by Carys Bray
Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Carys Bray
Title Page
Dedication
Everything a parent needs to know
Just in case
Sweet home
The rescue
Wooden Mum
Dancing in the kitchen
Scaling never
The baby aisle
My burglar
The countdown
Bed rest
Under covers
Love: terms and conditions
The ice baby
Bodies
I will never disappoint my children
On the way home
Acknowledgements
Sneak Peek
Copyright
About the Book
They say there’s no place like home. It’s where the heart is...
Meet the little boy who believes in miracles.
Meet the mother who loves to bring babies home from the newborn aisle of her supermarket.
Meet the husband who carves a longed-for baby out of ice as a gift for his wife.
Meet the widow who is reminded of romance whilst standing at the kitchen sink.
In this prize-winning short story collection, Carys Bray weaves together moments of joy, heartache, sadness and unwavering love as told through seventeen very different notions of home.
About the Author
Carys Bray was awarded the Scott Prize for her debut short-story collection, Sweet Home. Her first novel, A Song for Issy Bradley, was chosen for Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and was winner of the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award 2015. She lives in Southport with her husband and four children.
ALSO BY CARYS BRAY
A Song for Issy Bradley
For Neil
For Alice, Joseph, Daniel and Sam
Wherever you are is home
Everything a parent needs to know
Helen’s daughter hates her.
‘I hate you.’ The words shoot out of Jessica’s gap-toothed mouth. Helen would like to duck, but she laughs. It’s a laugh that is arrested and immediately charged with impersonation: a whimper in disguise.
Jessica is pressed into the corner, each hand resting on a cool tile wall. The shrieks of other children echo around the pool and the chlorine-fogged air. ‘I liked Daddy best,’ she fires. ‘I wish …’
Helen is porcupined by these articulated arrows. Nothing in all she has read can help her. She feels like an actress who has learned the wrong lines. She has rehearsed Mary Poppins, only to find herself appearing in Night, Mother.
Never back your child into a corner. Always provide a way out and allow your child to save face. Humiliation can be extremely damaging for children. Avoid public humiliation at all costs.
(Everything a Parent Needs to Know: Two Hundred Steps to Familial Bliss by DENISE GOODY)
Helen kneels, aware that she appears to be begging. She is begging. ‘Come out of the corner. Don’t stand there. Come and talk to me by the chairs.’
‘No.’
‘Well why don’t you just get in the—’
‘No.’
‘If you just—’
‘No.’
Helen fights another coil of laughter, this one cloaks tears. She is hot. The heavy, leisure-centre air is giving her a headache and the knees of her jeans are damp. She could roll them up, but she would rather have wet trousers than expose her raspberry-ripple legs. Jessica’s head drops and Helen can see the knobble on the back of her neck through its almost transparent covering of pale skin and biro-fine veins.
‘Look, Jess.’ Helen gives herself eight out of ten for patience. ‘Look. You said you wanted to wear Paul’s old trunks. You said you didn’t want to wear the swim suit.’
It is essential to respect your child’s autonomy. Allow your child to make decisions and accept consequences. She will thank you for it.
(Parenting for Idiots! by JOANN HUMBLE)
Jessica moves her hands from the wall and clasps them tight in front of her. She has been drawing at school. There is felt tip on her fingers. Her drawings usually feature herself and Helen. Semi-circle heads grow straight out of boxy middles. Legs are pencil thin and over-long. Helen’s face is often scribbled over. This is because it is usually raining or snowing in Jessica’s pictures. It is nothing personal. Children don’t really hate their parents. There are messages on the pictures. The messages are like tricks. Jessica recoils if Helen reads them incorrectly. Today’s picture reads, acisseJ morf mum oT.
Without the protection of a costume, Jessica seems shelled. Her torso is buttery soft and pale. Her fine, mousey hair is jumbled into a pony tail. Paul’s old trunks are blue and red. Helen holds the pink goggles. A small child’s voice snakes though the air: ‘Is that a boy or a girl?’
