by Andrea Darby
‘Why do you do that? You’re so not funny. It’s Sunday.’ I jump at the sight of a dishevelled Eleanor at my bedroom door. She marches to the mirror. ‘Aarrgh! I need my fringe cut. Jeez, I look such a mess. And my skin’s so bad.’
‘How about a trip to town? We could get you a new school bag, have lunch.’ I’m desperate for some comfort food, some proper mashed potato. I’ve recently resorted to ready mash – my guilty secret; aka Eazy Spudz for Lazy Cowz. It’s not the same.
‘We could do.’ Eleanor’s breath leaves condensation as she does her usual close-up check for spots.
‘Don’t sound so enthusiastic.’
‘Can we go to the Chinese all-you-can-eat – their spring rolls are amazing?’
‘Eleanor, it’s a Sunday. Don’t be such a heathen.’
‘A what?’
‘Never mind. Go on then.’
***
‘Freya’s nan is ill, so she’s not going to theirs for lunch. Please can she come with us – she proper loves Chinese,’ Eleanor pleads as we amble out of the shopping arcade.
‘I suppose so.’ I’m such a pushover. The idea was to spend quality time with my daughter outside the increasingly hostile home environment.
Of course, it’s my fault she can’t find the perfect bag. ‘You’re not helping,’ she snaps in the sports store, when, with my patience fully tested, I wander off.
‘You don’t want my help. I’m too ancient to have an opinion,’ I tease.
Back outside, I spot Bethany and her mum walking past in a bustle of pedestrians. Convinced Ruth has caught my eye, I wave – but they hurry on, seemingly oblivious.
‘Bethany and her mum just passed,’ I tell Eleanor, who’s in a teenage trance, gazing at the Barbour-coated models in a shop window. ‘I don’t think they saw us.’ She shrugs.
Later, with Eleanor’s mission finally accomplished and her mood temporarily lifted by food – and Freya – I drag the girls into a few of my favourite stores. But then Eleanor announces there’s no way she can walk home, her new shoes are agony.
‘I’ll actually die if I walk another step.’ I think she has a taxi in mind, and looks horrified as we climb on the bus with our bulging bags.
Imogen calls again that evening. She’s trying out a new cassoulet recipe, waiting for her beans to blanch. She wonders if Gaz has called, if I’ve called him. I deliver a double no.
‘Still – early days.’ I detect a thread of desperation in Imogen’s voice. I hear one of her girls giggling in the background. ‘That’s Laura with her new joke book.’ The laughter gets louder. ‘Not now, Laura … one minute, Carrie.’
While Imogen has a quiet word with her daughter, I think back to how much I loved my collection of kids’ joke books. ‘How do you make an apple puff?’ I’d ask Mum. ‘Chase it round the kitchen!’ She’d laugh the first time, next a strained smile, then exasperation. Dad fared better, always giving me an encouraging chuckle or ‘boom boom’. I’d often crack a joke after Mum and Dad rowed. ‘There’s a time and a place,’ Mum would chide sternly. Yet it seemed perfect timing. Mum got so tired of the same gags I invented an imaginary friend, Miss Giggles, to tell them to. She always roared – once or twice she’d even wet herself. I read jokes, in secret, on the loo if Mum was in a mood. I’d passed a few books on to Eleanor, but she’d never loved them like I did. And I was distraught when my favourite one got ruined – another victim of her tonsillitis. I’d found it under her duvet, its lime-green cover and a clump of dog-eared pages soaked in sick. Ironically, I used to love the book’s mustardy scent. It was no longer in print.
‘Sorry about that,’ Imogen says. ‘Laura’s desperate for me to share her news. She’s going to be Mary in the Year 1 nativity.’
‘Wow. That’s brilliant. She’s a star.’
Imogen promises a video. She knows I’ll be desperate to see it. While most parents of older children thanked God and all that’s holy they no longer had to sit in draughty halls and churches watching strung out and stilted manger scenes – however cute the kids – I couldn’t get enough of them. All because of Ashley; my Joseph.
‘By the way, more news – Ben’s decided to get in touch with his real mum.’
