One Day at a Time

by Susan Lewis

  I decide to make up my mind what do on to Saturday morning, because I’ve got other things to worry about tonight. I should have left half an hour ago to go up the union, but there’s no sign of our Susan, and Gary says he hasn’t seen her since she came home from school.

  ‘Are you sure she didn’t say where she was going when she went out?’ I ask him.

  ‘I already told you, no,’ he replies. ‘All she said was she couldn’t take Lucky because she scares people, and then she went.’

  ‘What was she wearing?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Was she still in her uniform?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I’d be worried anyway, but ever since she found out her favourite teacher’s leaving at Christmas she’s been in a terrible mood. Mostly she takes it out on me, shouting and screaming and saying she wishes she was dead, or she shuts herself up in her room refusing to come out. I suppose I’d rather that than think she was getting into trouble at school, or was out wandering the streets with the likes of Mandy Hughes, but the trouble is, she’s doing that too. Three nights running last week she managed to sneak out after we’d all gone to bed, and once she didn’t come back till gone midnight.

  I was waiting at the bottom of the stairs when she came in but she wouldn’t tell me where she’d been, and when I got hold of her to give her a damn good shake she threw herself down on the floor to escape me.

  ‘What the heck have you been doing until this hour?’ I asked her.

  ‘It’s none of your business,’ she shouted, picking herself up. ‘Now let me go past.’

  ‘You’ll stay right where you are until I get some answers.’

  She folded her arms and glowered at me as though she might put an evil spell on me.

  Taking a different tack, I said, ‘Susan, my love, you’re ...’

  ‘Don’t speak to me like that,’ she raged. ‘I’m not your love. I hate you, now get out of the way.’

  ‘Who were you with? Was it boys?’

  ‘I don’t have to tell you anything …’

  ‘If you’ve been with boys, young lady, there’s going to be some …’

  ‘I expect you think I’m a prostitute,’ she spat. ‘Well, for your information I am.’

  I felt as though she’d punched me, even though I knew it couldn’t be true. I wasn’t even aware she knew what a prostitute was, and to be honest, I don’t think she does, but I’ve been worrying all along about how far she might be going with these boys, and now I’m scared half to death that my worst nightmares have already come true.

  Is that where she is now? Letting them do things to her that a child her age shouldn’t know anything about? Dear God in heaven, please give me guidance, because I just don’t know what to do.

  ‘I don’t think Lucky’s very well,’ Gary says.

  I look down at the dog and think he’s probably right, because she’s not her usual lively self. ‘She’s probably eaten something that disagrees with her.’

  ‘Yeah, like one of my football boots,’ he grumbles.

  I had to buy him a new pair a couple of weeks ago, because she’d torn his others to shreds.

  ‘Shall I stay here and look after her while you go up the union?’ he asks.

  ‘No, you go in to Mrs Williams’s,’ I tell him. ‘She’ll be all right once it’s gone through her.’

  I won’t worry myself now about the mess I’ll have to clean up when I get back, I’ll just deal with it then. That’s if I go. I can’t think about going anywhere when I don’t know where our Susan is. I should go out to try and find her. That’s what I should do.

  I’ve been walking around for an hour now, up and down Anchor Road, over to the Horseshoe, the brook, the bus shelter, along Fisher Road and down Made for Ever club. There’s no sign of her, and no one I’ve asked has seen her.

  I return home, hoping to find her there, but the house is empty, apart from the dog. Just as I expected, she’s been sick all over the kitchen, so I set about clearing it up before going upstairs to make sure our Susan’s belongings are where they’re supposed to be. To my relief they are, so it doesn’t seem that she’s run away.

  So where is she?

  If something’s happened to her I’ll never forgive myself. I’m scared half out my mind that the police are going to come knocking on the door any minute, the way they did our Doreen’s after Robert was killed. Anyone could have got hold of her, God only knows what they might be doing to her. I’ve got a panic flaring up in my gut that’s worse than any ulcer, if that’s what it is burning my insides. It’s all my fault. Everything I’ve done has been wrong, from the minute her mother died. I’ve made one bad decision after another, after another, and I’ve never been nearly strict enough with her. Is it too late to get things back to the way they should be? I’m not even sure I know what that is any more, apart from wanting her to do well at school, and behave in a respectable manner. How am I to get her to do that? What’s wrong with me that I can’t get through to her?

  I fetch my notepad from the pocket of my coat and go to sit at the table in the dining room. Though my hands are shaking and my mind is spinning, writing is all I can think of to help blunt the edges of my fear. Maybe moving the pencil over the page, recreating words by Keats and Shelley, Shakespeare and Burns, will soothe my troubled mind and bring some relief into my heart.

  Fill for me a brimming bowl

  And in it let me drown my soul;

  But put therein some drug designed

  To banish women from my mind.

  Keats’s lament at least brings the ghost of a smile to my lips. Funny that I should have chosen that one first, or perhaps not funny at all.

  Lucky pads across the room and puts her head on my knee.

  ‘Hello, girl,’ I say, giving her a stroke. ‘Are you feeling better now? I expect you want to go for a walk.’

