by Amy Beashel
Things aren’t different though. Things are what they are, and I can’t go to my dad’s because my dad…well, my dad is dead. Yeah. Sucks, right? And you’d think I couldn’t grieve for someone I didn’t know, but I do, always, because if that one thing – his death – had been different, I’m fairly sure pretty much everything else would be too.
Mum was ready to move on. From me being a dirty secret, I mean. Because by the time I was, like, four or five, she was strong. She had this job in the bank and these friends who popped by with dinners in tubs for the two of us, using words like ‘tough’ and ‘cope’ and ‘Honestly, Steph, I’ve no idea how you do it alone’. They admired her, they said, how she was always so happy, and Mum would cock her head at me and say, ‘How could I not be?’, and her friends would smile and nod and arrange to meet up for coffee or wine, and they’d come back over with a bottle of white and a barrel of questions, and I’d listen through the thin walls of our flat as Mum chatted to them so freely about stuff she avoided with me.
And all that talk, it led her somewhere new, somewhere things could be different, somewhere things might not be so tough, somewhere she could do more than just cope, somewhere she might not have to do it alone. And so she sat me down with a Bourbon biscuit and told me she’d found my dad.
‘He wants to meet you,’ she said, and hope suddenly tasted like the brown crumbs I was picking from my knees.
We met just the once, when I was five, and he was everything she’d said he would be: tall and smiley and smelling of an aftershave Mum later told me was L’eau D’Issey Pour Homme.
The three of us went to the park, and I remember being high on the swing looking around at all the other kids, expecting them to be looking back at me, at this man who was my actual real-life dad standing right there behind me, pushing me closer and closer to the sky. And I thought their jaws would be dropping at this miracle. But no one else could see it. And I guess that’s when I first realised how small our lives are, how no one really sees anything but the obvious, how people rarely look beyond their horizon or ask questions of others in an effort to reveal their truth.
But my dad did. Ask questions, I mean. And not the usual ‘How do you like school?’, ‘What’s your favourite TV show?’ and ‘What’s the name of the teddy you’re holding there?’ Instead he asked me: ‘When are you the closest to physically bursting with glee?’, ‘Do you think you’re a good friend?’ and ‘Do you like music and why?’
That last question was the key that unlocked my voice.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘My favourite song is by Dinah Washington. George Clooney gave her to me. And she takes me and Mummy to the moon.’
‘Maybe I could come next time too?’ he said.
I looked at Mum because I was crap at making decisions even then.
She nodded.
‘I could give you a song as well if you like,’ my dad said.
For once I didn’t need guidance. ‘Yes, please,’ I said.
And my dad, my dad who didn’t know I existed until one week previous, my dad who’d driven all the way from Brighton with an almost-empty photo album and a battered but tuned guitar, my dad, my actual real-life dad, sat down on our living-room floor and sang ‘You Are My Sunshine’, and I felt the light of his actual real-life love.
He died one week later when he was on his way to see me a second time. In the boot of his car were three strings of yellow beads and a copy of Carly Simon’s Into White album all wrapped up and labelled with my name.
Dear Izzy, The colour of these necklaces reminded me of you. Keep the sunshine close to your heart. And track number eight – it’s all true. With lots of love, Daddy.
I only cried that day because Mum did. Because why would I cry for a man I’d met only once? But when Mum bought us a record player just so I could listen, I got it: the music hit me with what I’d lost. We played ‘You Are My Sunshine’ on my birthday, his birthday and the anniversary of his death. When the record player got damaged not long after we’d moved into Daniel’s, I searched for the song online and found all these other versions, and while Carly Simon’s will always be special, it was never quite right because she just couldn’t get close to sounding like my dad sitting on our living-room floor making me believe I was as great and as bright as the sun.
As I got older, I played various covers on my way to school, on my way home from school and whenever the moon Mum and I were destined for was hidden from view. Johnny Cash was too gruff; the Soggy Bottom Boys were too old. And then one day, when the sky was grey as lead, Grace sent me this version she found by these two guys Dan and Charlie on YouTube who nailed it like my dad with a ukulele and guitar. If I close my eyes, I can just about believe it’s him singing, and though my skin is totally goosebumped, I’m warm.
