I was that child.
My memories of my father’s dealer days are not narrative, they are sensory: the toothache sweetness of the Alpen and Butterscotch Angel Delight mixture that was the only food he, a junkie, could eat; the dusty smell of the incense; the rough scratch of the kilim cushion material. I must have been a little high myself, dopy with heroin smoke, my hazy memories not so different to the fragmentary recollections of the other people there, the ones who lost a whole decade, often a whole life, to drugs. But I know it happened. I know I sat in the living room with those people night after night, watching them chase the dragon, snort coke, smoke joints, cleaning up after them, managing their chaos in my small, determined way. The story starts to knit together as I get a bit older, when I better understood what my father and his friends did every night. It was not what other people’s parents did, I discovered once I started staying the night with friends and would creep around dark houses in which everyone was asleep by 11 p.m. (I would get scared, wake up the parents, tell them I wanted to go home). It was dangerous too, I discovered, the day a rival dealer tried to break into our flat, banging his fists against the door, kicking at it until the wood splintered. Dad pushed himself against the door, shouting: ‘Fuck off! Fuck off!’ Eventually the man gave up and left. Emotional intensity helps to set memory and fear is the most intense emotion of all because we have the most to learn from it.
I remember one night when I had grown larger, was less nimble, less able to fold myself quietly into a corner. They were all there, in our living room, more of them than usual, faces I didn’t recognize. The coffee table was piled with various powders, the ashtrays full, the novelty mugs brimming with cheap red wine. I got up to move from one part of the room to another; I don’t know whom or what I was going towards or getting away from, but I was ungainly in my fast-changing body and the space around the coffee table was a narrow obstacle course of cushions, glasses and outstretched limbs. I tripped, stumbled, reached out. My hand found the table and I leant on it to stop myself falling over. But like so much else in our flat the table was broken, the base not properly attached to the table-top, even though Dad had patched it with gaffer tape. The thick glass tipped beneath my weight, and all the heroin and cocaine, the wine, the ashtrays, everything on it began to tumble and merge, slipping off the table at once, fast and slow. They were shouting at me ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ as the thing they loved the most was lost in our stained old carpet, mixed with wine and warm ash and razor blades. They got on to their hands and knees and tried to salvage their beautiful heroin, but it was ruined and it was my fault and they all hated me. Even Dad.
That was a long time ago. I am not that person any more.
Sometimes, when my daughters can’t sleep, they lie in their bunk-beds and say to me, ‘Mummy, I’ve got sleepy knee,’ and I will take their aching legs in my hands and gently rub their small bones with my thumbs. And it is strange, this thread connecting the past to the present: my body, my memories, manifesting themselves in my babies. They must have got it from me somehow, this term, this feeling. Perhaps I once mentioned to them how long ago my legs used to ache in the night when I was tired and how I came up with my own special name for the feeling. I would not have explained the context.
It is strange because I have worked so hard to separate my past from my present. I have erected a wall between then and now, brick by brick, so that I may exist, be a wife, a daughter, a parent, a friend; so that I may sleep at night and wake in the morning looking forward to the day; so that my children will never know what I knew. When they go to bed they do not worry about flames engulfing their home or people dying from a drug overdose on the living-room floor. They are not afraid.
Because I have built this wall so purposefully and so well, when people meet me they do not see the daughter of a philandering junkie, they do not see the girl who watched her sister die in a hotel room in Tunisia, they see an articulate, educated, confident woman. They see success, not skin-of-the-teeth survival.
This is what I want them to see.
This is what I want to believe.
But now here I am, looking at pictures of the privileged junkies who populated my childhood and unsafe memories are bobbing up from somewhere within me.
I thought I had found a place to hide from my past: this home, this family, this job, this life. What if I was wrong?
4
1984, London
Dad always thought he could get away with it, all the risks and chances, all the shortcuts and the lies. When the police came it was worse for us than him. He wasn’t even home.
I was in my second year of junior school, the last lesson of the day, when Mr Mitchell walked back into the classroom, strolling with his hands in his pockets, his eyes roving until he spotted me. He wore red waistcoats and red-framed glasses and was my form teacher. I liked him, especially when he got so angry that his cheeks blazed as red as his waistcoat and he threw something, most often just a book or a pencil case, but once an actual chair. That made me laugh inside.
‘Can I borrow you?’ he said.
I thought perhaps it was a task he needed help with, although I couldn’t imagine what – I wasn’t good at much, not art, not sports. I was good at reading, but that was about it. I was reading Lord of the Rings for the third time. I loved the edition we had at home, the parchment-thin paper, the maps and strange alphabets. The way it was so straightforward who was good and who was bad.
I stood up. Mr Mitchell held the door open for me so I had to pass under his arm to leave class. He let the door swing shut.
‘There’s been a problem at home.’
I opened my mouth.
‘Nothing terrible,’ he added. ‘Not really. Just …’ He paused. ‘Just a situation. So I’m driving you back. Your mum will be there.’
His car was, of course, red. It was a VW Beetle, like ours, but shiny and tidy, no rubbish in the footwell, no tears in the fabric of the seats, no rusty bits or the key getting stuck in the lock.
