Summerwater Sarah Moss (microsoft ebook reader txt) 📖

herbal teabags. She chooses one each night, as if they weren’t all the same anyway, as if dead leaves and hot water constitute some kind of celebration. Mum opens the box and stands there pushing her nose into it. It’s her holiday treat, the selection box, at home she just buys supermarket chamomile, smelling of wet hay and loose because teabags are bad for the environment, which means that Mum’s special treat is to destroy the planet Becky’s going to inherit. Mmm, she says, now I’m saving the last of the cinnamon ones, I suppose I should have the lemon and ginger, I’m going to have to drink it sometime, but maybe mint and fennel tonight. Becky could wreck Mum’s whole system of self-punishments and rewards by making herself a cup of apple and elderflower tea one morning. Buy a bottle of wine, she thinks, or vodka. Go down the pub and get off your face on Baileys. Eat a whole tub of fucking ice-cream but stop wetting yourself over the teabags, Jesus Christ. Mind out, she says, I thought you wanted me to finish the washing up. No need to take that tone, says Mum, opening the little paper envelope as if there might be a golden ticket inside it, almost kissing her disgusting teabag. What tone, mutters Becky, and when Mum doesn’t respond, how do you know what tone I need.

I want to be dead.

She’s not going to get the burnt fish off the tray without taking the non-stick surface with it and anyway what does it matter what’s on a baking tray once it reaches 200C, surely that’s enough to sterilise whatever’s survived washing up. She goes on swishing the brush around until Mum’s settled herself in her armchair – if she gets to be that old, Becky will kill herself the day she first groans on sitting down – and then tips out the mucky water, runs the tray under the tap, watching a rainbow film of oil glisten and flow, and balances it behind the pile of more-or-less clean dishes on the draining board. She’s going to go see the soldier again, she thinks, because even hanging out with a weirdo in a wet tent is better than this. Being dead would be better than this. And he’s not that weird, actually, Gavin, he grew up in Lennoxtown, went to the Academy, normal enough, it’s just that then he joined the Army and ended up fighting in Iraq, though he won’t tell her what the fighting was about. Oil, he says. Money. Politicians in London telling lies. You don’t want to know. He stops looking at her when she asks about Iraq but she tried it anyway, what was it like then, out there? Did you kill anyone, she wanted to ask, because imagine crouching in a tent with a man who has killed someone and why else do soldiers go places, but she didn’t quite have the nerve. I don’t talk about that, he said, you need to get off home now lassie. Next time she took him a pack of biscuits from the cupboard and chatted about the weather and how weird it is on the park, the way everyone’s watching each other and there’s nothing to do and somehow this is meant to be more fun than being at home. He was definitely happier talking about her life than his, even made eye-contact once or twice. Don’t leave it like that, says Mum, everything’ll fall off, have a bit of sense. Some of it wants drying and putting away, you can’t always wander off and leave everything. I’m not trying to wander off, says Becky, I was just putting the tray down. Well, now you can pick it up, says Dad, and dry it and put it away the way Mum’s telling you. She wants to scream. She wants to throw the fucking tray at the wall. I washed up, she says, Alex can dry and put away. Oh for goodness’ sake, says Mum, Rob, you deal with her, and Dad stands up. Rebecca, can you just for once do as you’re told, can we just for once have one peaceful hour before bedtime without you whining and bickering. Your mother cooked for you, you’re too old for this, you’re acting like a spoilt child, you can’t expect to be waited on hand and foot, now take that cloth and dry those dishes and put them away or there’ll be trouble, do you understand? No, she thinks, actually I don’t, I don’t understand any of it, all this fuss about teabags and washing up, it’s not normal, normal parents would just be grateful I’m not taking drugs or sleeping around. Normal parents would be grateful she’s actually here with them in the stupid cabin in the middle of fucking nowhere, none of her friends have to do this stuff. Trouble like what, she says, and Dad looks at Mum and sighs and sits down again. Trouble like you won’t like, he says, trouble like not having any money and not being allowed to go out and if you really push it, trouble like not having a phone. Becks, can you just finish the job.

There isn’t anywhere to go out, she says, who even wants to go out, and in case you haven’t noticed phones are basically useless here, I’m not even taking photos because who wants to remember this, I can’t exactly post, can I, more rain on more trees, rain again, trees again, more rain, more trees, hashtag summer holiday, hashtag family fun.

Oh shush, says Dad, enough. I’m a man of many powers but even for you I can’t control the weather. Promise you, princess, when I can make the sun shine, I will. Now dry the dishes, Becks, please.

Becky picks up the damp tea towel with a map of the loch on it and dries the tray. She’s definitely going to go see Gavin, assuming he’s there but where else