,” Martha said. “We were just about to get started on the dragon’s head. Choose which paintbrush you want to use.”
The next two hours were ones that Martha knew she’d remember and relish for a long while. Time with her nana, niece and nephew might be short and she was determined to enjoy it.
After Martha gave the dragon a light sandpapering, Rose mixed the paint. She stuck her tongue out from the corner of her mouth as she concentrated on stopping it from oozing off the plate.
Zelda instructed her how to mix the colors. “For the dragon’s fleshy tones, you can use white with a dab of red and yellow. Never add black to darken a color, or you deaden the shade.”
“How do you even know that?” Rose marveled.
“My friend Gina is nifty with a paintbrush.”
Will insisted his job was to hold the dragon’s head up, so Zelda didn’t have to lean down too far to paint his face.
Martha thrived on taking charge of instructions. “That red is a little too bright, tone it down a little... Watch your sleeve doesn’t dangle in the paint, Rose... Would anyone like a nice cup of tea?”
Will talked about Spotify on his phone, and Martha agreed he could play some music.
They painted the dragon to the sound of Katy Perry and Beyoncé.
“He looks friendly,” Rose said, sitting back on her heels to admire their work. “I think he might live in the cave on Sandshift beach.”
“Dragon’s don’t live on the beach,” Will snorted. “They wouldn’t be able to breathe fire because the sea would put it out.”
“Of course they do,” Zelda said. She pressed a fine paintbrush against the dragon’s eye, adding a dot of white light to his pupil. “Haven’t you ever heard of the Sandshift Dragon?”
“No.” Will rolled his eyes, but then he leaned in a little. “What about it?”
“Tell us,” Rose said.
Zelda made her hands into claws. “His body is iridescent like a dragonfly’s and his scales look like rows of crescent moons. When you stare into his eyes, they look like they are full of fire. He isn’t a red-and-yellow dragon, like this one. The Sandshift Beast is dark green, the color of swampland.”
Martha looked at her nana and down at the tassels on the rug on the floor. It transported her back in time, to when she lay scribbling in her notepad. Words began to pop into her head and she joined in with the story. “It’s so he’s camouflaged against the seaweed on the sand. Each morning, before anyone wakes, he gobbles it up for his breakfast. People think he’s scary but really he’s shy...”
Zelda nodded. “Some say he comes from Romania, Count Dracula country. He came over on a boat, an exotic pet for a wealthy aristocrat. But the dragon set fire to his mansion. Somehow he escaped and found his way down to the sands...”
“He’d never seen the sea before,” Martha said. “Or sand. He loved the quietness of the cave. If you ever hear a roar in there, sometimes it’s the tide coming in, but often it’s the dragon testing out his lungs. He likes to paddle in the shallows and sometimes goes for a swim...”
Will gave a deep sigh. “Oh, sure. Dragons can’t swim.”
“The Loch Ness Monster swims. He’s not a dragon, though he’s some kind of distant relative.” Martha shuffled back by a few inches, moving her head to examine her work. “I think this fellow is finished.”
Will and Rose smiled, proud at what they’d accomplished, yet Zelda wore a look of contemplation. She kept hold of her paintbrush.
“Are you okay?” Martha asked.
Zelda stared at the dragon and then at her. “You’ve done it,” she said.
“Yes. We all have. He looks great, doesn’t he? You’d never know he was damaged before.”
“No. I mean that you’ve done it. You told a story. You remembered how to do it.”
Martha swallowed as a warm feeling began to creep over her, just like the one she sought by doing things for other people. It was as if she’d just stepped out of an air-conditioned room, and she savored it for a while.
“Yes, I did, didn’t I?” She nodded. “Maybe we should write the story down.”
29
Books
The next morning, the four of them took the bus over to Maltsborough. They sat on the back seat together and chatted for the entire journey. Zelda had decided to leave her wheelchair at Martha’s house. “It gets in the way and I want to move freely,” she said, making her hand into a snake. “I want to see the amusement arcades.”
As they neared the town, Rose nudged Will in his side. “You ask her,” she said.
“No.” He pushed back. “You do it.”
“What is it?” Martha asked. “What do you want?”
“Rose wants to go to the bookshop,” Will said with a smirk.
“It’s you who wants to go,” Rose retaliated.
“Is this the bookshop you refused to visit with me?” Martha frowned. “When you preferred a slice of chocolate fudge cake instead?”
“It didn’t taste as good as I remembered,” Will said.