The absolute, most important thing is to give a child a definite sense of who they are. Your child should feel comfortable with herself, happy in her own skin, certain of who she is.
(A Happy Childhood, a Happy Life! by BRENDA JOLLY)
‘Jessica, if you don’t go over there to your class right now, I will be very, very cross.’ Helen’s voice wibbles, undermining her reported crossness. Another laugh wings her throat and she clips it to stop the tears that are fluttering close behind. ‘Look,’ she tries. ‘You said you didn’t want to wear your swimming costume. You found the trunks. You wanted to wear them.’ Jessica’s toes flex and tense again. ‘So I said you could, but I wanted to bring the costume too, just in case. And then you said that I never listen to you. So I left the costume at home.’
Jessica stares at her feet. They are rigid. Toes curled, like claws. The other parents are watching. Helen can feel their stares between her shoulder blades. They will think, look at that poor girl whose mother has made her come swimming dressed like a boy. They will notice the crack of Helen’s bottom peeping out of the top of her jeans as she kneels in the damp patch. Helen would like to reach around and pull her knickers higher, but she can’t remember what kind they are.
Jessica raises her head slightly and glares out from under her fringe. Helen extends a hand, a come-on-this-is-enough hand, a let’s-be-friends hand, and Jessica flinches, as if she is expecting to be hit. As if she is used to it. As if she can count on it. She is cornered, cowering and half naked. A tantrum would be better. A tantrum would involve an eye-rolling, we’re-all-in-this-together glance at the other parents. It could be deflected by a shrug, a smile, and a when-will-she-grow-out-of-this chat in the changing room afterwards. But Jessica doesn’t do tantrums.
When all else fails, think a happy thought. Like Peter Pan and Wendy, you won’t soar unless you are happy. Remember a happy moment and grasp it as tightly as you would grasp your sword if you were to come face to face with an unfriendly dragon (no offence to any friendly dragons out there!).
(Give a little whistle: Disney solutions to parenting challenges by JO WHITE)
Helen’s happy thought is that Dave from her adult-education class put his hand up last week to say that he had enjoyed doing The Whatsit of Alfred Prufrock. ‘I relate to it,’ he said. ‘That stuff about walking in a room and wondering if people are looking at you. Getting it wrong and saying, “That’s not what I meant.” I thought it was all right, even though he’s a bit of a tosser. He should eat the bloody peach and roll his trousers up if he wants to.’
Before Dave and his less appreciative classmates had made it down the echoing stairwell of the further-education college, Helen’s imagination had given him sole charge of an aged mother and a life full of noble sacrifice as a dutiful, loving son. His mother would be waiting for him when he got home, Helen thought. When she heard the front door open his mo
ther would shout, ‘Is that you, our Dave?’ And Dave would call, ‘Yes, our Mam.’ Then he would make her a cup of tea and sit next to her on the sofa. They would talk about his childhood. About how she always did her best and how he was grateful. Then Dave’s mum, who actually had a name by this stage in Helen’s invention – Phyllis – would put her arm around Dave and say, ‘You’re a good lad, all I ever wanted was for you to be happy. Now get that little book out, and read me another one of those funny poems by that George Eliot.’
Jessica whispers something, inaudibly.
‘Say it again.’
‘I want to go home.’
‘Is this because of the trunks? It’s fine if it is. It just seems to me that in the car, before we got here, you didn’t really want to come. So I’m wondering if it’s just the trunks?’
Jessica shrugs twice in quick succession. There have been so many swimming lessons. But she can’t manage a length without a float. She thrashes and hammers at the water, fighting her way to the deep end. Occasionally the float pops out of her hands and she soaks into the water. Helen’s stomach clenches as she waits for the teacher to slide into the pool and retrieve Jessica. He’s always quick. But still …
Today in the car on the way to the pool Jessica had mumbled, ‘I might need some help swimming.’
Followed by: ‘Actually, I will need some help swimming.’
