Free Tarnished by Julia Crouch

today.
    ‘That’s a nasty bruise she’s got,’ Aunty Jean says, as we reach the harbour and draw up in front of an ice-cream van.
    ‘Where?’ I say, looking round. I’m only half listening because I can’t make up my mind between a Screwball, a Nobbly Bobbly or a Double Ninety-Nine. I’m thinking I’ll go for the Double Ninety-Nine because, even though it’s probably more than I can manage – Aunty Jean says my eyes are bigger than my tummy when it comes to ice cream – it is the first day at Tankerton.
    ‘Your Mummy, silly. On her face.’ Aunty Jean points to her own forehead. ‘You’d think it wouldn’t show on her skin, but it’s all purple, isn’t it?’
    There’s one thing about Nan and Aunty Jean that’s boring: if they get a chance, they’ll get in something about Mummy’s skin. I’m glad mine is more like Daddy’s. ‘You’d hardly know,’ Aunty Jean always says when she rubs in my sunblock, ‘if you remember to stay out of the sun.’
    ‘Oh that,’ I say, meaning the bruise. ‘She walked into a door, she said.’
    ‘They all say that.’ Aunty Jean hands me a tenner out of her purse. ‘I’ll have a treble Ninety-Nine today, darling. Celebrate your arrival. Get yourself whatever you want.’
    ‘Two treble Ninety-Nines, please,’ I say, standing on tiptoe so I can see into the van. The ice-cream man looks a bit dirty to me, so I watch him carefully. He touches the flakes and I have to pretend I don’t see it so that I can eat them. I decide, though, that I’ll leave the bottom bit of the cone, because his hand has been on there for ages.
    ‘Looks like your daddy duffed her up,’ Jean says as I carry our ice creams to a seat where she can park alongside me and we can watch the seagulls peck at the bits in the fisherman’s nets.
    I look up at her, shocked. Daddy doesn’t hit anyone, not even me when I’ve tried his patience beyond all limits. But Aunty Jean is laughing. It’s a joke. I feel this massive relief.
    ‘Raymond hasn’t got it in him to hurt a fly, you silly!’ Aunty Jean slurps the top off her ice cream, just before it tumbles down onto her hand. Then she leans over and whispers in my ear so that I can feel the cold on her breath. ‘It’s the treatment, isn’t it?’
    ‘Treatment?’ I say, looking round at her.
    ‘For the cancer,’ she says, pulling one of the flakes out of her cone and sucking the big blob of ice cream off it.
    ‘Cancer?’ I say.
    ‘I thought as much.’ Aunty Jean sighs and looks sadly at me. ‘They haven’t told you, have they? That’s no way to treat a child, keeping it in the dark.’ She draws another deep breath and takes my hand in hers. ‘Your mummy’s having radiotherapy, darling. For the lymphoma.’
    I don’t know these words. I frown and look at the horizon, which is a silver line between a grey sea and a grey sky. The clouds have rolled right in now, all the way from Essex, I suppose. Essex is what’s on the other side, beyond the sea forts that look like little trees out in the middle of the water. I looked it up in Gramps’s atlas. A spot of rain hits my nose and my ice cream suddenly seems too cold to eat.
    Back at the bungalow, we’re in Nan and Gramps’s front room and the gas fire is lit and it’s EastEnders and they’re all watching it and drinking Nan’s elderberry wine. They sometimes let me have a tiny glass, but not tonight, because Nan says it’s a strong batch.
    I’m on a cushion on the floor, in my favourite place near the fire and the sliding-glass bookcase, which I open up. Inside are all Nan’s medical books. I pull out the big one called Diseases and Symptoms , open it up on my knee and look up lymphoma. Then I have to drag out the big Collins Dictionary to find out what lymph nodes are and what a prognosis is.
    And then I am filled with dread.

Eight
    PARTYBOYZ was ready and willing, so Peg zoomed in on Raymond’s address in Google maps.
    ‘Massive,’ Loz whistled from her position