‘Really?’ He’d previously refused, even though Imogen had used a professional service to trace her. She suspected he feared rejection, though Ben vehemently denied it – he was just happy with things the way they were.
‘Yes, he feels the time’s right – now his adoptive mum’s passed. He needs to know the truth, why she gave him away, however painful that may be.’
‘That’s brave – I hope it works out for him.’
After our farewells, I can’t shift Imogen’s words from my head. Perhaps now my life’s changed, the time’s right for me to face a truth I’ve been evading; however much it might hurt.
I have a strong urge to look out my old school photograph. Ten minutes later – the contents of my white chest scrambled, several items flung to the floor as if by a frenzied burglar – and I’ve unearthed it: my tatty snakeskin purse buried under old cosmetics and other bits of junk in its disordered depths.
I slide out the photo, careful not to inflict more damage. It’s faded now, a tear roughly sellotaped down the middle. I’d ripped the photo in anger but, unable to throw it away, had bodged a repair years later.
I hold the image close. It’s hard to believe it was thirty-five years ago. He’s there, centre stage; my Joseph – the heavenly Ashley Baird all draped in white.
‘Hold hands!’ one of the many proud mums brandishing a hefty camera had demanded as we posed for post-performance pictures. We’d been too scared to refuse. One of the wise men, Nick somebody, was stood on my other side, crotch stinking of cottage cheese. I did whatever it took not to sit by him in class. But it didn’t matter that day. I was too excited to breathe in properly anyway. Mum had made my Mary costume out of a pale blue sheet from a C&A sale and the belt from her spare dressing gown.
Eleanor startles me. She’s holding up her new bag, various adornments already hanging from it; among them a diamante dog and the lucky amber charm from Sunny.
‘Nice,’ I say, smiling. ‘You’ll be jangling into school.’ About to flounce out, curiosity drags Eleanor’s grouchy face to the bed.
‘Oh, the Mary photo. Memories,’ she says, with a mocking sigh. It’s a shame her own school nativity didn’t evoke such happy recollections. She’d been an angel, looking all calm, bright and ethereal on stage until one of the shepherds snagged his crook on her sparkly gold wings, pulling them clean off and getting a rapturous round of applause that made both children cry in unison.
‘Imogen’s just told me Laura’s Mary in her school nativity.’
‘Aw, sweet.’ Eleanor moves closer. ‘It’s kind of rubbish – blurred and stuff. Who took it?’
‘Grandma. Cameras weren’t as good back then.’
‘Yeah, like, a hundred years ago!’
I can’t begin to explain how special the photo was. How the quality didn’t matter. How the picture, along with some of the finer details of that day, may be blurred but the feelings had the sharpness of a million pixels in my memory. That nativity had ignited a love of the stage that had never faded.
Yet the event was marred, just like the photo; spoiled by what came after. Ashley had left me with scars that I thought had healed.
I slip the photo back into the purse, my smile streaked with sadness.
CHAPTER 5
‘Put that rat back and go and let Grandma and Granddad in,’ I instruct Eleanor, dodging scowls as I dart around her room bundling clothes and make-up into drawers and cupboards.
Despite promising a brief visit – on their way to see friends – Mum would surely make time for one of her inspections, so she could wonder all over again at how slovenly her only daughter had become, how her ‘neat and orderly’ gene had skipped a generation.
‘Hamster,’ Eleanor corrects, with a frown, landing Pepsi a kiss on his furry head as she eas
es him through the cage door. I’d insisted she clean the cage in honour of Grandma, who found the very thought of a rodent in a bedroom so abhorrent it triggered one of her flushes. Like me, Eleanor longed for a dog, but Dan was never keen and I had to concede it probably wasn’t practical. Pepsi was the compromise.
I kick several shoes under the bed and peer through the window. Dad’s new blue Honda shimmers on the drive and I can see Mum’s navy handbag poking out of the porch.
I’d definitely inherited Mum’s penchant for curtains, I think, gathering them into the tiebacks as I gather my composure. I suspect it’s the association with stages for me – the excitement of what unfolds behind and between them. I prefer them in rich fabrics, but plain and unfussy. Mum, on the other hand loved patterns, a pelmet and swag. I’m convinced she judges a woman by her drapes. ‘I think she’d sooner be seen with her knickers off than not have her windows properly dressed,’ I’d said to Dad one day, out of her earshot as she fussed over a new pair in the dining room. ‘Hell will freeze over before either happens,’ he’d quipped, wiggling his dense eyebrows.
