The A-Z of Everything

by Debbie Johnson

  We’ve both had a shower, carefully timing it so only one of us had to be upstairs at a time, and we’ve read Mum’s card, and we’ve started cooking. Neither of us has commented on the contents of the card, other than agreeing that Henry the Hedgehog does indeed look quite dashing, because neither of us wants to have this conversation.

  In fact, we don’t want to have it so badly, we’ve taken ages in the kitchen. Partly because we’re both pretty ineffectual cooks, it seems – and partly because, as long as we’re cooking, we’re not in the Posh Room. And if we’re not in the Posh Room, then we don’t have to talk about Bastards. And if we don’t have to talk about Bastards, we can ignore the fact that our dear, departed mother, in her wisdom, wants us to discuss Gareth.

  Personally, I’d rather poke myself in the eyes with a very dashing hedgehog than talk about Gareth, and I am sure that Rose feels the same. After we read the card, it was as though we both simply decided to ignore it for the time being – perfectly in tune for once.

  It’s also very strange simply being back in the cottage together. Mum has had a change-round in the kitchen cabinets, so the pots and pans are in unexpected places, and she has replaced all of her china. I don’t know why this surprises me – did I really expect her to have frozen completely in time?

  Some of the rooms – my bedroom, and Rose’s, plus the Posh Room – are pretty much identical to how we left them. Not in a Miss Haversham way – they’ve been cleaned – but in terms of layout and contents. Other places, there’ve been subtle changes. The natural evolution of a space well lived-in: new light fittings here and there; a different shade of paint in the hallway; the flat-screen TV.

  It’s all very strange, and I need some solitude. I live alone, and being around other people for too long in a domestic environment practically brings me out in a rash. I leave Rose to finish off the cooking, and take myself off to my bedroom for a while, with a nice glass of C; the entry for that was simply ‘C is for Champagne – drink it as often as you can, life needs a bit more fizz.’

  By the time I come back down, having spent a restless half-hour firing off work emails and flicking through my younger self’s book collection, Rose has laid the table in the Posh Room, and dinner is ready.

  The Posh Room is probably called a Dining Room in estate-agent speak. To us, though, it was simply always the Posh Room – the place where Mum had some of her most precious objects on display; the place where my old tobacco tin used to live. It’s a large room, with the walls painted deep red, low ceilinged and beamed, dominated by a massive old oak table complete with silver candelabra.

  I sit, and look at the food on my plate. There is so much, I know I’ll never get through it all, even though it smells so good. Rose is showing no such hesitation, and is tucking in with gusto. I know she’s down on herself at the moment, because of her weight, but I actually envy her appetite.

  Perhaps that’s why I decide, just as she spears a butter-coated baby spud, to finally start the conversation our mother has asked us to have.

  ‘So,’ I say, after a fortifying sip of C, ‘shall we discuss the Bastard in the room?’

  Rose immediately chokes on her food, and I wonder for a few moments as she splutters and coughs whether I’m going to have to leap across the table and perform the Heimlich manoeuvre on her. Not that I really know how, other than what I’ve picked up from watching Casualty.

  ‘Ummm … do we have to?’ she says, once she’s finally recovered.

  ‘Well, no, we don’t have to. But it’s what we’re here for. All of this was to set a mood, wasn’t it? Not just so we can stuff our faces.’

  I feel a flood of guilt wash over me as I see her blush, and lay down her knife and fork. She’s taken that personally, and I understand why. The distance between us is like a field full of landmines, and I’ve just accidentally set off an absolute humdinger. Still, it’s too late to take it back, and blustering on about what I did and didn’t mean will just make matters worse.

  ‘Right,’ she says, gulping down half her glass of C at once. ‘Well. What do you want to know?’

  ‘Everything, I suppose. Within months of Disco 2000, you two were married, and not long after you were pregnant. It’s always struck me as odd that while what I did merited being sent into the wilderness for the rest of my life, what he did resulted in you agreeing to marry him. I’ve never quite figured out why he got a second chance, and I didn’t.’