After that: ‘Because I might have forgotten how to swim.’
And finally: ‘I can’t really swim.’
‘That’s why you’re going, Jessica,’ Helen had replied brightly. ‘So you can learn how to swim.’
It is vitality important to introduce children to as many new experiences as possible. Like puppies, children need to be socialised. Children will not be afraid if they have been socialised correctly. They will approach life with the joie de vivre of a puppy.
(Like Dogs, Like Children: the new way to train your child by BEN RUFF)
Helen stands. She gives up. Other parents drink too much, make promises they can’t keep and hit their children. Helen gives up. Her feet have gone to sleep. They prickle as she walks toward the chairs where the other parents are sitting. Jessica follows several paces behind.
‘Ah,’ calls one of the parents. ‘Ah, poor love.’
‘Did you forget her costume?’ another asks. ‘Is that all they could find for you behind the desk?’
The changing rooms are quiet. Jessica puts her clothes back on ponderously. There is something heavy and cheerless in her, as if she was made for disappointment. She cultivates every hurt, every injury, and she wears them in the creases of her forehead, and in the tentativeness of her occasional embrace. Helen bends to help with her socks. Jessica’s feet are soft and white, and her little toes curl like monkey nuts. Helen would like to kiss them.
‘Remember when I was late for school in Reception Class, Mummy?’
‘No.’
‘Yes, you do. I couldn’t find my cardigan, and you shouted at me, and I was crying when we got there.’
‘No.’
‘Well, I do.’
One day, Helen thinks, Jessica will sit on an orange, plastic chair in a designated room at a GP surgery and describe her horrendous childhood to a sympathetic counsellor. The trauma of attending swimming lessons wearing her older brother’s trunks will equal her already misremembered recollections of the divorce. The counsellor will agree that her mother has ruined her life. This scene approaches with the inevitability of a speeding train.
‘I’m sorry if I shouted at you when you were in Reception, Jess.’
‘That’s all right.’ Jessica shrugs and examines the felt tip on her hands.
When they get home, Paul opens the door to them. ‘You’re early, Mum,’ he says, caught red-handed with the Xbox controller. Fluff is growing on his upper lip and chin, but it cannot obscure the openness of his face.
‘You obviously weren’t expecting us.’
‘How come you’re back already?’
Helen relieves him of the controller as she explains.
‘Doh!’ He slaps his forehead. ‘You Muppet, Jess!’
‘Remember the story of Thumper,’ Helen says. ‘If you can’t say anything nice …’
‘Lol.’ He grins.
‘I don’t think that’s actually a word.’ She smiles back at him.
‘Lolz,’ he says.
‘That doesn’t sound like a word, either. Go and do your homework.’
‘Rofl,’ he calls over his shoulder as he walks up the stairs.
‘I think those are actually initials, not words,’ Helen says. ‘You can’t really pronounce them like words because the vowels aren’t—’
‘Chillax, Mum,’ he calls as he closes his bedroom door.
Jessica picks at her dinner. Her reasons for not liking food include it being too yellow, too soft and too runny.
‘Remember when it was May Day at nursery, Mummy?’
‘No. Eat your dinner, please, Jess.’
‘Remember when it was May Day and everyone came with a May Day hat with ribbons on, to dance around the May Pole?’
‘Not really.’
‘Except me, cos you forgot.’
Helen remembers.
Paul laughs. ‘OMG, that’s nothing,’ he says with his mouth full. ‘I remember once when Mum was an hour late picking me up from school because there was an accident on the coast road and she couldn’t turn the car around or anything. She didn’t have her mobile with her and no one knew where she was. Any more grub?’
Disappointment bounces off Paul like hail. He is amenable, unguarded, confiding. ‘We did about boners in biology,’ he said to her recently. ‘Someone said that the Leaning Tower of Pisa is like a giant boner!’ He laughed for a long time and eventually she had to join in. They stood in the kitchen together, giggling madly, until Jessica appeared in the doorway and drizzled sadness over the pair of them.
