The Stranger In My Home: I thought she was my daughter. I was wrong.

by Parks, Adele

  ‘Ice rinks can get extremely cold,’ I comment.

  ‘Yes, I know. The clue’s in the name.’

  I stand at the full-length mirror in the corner of our bedroom and slick moisturiser on my neck and face; we’re quiet for a moment. ‘Did you give her any cash?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Ten pounds.’

  ‘Do you think that’s enough?’

  Jeff lets out a small but significant huffing sound. ‘That is a redundant question. Obviously, I do, or I’d have given her more. What do you expect she’s going to buy at an ice-hockey game? She may need money for a coffee, at most. Ten pounds is more than generous. I’ll be expecting change.’

  I don’t like Katherine drinking coffee but I know this isn’t the moment to say so. There’s nothing she and her friends find more hilarious than ordering at Starbucks and telling the barista that they are called Jennifer Lawrence or Dakota Fanning. I imagine it is quite amusing hearing them call it out when the cappuccino is ready and watching all the other customers look around in anticipation. ‘What if she wants to buy a souvenir?’ I rather hope she doesn’t.

  ‘A souvenir?’

  ‘A scarf or a team T-shirt.’

  Jeff screws up his face in mock-astonishment. ‘If she needs anything else, Tom is there. I’m sure he’d lend her the money.’

  ‘She might want money to get a cab home.’

  ‘Tom is bringing her home.’

  ‘But if something goes wrong. If they don’t get on and she wants to leave in a hurry.’ As I articulate this I can’t decide if this scenario is something I want badly or something I should pray doesn’t happen.

  ‘I think that’s unlikely.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘She can text us.’ It seems to me that Jeff often knows how things will play out, or thinks he does, which is as good as. He’s always confident that he can predict what people will do. That must be useful in his profession; he observes, sees patterns and identifies types. Perhaps we humans aren’t infinitely fascinating, after all. At least not to Jeff. I never assume I can predict outcomes. There is an old adage, ‘Plan for the worst, hope for the best.’ I do half of that.

  Jeff and I have always had a different response to life’s inevitable emotional highs and lows: he craves them; I shun them. I firmly believe it has everything to do with our respective backgrounds. I have endured enough drama to last me an eternity; I long for normality, tranquillity. If I were to draw a metaphor, I’d say that throughout my childhood, isolated, I sailed stormy, black oceans while he played Pooh Sticks by a babbling brook. He comes from a middle-class home where his parents loved one another a sensible amount right up until his mother’s death two years ago; they did not feel the need either to doubt it or shout about it. He and his sister were encouraged and motivated, although not suffocated. Fortnightly phone calls between family members centre around how well the roses or the captain of the golf club are faring. As a result, Jeff operates on terra firma. He finds the world interesting rather than terrifying, and life’s challenges stimulating rather than discouraging. It’s what I love about him and what is most foreign about him. It’s what I wanted for Katherine, although that’s impossible now.

  When Katherine has fall-outs at school he simply says, ‘It’s inevitable – ignore the bitches.’ Admittedly, his response makes her laugh and my insistence on visiting the school to discuss the situation with the headmistress makes her furious, but I have to do something; he can let things be. I understand that a level of detachment must be necessary with his work. When his mother died, he was, naturally, upset, they were very fond of each other – she was a wonderful mother, and mother-in-law – but he didn’t grieve in the expected way. He often referred to her, warmly, even tenderly, he was happy to share memories and anecdotes about her, but he didn’t cry or skip a meal. I never once caught him staring off into the mid-distance, simply missing her. If it hadn’t been for the fact that she appeared, thinly veiled, in his next novel as a magnificent, indomitable matriarch, I might have thought he’d rather undervalued her.

  His ability to remain somewhat removed from this catastrophe and to observe it, rather than magnify it, is probably helpful; it’s possibly what is keeping us all sane right now, yet I feel a spike of resentment. I long for a more agitated response to our plight. At least that way I might not feel so alone.