  I hadn’t intended to say any of that, but it just kind of oozed out, my voice much calmer than I am actually feeling. Because it had hurt, so very, very much. I understood her banishing me – if I could have banished myself, I would; I totally deserved it. But her life with him had continued, and that made it all worse.

  She chose him over me – a childish view, I know, but one I could never quite shake off. From the moment she met Gareth, in fact, I felt like she chose him over me, which was at least one of the contributory factors to what eventually happened.

  Rose is gazing off into the distance, the candlelight flickering over her face and making her beautiful eyes glitter, as she tries to come up with an answer. I suspect she’s about to be brutally honest, and I’m not sure I’m ready for it.

  ‘I suppose,’ she says eventually, her stubby fingernails tapping away on the tablecloth, ‘that I was, like Mum says, under his spell. I can see things a lot more clearly now, but at the time, I couldn’t. All I could see was him – this handsome, charming, successful man, who just made me feel … lucky. Lucky that he’d chosen me, when he could have had anybody he wanted. Everything about him was just, I don’t know, magnetic. His energy, and his style, and the way he talked – like the world was his, and he’d chosen me to share it with him.

  ‘It was the first time I’d ever been in love, and it was like a drug. I couldn’t get enough of him. Every minute away from him felt wasted.’

  ‘Is that why you dumped all your friends, and me,’ I ask, ‘because you thought we were a waste of time?’

  It’s a cruel question, and I feel a bit like I’m kicking a puppy in the head here, but it’s valid. I need to ask it, and I need her to answer it.

  ‘It didn’t feel like I was dumping you all at the time,’ she replies, quietly. ‘It didn’t feel like that at all. In fact, there was something about the way he affected me that somehow allowed me to blame everyone else … I thought I was trying to fit you into my new life, and you just couldn’t accept it. And I think part of that is true – you were jealous, Poppy, you know you were.

  ‘You were at such a loose end, and the timing couldn’t have been worse really. But … yes. He painted such a perfect picture of our future, and there only seemed to be space for me and him. He pretended to want to include you, and Mum, and my friends, but he didn’t, not really.

  ‘This is another of those things I’ve only realised since – that it started early, the way he used to try and control everything. He’d buy me clothes that I didn’t really like, that weren’t me, but he’d tell me how beautiful I looked in them and that made everything all right. He’d arrange nights out with his friends, but never mine. He told me my job in the lab was a bit of a waste of time; that it was beneath me … that I could do better. I suppose he told me things that I wanted to hear, so I went along with them.’

  She pauses here, and we both drink some more, and I eat one languid runner bean. I feel like screaming at her, truth be told – because it might have taken her years to figure out, but I could see all of this about Gareth from the very beginning. I hated him with a passion – and yes, she’s right, I was jealous. But I was also worried that he was eating her up one mouthful at a time. God only knows I had a shitty way of going about it, but I’d wanted to protect her.

  ‘Okay,’ I say, when her pause looks likely to stretch into a maudlin silence. ‘I get all of that. And there are things I’d like to say here that I won’t, because it might result in us both exploding – but after. After … the thing that happened. Why didn’t you realise then
that he was the world’s biggest Bastard?’

  ‘The thing that happened?’ she echoes, bitterly, pointing her fork at me as though she’s considering aiming it at my heart. ‘You mean the thing where you had sex with my boyfriend, Poppy?’

  If she’s trying to hurt me with that, she’s on to a loser. I’ve felt so bad, for so many years, that there is nothing more she can do to me. That one act – that one pathetic, sweaty, disgusting, drug-fuelled act – has consumed my entire life.

  I have never regretted anything more, and I include breaking my mother’s heart in that. I’ve said I’m sorry a million times; spent months writing her letters and trying to speak to her, begging her forgiveness – and I was always met with a stony silence. It was as though I simply ceased to exist, while they went on to play happy families.

  ‘Yes. That … Lest we forget,’ I reply. ‘I didn’t do it alone, you know.’

