Winman, Sarah: When God Was a Rabbit

‘Why?’

‘Easier. Mum says people judge her. Call her names.’

‘Like what?’

‘Slag.’

‘What’s a slag?’

‘A woman who has a lot of boyfriends,’ she said, taking off her rain bonnet and inching under my umbrella. I shuffled over and made room for her. She smelt of chips.

‘Fancy a Bazooka? I asked, holding the gum out in my palm.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I almost choked last time I had one. Almost died, my mum said.’

‘Oh,’ I said, and put the gum back in my pocket, wishing I’d bought something less violent instead.

‘I’d really like to see your rabbit, though,’ Jenny Penny said. ‘Take it out for a walk. Or a hop,’ she added, doubling over with laughter.

‘All right,’ I said, watching her. ‘Where do you live?’

‘In your street. We moved there two days ago.’

I quickly remembered the yellow car everyone was talking about, the one that arrived in the middle of the night pulling a dented trailer.

‘My brother will be here in a minute,’ I said. ‘You can walk home with us, if you like.’

‘All right,’ she said, a slight smile forming on her lips. ‘Better than walking home by myself. What’s your brother like?’

‘Different,’ I said, unable to find a more precise word.

‘Good,’ she said, and started once again to hop from one foot to the glorious other.

‘What are you doing?’ I said.

‘Pretending I’m walking on glass.’

‘Is it fun?’

‘Try it if you like.’

‘OK,’ I said, and I did. And it strangely was.

We were watching The Generation Game , shouting, ‘Cuddly toy, cuddly toy,’ when the doorbell rang. My mother got up and was gone for quite a while. She missed most of the conveyor belt bit, the good bit, and when she came in she ignored us and went over to my father and whispered in his ear. He stood up quickly and said, ‘Joe, look after your sister. We’re going next door. We won’t be long.’

‘OK,’ my brother said, and we waited for the front door to slam before he looked at me and said, ‘Come on.’

The night was cold and urging frost, and much too harsh for slippered feet. And we crept nimbly in the shadow of the hedge until we reached Mr Golan’s front door, thankfully still on the latch. I paused in the doorway – three months since I’d last crossed it; since I began to avoid my parents’ questions and his pleading, rheumy eyes – my brother offered his hand, and together we passed through the hallway, with its smell of old coats and stale meals, and headed towards the kitchen where the sound of subdued voices lured us like flickering bait.

My brother squeezed my hand. ‘All right?’ he whispered.

The door was ajar. Esther was seated on a chair and my mother was talking on the telephone. My father had his back to us. No one noticed our entrance.

‘We think he took his own life,’ we heard our mother say. ‘Yes. There are tablets everywhere. I’m a neighbour. No, you were talking to his sister before. Yes, we’ll be here. Of course.’

I looked at my brother. He turned away. My father moved towards the window, and it was then that I saw Mr Golan again. But this time he was lying on the floor; legs together, one arm out straight, the other bent across his chest as if he’d died practising the tango. My brother tried to hold me back, but I escaped his hand and crept closer.

‘Where’s his number?’ I said loudly.

They all turned to look at me. My mother put down the receiver.

‘Come away, Elly,’ my father said, reaching towards me.

‘No!’ I said, pulling away. ‘Where’s his number? The one on his arm? Where is it?’

Esther looked at my mother. My mother turned away. Esther opened her arms, ‘Come here, Elly.’

I went to her. Stood in front of her. She smelt of sweets. Turkish delight, I think.

‘He never had a number,’ she said softly.

‘He did. I saw it.’

‘He never had a number,’ she repeated quietly. ‘He used to draw the numbers on himself, whenever he felt sad.’

And it was then that I learnt that the numbers, which looked as if they had been drawn on yesterday, probably had been.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

‘Nor should you,’ said my father angrily.

‘But what about the horror camps?’ I asked.

Esther placed her hands on my shoulders. ‘Oh, those camps were real and the horror was real, and we must never forget.’

She pulled me towards her; her voice faltered a little. ‘But Abraham was never there,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Never there. He was mentally disturbed,’ she added, as casually as if she’d been talking about a new hair colour. ‘He came to this country in 1927 and he had a happy life. Some may say a selfish life. He travelled a lot with his music and had great success. If he kept taking his tablets, then he was my old Abe. But if he stopped – well, he became a problem; to himself, to others . . .’

‘Then why did he tell me all those things?’ I said, tears streaming down my cheeks. ‘Why did he lie to me?’

She was about to say something when she suddenly stopped and stared at me. And I believe now that what she saw in my eyes, what I saw in hers – the fear – was the realisation that she knew what had happened to me. And so I offered my hand, to her the lifeline.

She turned away.

‘Why did he lie to you?’ she said hastily. ‘Guilt, that’s all. Sometimes life gives you too much good. You feel unworthy.’

Esther Golan let me drown.

My mother blamed it on shock, a delayed reaction to the sudden loss of her parents. That was how her lump had started, she said, as she placed the Bakewell tart onto the kitchen table and handed us the plates. The trigger of unnatural energy, she said, that whirls and gathers momentum until one day, when you are drying after a bath, you feel it sitting there within your breast and you know it shouldn’t be there but you ignore it until months go by and the fear adds to its size and then you sit in front of a doctor and say, ‘I’ve found a lump,’ as you start to unbutton your cardigan.

My father believed it was a cancerous lump, not because my mother was genetically prone to such a thing, but because he was looking out for the saboteur of his wonderful life. He’d started to believe that goodness was finite and even a glass that was once half full, could suddenly become half empty. It was strange to watch his idealism turn so rapidly to slush.

My mother wouldn’t be away for long, a few days at most, for the biopsy and the assessment, and she packed with a calm assurance as if she was going away on holiday. Only her best clothes went with her, perfume too, even a novel – one she would describe as a good read. Shirts were folded with a small sachet of lavender pressed between the cotton and the tissue paper, and doctors would soon exclaim, ‘You smell lovely. It’s lavender, isn’t it?’ And she would nod to the medical students crowded around her bed, as one by one they offered their diagnosis of the growth that had taken illicit refuge.

She placed a pair of new pyjamas into her tartan overnight bag. I ran my hand over the fabric.

‘It’s silk,’ my mother said. ‘A present from Nancy.’

‘Nancy buys you nice presents, doesn’t she?’ I said.

‘She’s coming to stay, you know.’

‘I know,’ I said.

‘To help Daddy look after you.’