The mother–daughter bond is the strongest, most loving tie of all. Girls need a loving, committed, attentive mother. With such a mother, what could possibly go wrong?!
(All you need is love! by PAULINE MCCARTNEY)
At bedtime, Helen arms herself with fiction. ‘How about this story, Jess?’ she asks.
‘No.’
‘Or this one?’
‘No.’
‘How about you choose one yourself?’
‘It’s okay. We can have the one you wanted.’
‘I was just making a suggestion, Jess. It’s your choice. What would you like?’
‘No, it’s okay, we can have the one you wanted. I don’t mind.’
‘Well I was hoping you would pick one that you like, so it would be more fun for you.’
‘I’m trying to be kind, Mummy.’
‘Sorry.’ Helen reads Jessica a story about a dog. He runs away from home and gets so dirty that his family don’t recognise him. They don’t believe it’s him until he’s been in the bath. Then everyone hugs, and they are all happy. ‘That’s a lovely story, isn’t it?’ Helen smiles.
‘I wanted Nobody Likes Me.’ Jessica shrugs in a way that is meant to suggest not minding and minding very much all at once. ‘The one where the boy’s mum is horrible to him and he hides under the bed and falls asleep and dreams about—’
Helen bends to kiss the soft skin of her cheek.
‘Ouch.’ Jessica rubs her face hard with the flat of her hand.
‘Sorry. I love you, Jess. Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight, Mummy.’
Jessica has arranged her cuddly animals so that they are lying with their heads on her pillow. There is a small corner left for her. She rolls onto her side to make more room for the creatures, allowing herself a tiny wrap of duvet. And then she is still.
Later, after Paul has gone to bed, Helen reads. Tonight she eschews help for happiness. She ignores the growing pile of hard-backed, hard-faced, hard-to-follow advice, and grasps her earlier happy thought.
It’s dark outside when she falls asleep on th
e sofa, her head resting on the pages of a small poetry book. She dreams of Jessica’s toes curled like claws, scuttling across the bottom of the swimming pool in the thick silence, oblivious to her poolside cries of, ‘Time for you, and time for me, Jess.’
Just in case
I’ve been looking for a baby to borrow for a number of weeks. I’ve offered to look after several, even some I don’t know very well. But their mothers seem suspicious. I ask nicely. I say please and I smile. I remember to ask whether it’s a girl or a boy and how old it is, although I’m more interested in its length than anything.
This morning the lady who lives next door rang the bell. ‘Emma! I didn’t think you’d be here during the day, just called by on the off chance,’ she said. ‘Are you on holiday? Could you do me a massive favour?’
‘I’m not on holiday,’ I replied, rummaging through the pockets of my head, trying to find her name.
‘My dad’s got this pain in his chest. Mum’s called an ambulance. I’ve got to meet them at the hospital.’ She glanced at the baby in her arms. ‘Only I really can’t …’
I smiled carefully. ‘I’d be happy to help.’
‘Oh, thank you.’ She handed the baby over. A little girl who might be the right size. ‘I just want to make sure my dad’s okay. I’ll be straight back, probably no more than an hour. You’ll be all right?’ I nodded. ‘We’ll have to have you and Richard round for a drink again soon,’ she called over her shoulder as she hurried to her car. And then she disappeared.
The baby was warm and sleepy. She arched and stretched as I carried her into the house, but she didn’t wake up. I wonder if I should know her name. I sit on the sofa holding her.
When I was pregnant I was desperate to see inside my stomach. I thought of it as the ultimate, animate, travel case. I wished there was a zip I could open and close. The scan was thrilling, like one of those machines at the airport checking the contents of your luggage. Richard asked the nurse if she could tell the colour of the baby’s hair. She wasn’t sure whether he was joking. She told us it was a girl. When you are pregnant, people often ask if you want a boy or a girl. You must say that you don’t mind. This is an unwritten rule. I know about unwritten rules.
