by Susan Lewis
Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Susan Lewis
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Author’s Note
Copyright
About the Book
She was only nine when her world fell apart. The struggle to understand took a lifetime.
In 1960s Bristol, Susan’s family was like any other with its joys and frustrations, and fierce loyalties. Then tragedy struck and left a legacy that was to last a lifetime.
Susan was only nine when her mother died. A year later she was sent away to school. She didn’t want to go, and didn’t understand why she had to.
In her struggle to cope with an uncertain world – a world where nothing seemed to make sense any more – she pushed away the one person she loved best, her father.
It wasn’t until adulthood beckoned that she realised that, in order to turn their relationship around, she had to learn to love – and trust – again.
From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Just One More Day.
About the Author
Susan Lewis is the bestselling author of twenty-six novels. She is also the author of Just One More Day, the moving memoir of her early childhood in Bristol. She lives in Gloucestershire. Her website address is www.susanlewis.com
Susan is also a supporter of the childhood bereavement charity, Winston’s Wish: www.winstonswish.org.uk and of the breast cancer charity, BUST: www.bustbristol.co.uk
Also by Susan Lewis
A Class Apart
Dance While You Can
Stolen Beginnings
Darkest Longings
Obsession
Vengeance
Summer Madness
Last Resort
Wildfire
Chasing Dreams
Taking Chances
Cruel Venus
Strange Allure
Silent Truths
Wicked Beauty
Intimate Strangers
The Hornbeam Tree
The Mill House
A French Affair
Missing
Out of the Shadows
Lost Innocence
The Choice
Forgotten
Stolen
No Turning Back
Just One More Day, A Memoir
For Eddie and Eddress’s grandchildren
Grace and Tom
Acknowledgments
My warmest thanks go to ex-Red Maid and former partners-in-mischief Christl Hughes, Lindy Stacey and Sara Clark. They have different names in the book, but they’ll know for sure who they are.
With love and many thanks to my cousin Alwyn Brabham.
A huge thank you and much love to my partner, James Grafton Garrett, for his invaluable support, interest and encouragement during the research and writing of this book. I know my dad would have loved him so I’m very sorry that they never met. A big thank you too to my agent Toby Eady and editor Susan Sandon. Nothing would ever get written without them, never mind published.
I’d also like to dedicate this book to the enormous number of readers who contacted me after reading Just One More Day to ask what happened to my father and brother. Herein lies the tale …
Chapter One
Susan
I SAW A film once, or part of a film anyway, where two prison officers were walking a murderer along this creepy dark corridor to where he was going to have his head chopped off. Actually, they might have been going to hang him, or shoot him to bits, or fry him up in an electric chair. I never found out, because my mum caught me hiding behind her chair watching the film I was too young for, and packed me off to bed, lucky not to have a clip round the ear for sneaking downstairs.
Anyway, the point is, I’m that person now, being walked along a creepy corridor to the end of my life. I know they don’t put eleven-year-olds to death, but they do lock them up, and that’s definite, because it’s happening to me right now. My dad and Auntie Nance are marching me along like prison warders, and I – even though I haven’t done anything wrong – am going to be shut away in this stinky, horrible, really scary place that’s full of ghosts and evil witches and probably has secret passageways all gummed up in spider’s webs and rat nests that you can never find your way out of.
And you should see my shoes.
Even my gran wouldn’t wear shoes like this. Well, actually she does, and that’s my point. She’s really old and I’m not, so it’s just mean to make me wear these black lace-ups with a round toe and big thick heels like a man’s. They even squeak, and they hurt, but no one cares, because no one asked me if I wanted to come here and I don’t. I cried and cried and begged my dad not to make me, but he kept saying it would be for the best.
‘You’ll get a good education and go to university and I’ll be very proud of you,’ he said, over and over again.
‘I don’t want you to be proud of me,’ I shouted, over and over again. ‘It’s stupid being proud. It’s a sin, even, because it says so in the Bible.’
‘She’s got an answer for everything,’ my auntie muttered. I could tell I was getting on her nerves and I was glad, because she was getting on mine. I wished she’d go home, and my mum would come back. Mum might have been strict, and it might have been her idea for me to go to this stupid school in the first place, but I knew she thought it was creepy too – and stuck-up and not somewhere she’d ever really want to send me. Would she? When I came to think of it, I decided that perhaps it was a good job she wasn’t there to ask, just in case her mind was still made up, because there was never any getting round her. Not like Dad.
‘Please Dad, I want to stay home with you and Gary and all my friends,’ I begged. ‘I’ll be really good, I promise. I’ll do all the housework and the washing, I’ll make your tea every night and wash up all the dishes and dry them and I’ll never answer back.’
‘My love,’ he said, in the voice he uses when he’s sorry and upset, but he won’t back down, ‘you’ve won your place there now, which is marvellous, because it goes to show how clever you are. Not everyone can go to Red Maids … ’
‘I don’t care. I don’t want to go. I’m not clever, I’m really dumb and I want to stay here with you.’