I got in and was amazed at the springy perfection of the seats. ‘Is your car new?’ I said.
‘No, I’ve had it seven years,’ said Mr Mitchell.
But I could tell that he was pleased I’d asked.
It was a ten-minute drive home, quicker than usual because we missed the traffic.
‘Goodbye, good luck,’ he said.
I got out of the car and he watched me through the closed window, his seatbelt still on, the engine still running, as if he knew he was meant to make sure I got in the house OK, but wanted to get away as fast as he could.
I put my key in the lock, but before I pushed open the door, I turned around. Mr Mitchell was still there, waiting, watching. I waved. ‘Goodbye!’
He looked sad, his red cheeks pale.
I walked up the stairs slowly. The block was quiet and my legs were heavy. When I finally reached the third floor I was surprised to find the door open.
Mum was standing just inside. ‘You’re here,’ she said. She was pressing her fingers into her forehead as though she was in pain and her cheeks were blotchy from crying. ‘They’re in your bedroom. They won’t listen to me.’
The flat was a mess. The flat was always a mess, but this was a different sort of mess: sofa cushions were tossed on the floor; bits of fabric had been pulled off the lamps; all the ornaments were tipped over. Nothing was in the right place, nothing was the right way up, everything was wrong.
I left my school bag on the floor by the door and went to my bedroom. I could hear two men talking.
‘What’s this?’
‘Have you looked in here?’
I pushed the door open and saw that the voices belonged to two policemen in dark navy uniforms made of thick wool with shiny buttons. I saw that all my books had been thrown across the floor, the duvets had been pulled off the beds, clothes had been tossed from drawers. One of the policemen was by Candy’s pile of soft toys. He had a pink Care Bear in one hand and a fistful of white stuffi
ng in the other. He must have ripped it open, stuck his fingers into its belly, pulled it apart. He threw the bear and its insides on the floor, picked up another and pulled that one apart too. The plushy fabric made a ripping sound as it tore.
I knew what they were looking for and I knew it wasn’t hidden inside one of my sister’s teddies.
A couple of nights after a rival dealer had tried to break into the flat, banging on the door and swearing, Dad and I had sat up together late into the night. We had no visitors; it was just us. Dad got his DIY bag out of the utility cupboard behind the sofa. It was a black sports holdall filled with rusty nails and old drills, a massive hammer and paintbrushes that were solid with dried emulsion.
‘We’ve got to get a bit clever, you and me,’ Dad said, puffing on a joint. ‘There are all sorts of dodgy characters about.’
We hadn’t discussed the man or what he might have done had he managed to get into the flat – steal the drugs, rob us, beat us up, kill us – but I knew that was what we were talking about.
Dad had the Egyptian-eye box open on the glass coffee table, three plastic baggies of powder squashed into it like nestling chicks. He plucked them out one by one and laid them on the table, then he plunged his hand into the DIY bag, something I was always too scared to do because of all the sharp metal and the malfunctioning power tools. He rummaged around a bit, Mary Poppins style, and brought out a big plastic torch with an orange casing and a black head. He unscrewed the head and let the three jumbo Duracell batteries slide into his hand. He chucked them into the DIY bag and then stuffed the three bags of heroin into the body of the torch, one by one, before screwing it shut. He turned the torch on and off and laughed when it didn’t work.
‘Don’t tell anyone about this, G, it’s our little secret.’
‘Yes, Daddy,’ I said, swelling with pride.
The other policeman, not the teddy-destroyer, stepped up on to my bed, on top of the sheets, in his shiny black outside shoes with their thick soles, so that he could look behind the mirror.
‘Excuse me,’ I said. I was angry and that made me brave.
The policeman standing on my bed turned around. ‘Please go back into the hall,’ he said.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘We are searching this property,’ said the other policeman.
But I was still looking at the one who was on my bed. ‘Don’t you think you should take your shoes off before standing on someone’s bed?’ I said.
A funny look passed across his face and suddenly he didn’t look so sure of himself. The other policeman looked at the white fluff that he had torn out of the belly of a teddy bear and I hoped that he felt bad too.
‘Please go back into the hall.’
I shuffled back a little, but still I watched them.
The policeman stepped off my bed. ‘It’s not in here,’ he said.
The other policeman let the ruined teddy drop to the floor.
I followed the policemen into the living room. It felt like a game of hot and cold, and they were getting warmer, warmer, warmer, but I kept my gaze calm and clear as they pushed the sofa into the middle of the living room and pressed the utility cupboard door so it swung open. Inside was the ironing board, a rarely used mop, an old stereo. The DIY bag was on one of the shelves, but the policeman got down on to his knees and started scrabbling around in the darkness. He found a rolled-up ball of silver foil and untwisted it to reveal its blackened, sticky heroin core.
‘Put this with the rest,’ he said.
Then he stood up and closed the utility cupboard door.
Colder, colder, colder …
That night I told Dad the story of the police raid, embellishing it and making it more exciting, emphasizing my bravery, my coolness under pressure, my poker-faced poise. He squeezed me hard. ‘I’m so proud of you, my darling! We got away with it!’ We ate crème caramel out of plastic pots to celebrate and Dad got the heroin from the torch, looked at it, chuckled and did a little bit, as a treat, even though he had got this lot in to sell and had promised Mum he would try to stop using, really try this time.
