by Pat Barrow
“But Dad…” I started.
“Come on Het, I’m trying to make it easier for you. Look, you’ve been much better the last few weeks. You’ve been much brighter and you haven’t endlessly been going on about her, so why don’t we just take the opportunity to push her into the background a bit more? Then everybody will be happier. Don’t worry, I’ll explain to her that you need time to settle here. There’s nothing for you to explain or feel guilty about. Remember she’s the one in the wrong, not you and Jonty.”
“I don’t even want to go up to Whitley Bay in February,” said Jonty. “I’ve got my friends down here and I want to see them in the holidays. Mum’s not that important to me. Like Dad says, she’s the one who’s been horrible to us and left us.” It seemed he just wanted to be doubly sure of Dad’s approval and of course, he won a big hug from Dad.
“Of course you need time with your friends – I just wish your sister had settled in as easily as you have.”
I reckon Dad must have spoken to mum ’cos surprisingly a couple of days later, he announced, “I’ve arranged for you to go and stay at Suzie’s for a few days at half term. If your mum wants to come down and see you whilst you’re there, then that’s fair enough.”
“But Dad, the court order –”
“Court orders are fine as long as everybody agrees about them. What’s your mum going to do about it? She’s already demonstrated that she’s not that bothered or she’d have been back at court in a flash.”
“But Dad she –”
“Don’t start making excuses for her, Hetty, otherwise we’re going to get back to where we were and I thought we were moving on. Remember that chat we had when you realised how cruel your mum’s been? The trouble is, you are far too kind to her – you’ve got to be tougher, she doesn’t deserve everyone being nice and making excuses for her.”
That night, I heard Dad and Amy arguing. I craned my head to hear what they were saying. Amy was really annoyed that Dad was prepared to take both Jonty and me back to Welshpool to stay with our friends at half term and was arranging with Mum for her to come down and see us there. “Just let go of her, can’t you?” I heard Amy say. “She doesn’t bother about the kids so why put yourself out making it easy for her? I wanted us all to spend some time together and really get to know each other as a family and now you’re going to be charging off to Welshpool and staying with your sister in Shrewsbury again. That’s ridiculous, what’s the point of us being together? I’ve told you I can’t keep leaving my business – my life is here and I thought you wanted to share it.” She sounded angry and frustrated and I heard Dad snap back at her but he didn’t sound as confident as he usually did. Amy was a feisty young woman and I didn’t think she’d stand any nonsense, especially from Dad. She made it very clear what she thought and what she wanted and demanded.
The pull of staying with his best mate was enough to win over Jonty, although his only reference to Mum was to check with Dad that he didn’t have to see her if he didn’t want to. I was a strange mix of cross and sad when Dad assured him that it was his choice and there was no pressure.
It was great seeing Suzie again but staying there didn’t work out all that well. Suzie’s mum was at her wits end trying to find something to give me to eat. I think she got fed up with me saying that I wasn’t really hungry, but then I’d sit poring over recipe books or looking at menus in shop windows. I guess it didn’t make sense to her and it was crazy to me too. I was tired, desperately tired and I know it was because I wasn’t eating properly. Suzie was annoyed with me because everything she suggested was met with an ‘okay’ but without the enthusiasm I’d always shown in the past. She seemed relieved that the plan was that Mum was coming down to meet up with Jonty and me for the day. But Jonty then left a message with Suzie’s mum to say that his friend’s mum had made arrangements for a special day out for him and his mate that day and so he couldn’t see Mum. I was wound up about it but there was nothing I could do and it seemed no one was going to put any pressure on Jonty, especially Dad. When I spoke to him, his response was clear. “Jonty’s moved on, Het, it’s what you need to do too. I’m so disappointed if you’ve fallen under her spell again. I really thought you’d realised the truth about your mum.” His words stung and left me silently sobbing myself to sleep.
Mum came to Suzie’s house. She’d travelled down in the early hours of the morning so that she could get there by 11. Of course, Suzie’s mum and Suzie made a big fuss of her, they’d known my mum for years and loved her to bits. We had a good day although Mum was surprised that yet again I didn’t want any lunch. “Hetty, I’m really worried about you, you just seem never to eat anything and I’m –”
“Of course I eat, Mum, I eat loads,” I just snapped back fiercely defensive, “it’s just that I had a really big breakfast and I just don’t want any lunch. Maybe tonight I’ll have something before I go back.”
“Okay, shall we go to the pizza place?”
“Well, I’m not really keen on pizza.”
“Since when?” said Mum.
“Well, I’ll have some chicken or something. Chicken and salad or something like that.” Mum shook her head in despair, I think a bit of her knew what was happening, but she couldn’t work out why or what she could do about it. She was scared of frightening me away and I guess she was desperately sad when all she could see was the daughter she loved disappearing, literally fading away.