He gave me a big hug, mainly because I was crying, and he never likes it when I cry. ‘I can’t let you stay here,’ he told me (I think he was close to crying too, which just went to show that he didn’t want me to go really). ‘People might start saying things, because you’re a girl and there’s only me and Gary … ’
‘Then we’ll bash them up. What sort of things?’
‘Bad things, and if they do, someone might come and take you away and we don’t want that, do we?’
‘So you’re sending me away instead?’
‘To a place where you’ll grow up to be a proper lady, the way your mum wanted.’
I didn’t say anything else after that. I just put on my cross face and stormed off, because I didn’t see why w
e had to do anything Mum wanted when she wasn’t even there to tell us what she thought any more. I want her to come back, more than anything. Sometimes I feel as though all my skin is going to explode I want it so much. It makes me really mad that she’s gone. I mean, some days it’s all right, I just get on with things and it’s like normal, but then it suddenly becomes all horrible and wrong, and I feel really afraid to think that I might never see her again. I hide under the sheets so no one can hear me crying – or stand by my bedroom window and look up at the sky in case she’s there, looking down. ‘Please come back,’ I whisper. ‘Please.’
They keep saying she’s dead, and I know it’s true, but then suddenly I’m not all that sure. You see, I found a photo once, when I was about nine which was before she was dead. It was tucked inside her cookbook and it was of a man called Michael. He’d even signed it, To Eddress, with love. I remember feeling really scared and angry, like everything was going out of control. I ended up tearing it into little bits so she wouldn’t be able to look at it any more. Because she had a wicked temper I expected her to go on the rampage after that, demanding to know what had happened to the photo, but she never said a word, which just goes to show it must have been a secret. Apart from once hearing her say to Mrs Williams – her best friend and our next door neighbour – that she had to see Michael, I never heard her mention him, and I never asked who he was in case she told me it was someone she loved more than Daddy.
The next time she went into hospital I asked her if it was where she was really going and she said, ‘You’re a dafty, aren’t you? Where else would I be going?’
‘I don’t know,’ I answered. ‘When will you be coming back?’
‘Soon, I hope, but you have to be brave for Daddy and Gary and keep your chin up while I’m gone, all right?’
‘Are you taking your cookbook?’
She gave a cry of laughter. ‘You do ask the funniest things at times,’ she said. ‘What am I going to be needing that for?’
I only shrugged, because I couldn’t give her a proper answer, and because I felt glad she didn’t need it I put my arms around her.
‘Oh, what’s all this nonsense now?’ she said as I started to cry.
‘I don’t want you to go,’ I told her.
‘I know, my old love, and I don’t want to go either, but it’s the only way I’m going to get better.’
‘But there’s nothing wrong with you, not really.’
‘Just a little bit, but we’ll get it sorted out, and if it turns out to take a bit longer than we think it’ll still be all right, because whatever happens you’ll still be my best girl, and nothing’s ever going to change that.’
I don’t know if I’m still her best girl now, because I don’t know if it counts when people are dead. Unless she’s not really dead and she did go off with Michael. I hope she did in a way, because then she’d be able to come back. The trouble is, I saw them carrying a coffin out of our house just after Daddy told me the angels had come to take her to Jesus, and I think she must have been in it. I was next door when it happened, and I saw, because I peeped out of their landing window. They put the coffin in a big black car and drove off. It could have been a trick, of course, and if it was I don’t know where she’s living with her other family, I just think it’s really mean to leave your husband and children, especially when they haven’t done anything wrong.
It’s worse for Gary, because he was only five when she went. (He’s seven now.) Everyone felt really sorry for him. I heard my aunts and uncles talking and arguing about him one night. They all wanted him to go and live with them. No one wanted me, which was good, because I wouldn’t go and live with any of them if they begged me. I just want to stay with my dad, because he’s the best person in the whole wide world with loads of stories up his sleeve and great big hugs any time we want one. He’s really clever and funny, and everyone likes him and says hello to him, and offers to do things to help him. The only thing he’s not very good at is cooking, but that doesn’t matter. We don’t have to eat much, beans on toast will do, or fish-fingers and chips. I quite like corned-beef mash too, except when the potatoes are still hard. On Sundays we usually have a roast dinner with one of my aunties, followed by tinned peaches and condensed milk for afters – my favourite.
Wonder what poison we’ll be served up here in this bloody school.