  ‘She didn’t eat much of her tea.’ He doesn’t respond, so I’m forced to be explicit. ‘Do you think she’s becoming a little bit anorexic?’

  ‘That’s crazy. Usually, she has a great appetite. She was just excited about tonight. Besides, I don’t think one can be a “little bit” anorexic.’

  ‘She’s under a lot of pressure.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘She’s very thin.’

  ‘She’s always been thin. They all are.’

  I pause in applying my lipstick and glare at him. It didn’t need to be said. Why does he insist on pointing out that she’s one of them? I notice that my lipstick is bleeding into the lines around my mouth. I have an old woman’s mouth. On top of everything.

  ‘Yes, she has always been thin, but her counsellor did say that we had to look out for strange behaviour. I’m just trying to be vigilant.’

  ‘I don’t think a girl skipping a meal because of excitement is strange behaviour.’

  ‘How do you know it’s excitement? It might be anxiety.’

  ‘She wanted to go, Alison. She jumped at it.’

  ‘Don’t underestimate what she’s going through,’ I say crossly, because I know she did want to go and I can’t bear to hear it.

  ‘I’m not. I’m fully aware that she’s facing immense challenges at the moment.’

  ‘Yet you think it’s OK for her to gad about with strangers?’ I’m becoming shrill and unreasonable. Frustratingly, being aware of this doesn’t have the effect of forcing me to calm down; instead, I plunge deeper into a vortex of panic. ‘Unaccompanied? You think that’s OK, do you? Do you? You don’t think that will add to her sense of uncertainty and chaos?’

  ‘No, I don’t. They’re not strangers, are they?’

  ‘Yes, they are,’ I insist. I stamp my foot. Literally. Jeff and I stare at my leg in amazement. Neither of us knows what to say about such a childish outburst. I feel impotent. Humiliated.

  ‘Well, they oughtn’t be,’ he murmurs. I disagree but can’t answer because I know if I say another word I’ll cry. I need to keep her greedily to myself. I can’t admit exactly why; it’s a vile thought that her time might be limited, there might not be enough of her to go around. It’s sickening. I sicken myself. Jeff walks towards me, takes hold of my hand and gently leads me to sit on the bed. He puts his hands on each side of my head and turns my face towards his.

  ‘We ought to count our blessings, Alison. They are charming people.’

  ‘Yes,’ I reluctantly admit, because, undeniably, they are. And they might steal her. Even if she is well and healthy, I am still at risk of losing her.

  ‘No screaming fits, no dirty tricks, no stories sold to the tabloids. I think we’ve been extremely lucky with the Trubys. Extremely lucky.’ I’m at a loss as to how to respond. Nothing about this situation is lucky. ‘She’ll be OK,’ he whispers.

  ‘Not necessarily. What if—’ I can’t bring myself to say it. He stays focused on me, I know he does; even though I pull my eyes away from his I can feel the heat of his gaze on my scalp, there among my dark roots and stray grey hairs. All human fallibility and vagueness. Vanity. It’s suddenly important to me that I don’t cry in front of him. Normally, I’m unafraid of showing my feelings to him, they are forever bubbling just below the surface: joy, pain, euphoria, disappointment. He thinks it’s fascinating and even attractive that I cry at movies and the news, but I feel this so deeply I cannot allow my feelings breath. Given any sort of life, they’ll engulf me.

  Carefully, he explains, ‘That’s why I want her to get to know the Trubys. So
that she has more family to support her if she does have the mutated gene.’

  ‘It’s our job to support her.’ I don’t want to have to listen to what he’s saying.

  ‘You can never have too many people to love and support you, can you, Alison? You know that.’

  Yes, this is what I’ve always believed, and yet I can’t bring myself to agree with him. She doesn’t need their love; she has mine. She has me. Aren’t I enough? I’ve always tried to be everything. Jeff waits for me to nod, obedient to his calm, well-thought-through, rational train of thought. When I don’t acquiesce, he stands up. ‘We’ll just have to see how this plays out.’