What’s best about Dan and Charlie is they only sing the nice bit, the same bit my dad sang to me. Those other verses, about disappeared sunshine and shattered dreams, they’re too much like reality, too close to the bone.
So it’s only that light-filled part of the track that belongs to me. And I do reckon a song can belong to a person as much as a necklace or a cat or a book, more so even, because a necklace gets broken, a cat gets given away, a book gets ripped apart. I guess that’s why you’d want music on an island, because music is immortal whereas people aren’t. Because even when you don’t have the record player or even the record, you have your voice, which was unlocked by your dad, who met you just once when he made you the light in his sky. And you can sing.
But yeah, if things had been different, I’d have had more than that song, more than the photo album in which my dad put a picture of him and Mum when they were seventeen and sixteen, along with a note telling me how the idea of filling the pages with photos of the two of us put him the closest he’d ever been to physically bursting with glee. If things had been different, Mum’s heart wouldn’t have broken with losing him a second time and the hole he left wouldn’t have been filled by a man who shines like sunshine but flattens like a typhoon.
If things had been different, Daniel wouldn’t have pulled so hard at the necklaces that the strings snapped and the beads scattered across the floor.
If things had been different, Mum and Grace would still be my stabilisers, we’d still be strung together, and I’d be more than all my broken pieces, wearing the sunshine close to my heart rather than storing it in a jar.
If things had been different, an imaginary island with music would be refuge enough.
But they’re not. It’s not. We need an actual real-life refuge because things are what they are. The photo album is empty. The sun doesn’t shine. We can’t sing.
Maybe I should have stuck with the Carly Simon version of ‘You Are My Sunshine’ that Dad gave me, not tried to kid myself that I was due anything more than heartache. danandcharlie95 may have gleaned the happy bits, but life’s not like YouTube, is it? Life is how Carly and Johnny sang it: the sunshine goes when the people you love find someone new.
TWENTY-ONE
We arrive on a dark suburban street where some woman, whose hand is on my shoulder as she tells me her name’s Elizabeth, takes us from our car into a house which feels nothing like home. Whatever home is. And I know she’s doing her best to make us welcome, with that smile she has, which is just about perfect in that not-too-jolly-but-totallywarm kind of way that I guess this situation calls for.
This situation!
It sounds so dramatic, right? We have a situation! Like the police are about to swoop in and put up a do-not-cross cordon before taking evidence and ushering us into witness protection. But, no shit, we’re not far off. Because Elizabeth’s giving us some ‘basic rules’, and Mum wasn’t kidding when she said about not telling a soul where we are.
‘For your own safety,’ Elizabeth says, ‘and for the safety of the other women and children here, we ask that you don’t give anyone your address. We’d also appreciate you turning off the location services on your mobile, if you have one.’
Mum looks at me, like, hand it over, but my hand stays wrapped around my phone, willing the vibration of a message from Grace. Nothing comes, not during Elizabeth’s speech or when we dump our stuff in ‘our room’, or when she’s looking at her watch, asking do we want tea cos it’s almost midnight, and maybe we’d rather go to bed and run through everything in the morning.
But Mum’s too wired, she says, her eyes wide and her mouth kind of open, like there’s so much story waiting to spill. So Elizabeth boils the kettle, running through the list of services available to us while we’re here. There’s a whole heap of people we can meet on Monday apparently. ‘They’re all here to help,’ she says. And though I like her, I want to shove the packet of Rich Tea Elizabeth’s offering me in her face, because it’s not that simple, is it? It’s not just one thing. It’s Daniel. It’s Jacob. It’s Grace. It’s too many goddamn beads scattered in different directions across the floor.
We’re too far away for starters.
All those miles we’ve driven, they burn in my heart like that entire jar of silver-skinned pickled onions Grace and I shared between us two summers ago, seeing how many we could squish into our mouths at once, dribbling thin lines down our chins as our vinegared giggles brought Daniel up to my room, where he told Grace, ‘Even with the drool, you’re just like a young Nathalie Emmanuel.’
‘Aw, thanks,’ she said, one hand self-consciously toying with her ’fro, all uncharacteristically coy, because after Grace’s crush on Gabrielle came her crush on Missandei. ‘Game of Thrones! I didn’t know you were a Thronie, D!’