‘I hope we haven’t spoiled any plans,’ Mum says, greeting me in the living room, dressed like an aunt at a wedding in a blue floral dress with a navy jacket and matching shoes. Her bouffant hair looks newly permed; not a strand has escaped the Elnett assault.
‘Not at all. It’s great to see you,’ I say, giving her a hug.
‘Ooh, it still smells of Christmas in here… cinnamon… lovely.’ She sniffs the air. Eleanor catches my eye, desperate not to laugh. Mum says that virtually every time she visits.
‘Cinnamon’s for life, not just for Christmas,’ I joke.
Mum ignores me. ‘When your dad looked at the route to our friends’ new house in Stoke, it seemed a shame not to pop in.’ Dad’s arm’s draped around Eleanor. He nods, with a goofy smile. ‘I say “house”,’ Mum continues, undoing her jacket. ‘It’s one of those park homes. Goodness knows how they can live in one of those – after having a four-bedroomed place. But each to their own.’
I shrug. ‘How you feeling, Dad?’
‘Fighting fit.’ He releases Eleanor to do a boxer pose, calloused knuckles protruding from fists held tight in front of his contagiously cheery face. And he looks it, still wiry and dapper for a man in his mid seventies, with an impressive head of bouncy, two-tone silver hair.
‘Well, I wouldn’t say that,’ Mum says. Eleanor and I can’t suppress smiles as Dad pulls an overly glum face.
It isn’t long before Dad comes up with an excuse to hijack Eleanor – he needs a techno teen’s help to operate the music system in the new car – and Mum seizes the opportunity to talk about his health.
Dad has ‘unstable angina’. I remember when Mum first told me. We were in her gleaming kitchen, choking on Cif fumes. Mum wasn’t one for displays of emotion, and I cried when I saw her welling up, assuming the worst. Although my parents bickered a lot, they’d be lost without each other. And the thought of losing either of them was one I couldn’t contemplate. But typical Dad – he’d waltzed in, dismissing the ‘drama’ and declaring that a few blood pressure pills and half an aspirin each day would keep it at bay.
‘Your dad insisted I was making a fuss, but I knew the tablets were upsetting his stomach, Carolina,’ Mum says, shadowing me as I make drinks. I still wince when she uses my full name, which she insists on doing every so often, as if to remind me. Mum wanted me to have a name with substance. She’d always considered her own, Yvonne, a little inadequate. So I got four syllables. However, I decided Carolina was far too prim for a little tomboy who collected snails in a bucket behind the shed and put bogies under her microscope, and – to Mum’s horror – I shortened it.
‘Dr Mills eventually agreed to change them – I had to be quite insistent – and he felt better almost immediately,’ Mum adds proudly.
‘That’s good,’ I say, finding myself arranging chocolate biscuits on a plate in Mum’s honour.
Later, with Dad, as always, keen to tidy the back garden for me, my suggestion that Mum help Eleanor to make a Victoria sponge for school is favourably received.
‘Well, I must have made several dozen over the years,’ Mum declares. ‘Has to be real cream – none of that UHT nonsense.’
While Mum and Eleanor walk to the shop – the jam they unearth at the back of one of Mitsy’s shelves has grown an impressive mould – Dad appears at the french windows, secateurs in hand, asking if he can be cheeky and check the sports news. He winks: ‘While your mum’s not here.’ He’s still watching TV when I return from the kitchen.
‘That guy puts me in mind of Ashley … you know …’ Dad falters, shifting his weight in the chair.
I catch a side-on glimpse of a man with shoulder-length fair hair before he disappears from the screen. It’s a good job Mum’s not there. Ashley’s name’s a close second to Nigella on her hate list, and only just above bacteria.
‘I suppose you heard about his accident?’ Dad’s eyes avoid mine.
‘No.’ I sit on the arm of the sofa for support.
‘Yes, some stage equipment fell on him. Very badly injured by all accounts.’