  The inappropriateness of his words causes my throat to burn. I think I’m going to choke. Choke on his words. ‘Really. And that’s your answer, is it?’

  ‘Well, what else can we do?’ I don’t know, and I hate myself for not knowing. I’m supposed to guide Katherine. I’m her mother. ‘Look, at least she’s happy tonight,’ he goes on. ‘Since we dropped this bombshell on her, she hasn’t been herself, not really. The swearing, the truancy. Both completely understandable, but not very her.’ I don’t want to concede the point, but I can’t deny it. The brutal, black facts beat down on me like blows.

  She’s not ours. She might get cancer.

  I don’t want to deny her any happiness. I’ve only ever wanted her happiness.

  ‘I think she just sees it as gaining a load of siblings,’ he adds.

  ‘But it’s not that simple, is it? Not that simple at all.’

  ‘Maybe not, but maybe we have to think of it in those terms for now.’

  ‘Until when? Until she wants to have her nose and tummy button pierced like Olivia?’

  ‘Do her piercings bother you that much?’

  No, not really, but I daren’t say what really bothers me: Until she wants to move in with them. Saying it might make it happen. I move my head in a way that is neither a nod nor a shake. Jeff realises I’m not going to make any further comment; he simply adds, ‘I’m done. I’ll wait for you downstairs.’

  Twenty-Two Years Ago

  The brittle, clawing fingers of her hometown dug deep into her flesh and held her fast for three more slow, never-to-be-recovered years. One by one, she bent the fingers back, loosened the clasp of inertia, paucity, responsibility, and reached for possibility, opportunity, hope. She wriggled free and, finally, aged nineteen, she ran to London. Unfortunately, the streets were not paved with gold; they were packed with people who had plummy accents, lithe limbs and silky hair. Aliens. It seemed that everyone – other than her – dashed about, certain of their place in the world, clear about where they were going, and not ashamed of where they had come from. Terrified, she considered getting back on the coach, but instead she made a burrow, if not a home, in a tiny, dirty flatshare. Eyes to the floor, she worked hard; many long, poorly paid hours met her rent. She worked as a waitress through the day and as a cleaner in an advertising agency at night.

  Then the world started to shift. Imperceptibly, Sloaney types went to ground; skinny models and gritty rock stars started to rule. Alison was entirely lacking in the sort of daring that allowed hedonism or even pouting but at least her accent was no longer a drawback; she was able to amalgamate somewhat. It wasn’t until she was twenty-four that opportunity finally slithered through the door, arriving in the unlikely form of a bolshie creative director stumbling back into the office after an extremely long lunch which had rolled into supper. She’d just finished cleaning the loos. It was disgusting, the state people left them in. They didn’t bother even to flush half the time. What sort of person thought it was OK that another person would clean away their turds? The creative director was loud and flamboyant. She’d seen him before; sometimes he worked late, sometimes a few of them would just hang around the office, drinking beer, acting as though they didn’t have homes to go to, although she knew they did. Nice ones, probably. Tonight he yelled to her that he was planning to pick up some important sketches before he went on to a nightclub with a client. She made him coffee, pointed out that there was some white powder just below his nose and handed him a bin with admirable speed when he turned green, thus saving the important sketches from being soaked in regurgitated pizza. After she’d wiped his shoes clean of vomit and called him a cab home, he offered her a job as his personal assistant. She wasn’t sure he’d remember in the morning but, in a rare display of nerve, the next day she did not go to the café where she served lattes to grumpy commuters but instead turned up at the Soho offices and slid behind the desk outside his door. To her surprise, no one asked her to leave.