He didn’t correct her either – none of his usual ‘It’s Daniel’. Just a wink and ‘I like to be a man of mystery, G.’
D?
G?
I remember how the acid on my tongue spread to my chest. Fast. Vicious. Raw.
‘He’s so goddamn cool,’ Grace said after she and Daniel spent twenty or so minutes narrowing down their favourite Game of Thrones episodes to ‘The Dance of Dragons’ or ‘Baelor’.
‘As a goddamn iceberg,’ I said, thinking of that unexposed mass lurking beneath the water. I was so close to telling her. ‘You know, ninety percent of an iceberg is underwater,’ I said.
But Grace was back on her phone. ‘OMG, Izzy! It’s not all about scissoring!! In fact, this suggests it’s almost never about scissoring!’
‘Huh?’
‘Sex! Girl sex, I mean.’
‘Grace, are you on Autostraddle again?’
And she was, obviously, because ever since she’d discovered it, Grace had been banging on about this ‘kick-ass lesbian and bi site’ where she was learning everything she needed to know about being ‘the best bloody queer I can be’.
That’s the thing with Grace: whatever she does/is, she does/ is it with gusto. That’s why I’m so vexed about her sending me to goddamn hell: Grace never promises something and doesn’t see it through.
‘Make yourselves at home,’ Elizabeth is saying for the third or fourth time, ‘but do think of the other women and kids here and tidy up after yourselves, please. It’s important we all work together to keep this place nice.’ She’s leading by example, washing our cups, putting the biscuits in a tin. ‘Oh, Kate, hi,’ she says, as the slick stick of bare feet on lino comes into the room behind me.
‘All right.’ The woman might be twenty, she might be forty; it’s hard to tell cos her face is so puffy, so bruised. Her left eye is barely open, and the cheek below sags like it’s been dragged off its bone, pulling at the corner of her mouth in a way that reminds me of Grace’s nan after her stroke, but more savage. ‘I’m Kate,’ she says, lisping a little, and I try not to stare at the chipped front tooth when I take the hand she offers, try not to wince as she moves closer and the red around the iris of her right eye mottles with the white so it looks like that lining at the bottom of a packet of fresh steak. ‘It’s OK,’ she says, and her other teeth are so straight, so perfect, it’s like they couldn’t possibly be part of the same face, ‘you can look. A bit Frankenstein, aren’t I?’
‘Frankenstein’s monster actually,’ Mum says, and I must look at her like, that’s a bit rude, cos she’s all sorries and I don’t know what I was thinkings. ‘I’m Stephanie by the way…Steph actually.’ And when they shake each other’s hands, Mum’s face is like one of those kids at school waiting to be picked for the team. ‘Frankenstein’s the bloke who created the monster, not the monster itself.’
And I’m seriously like, just stop it!
But Mum offers Kate, who sits down next to her, a biscuit, and the two of them turn their chairs a fraction so they’re more easily able to talk.
‘So I’m the monster then?’ Kate’s laughing though and her voice is all genuine curiosity, like Grace on Autostraddle getting wise to something new.
‘Oh god, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sorry.’ Mum’s head is in her palms in total embarrassment.
Kate reaches over, takes one of Mum’s hands, and they look right at each other, like there’s some kind of understanding. ‘He might be Frankenstein but, to be fair, he’s a bit of a monster too.’ Kate winces slightly as she chews on the Rich Tea. ‘Though I can think of a few other names I’d call him if I saw him.’
‘I know what you mean.’
Maybe I’ve gone total loco here but are we actually sitting around a table with smiley Elizabeth and bruised Kate making jokey small talk about what to name the men who’ve ruined our lives?
‘Elizabeth’s right: it’s late.’ Mum looks from her watch to me. ‘I should get you to bed, Izzy.’
This is a joke, right? I’m seventeen. Mum hasn’t put me to bed for years, hasn’t even come in to say goodnight since Daniel insisted on her ten o’clock lights out. Seriously! And what? She goes back to ‘Izzy’ and all those years are undone? She starts acting like mother of the year, when there are so many other things she should have concerned herself with before my bloody bedtime.
‘Nice to meet you, Izzy.’
