A short story in 3 parts. Part II: Millie
Cheryl’s family care about the environment. For example, Neil nagged Cheryl for not bringing some of the plastic carrier bags from home when they got the big Christmas shop in. They already have a kitchen cupboard full of them. They are aware they could do more, but it all takes time – and time, it always seems to Cheryl, is such a precious commodity. She never quite knows where it goes, she reflects as she settles down in front of the TV; somehow, it just runs through her fingers and vanishes.
On Claire’s eighth birthday, her primary school runs a project on how humans are destroying the orang-utan’s habitat. She proudly presents the poster she has drawn, quoting parts of the Rang-Tan poem they had read together in class. Cheryl doesn’t know that the birthday cake they are tucking into was made with Indonesian palm oil. No one has the time to read the ingredients when shopping at the end of a busy day. The hourglass is always draining.
February is a cold and damp squib. When Cheryl enters their elder daughter, Millie’s bedroom, she is met with a frosty atmosphere. Not because Millie is in any way hostile, no; she is a very affectionate daughter, always has been, forever looking out for others and putting herself last. But she is sitting at her desk in a thick woolly sweater from the charity shop, with her radiators turned off. When Cheryl tries to turn them back on, Millie says no. Something about heating being bad for the environment. Cheryl acquiesces, thinking it will only be a matter of time before her daughter gets fed up with feeling cold. Teenagers go through phases, everyone knows that – and sometimes, it is better to indulge them in these.
In March, Neil watches a documentary on electric cars. He is impressed – especially with the acceleration some models achieve. They would certainly leave his little Mazda standing. But until they have paid off the mortgage, there is no way he can afford one – not with the battery prices being what they are. The other problem is his 20-mile daily commute: surely he would have to recharge it every other day? And there is nowhere at home to plug it in; they don’t have a garage. Neil doesn’t know that there is a train station a five-minute walk from his office. He hasn’t been on a train since his grandparents took him to Skegness the summer he turned six. All he remembers is the sand shifting between his toes as he walked across the beach, and his footprints slowly filling with water behind him. It was the first time he felt himself making an impact on the world around him.
In June, the Robertsons start planning their annual holiday. Cheryl and Neil are looking forward to it: a bit of well-earned respite from work, and time away from it all together as a family. Until, that is, Millie throws a spanner in the works. She doesn’t want to fly. She’s read somewhere that air travel contributes to climate change. Millie is obstinate that she would rather stay at home by herself, but Cheryl puts her foot down. She wouldn’t be happy to leave Millie on her own, right now – she’s at such an impressionable age. The other day, she tried to skip sixth-form to take part in some youth protest. She has even drawn an hourglass on the front of her jotter – quite well rendered, Cheryl admits. When she questioned Millie about it, she said it was a metaphor for time running out. Cheryl supposes it’s normal for parents not always to understand their teen-age daughters. Her mum was the same with her.
The summer holiday isn’t quite what the Robertsons have hoped for. August is plagued by a heatwave, and the day-time temperatures in Marbella reach the mid-thirties – hot enough to confine them to their hotel quarters and poolside for the most part of most days. The other fly in the ointment is Millie; ever since they’ve arrived, she has done nothing but complain: about the plastic drinking-straws, about the heat being man-made, about the litter on the beach. She is at such a difficult age. The other day, when they did venture out to the seaside, she spent the whole day sulking in the shade, picking up grains of sand in her hand and staring at them. When faced with global environmental problems, she feels as infinitely small and insignificant as one of those grains. She doesn’t realise yet that the entire beach is made up of them.
image: Top of the World, by MartiAn