by AJ Taft
Lily turns her attention back to Jo, pink tongue stuck out, sealing the spliff. “I went to see my Aunt,” says Lily. “I thought she was dead but she showed up at my mum’s funeral. And she gave me this photo album of my mum’s wedding day. I’d never seen a photo of my mum from before I was born. I didn’t recognise her, look.” She pulls the album out of the top of one of the boxes for the tip. “I never saw her smile, not once.” Lily takes the spliff Jo is offering and lies back on the mattress. She smokes in silence, while Jo leafs through the album.
“He’s got your eyes.”
“Do you know what?” says Lily, propping herself up on her elbow. “I can’t believe it’s legal. I can’t believe that you can have a child and then leave it, abandon it to whatever life, without checking up on me… it, at all. He has no idea what kind of life I’ve had. He’s never checked that someone’s taking care of me. What if my mum had died fifteen years ago? Do you know what I mean? And now, he can refuse to meet me or give me any explanation? It should be against the law.”
Jo nods. “It’s called something like breach of promise.” Jo had studied law for a year at polytechnic, before switching to the same politics degree as Lily. “Breach of contract, that’s it. He was supposed to be a father but instead he turned out to be a useless prick.”
“I should sue him.”
“For damages.”
“For the life I could have had if he hadn’t left and taken me mum’s heart with him.” Lily smiles to show she’s half joking. Jo takes the spliff from Lily’s fingers.
“What do you think your life would have been like?”
“What, if my mum would have been as happy as she was then?” Lily nods towards the album. “God, it would have been completely different. I would have had clean clothes and learnt to play guitar. I used to hate kids with two parents; you know the ones that both turned up at parents’ evening, sports’ day. My mum never went to one. I used to make up all kinds of excuses for her, she was ill, my granny had died, she’d got a new job. They must have known I was lying; I got through about fifteen grandparents, but no one ever said anything. I used to fantasize about my dad taking me to football matches. I worried that he’d left because he’d wanted a boy not a girl. Stupid huh? But then why did he leave as soon as I was born? What was so disappointing?”
“He’ll just be another sad ass bloke.”
“I would have been normal. I’d be at the uni, living in halls of residence; one of those ones like what’s-his-face lived in, with wardens on hand in case I couldn’t work out how to use the tin opener. I’d have a big gang of friends with names like Tamara, we’d all be about to move into a house with central heating and a washing machine.” Lily’s spent a great deal of her time at polytechnic observing such students. She starts to laugh. “I could have been ordinary.”
“We wouldn’t be friends though, Tamara.”
“And you know, it’s not just him.” Lily sobers up for a moment. “It’s everyone. Where are all my relatives; his side of the family? I had no one growing up. My grandparents, my mum’s mum and dad, died when I was little. I had Aunt Edie, but my mum pretended she was dead.” Her anger surfaces again and Lily feels sick. “And the least my ‘dad’ could have done was to meet me, just once. Or at least write me a letter. The Salvation Army would have passed it on to me. Why didn’t he at least explain why he didn’t want to see me? He hasn’t considered my feelings at all, ever. Not one moment in my whole life.”
They are down to the last candle and it flickers bravely on. The Ginsters cheese and onion pasty has been at least nibbled and another bottle of vodka lies empty on the floor. Lily reaches for her cup, and as she does so, Jo notices the grubby bandages on her wrist. Lily catches her looking and pulls at her sleeves self-consciously.
“You’re right Lily,” says Jo a few moments later. “He owes you a meeting. So, let’s set it up.”
“What do you mean?”
“If he doesn’t want to see you, let’s go see him.”
“We can’t,” says Lily, at the same time as a feeling of excitement floods her belly.
“Yes we can. Otherwise you’re just another victim. Another woman who’s let a man walk all over her and then beat herself up about it, rather than the arse that’s responsible. This is a war, Lily.” Jo’s radical feminism has become legendary at polytechnic. She handed out photocopies of Solanas’ SCUM manifesto on their first Sex and Gender tutorial. “It's time to start fighting back.”