  She thought of the adverts she’d watched on telly as a child; the ones about Oxo cubes and families; this gave her the courage to raise her head a fraction and she started to glance up and about. She was efficient and helpful. She smiled a lot and never complained about the long hours, so people liked her, or at least – if she couldn’t hope for quite that – they needed her. Before, limited by having two jobs, her romantic opportunities had been confined to the driver of the late-night number 22 bus or the chap who owned the corner shop at the end of the particularly dingy street she lived in. They were both in their sixties. Now she considered the guys who sat at desks near her own; she was curious about their sharp suits and slick, shallow smiles. She managed the occasional romantic encounter. Scrub that – she managed the occasional sexual encounter – romance didn’t feature; offering to clear the desk so that she didn’t accidentally staple her backside to a status report was about as romantic as it got. Unfortunately, she found that the devastatingly attractive guys made her feel plump and pointless. She believed the point of her was that she was fairly bright and fairly kind, but very hot men aren’t generally interested in either trait. She decided, as they inexpertly drilled into her, never to regret these experiences, but she knew she could hardly value them. They were tiring and inane. She could only hope they would turn out to be more fun in retrospect than they were proving to be at the time. It might give her something to think about when she was a middle-aged housewife chopping vegetables.

  Baby carrots or courgettes.

  She was so very glad when Jeff came along.

  It was a bright Saturday in September. Camden Market was alive, buzzing like a beehive. The smell of aromatherapy oils and incense butted up against the smell of strong coffee, and coleslaw on jacket potatoes. Some people were eating Thai food, Chinese, Indian. It was astonishing to Alison. She enjoyed dawdling around the stalls selling second-hand donkey jackets and customised Doc Martens. She was often drawn to the mystics offering to read Tarot cards, revealing futures for a few quid, but she never dared do it. What if it was as bad as her past? She couldn’t bear the thought. Best not to know. Alison liked the market because it was accepting of all; people with buzz cuts, tattoos, piercings or Fred Perry shirts were shoulder to shoulder, it was the embodiment of Cool Britannia. Anarchic, experimental and inspiring. Most Saturdays, she and her flatmate trawled around the stalls, marvelling at the curios and trinkets, coveting the clothes and the furniture. That particular Saturday Alison was foraging through the tie-dye and crystals, looking for funky, fun, inexpensive accessories. She couldn’t decide between two hats. She kept putting one on, then taking it off and trying the other, staring at herself in the mirror, pulling funny expressions which she hoped passed for alluring. He came out of nowhere and said, ‘You must buy the blue one. The other is a horror.’

  She should have been offended, but the moment he said it she knew he was right. The air was giddy. She could taste it on her tongue, feel it in her veins.

  ‘Alison, this is Jeff, from my office. Jeff, this is Alison, my flatmate,’ her friend had muttered dutifully. There was something in her tone which suggested she’d already seen that Alison and Jeff wanted to become much better acquainted.

  ‘Where are you going to wear that?’

  Alison blushed, mumbled, ‘Nowhere special.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you are. I’ll take you for a drink. I
know the best pub on the river.’

  Alison appraised him. He was five foot ten, or eleven, average height. Yet he seemed so big, exuberant; she sensed that he had enough confidence, optimism and assurance to buoy up them both. Their mutual friend understood she’d just become the third wheel, she made discreet excuses and left them to it. Melted away like snow in sunshine. So it was decided. Alison went with him immediately, somehow sensing that this might be it, the moment when her luck really changed, her life changed. For ever.

  He was unlike the other young men she knew. So many others were inflated with misplaced arrogance or crippled with crises of confidence, but he managed to get the balance right. He introduced her to his wide circle of friends and together they all had such fun. He knew all the best places in London: comedy clubs to laugh in, Indian restaurants to eat in, old-school cinemas, the latest nightclubs, secret places to swim. He seemed to have access to so much life, and he was willing to share it with her.

  He bought her flowers.

  And books.

  Jeff wasn’t stupidly good-looking, not the sort that would cause her to be silenced by nerves. That’s not to say he was unattractive – far from it. He was attractive, but, largely, the attraction came from the fact that he was a ridiculously clever man. She took delight in declaring him – to anyone who would listen – the most intelligent man she had ever met. There was a chance she set too much store by the fact that he could quote Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Larkin and Dylan Thomas, but then is it possible to give too much credit to a man who wants to quote poetry? Importantly, Alison felt that Jeff seemed to value her as someone who was fairly bright and fairly kind.