The day was over far too quick. My intentions to be somewhat cool and distant with Mum hadn’t worked at all. Of course not. Not wanting her was a sham for Dad’s benefit, the reality was so different. I’d clung to her and sobbed my eyes out, telling her that I was so unhappy. I loved her so much and missed her dreadfully. “Hetty, let me ask you something, do you pretend to your dad that it’s different? I’d rather you told me, I’m not blaming you, I’m not cross with you but you see your dad reckons that neither you nor Jonty want to see much of me anymore and it just doesn’t make sense ’cos when we’re together…” her voice trailed off. I felt awful.
I put my head down and mumbled. “Well, it’s really difficult when Dad asks me, and I think that sometimes I say things that aren’t quite true because that makes things that little bit easier. I don’t know what I believe any more, Mum, I just want it all to stop. It’s all so wildly out of control and I’m scared.”
“Oh, Hetty! What have we done to you? I’m so, so sorry my darling.”
Chapter 38
Amy tried her best with us, both with me and with Jonty. It was clear that Jonty was her favourite – it had been so easy for her to win him over, he was just so enthusiastic, lapping up every new suggestion she made. She was young and good fun and although I didn’t really want to like her, I couldn’t help myself, she was so bright and attractive and confident – full of life – one of those irresistible people which I envied. Now I so often wonder what on earth made her hook up with my dad. After that half term holiday when I’d got so upset, I was determined that whilst I’d pretend to Dad that I wasn’t that bothered about Mum, I wasn’t going to make any effort with Amy. At least I could do that for my mum.
I came in from school one afternoon, Amy was there. That was unusual, generally she and Dad weren’t home till almost 6 pm and Jonty and I fended for ourselves after school and clubs. “Oh Het, how lovely to see you,” Amy beamed. “Let me make you a hot chocolate with swirls of cream on top and a chocolate flake.”
“No, thank you,” I mumbled.
“Oh come on, Het, you never seem to have anything special – come on, it’s my treat.”
“My name’s Hetty,” snapped crossly. “I don’t like being called Het except by my friends”
“Oh, oh, sorry, sorry.” Quick as a flash, the smile disappeared and a glimmer of annoyance crossed her face before the smile returned. I guess she wasn’t used to people brushing her aside. I didn’t trust her and I certainly wasn’t going to make life easier for her. I guessed she hated me as much as I hated her.
I ran upstairs in a daze, my cheek was smarting. I looked in the mirror and saw the red mark. The horrible, horrible woman. What did my dad want to be with her for? I lay on my bed and sobbed and sobbed. Was I crying because of what Amy had done or was it because I’d lost my mum and I thought I was losing my dad and all my friends were in Welshpool and Shrewsbury? I’d got nobody here and I hated it and I hated myself and I hated everything and it was all my fault.
Dad came up the stairs soon after he came in from work. I leapt off the bed and ran to him expecting him to take me in his arms, but to my horror, he pushed me aside. “What’s got into you, Het? How dare you behave like that?”
I looked at him askance. “But she –”
“Of course Amy reacted to how you behaved. She had to stop your crazy outburst; goodness only knows what you would have done next. It was the only way she could stop you. A perfectly normal and a very sensible reaction. She was trying to calm you down, you idiot, you were obviously going berserk.”“But –”
“Don’t ‘but’ me, you’re the one who’s in the wrong, not Amy. Amy’s tried her damndest to get it right for you two and you are such an ungrateful little b –” He didn’t finish the word and I guess he was going to say something derogatory but he held back. Nevertheless, he went on and on and on telling me how appalling my behaviour was, how ungrateful and spiteful I’d become. His outburst seemed to me to be out of all proportion and it just left me a quivering wreck. He insisted that not only did I clean the mess up but I had to apologise to Amy and if it my cleaning wasn’t to her satisfaction, I’d have to pay to have a professional cleaner in and that would mean I’d have no pocket money for months. His final stinging remark as he left was, “You’ve let me down, Hetty, you’ve really disappointed me, you’re just like your mum and if you’re going to behave like that, there’s no place for you here.” I looked at him in utter disbelief – my world fell apart, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. So all my fears were true, he really didn’t want me and he preferred Amy to me. I hated her even more, she’d annoyed me before but now I really, really hated her but I couldn’t let my dad know that because he’d just get rid of me like he’d got rid of Mum and I’d already told him that I didn’t want my mum anymore, so I’d have nobody because Jonty wasn’t the brother I’d always been close too, he’d been won over and firmly belonged to Dad and Amy. Life couldn’t have been worse.
Of course for the next few days, I did everything I could to win Dad over again. But it was hard. Amy was cool and distant. She listened to my apology but her words of acceptance had no warmth – she just went through the motions like she had no choice. She was distant and clearly disinterested in me although she went out of her way to make a real fuss of Jonty and of course, he just lapped the attention up.