Lily stands up. “But what’s the point? He doesn’t want to see me. What would I do? Chase him down the street shouting, ‘please be my dad?’” Standing up has made her light headed. She starts to giggle.
“He owes you an explanation, Lily.” Jo is deadly calm. “He’s a spineless bastard, and he owes you an apology at the very least. If the Salvation Army can find him, I’m damned sure we can. What the fuck made you pick them?”
“There are not exactly thousands of people out there queuing up to help reunite you with your birth family, you know. It was either them or Cilla and ‘Surprise, Sur-bloody-prise’. Their motto is blood and fire.” She shrugs. “I thought it sounded good.”
She sits back down on the edge of the bed settee. “I’ve tried to find him. I got the bus to Skipton, that’s where Aunt Edie said he lives, well she thinks. I went to the library and read about a million old copies of the local paper, I went back over ten years, nothing. I looked in births, marriages and deaths, everywhere. I spent all day there, ’til I went bog eyed.”
“Did you try the phone book?”
They look at each other. Lily opens her mouth to speak but no words come out. They both burst out laughing. Lily laughs so hard she worries she may choke.
Chapter 8
Two men are chasing Lily; one is wearing a trilby hat and a long dark raincoat, the other is dressed in jeans and a black bomber jacket. Lily knows him from somewhere but she can’t remember where. She runs down a dark side street, her lungs screaming at the effort. She’s halfway down the street before she realises it’s a dead end. She starts trying to climb the wall, but the man in the bomber jacket reaches her and grabs her ankles.
Lily sits up with a jolt, as a police car passes the house with its sirens screeching. Sweat makes her T-shirt stick to her skin. The pile of duvet next to her moves, making her jump. Then she remembers. She takes a few deep breaths and then lays back down, smiling up at the ceiling.
Jo lifts her head an inch off the pillow. “What you grinning like that for? God, my head hurts. Roll me a fag and stop smiling.”
Lily absent-mindedly sticks two cigarette papers together. Then she realises what she’s doing and looks across at Jo. “Don’t let ’em go to waste,” says Jo, flinging her the dope tin.
“You know, it’s Saturday,” says Jo thoughtfully, as she inhales the last of Lily’s spliff. “The library probably closes early. We should get going, we can clear up later.”
Lily has never been to Accrington library. The lady at the desk directs them upstairs, to a shelf that bows under the weight of a complete set of phone directories.
“I can’t believe you’ve spent all this time wondering where he is and never once picked up a phonebook.” Jo scans the shelf for the Skipton edition. “I mean, Winterbottom. It’s not exactly John Smith.”
Lily starts to rearrange the poetry section, starting with shades of red. “Hey, so I’ve not been thinking straight. I never knew they kept phone directories in libraries.”
Jo pulls out a directory, slings it on the table and flicks through the pages. “Here we are,” says Jo, “David Winterbottom. There’s only one.”
Lily grabs the directory from Jo. “Let me see.”
“Have you got a pen on you?” asks Jo.
Lily shakes her head. “There’s seven other Winterbottoms. They might be my relatives too. What if I have a massive family out there?”
Jo glances around the room and then carefully rips the page from the telephone book. “Come on, let’s get
out of here.”
They go to the pub across the road, and despite the drizzle, sit outside. “We could just ring him. Ask him if he used to be married to your mum.”
Lily smokes in silence. She’s spent nineteen years imagining meeting her father; she can’t help experiencing a feeling of anticlimax.
“Or, we could pretend to be solicitors, trying to track him down because he’s inherited something.”
The drizzle turns to raindrops. The majority of them bounce down on the green umbrella fixed to the table. A few hit Lily’s back. They drink in silence. Lily lights another cigarette from the butt of her first. “He’s going to be suspicious. He’s just had the Salvation Army on his case.”
“What about if we said we were doing some market research? We could ask him if he’s got any children…”
“He doesn’t want me to find him, remember?” Lily looks up at Jo for the first time since they arrived at the pub. “He’s hardly going to say, ‘oh yes, I’ve got a nineteen-year- old daughter I abandoned at birth.’ Is he?”