We’ve just reached a prison bed, which is the last but one in a row of about twelve going down one side of the dormitory. Opposite is another row of twelve and at the end are two private rooms where, apparently, sixth-form girls live. All the beds have blue iron frames (and snakes under, I expect), with a cubicle behind that has a curtain across the front so no one can see in. Inside the cubicle is a dressing table with two drawers for our brassieres and bags (that’s what they call knickers here, or so it said in the information they sent – bags, what a stupid name), and a wardrobe to hang up all our uniforms. There are loads of them. One for school, in summer, another for winter, another for evenings, a different one for Saturdays, and one that’s actually quite mod for Sundays. (The Sunday uniform is a bit like a Mary Quant dress, because it’s straight with long sleeves, a zip up the front and a white collar that can be unbuttoned off the dress so we can put it in the wash. If it was short it would be really fab, like one I’ve seen my cousin Alwyn wearing, but it comes right down to the knee and we have to wear these thick granny stockings under it that are as old-fashioned and vile as our shoes. Honestly, I’m so glad no one can see me.)
There are lots of other girls arriving with their parents, and by the sound of it they all speak really posh. I’m not going to speak posh for anyone. The girls in the beds either side of mine are first-formers too, and the one whose name turns out to be Laura has a sister up the other end of the dormitory who’s a year older. Her name’s Cheryl.
‘Are you all right then?’ my dad asks in his best chirpy voice. He’s trying to seem jolly and jokey, but I think he looks a bit worried and shabby in amongst all these tall, stuck-up people with their smart hairy overcoats and bri-nylon shirts. He’s taken his cap off now and put it in his pocket, but Auntie Nance’s scarf is still tied up under her chin like it’s trying to stop her mouth falling open. No one else is wearing a scarf – or a cap.
‘No,’ I say.
‘I know, why don’t we put your things in your dressing table?’ he suggests.
‘No.’
‘Come on, I’ll do it,’ Auntie Nance tells him.
So they open up the curtain behind my bed and start stuffing my smalls, socks and nighties into the drawers. Everything has a name tag on it – Susan Lewis RM 74. My dad sewed them in himself, so they’re a bit wonky, but who cares? I was going to help, but then I thought, why should I when I don’t even want to go there?
‘We’ve put your nice writing pad in your top drawer,’ Dad tells me. ‘You’ll be able to send us lots of letters telling us what’s happening.’
My stomach’s starting to go all funny now and I think I’m really scared. ‘I’m not writing to you,’ I tell him sharply.
‘Well, that’s a shame, because I’ll be writing to you.’
‘I won’t read your stupid letters.’
Auntie Nance is taking something out of her handbag. ‘Here’s a couple of mint humbugs,’ she says, passing them over. ‘Don’t tell anyone you’ve got them, because you’re supposed to hand in your sweets.’
I look at my dad, but he’s not looking at me. He’s watching what everyone else is doing. Some parents are starting to leave now, and some of the girls have already changed into their uniforms. Our own clothes have to be laid out on the end of our beds ready for collection, and we won’t get them back again until the next time we’re allowed home. ‘Please don’t make me stay,’ I say, catching hold of Dad’s hand.
He’s starting to look all worried and ruffled.
‘That’s enough of that nonsense now,’ Auntie Nance butts in. ‘You’re a lucky girl to be here, and don’t you forget it.�
�
I don’t think my mum liked Auntie Nance very much, and I can see why.
Suddenly an alarm starts shrieking around the walls like a witch’s scream. Fab! There’s a fire! Let’s move! I start grabbing my things, but then I realise no one else is reacting the same way.
‘That’ll be it then,’ my dad says. ‘Time for us to go.’
I look at him again. He’s not really going to leave me here. I know he won’t, because he loves me, or he’s always said he does, so he wouldn’t be so mean as to go home without me. He can see how horrible this place is with its stink of BO and cabbage and great big windows that are too high to see out of, even if you stood on a chair. There are all sorts of rules and regulations we got sent that I still don’t understand, and I’ll only get to see him on Sundays after church, and that’s not fair when all my friends are seeing their mums and dads every single day. I want to see my mum. Where is she? Why doesn’t she come and save me?
Daddy won’t leave me. I know he won’t.
‘All right then, my love,’ he says, and puts his arms around me.
I turn away.
‘I’ll put your suitcase here, at the end of the bed,’ Auntie Nance says. ‘They’ll probably tell you what to do with it later.’
‘Dad,’ I wail.
‘Oh, come on now, you’re a big girl,’ he chides.
I don’t want anyone to see me crying, but it’s really hard to make myself stop. I steal a quick look round and see that the other girls are unpacking, or chatting to one another, or lying on their beds reading comics and magazines. I like Dandy and Beano, but Jackie’s the best, even though I’m not supposed to be old enough to read it. All I’ve got now is a copy of Lambs’ Tales From Shakespeare which I don’t like reading myself, because it’s always better when Dad reads it out loud.
‘Do I get a kiss then?’ he asks.
I shake my head.
‘That’s not very nice now, is it?’ Auntie Nance says.
I don’t look at her, because I’ve really stopped liking her now. She used to be my favourite auntie once, but not any more.
