"Breathtaking and moving, Helen and the Grandbees is a novel that bravely explores themes of familial discord, race and love in modern Britain. It is a book that immediately gripped me, compelling me to keep turning the pages well into the night. Morrall writes with confidence, poise, and a sense of humour to match. At times heartbreaking and heartwarming, this is a novel readers won't soon forget. A riveting debut." —Awais Khan, author, In the Company of Strangers
"Alex can write; she has a way, a bit like playwright Mike Leigh, of zooming into the tiniest, seemingly mundane physical details of a situation, and in so doing, conveying the complexity, circularity and pattern of relationship and emotion. There is a humanity and a realism about her writing that Is far from commonplace despite the fact that when you read about the people and situations in her storytelling, they are instantly recognisable. Helen and the Grandbees is unbearably sad but because Alex manages the seemingly impossible feat of introducing hope right from the start it is possible to read and read on, with curiosity and enjoyment." —Dr Kairen Cullen, writer and psychologist
"Authentic and tender. This utterly moving novel has created an unforgettable heroine in Helen. I held my breath as her troubled life unfolded and wanted only the best for her and her grandbees. This gorgeous book is not just an exploration of identity, race and mental health, but also one about family love, sacrifice and bravery. I loved it." —Carmel Harrington, author, A Thousand Roads Home
"What an honor and privilege it has been to read Helen and the Grandbees. I enjoyed it immensely. Every single character was memorable and felt completely genuine. Alex Morrall is a hugely talented author, with a gift for drawing characters of vastly different ages and from various backgrounds and social classes . . . This is the type of novel that will stick with me for a long time." —Mary Rowen, author, Leaving the Beach Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
I wish I never did meet Kingsley, that horrible man. Why did Aisha have to remind me of him when she came to the hospital? He should be long gone. But now because I am half awake and half asleep, every time I raise my drugged head it is like I am living back then when Aisha was a toddler and Kingsley is still in our lives. My heart beats faster when I think he is still around. It is racing with lists of thoughts about how I have to try and keep everyone safe, and make all of the lists interlink and fit in. I have pictures of him in my head that probably aren’t really like him at all, all inflated and pompous. Lily had been frantic for days after his arrest. She had run away from a safe marriage to Kingsley. And maybe Kingsley was going to let her drop in the space in between, the space where there was no one to pick her up. She’d met Andrew when she was seventeen. I don’t think she even knew about the space between until then. It was money laundering he had been arrested for. “They didn’t charge him, they just questioned him for hours like it was his fault they didn’t have enough evidence,” said Lily. “You said he worked with money?” She looked guilty at first, as if she also thought this all made too much sense, then she looked defensive, more than if I were to talk about Maurice and Jenny, so I shut up.
I am vaguely aware that I am still on the sofa in my flat. I must have fallen asleep here, what with all these new painkillers for my broken bones and the other drugs. Maybe they should not have been mixed, maybe the side effects should have said, ‘Warning: this cocktail will bring up the past’; this cocktail will remind you of Kingsley. When I eventually met Kingsley, he was swinging Aisha around by her arms in Canary Wharf, by the river, as if to impress upon me that he can be Aisha’s new dad, but I just wanted him to get his hands off Andrew’s daughter. And Aisha looked kind of put out too, like this was too scary a game for her, her fun shrieks starting to sound more like scared shrieks. Kingsley had brought lilies, orange lilies, for me as they met me by the tube to take me to Pizza Express. I don’t think he knew about Lily’s real name, though. Even if he was clever enough to know, he would not have cared enough. He cared about Lily, I respect that. But he didn’t care for Lily’s mum. When he came with the flowers, I thought maybe he was quite nice, but I was really just giving Lily the benefit of the doubt. I am drifting all these years later, because sometimes when I lift my head, I think I can see the orange lilies that he left in a vase on the dining table. They were next to the orange bowl from Turkey, which also flashes into my mind. I remind myself that the lilies couldn’t be on the table because I didn’t keep the lilies for long after he left. Kingsley didn’t take long to convince me he was a dislikeable person. The orange lilies are here in my living room again. I am sure they are. It does not seem to be enough to remind myself that I threw them away. They sit upright on the dining table. And maybe Kingsley is here too, in the shadows, in one of his moods. Now that I have thought of it, there are noises I can’t explain. My heart is racing. The weird thing is, I know it is night-time because I am asleep, but actually it seems to be daytime. There is light pouring through the windows and the tinny sound of ‘Popeye the Sailor Man’ from an