“Well, there’s only one thing for it then. We’ll have to go and see for ourselves. We’ve got a photo.”
“It’s twenty years old.”
“So what? We’ll still be able to tell if it’s him. We’ll just have to camp outside his house. We could do with a car.” Jo takes a drink and then almost chokes. “I can get us a car. I’ll borrow our Ste’s, my brother’s. He never uses it; it’s rusting on my mum’s drive. She’ll be well pleased to get rid of it.”
“What about poly, Jo?”
“What about it? It’s hardly rocket science. We break up in a few weeks anyway. I told them you needed some compassionate leave. I talked to Wardle, he said fine, so long as we promise to get the lecture notes copied up. Oh and he gave me a couple of essay titles we have to hand in by January. I’m sure we’ll both be able to catch up.” She emphasizes the both. Lily looks uncertain. “We’re both going back, Lily. We’ll get this sorted out and then we’re both going back, to continue our fabulous education and then get on with our fabulous lives.”
Lily wishes she had Jo’s optimism. She has a sense of foreboding that she can’t shake.
The bus to Manchester arrives half an hour late, and they almost miss their connection to Liverpool. Lily sprints down the bus station with Jo lagging behind, and just manages to catch the driver’s attention. From Liverpool they catch another bus to Kirby where Jo’s mother lives on a housing estate, one of those Barratt ones Lily’s seen advertised on television, the one where the helicopter flies in.
A Mini is parked on the drive. It has a white roof and red sides. “What do you reckon?” asks Jo. “Thank God he stopped short of painting a Union Jack on the bonnet.”
Jo’s mother opens the door, dressed in a pale blue, velour tracksuit. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I’ve got nothing in for tea. Why can’t you ring like normal people?” She mock cuffs Jo round the back of the head and smiles at Lily. “I don’t know what your friend’s going to think of me, and look at the state of you,” she says, drawing Jo in for a hug. “When are you going to get your hair cut? You look like no one cares for you. Oh it’s so good to see you.” Lily looks at the floor as Jo hugs her mother again.
“You must be Lily.” Jo’s mother puts her hand on Lily’s shoulder. “I’m Wendy. I’ve heard so much about you. How are you doing? I’m very sorry about your mum. How was the funeral?”
“Fine. Could I use your toilet?”
“Upstairs, first on the left.”
When Lily comes back downstairs, Jo and Wendy are in the kitchen. They both stop talking as Lily enters the room. “Anyway,” says Jo looking at Lily, “we’re not stopping. We just want to borrow the Mini for a few days. Our Ste won’t mind. Well,” she corrects herself, “he won’t know. We’ll have it back by the weekend.”
“Oh take it away for good, can’t you? He hasn’t mentioned it in weeks. He’s all caught up in this new woman.” Wendy raises her eyebrows skywards. “I don’t think they’ve got out of bed since he met her. If you can get it started, it’s yours. Now, come on,” she claps her hands, “Let’s open a bottle of wine. Lily, if you can get the corkscrew from that drawer over there, Jo can get on with finding us some glasses, and I’ll go and see what I’ve got in the freezer.”
They sit together at a table in the kitchen eating homemade fisherman’s pie. Lily has never tasted such deliciousness. She forks in mouthfuls, while Jo and Wendy gabble away like a pair of teenagers who haven’t seen each other for months. After a second bottle of wine, Wendy says they’d better spend the night.
Jo’s bedroom gives the impression that Jo the teenager has just gone to get a glass of water and will be back soon. As Jo opens the wardrobe door to find them both a pair of pyjamas, Lily spots a small picture of Simon Le Bon pinned to the inside. On the bedroom wall is a large poster that proclaims, ‘Protect me from what I want’. Lily wants to ask if Jo wants Simon Le Bon, and if that’s what she needs protecting from.
They lean out of the bedroom window and smoke a spliff in silence. It’s a clear night and Lily watches the stars. When they pull their heads back into the room, Lily notices a photograph framed on the windowsill. A boy with a long, dark fringe stares sullenly at her. “Who’s that?”
Jo sighs. “That’s William. He, well, we used to go out.”
