Vanilla

Chapter Six

This chapter is really long. I was going to split it, but both halves were too short, so in the end I just kept it as it was. Hope you like it!

Dedicated to Fizzyswag for comparing me to Sarah Dessen (asdfghjkl)

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            Downstairs, I could hear thumping.

            It wasn’t even soft, either; it was an extremely loud, incredibly distracting type of thumping that jogged my pencil each time it started up again. I was trying to sketch the view from my window – a relatively easy task, for lack of a better thing to do – but the way this was going, it looked like Walden was in the middle of a particularly violent earthquake. I just couldn’t stop my pencil from jerking every few strokes. It sounded like Gram had taken a hammer and was hacking violently at the wall; this, perhaps, was the main reason I decided to rise from my desk and investigate.

            I found her in the kitchen. She was bent over her washing machine, which she’d dragged out from the wall, whacking at it forcefully with her fist.

            “Uh, Gram?” My voice was drowned out by another loud thump; I cleared my throat and tried again. “Gram!”

            This time she stopped, spinning around to face me. Her glasses had slid right down to the end of her nose, so that she peered at me over the top of the frames.  “Yes, dear?”

            I frowned. “What are you doing?”

            “Well,” she said, “the washing machine’s broken.”

            “Right,” I responded slowly, wondering if I was missing something obvious here. “And, um… you’re punching it why exactly?”

            “I seem to remember I had the exact same problem a few years ago,” she mused. Of course, when Gram said ‘a few years ago’, we were more likely to be looking at a timescale of around thirty years previously. “And Jim tried something like this, I’m sure. But it doesn’t seem to be working this time.”

            I was pretty sure the washing machine’s instruction manual would advise against physical assault as a method of repair, but I didn’t voice my opinion. Instead, I suggested gingerly, “Well, maybe you should call someone out to take a look.”

            “Hmm… maybe.” She was still frowning at it, as if by narrowing her eyes the problem would magically disappear. “The trouble is, I’ve got a huge pile of washing to do and it’ll probably take a while for someone to come out.” She paused. “Maybe I should just have another go at doing it myself…”

            “No!” I interjected, a little too quickly. “I mean, the launderette’s only down the road. I could go down there and do it for you.”

            Though spending an afternoon with the contents of Gram’s wash basket didn’t sound exceedingly appealing, I was more worried about her doing herself an injury tinkering with the thing. Not to mention flooding the kitchen if she managed to whack it hard enough. For such a little woman, she had a surprising amount of strength.

            “Really? Well, that’d be a great help, Flo, but you don’t have to.”

            “It’s fine,” I assured her. “I’ll do it. You just go dig out the Yellow Pages and get a number for a plumber, okay?”

            That was why, half an hour later, I found myself on the way down to the town centre with a zip-up bag of Gram’s washing in one hand. For once, the sun was actually shining over Walden, sending tourists flocking to the beach and making the pebbled shoreline busier than I’d ever seen it before. Free spots were disappearing at an alarming rate; everywhere I looked, there seemed to be another family piling in, setting up their windbreakers and tents whilst the kids made for the sea. I had to consciously block out the flashback that was threatening to set in – of seaside day trips when Nora and I were kids, filled with smiles and afternoon ice-creams and my parents holding hands. I was closer to them now than I’d ever been, yet the memories seemed a lifetime away.