have to talk about him when she only knew him as a toddler? What is going on? I sit up sharply and my head spins. I’ll go outside for some fresh air, even though my hair must be standing on end, and my clothes are all mismatched. As soon as I get outside, I find myself retching against the broken slabs. Then my head clears and the bright blur around me sharpens up. I can see the ice cream van now, but I must be hallucinating, because I can see grownup Aisha too, just walking away from it. Aisha sees me too, but that’s when the stones start coming. I hear a rattle and I don’t understand what the noise is at first, maybe the squirrels, I have seen them throw things out of trees as if they are trying to get you to go away, but Aisha is looking towards one of the blocks of bin cupboards, and when I look where she is looking, there’s a group of three boys and girls, probably not much older than her, laughing, throwing stones or something, each more confidently than the last, definitely aiming and calling at Aisha. Aisha tries not to look at me, but when she sees that I have seen, she looks more awkward, like half of her is trying to walk faster, and the other half is trying not to look like she’s walking faster and I think she is doing well, until one stone lands against the ice cream, throwing Mr Whippy against her spaghetti-strapped t-shirt. Then she lets both cones drop to the floor against her feet, more ice cream on her socks. She stares down at them, her hands agitated, and I know that she doesn’t know what to do now. She looks at me and I see in her face a look that says, please don’t be part of this. But they have hurt my bee. I charge down the steps towards them. “Get away,” I yell down the road, and they don’t hear me at first, so I start staggering closer. “You get away from my granddaughter.” This time they hear me, or at least a couple of them do, and try to get the attention of the third, tugging at the back of his t-shirt.
I wonder if there will be the stabbing of a mad old lady in Deptford now, I wonder what I have begun. At least I know that Aisha will get away. But the teenagers look at me openmouthed, still not moving. I am so furious with their ignorant acned faces for not moving that I go to shake them away, forgetting my broken arm and shoulder, which makes me wince, and I call out in pain, which I suppose must sound like I am screaming at them, with my lined face and my cranky hair, waving my purse. They don’t even pretend not to be a bit scared as they scatter, just the one boy, the last to see me, calling ‘loony’ as they scatter along the road under the feet of a red mini who beeps wildly at them. They settle for swearing at him, forgetting us, their voices disappearing beyond the next block of flats along. Aisha is still in the same spot, looking better at keeping her cool than a minute ago. She is trying to scrape ice cream off one sock with the other foot. I come up and put one arm on her shoulder, just one. I don’t want to make a big fuss. “I have wet wipes upstairs, we can clean that up,” I point to her t-shirt. She nods at me, with downcast eyes. “I wanted to come and surprise you, and then I saw the van, and I thought it would be nice to get you an ice cream too.” I can’t help but smile, looking at the teenager who has started to look like Ingrid when I met her as a grownup, but in a more relaxed, less made-up way. She’s come back even though she found out about my visits to the mental ward next door; even though I’ve missed so much of her teenage years and I fell out with her mum. It’s not just that she wants to know about Kingsley. Aisha wants to know me, not just the things I can tell her about the past. “It’s okay to cry, you know,” I risk saying, just in case I have assumed too much that she is just like my never flustered Lily. A small smile creeps out in one corner of her mouth and she says, “Same to you,” and for some reason that means that I do let just one tear slip from the inside of my eye and brush it away before she can tell for sure. “Do you know them?” I ask as we make our way back to my flat. She nods. “They must have followed me here.” “From school?” She shakes her head. “From our estate. It’s not so…” She searches for the word and I don’t want to say it for her, because I don’t want to acknowledge the problem at all. I just hate to see her struggle too. “It’s very white, your estate,” and she nods. And I think again of the sinking injustice of how Lily had to battle not being black enough, and now Aisha is battling being too black, and it’s impossible to explain to the whole world that when you have a family that is mixed race, that it’s not just bad to be racist, it’s daft to be racist, because you’re all just family and you all share all your features, it’s just looks. So many daft people causing so much trouble. “But throwing stones!” “I think they were conkers, not stones,” she adds and then catches my eye as I pull my ‘does that make any difference’ face and almost laughs at herself, pulling her hands against her nose as if to clear away an absent tear. “Does your mum know?” I say that because I know Lily would know what to do about this and really do it. Not like me. Aisha shakes her head. “Aisha,” I say to her, “either you tell your mum, or I do.” She nods, her eyes floating out to the road behind her. I sigh. She’s not going to tell her mum and I have no idea how I could ever speak to Lily again.