“He’s good looking.”
“Yeah, too good looking. He got off with my best friend at a party. I went to get a drink and when I came back they were sat together on the stairs, snogging, with his hand up her jumper.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. She told me afterwards that he’d been trying to get off with her for weeks.” Jo pulls on a pair of pink candy striped pyjamas and climbs onto her bed. An old Snoopy, with only one ear, rests lopsidedly against her pillow, and CND badges adorn her curtains. “That’s men for you.” She sniffs. “He did me a favour really.” She glances at the empty photo frame next to her bed, which used to contain a photograph of her father, swinging her up in the air when she was a kid. She threw the photo years ago, but for some reason she didn’t fully understand, she’d kept the empty frame. She forces her attention back to William’s transgressions. “He made me realise men just can’t be trusted. If he wasn’t for him I’d probably still be wearing lipstick and hoping my ass didn’t look too big.”
Lily climbs into the put up bed. The duvet has a faded picture of a black and white Pierrot clown on it, and smells of fabric conditioner. Lily’s wearing an old nightshirt of Jo’s, that’s about three sizes too big and has been mended with a patch on the front.
Jo turns off the light and lies on her back, her head resting on her arms. The glow stars she stuck to the ceiling when she was twelve years old, radiate back at her. She recites all the constellations to herself. “Did you ever love anyone, Lil?”
Lily doesn’t answer. She’s fast asleep, her swollen belly warming up the bed sheets like a hot water bottle.
They wake to the smell of frying bacon. “I don’t know, you students.” Wendy says as they enter the kitchen. “Spend half your lives asleep, while us hard working, taxpaying folk pay you for the privilege. I hope you were having deep and profound dreams at least. Come on, Lily; get your feet under the table. Tea or coffee?”
Lily, if given the choice, would stay at Jo’s mum’s house forever. She’s never experienced freshly laundered sheets or real coffee, but Jo is anxious to get moving. She starts piling bags into the boot of the Mini. “I’m just borrowing a few bits. I’ll bring it all back.”
They have to push start the Mini down the road; Lily and Wendy at the rear, Jo running alongside, one hand on the steering wheel. It finally kicks into life and Jo dives headlong into the front seat. The car makes a throaty sound, coughs and splutters for the first few hundred yards but then finds itself. Jo pulls into the kerb, revving the engine, plumes of smoke billowing from the exhaust.
“Bye, thanks for having us.” Lily says, standing stiffly as Jo
’s mum tries to give her a hug.
“Make sure you eat properly,” Wendy shouts after her, as Lily pulls away and runs down the street towards the Mini.
“We’ve got wheels,” Jo shouts, as Lily jumps into the passenger seat. Lily laughs. The car has a stereo system that looks more valuable than the car itself; thick speaker wires like liquorice shoelaces, hanging out from under the dashboard. Jo rummages through the glove compartment, one hand on the wheel, and pulls out a tape. Moments later both girls are singing along to Whitesnake. The amazing thing about Jo is, when Lily’s with her, she gets this feeling she could do anything.
Lily’s euphoria evaporates on the doorstep in Accrington. The house is dark and the smell seems to have intensified. She opens a window, despite the cold. How come, despite being left by her husband, Jo’s mum had made such a go of life?
Jo is unloading bags from the car. She steps through the front door. “I’ve brought joss sticks.” Her cheeks redden, “I just thought, you know…”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Come on, look lively. Let’s get the rest of the bags and then I’ll skin up.”
Chapter 9
Lily smokes thirteen cigarettes as she watches the sun rise from her position on the back door step. ‘Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning’, the words go round and round her head as the bright pink dawn spreads over the horizon. She helps herself to a small glass of vodka, to try to settle the unease in her stomach.
The Mini must have enjoyed its journey from Liverpool to Accrington, because it starts first time. They stop at a petrol station on the outskirts of Skipton and buy a street map. Lily navigates, turning the map three hundred and sixty degrees on her lap as she follows their route with her finger. They follow the one way system round the town centre, before snaking their way up to the north, as the streets widen and become tree-lined, until finally they turn a corner.