  She slams her fork down, and gravy splatters across the tablecloth. She looks angry and tearful at the same time, and I am sure it is only the thought of Mum hovering around in spirit form that stops her from getting up and walking out.

  I can practically see her counting to ten and breathing deeply as she tries to calm herself down. I sit opposite, sipping C, and undoubtedly looking cool as a cucumber even if that’s not how I’m feeling. I can’t blame her for hating me, for all kinds of reasons.

  ‘I was hurt,’ she says eventually, not meeting my eyes. ‘Bloody devastated. But when the dust settled, when you’d run off back to Mum with your tail between your legs, he was still there. We still had a flat together. A bloody cat, for goodness’ sake. You didn’t know this, but he’d also persuaded me to hand in my notice at the lab just before New Year, so I didn’t even have a job. My whole life was tied into his – and he grovelled. God, how he grovelled.

  ‘He seemed just as devastated as me – even worse, in fact, because it was all down to him. He told me he was sorry, and how much he loved me, and how he’d made the biggest, most stupid mistake of his life. That he was off his head on drugs, that you made the first move, that he didn’t even realise what was going on until it was too late. That he’d do anything to win me back and make it up to me. And then, after weeks of this, he came home with an engagement ring and proposed to me.

  ‘I might not win any Feminist of the Year awards for it, but I wanted to believe him. I wanted to be loved, and adored, and looked after. I wanted to forgive him, and live the life he’d said we could live – so I did. We got married, we had Joe. It seemed to be what he wanted, at the time, but I know now it wasn’t. It was like … well, like a game to him. He had to win, no matter what the cost – but once he’d got me, he wasn’t that sure he wanted the prize.’

  Part of me had stopped listening as soon as she said that one line: ‘you made the first move’. That was so far removed from the truth that my blood was boiling, and I was furious – with him for saying it, and with her for never, ever listening to my side of what was admittedly a pretty sordid story. I realise that I am repeatedly stabbing a potato to death, and force myself to calm down.

  ‘Go on,’ I say. ‘What happened after Joe was born?’

  ‘Well, a lot of things happened after Joe was born. I had a mini nervous breakdown – I didn’t have a clue how to look after a baby, and felt like a huge failure. I couldn’t settle him when he cried, I couldn’t breast-feed properly, I was exhausted, and I was depressed. It’s like the whole world expected me to be euphoric – I was happily married, and had this gorgeous, healthy baby boy – but actually I wasn’t. I was falling to pieces.

  ‘And Gareth … well, Gareth suddenly became very busy. His career started to really take off, and he was out all the time. Having meetings, ruling empires, shagging secretaries – who knows?

  ‘All I knew was that my reality had changed beyond all recognition – he’d come home, often near midnight, and I’d just be this huddled wreck of a woman, sobbing and gibbering. It went on for months, and it was awful. He seemed to love Joe, and made a show of supporting me … but it wasn’t real. He’d do things like buy me a gym membership, because I couldn’t shift the baby weight, but never be there to look after Joe so I could actually go to the gym. Then he’d make sarcastic comments about how the only pounds getting lost were from his bank balance.

  ‘He’d want to have sex, but it was always when he was drunk after a night out, or when I was knackered – which was all the time. And after we’d done it, he’d just collapse next to me without saying a word, like he’d performed a bodily function rather than made love to his wife.

  ‘Mum came up a few times, and when she was there, he was perfect – made a big show of doing the dishes, and ordering takeaway so I didn’t have to cook, and saying he was considering “getting me a cleaner” – as though I was so incompetent I couldn’t do any of those things any more, and he was the big man helping me through my rough patch.

  ‘It got to the stage where I felt like I was living with a stranger – and, to be fair, he probably did as well. It wasn’t all his fault. I lost interest in everything other than survival – getting through the sleepless nights, dealing with the mind-bending tedium of looking after a demanding baby, living on biscuits and a secret brandy bottle I kept in the nursery. Honestly? I was a mess – and the worse things started to get for me, the better they seemed to go for him.