I guess that was when I started to do little spiteful things that would upset and annoy her but which she wouldn’t be able to pin on me. I know it seems petty and it did to me even then but I didn’t know what else to do, but I just had to do something or I’d go mad. I’d hide her car keys or drop her shopping list in the bin or switch off the plug to her phone when she was charging it. Or I’d spit in her cup of tea or coffee or hide one of her shoes in the junk cupboard. Stupid little things really, things that would annoy her no end but she couldn’t prove I’d been responsible for although I guess she had a pretty good idea what was going on. On the surface, there was a sort of uneasy truce between us but deep down I think we both loathed each other even more than we had done before the hot chocolate incident. She didn’t trust me and no doubt realised I was jealous of the relationship she had with my dad. I was madly jealous because I knew he cared more about her than he cared about me. In fact, he didn’t really care about me at all and that was unbearable. I had to win him back, I just had to.
Dad made the suggestion that I started horse riding again. It was an activity I had loved whilst I was in Welshpool but somehow I’d lost any enthusiasm to do anything and so I told him I was too busy with my school work. He just accepted that ’cos of course it was essential that I achieved A grades. Jonty had loads of friends and went to his Tae Kwon Do lessons and was in the junior club team. He was looking forward to surfing in the spring and summer whereas all I did was to go to school and work really hard. I didn’t have any true friends, I didn’t bother going out. I just sort of faded into the background, the odd girl who didn’t eat much, a bit of a party pooper, on the periphery of friendship groups so of course I never got asked to anything, nobody bothered with me – my self-esteem and confidence ebbed away even further.
I wrote regularly to Suzie, I had to try and sneak a stamp so that Dad wouldn’t ask to see my letters. However, he’d stopped bothering to insist he read Mum’s letters, I think he was totally convinced that I shared his view and was no longer really bothered about her. With Dad, you agreed or you were just dismissed – there was no alternative view. Mum wrote most weeks but her letters had become brief, just news about places she’d been to or films she’d seen and books she’d read. It seemed she’d accepted that Jonty and I had a new life now and that no matter how hard she tried, it was going to be really difficult to maintain the sort of relationship that we’d had. It was quite clear that the court order had been chucked out of the window as far as Dad was concerned and the only way that Mum would get to see us was if we went to Shrewsbury and stayed with Aunty Nicky and she came down there. I guess even I accepted that it was too much to expect her to drive all the way down to Shropshire and then all the way back up to Whitley Bay and then do the journey again when it was time to come back. So from then on, visits to Whitley Bay only happened in the summer holidays and sadly, Jonty never bothered to come. At the time, I thought that it was cruel and selfish that Mum didn’t fight for Jonty and I asked myself over and over why did she give up so easily? It was only as I got older that I realised it was like she’d told me that day in Shrewsbury before we moved. She appreciated that Jonty and I were suffering the pain of separation but we were managing it in a different way and she had accepted that putting pressure on Jonty and expecting him to tell Dad that he wanted to see his mum was too much for him. It would make his pain unbearable. I begged Dad to let me travel on my own on the through train from Cardiff to Manchester and then change on to the Newcastle train but he’d have none of it. “Six hours alone on a train – that would be so irresponsible of me, Het – no, I’m not exposing you to a risk like that. Remember, I’m the parent in charge of keeping you safe.” How ridiculous, but I knew better than to argue with him.
It was just before I took my GCSEs that Dad told Jonty and me that he was buying a house. I immediately t
hought that he meant a house for him and Amy, but no, he explained that although he and Amy were staying good friends, that it was better if each had their own properties and more especially that we had our own place. I started to panic if things weren’t working out between him and Amy, had he sussed how mean I was to her? Did he blame me? I don’t know, he didn’t say. A bit of me hoped that he would move back to Welshpool but no such luck. His new job was working out well and he’d already seen a house in Cardiff that he liked and so that was that there was no discussion. It was a ten-minute walk to Amy’s but at least I didn’t have her breathing down my neck. It seemed from what Jonty told me that Amy didn’t want the two of us around. She wanted it to be just the two of them and separate homes seemed to do the trick.
As was predicted, I did extremely well in my GCSEs but my teachers’ unanimous view was that I’d got insufficient outside interests and if I genuinely wanted to pursue a medical career, I’d need to show that there was more about me than just achieving academically. It had always been Dad’s dream that I’d be a medical student, he’d told me years before that had been his ambition. His own father had been a doctor, but I’d never met him, he died before Jonty and I were born. Dad hadn’t really talked about him, but Mum had explained that my dad had always felt he’d been a disappointment to his dad because he never made it to medical school and his ambition was to relive his own dream through me.