‘Night,’ I say to the floor, cos, not being rude or anything, but I can no longer look at Kate’s face when she talks to me.
Daniel was careful, you see – he kept Mum’s ‘accidents’, as he sometimes called them, to places where they could be hidden under clothes. Made them easier to ignore, I guess, whereas Kate – well, her hurt’s totally exposed.
‘You stay here if you like, Mum.’ I don’t mean for it to sound quite so much like that’s what I want.
‘No, no,’ she says, all awkward now, like I’ve revealed something just as painful as cuts and bruises. ‘We both need some rest.’
And none of it feels true. Not the way she reaches for my hand as we leave the kitchen. Not the whisper that the room is quite nice really, isn’t it. Not the way she says ‘Izzy’, which sounds as thin and as forced as her promise that ‘Honestly, Izzy, I mean it this time. I promise you, Izzy. We’ll be OK.’
TWENTY-TWO
We’ve been here before. Not here exactly. Not a refuge with an Elizabeth, a Kate and Rich Tea biscuits, but a hotel room littered with a few of our belongings and all of our hopes that things would be different from now on. I swear that’s what Mum said that time three Christmases ago when she whisked me away like she did tonight and took me to a Premier Inn. ‘Things will be different from now on,’ she said, and I believed her. Back then I had no reason not to.
But it didn’t take long for Daniel to find us, knocking on the door, his taps so much softer than you’d imagine, and even the way he said Mum’s name was a plea. ‘Steph,’ he said. ‘I need you.’
And the door must have been made of aspirin or something, cos the memory of all that pain he’d caused seemed to dissolve with his noisy tears so that he was in the room then, on his knees, literally begging cos he couldn’t bear to be without us, especially now, he said. ‘My mother’s died.’ And not being harsh but that news was a done deal, right? ‘Very early this morning.’ He was weeping. ‘In her sleep.’ Properly weeping. ‘At least it was peaceful.’ Like
full-on, couldn’t-catch-his-breath kind of weeping. ‘I need you.’ And so it didn’t matter that Mum hadn’t yet let herself look at him, cos his howls were like the barks of a sheepdog or something, calling her, drawing her in. ‘I can’t be without you. Not now.’
I went to sit in the bathroom like Mum told me, but the walls were as thin as my hopes were by then.
Only she could save him, he told her. And so we put our things back into the suitcases and Mum let me take the tiny shampoo and the tiny shower gel from the tiny bathroom, maybe as tiny compensation for not seeing through that tiny hope she’d given me. ‘It will be better,’ she whispered.
It wasn’t just miniature toiletries I took from that hotel. I took a lesson too: Mum couldn’t be trusted. Not in the slimy way you don’t trust a liar or the sceptical way you don’t trust a drunk. She wasn’t conniving, deceitful or mean.
She was hopeful, I guess, and I got it, cos Daniel’s not one hundred percent nasty – he lights scented candles, makes dinner, whisks us away to Paris, brought us into his home and says sorry. ‘He’s a romantic,’ Mum said once. ‘He feels things deeply.’ ‘No shit,’ I wanted to shout. ‘So do we.’ But he cries too. Big heaving lumps of apology spill from his chest when he’s done what he’s done and you believe him, because he’s broken, he says. Can we help fix him? he asks, and monsters, real monsters, they don’t want your help or your forgiveness, not like Daniel who wants it all, needs it all if he’s to have a chance of getting better, of becoming the kind of man we deserve.
Before Daniel found us, when we hadn’t been in the hotel room long, we were lying on the bed listening to a Desert Island Discs when Mum said, ‘Destination moon’, and even though I was almost fifteen, I snuggled into the curve of her spoon-shaped body and let the warmth and the smell of her take me to that place I hadn’t let myself sink into for years, that sweet spot where Mum put me first. And it’s weird, cos I hadn’t really realised I wasn’t there – in that number one spot, I mean – until we left the house early that morning. And when Mum ushered me, an hour later, from the car into the hotel, neck like an owl as she looked for signs of Daniel, and whispered, ‘I’ll keep you safe’, I hadn’t thought that she hadn’t been. Keeping me safe, that is. I hadn’t put any of the responsibility for my unhappiness with her. It was all down to Daniel, right?