‘You sure it was him, Dad?’ My heart pounds on my ribs. How had I missed that?
‘Yes. It was in all our local papers – and the Standard.’
I really don’t know how I feel, but I bet Mum’s so pleased.
***
‘Still up for a shopping trip next weekend?’ I ask Tash on the phone. ‘I need your help to choose a dress for the ball.’
‘Hell, yeah. We could meet after I get my acrylics done.’
I’ve passed on previous shopping invites, fearing it would be too crazy an experience. But I can’t stand another Saturday in which the highlight is watching Mum gloat while Eleanor proudly pulls a Victoria sponge from the oven as if seeing and smelling something freshly baked in our kitchen’s a miracle akin to turning water into wine.
I’m slumped on the sofa eating toast, computer on my lap, lost in thoughts of what Dad told me the previous day when the chain of coincidences really dawns on me. First, the compulsion to re-read the letter I’d kept hidden for years, then Imogen’s reference to Ashley, after years of honouring my taboo on any utterances of his name (unless suitably inebriated); leaving it firmly stamped into the mud. Then there was the resonance of her words about Ben contacting his mum, his need to ‘know the truth’. And Dad’s revelation.
It only takes a few keyboard clicks before I’m immersed in information about Ashley’s accident. It was six months ago at a Reading theatre during a final rehearsal for a contemporary production; him and two fellow actors struck by some suspended staging. His injuries were clearly serious; he’d undergone several big operations. I think of Mum. No doubt she’d wished the equipment had been heavier. Clearly, she’d thought better of telling me.
I phone Sunny. It’s a fortnight since my outburst and I’m keen to apologise. Although Imogen’s adamant I’ve got nothing to be sorry for, should have ‘given it to her with both barrels’, my moral compass is guiding me in that direction; it’s the right thing to do. I hate getting outwardly cross with people – even those well deserving of my wrath – fearful of upsetting them; and myself. Confrontation’s even more challenging with Sunny, always so seemingly calm, hushed voice stroking her words, rounding the edges so they can’t possibly be deemed negative or hurtful. Besides, she’s not a bad person, I tell myself often. I shouldn’t focus on her faults and foibles. She meant so much to Dan. ‘I had to be her father and big brother when Dad was busy being a hippy, getting high on pot and pale ale,’ he’d told me during one of his ‘why was I lumbered with such liberal parents?’ moments.
Yet, though I hear the apology in my head, I can’t deliver it to my tongue. I end up telling Sunny I’ve got some cyclamen plants for her – a kind of implied peace offering.
‘Super. I’ll come over this morning then, if you don’t mind,’ she says.
It’s not long before I he
ar the knock – an extended version, with extra taps. I wonder if it’s some kind of Morse code, summoning evil spirits to punish me for evading my dead husband’s wish.
After taking a deep breath that lasts the length of the landing, I’m forced to do one of her slow-motion blinks when, still in my PJs, I open the front door to Sunny. Winter sun and a very loud, tiered ‘flower power’ dress both scream at me.
‘Hi, sweetie. Lovely to see you.’ If Sunny’s feeling any animosity it’s well concealed, as always. She’s on her way to the care home and thought she could take the plants. ‘I’m going in early today – taking my violin – as Mick hasn’t had many visitors this week, poor thing.’ Her eyes slide slowly across my face.
Despite her delicate fingers, no one can press my guilt button as firmly as Sunny, I think, as we carry the plants to her car. She visited her dad almost every day, while Eleanor and I seldom went. Sadly, Mick had suffered several strokes, the latest leaving him unable to speak. It’s why Sunny had stayed in Tetford. She hated stopping in one place for long, travelling for most of her adult life. (‘Travelling’s so good for the soul, Carrie.’)
I should visit Mick more. But things were strained between Dan and his dad – especially since his mum, Mary, had died – so we’ve never been close.
As Sunny squeezes the pots into the minuscule boot of her daffodil yellow Micra, I squint at the sun, checking no one’s around to see me in my night attire.
‘Mick will really appreciate these,’ Sunny says. I smile. I still find it odd that she calls her dad by his name. Dan maintained it was the ‘New Age thing’; she’d done it since her teens.