I ended up watching the telly by myself as he slipped away into unconsciousness, repacking the heroin into the torch, dropping it into the DIY bag, zipping it shut.
5
2014, London
I have been given the task of filling a new slot in the magazine called ‘Women and Charity’. I must find four upper-class women who are prominent in the charity sector and talk to them about their work. Kate, Tatler’s editor, suggests Julia Samuel as the first subject. Julia is a psychotherapist and a founder patron of the charity Child Bereavement UK as well as a member of the Guinness family. She was the first resident psychotherapist at Paddington Hospital, caring for parents grieving the loss of babies in childbirth. She was also great friends with Princess Diana and, apparently, consoled the young princes William and Harry after their mother’s awful death.
We meet at Julia’s Bayswater flat, which is at the top of many flights of carpeted stairs. Julia has short blonde hair and blue eyes. She is brisk but not unfriendly, offering me a cup of tea and inviting me to sit at her kitchen table. I get out my Dictaphone and notepad full of careful research. I am very professional and serious with my spectacles and my smart blue dress from Whistles.
Julia does not want to talk about Princess Diana, she wants to talk about the charity. She explains how CBUK supports children who have been affected by the sudden death of a loved one and tells me about the work the charity does in schools, giving teachers the tools to communicate with bereaved children via workshops and informative literature. I pretend to concentrate; I nod and ask pertinent questions, even though my eyes are too wide and my heartbeat too fast. Julia occasionally goes silent, watching me. I feel a little uncomfortable when she does this.
‘Did something happen to you, Gavanndra?’ she asks.
I open my mouth to say: ‘No! What are you talking about? Let’s keep talking. What was Princess Diana really like?’
But those are not the words that come out.
I tell her about Candy. My voice cracks but I do not cry.
Julia listens; then she says how sorry she is for the things I have seen and experienced, how sorry she is for my whole family. ‘But you have all this suppressed grief, you really should see someone.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I will.’
I do not tell Julia the worst of it. I do not say that I cannot remember Candy.
I do remember, just before Candy was born, walking around the flat with my mother, her huge belly straining against the fabric of her nightie, and telling her that we needed to make the house safe for my new sister, pointing at dangerously sharp ornaments, the ashtray that had to be moved to a higher shelf so she wouldn’t eat the cigarette butts, things that could cut her, burn her, hurt her.
‘Oh yes, we must move that, you’re right. Good girl.’
I remember going with my mother to the World’s End Nursery to pick up a kitten, a companion for me so that I would not feel left out when my new sister arrived. I chose a tiny tabby with three freckles on her wet nose. I called her Spottynose and we carried her home in the plastic shopping bag which also contained cat food and cat litter, her little face poking out of the top.
I can remember all this, but I cannot remember a baby, a cot in my room, a small strong fist.
Even once Candy was born I am alone in my memories, never with my sister.
I remember one holiday in Puerto Banús. We were staying in a small holiday complex, a rectangle of villas surrounding a pool. Candy would have been just over a year old, but I was playing by the pool by myself, no parents, no adults. I was jumping in and out of the pool, loving the splashing, the cool water, the feeling of sinking, pulling myself out and plunging back in again, running at the pool, curling myself into a ball, dive-bombing and belly-flopping. I was a confident swimmer, a happy holidaymaker who knew a few words of Spanish and enjoyed plates of clams followed by a chunk of
water-melon bigger than my face. I was such a confident swimmer that my parents were content to leave me by a pool, alone, aged five, running along the slippery tiled edge, floating at the bottom, eyes open, to see how long I could hold my breath.
I was a confident swimmer. What could go wrong? I jumped in the pool backwards. I misjudged the distance and my chin cracked against the concrete edge, knocking me unconscious, splitting my chin open, skin flapping away from jawbone. I sank to the bottom and the water turned red with my blood as no one watched.
I am alive because of chance. A young man happened to open the door of his villa, saw the strange redness that was spreading in the pool – my blood, becoming thin and diluted with chlorinated water. He leapt into the pool and pulled me out, dragged me on to the side, pumped my chest so that water spurted and spluttered from my mouth, the sun bright overhead.
I was not aware of any of this happening. This is what I have been told. The next thing I knew I was in hospital, Dad staring down at me, grinning, the long gold chain that he always wore dangling above my nose.
‘Hold still, my darling, let the man sew you up.’
I would never leave my girls alone by a pool. I don’t like to let them out of my sight. I hover close to them in the playground, shout at them when they run too far ahead. I tell them not to cycle too fast, climb too high, go too far out in the sea. At night I check there is nothing too tight around their necks. I listen to their breathing in the dark and lay my hand on their chests to make sure they are still warm. I imagine all the ways they could die. I am afraid. The fear lives in me, but I keep it hidden. No one knows the strange thoughts that eddy in my head, not my husband, not my best friends; I keep these thoughts to myself because they are horrible and ugly and I don’t think other people should have to hear them. It might make them think I am horrible and ugly too.
The Consequences of Love Page 4
