Taking Off
Chapter 20
Chapter 20
Matt watched the World Cup with Jim and Peter all morning. His heart skipped a beat when Katie called out from behind his armchair as he hadn’t noticed her arrival.
“Mum could do with some help, Jim,” Katie said.
“Yes, yes. Tell her the match will be over in forty minutes.”
“Forty minutes? Are you kidding? The food is almost ready to go.”
“Keep it warm in the- Go, go, you plunker!”
“Oh no,” Peter said. “He’s missed it, what an idiot.” Peter threw his empty can in the air and crushed it with one hand mid way through its descent.
“It was trickier than it looked,” Matt said.
“Matt, can you come and help mum?”
“But I’m watching the match!” Matt shifted to the edge of his seat and kicked an imaginary football with his left foot. “No, you’re right, Sunday lunch isn’t the time for football. We can tape the end of it.”
He joined his mother in the kitchen and held a bowl while Linda poured the gravy into it.
“I’ve got some news,” Katie said.
“Have you? From Airdrive?” Linda set the dish down. “Good or bad?”
“Not so good. There seems to be a problem with the medical certificate.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure, that’s the problem.”
Matt brought the plates out to the dining table, placed each of them centrally on their own mat and returned to the kitchen to fetch the cutlery. Katie and Linda scrutinised him .
“What?” he asked.
“We were just saying you might know what’s up with the medical,” Linda said.
“Why would I?”
“I don’t know, you know those things better than us.” Linda fitted a new roll of kitchen towel onto the holder and binned the empty cardboard cylinder. “What could they have a problem with?”
“Maybe your eyesight? Is it twenty out of twenty?”
“Yes.”
“What about the therapy you had for your back?”
“They don’t know anything about it, it was more than five years ago. I really wonder what could be wrong with it.”
“Have you talked to them to find out?”
Katie swallowed hard. “Not yet, I will next week though.”
“I hope they tell you, hopefully you can sort it out.” Matt put his arm around his mother’s shoulder. “At least, you know she’s got a solid reference.”
“Did you write it?”
“Yes, I did.” He smiled at his mother, avoiding Katie’s eyes.
“That’s nice of you. I wonder where you find the time to do all this, you’re so busy.”
“That’s the least I could do. I’m really proud of my little sister.” Matt hugged both his mother and Katie, then called out the guys for lunch.
***
Katie had to wait for two weeks for an appointment with Dr Hays-Smith despite pleading for an earlier date with the three different receptionists working in his office.
“How have you been holding up since our last session?”
“I’m fine. I’ve heard back from Airdrive School and that’s why I’m here.”
“What happened?” Dr Hays-Smith crossed his legs and leant back in his chair.
“They have rejected me because my silly brother mentioned my past alcoholism in his reference letter.”
“Your brother?”
“Yes, don’t get me started on that.” Katie grabbed a pen from the desk, slid her finger underneath the bendy clip-on and let it snap back against the plastic body.
“Would you like to talk about your problems with your brother?”
“No. In the future maybe. For now, the school needs a letter from you stating that I haven’t required treatment for alcoholism in the past five years.”
“Five years? I couldn’t write such a letter, I wasn’t treating you then.”
“You father was. Can’t you look through the archives?”
He sighed. “It’s not so easy to do, I don’t have the time for this.”
“But I need that letter.” Katie pushed the pen lid up and down with her thumb and tapped her feet in rhythm with the clicking sound it produced each time it passed over the raised rim.
“Your GP must have been kept informed by my father. I can write you a letter stating that you do not currently have a problem. You’ve not slipped up since your last visit, have you?” He glanced up over his glasses.
“No, of course not.”
“Then you should get your GP to write a letter about your past.”
“It’s going to complicate things, isn’t it?”
“This shouldn’t pose any problem. If anything, it will help you to get two letters on your side.”
“I don’t think so. They were clear that they wanted one letter from you, not from my GP.” Katie stood up, dropped the pen on the seat and picked up her bag. “I might as well give up.”
She walked out of his office and bumped into shoppers in the street. Her ears burnt, her head melted, she lifted her tee-shirt up to her belly button and slumped on a bench in Warwick Gardens. A dog barked at her. She got up, walked down Holly Grove and crossed Rye Lane three times, hesitating between going home and going back to Dr Hays-Smith and ask for the letter he had offered.