***
It’s weeks after the night Kingsley was taken in for questioning before we all finally sit down at Pizza Express, Kingsley who’s treating us, and Lily who loves him, and toddler Aisha who hides behind Lily. He had tried speaking to me as we joined each other at the tube entrance, “So, Helen,” he’d called out hanging on to my name, as if trying to work out what to say. “What’s Liverpool like?” He was looking over at the pubs and bars we were heading towards, rather than at me. I didn’t want Kingsley to feel bad for thinking I’m from Liverpool when I’m not, so I said that Liverpool was full of tower blocks and left it at that. I sensed Lily perk up behind the shadows of her eyes at the possibility that she might hear a story from my past, but I’m not even from Liverpool and I’ve told her that before, so I don’t know what she expected. We all went quiet, Aisha hovering on her mum’s side and me not from Liverpool, until Kingsley got bored of pretending to be fun. I choose the first pizza on the menu and think about telling Kingsley that Ingrid’s real name is Lily, like the flowers that he brought me which are sitting on the table. I try really hard to say something to this man that my daughter loves so much that she’s turned her life upside down, something that’s not about being arrested, but it’s all I can really think of. Kingsley’s arm rests on the back of Lily’s chair and every now and then, he mixes his fingers with her highlighted hair and smiles like he doesn’t mean it. Eventually, while Aisha spoons vanilla ice cream from a sundae glass, he frowns over his cobra and says, “Why are you staring?” and I can’t help it, it spills out. “Have you been to prison?” For the first time he glances at me properly, just for a few seconds. Then he carefully lays the drink back onto the table, looking away again as if he just remembered he doesn’t want to be here. In the corner of my eye, I see Lily’s head fall into her hands. I think he is going to say something, when his phone starts buzzing. He grabs at it while I wait silently. Perhaps he will pretend he never heard me. That might be best all round. After a couple of seconds of staring at the screen, he sighs and slams the phone to the table. “The police are wasting my time. My business is none of their business, and this is certainly none of yours.” He pushes the phone to one side, but it skates over the table before tumbling off the edge, taking a table knife with it. I reach to pick it up. “Leave it!” He lifts his fingers from the table, as if throwing out an order. Redness starts to creep up my face in case the other diners have heard his tone. Lily has moved a tiny bit away from him. “I’m sorry…” I begin. Kingsley stands up and his chair wobbles, but doesn’t fall. He turns to Lily. “I can’t be dealing with loonies in my busy life.” Who told him I was loony? I grit my teeth. At least one other diner is looking over at us, looking at me being called a loony. I will not cry. I’ve had lots of practice. Kingsley marches to the door, the medallion round his neck swinging, the cobra in his hand spills as he leaves. I watch him through the window, standing in front of the smokers’ tables. I turn to look at Lily. “I know I shouldn’t have…” She cuts me off. “It’s been tough, you know,” she says biting her lip and taking her napkin from her lap and placing it on the table. “Please try not to upset him,” she adds with a frown, almost as if she is begging. The beg in her voice makes me take a second glance, but she’s standing to follow him before I can see into her eyes. Aisha is looking up at her loony grandma, her tiny pigtails shaking with the motion. I don’t know what to say to her. A waiter picks up Kingsley’s phone from the floor, placing it quietly next to my plate as if he knows it is all my fault really, but just shouldn’t say. Lily and Kingsley stand talking on the terrace, their backs to us. Lily’s gesturing gently towards Kingsley’s stiff frame. Lily has always been the icy one, but now she’s turned into someone else, someone who can calm Kingsley down. After a while they come back through the glass doors, looking at Aisha so that they don’t have to look at me. Kingsley is confident in his own body, walking with fluid movements to his blazer on the back of his chair. He gathers his wallet. “Here, Helen, don’t go straight home after lunch. Buy yourself something nice. Get yourself a cab.” He offers me two notes. Like the flowers, they are pinky-orange, scrunched up, waiting to be admired. Lily smiles at me. “Isn’t that sweet?” she says, but her face says ‘Please agree’. “I’ll point out the taxi rank.” “Is he going to prison?” I whisper when Kingsley goes for a toilet break. “Is that why he’s so angry?” She points with her eyes towards Aisha, but Aisha is focussed on her colouring in with the expression of someone solving a complicated mathematics puzzle, so Lily shakes her head. I wait until she finishes her glass of wine. “They had no real evidence. He thinks it’s an old business partner he fell out with, trying to cause him trouble.” I look at her a little longer. She still won’t look at me properly and I don’t think that’s because of the arrest, or that a few days ago she thought she’d lost him. She knows what I have seen, that she has changed somehow with Kingsley. Maybe Kingsley is stressed and angry because of the arrest. But Lily has changed. Kingsley has changed Lily. How did he do that? I don’t wave back as they send me shopping under the cold towers of Canary Wharf. He loves Lily, I tell myself. That should be enough for it all to be okay. He doesn’t need to like me to keep my Lily happy.