  ‘It was like there was only so much happiness to go round, and he had it all – constant promotions, trips abroad, winning awards, new cars. It got to the stage where I was too embarrassed to go to work parties with him, because I was definitely ashamed of myself, and he found ways to let me know that he was ashamed of me too.

  ‘It started with little digs – he used to joke, all the time, about my weight, or my mumsy clothes, or living in leggings, or how my conversational skills had been reduced to “goo goo” and “ga ga”.

  ‘He did it in a way that made it seem funny – like he was just having a laugh – so I could never really challenge him on it. In fact I thought I was going mad – imagining it all. Because when we were with other people, he was the perfect dad, the perfect husband – so I came to the conclusion that I had to be imagining it. Even when I caught him staring at me with complete disgust while I slobbed out in front of the TV, I told myself I was just being paranoid.

  ‘When he started calling me Fatty Dumpling – calling it a term of endearment – I told myself I was being too sensitive. And when the sex got even worse, until it was just a cold, horrible, painful thing, I told myself it was my fault – that I’d become so unattractive, no man would really want to sleep with me, and I was lucky Gareth was still interested at all.

  ‘By that stage I had nobody around to tell me any different. I had no friends, no colleagues. I didn’t have you. I pretended to Mum that everything was fine, although I’m never sure she believed me. My whole world revolved around Joe, and Gareth, and what Gareth thought about me – I saw myself through his eyes only, and his eyes really didn’t like what they saw, no matter how hard I tried.

  ‘I remember this one night, when Joe was maybe ten months old, deciding I’d make an effort. I cooked dinner, and did this stupid dress-up thing – greeted him at the front door dressed as a French maid, you know, with one of those frilly caps and an apron? It was meant to be fun, to try and put some sparkle back into things. He just looked at me, as if I’d gone completely mad, and said something like, “I think you should have ordered that one a few sizes up, don’t you?”

  ‘Nothing I ever did was good enough, and it almost came as a relief when he left, to be honest. Of course he swore there was nobody else, but I’ve discovered different since – there were quite a lot of someone elses.

  ‘By the time he packed his bags and walked out of the door, I was a wreck. I begged him to stay, practically held on to his ankles as he went for his car keys, Joe screaming away in the background – but it was weird. Once he’d gone – once I’d stopped crying and wailing and snivelling – I realised that I w
as relieved. That I could be fat without anybody telling me off for it. That I could wear tatty old leggings and nobody would see. That I could have my meltdowns in peace.

  ‘It was hard. It was horrible, being on my own with a toddler – and I hated myself so much by this stage that I couldn’t do all the things I was probably supposed to do, that Mum suggested. Like join mother-and-baby groups, or go to coffee mornings in church halls, or make new friends at single mums’ events.

  ‘She kept saying I wasn’t the only person going through this, that I should reach out – but I couldn’t. And, you know, we got through it – I survived, Joe survived. Sadly Gareth survived, although these days he just sends me snarky texts and emails that imply I’m a bad mother, and I try not to let those get me down. But … well, Mum was right. I suppose she’s always right – he just sucked the life out of me.’

  We have both forgotten our dinner by this stage, and the candles are burning low, and I notice that we are both in tears. Her, understandably, for being forced to relive all of this. Me, for having to hear it.

  I mean, I knew some of it – I hadn’t lived in a bubble. Mum told me when he left. But the rest … the control. The slow character assassination. Basically, the emotional abuse? I didn’t know all of that, and I suspect Mum hadn’t either, or she’d have hired a hit man and had Gareth erased. That, I think, is still an option – it’s never too late for revenge.

  I love my sister. In fact at times I’ve probably loved her too much – needed to love her too much. I love her so deeply, so fiercely, that I’ve never been right since she kicked me out of her life. I’ve always known this – known that Mum was right when she compared us to three-legged dogs and tortoises stuck on our backs – but I have never felt it as strongly as I do now.

  I am devastated for her, and by what she has told me. I am furious with him for doing it, and with myself for putting her in a position where she had to cope with all of that without me, and with the fact that it has taken our mother’s death for me to hear the full story.