  Her tail starts to wag, showing her understanding of ‘walk’, so I put my pencil down and go to find her lead. I’m hoping that by the time I come back our Susan will be here. If she isn’t, then all I can do is sit and wait, because Gary’s going to be home any minute, and I can’t leave him on his own while I go roaming the streets looking for her again.

  Susan

  I can hear Dad going to take Lucky for a walk. He’s telling her to stop pulling him the wrong way, because he doesn’t realise that she knows where I am and is trying to get to me. In the end he wins, and tugs her on out to the street.

  I heard him going out earlier too. I think he probably went up the union, he usually does on Wednesdays. Gary’s next door with Geoffrey and Nigel, and I’m here, under our old tent in the shed. It smells all fusty, and I think there might be spiders around, but I’m not particularly scared of them. I should have been going out with Mandy and Julie tonight, but when we got round the Anchor Kev was there with his new girlfriend who lives over Longwell Green. Her name’s Debbie, apparently, and she works over Brains, which I suppose is how he met her.

  He didn’t even bother to speak to me. He just looked the other way and pretended I wasn’t there. Then he walked past us with her holding his arm, and from the direction they went in he must have been taking her down the club, where he’s never taken me. I know I’m too young to go in, but he’s never even let me hold his arm in front of everyone else, and to flaunt her in front of me like that was just mean.

  Before Mandy went off with Rich, and Julie went with Larry, they told me to wait for them round the bus shelter, but I didn’t bother to go. I just came back here and got into my special place where no one can find me, or get on my nerves any more.

  I think I’ll stop going round with Mandy and Julie from now on, and just go round with Lainey. We had a bit of a row in school today because I was nasty to Mrs Philpott, but we made up again on the way home. I feel a bit bad for telling Mrs Philpott that I didn’t want to see her wedding photos, because I suppose it was quite rude. What’s the point, though? I won’t know anyone in the pictures except a
few teachers, and I see them every day already so I don’t need to see them again. And who cares what her new husband looks like anyway?

  I think Dad’s got a girlfriend called Anne. I don’t normally read his tiny little writing, but for some reason I did the other day, and this is what it said:

  Anne dresses so attractively and modestly that it makes me feel devastated. A vision of gentle beauty, colours and contours, carefully chosen to suit her. Her taste is reflected in her clothes. Her heavy shoes show resourcefulness, stamina, strength and health. It sets me wondering about her religion, politics, education and ambition. Her hair is blonde. She is strong-limbed, determined, but has an easy carriage, and elegant poise. What does she see when she looks at me? The misshapen dwarf gazed upon by the beautiful princess. Her fairness makes my Nordic type ache for I don’t know what.

  I ripped the page out of his book and kept it. I wonder if he’s noticed yet. I don’t expect so, because there are thousands of pages he’s written, and I don’t think he ever reads any of them back. He’s funny like that, but there again, I suppose I don’t read my diaries after I’ve written them either, so I wonder why I bother. Why does he?

  She sounds nice, this Anne, but I don’t expect she’d like me. Anyway, we don’t want another mother.

  ‘We’re all right as we are, aren’t we?’ I said to Gary after I read it.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ he replied.

  I could tell he didn’t know what I was on about, so I said, ‘We don’t want Dad to get married again, do we? She’d only be telling us off all the time, and you know what she’d be, don’t you?’

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘A wicked stepmother.’

  He turned a bit pale at that. ‘We definitely don’t want one of those,’ he agreed.

  I keep wondering what I’d do if Dad did get married again, especially if it was to someone who didn’t like me. I don’t want him to love anyone except Mum and us. We don’t need anyone else. We’re all right as we are.

  I can hear Dad coming back now, and Lucky’s trying to get to the shed again. He still doesn’t take any notice, just pulls her inside and closes the door.

  I don’t know how long I’ll stay here, maybe until I die.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Eddie

  ‘OH, MR LEWIS, you shouldn’t have done that.’

  Anne’s smile is lovely. Her cheeks have turned pink, showing how pleased she is.

  ‘I just wanted to show my appreciation for the way you hung on to those photographs for me,’ I tell her.

  It’s a box of Maltesers, which I thought was a good choice, not too personal, but something she was sure to like. I nearly got Milk Tray, until I remembered the advert. It makes my toes curl up to think of myself trying to swoop into her bedroom at night, dressed all in black with a mask over my face, so heaven knows what it would do to her. Frighten the living daylights out of her, I’ll bet, and who could blame her? Eddie Bond 003 and a half!

  ‘Oh, I’m glad you like them,’ she says. ‘And these are my favourites, not too fattening, but a little bit of naughty all the same.’

  She blushes fiercely at the innuendo, and I think I do too.

  Trying to cover her embarrassment, she puts the chocolates down and starts searching for something under the counter. ‘Someone brought a book on dogs in last week,’ she tells me. ‘It should be here somewhere. Ah, here we are. I remember you saying you wanted one to try and help train yours.’

  I give a chuckle as I take the manual and leaf through it. ‘You don’t know how much we need this,’ I say. ‘The blinking thing’s close to running wild.’

  She smiles in a fond sort of way. ‘I expect the children love it though, don’t they?’

  ‘Oh, there’s no doubt about that, and she’s not a bad little thing in her way, very affectionate, but not a clue about discipline.’ I cock a playful eyebrow. ‘I’m sure there are some who’d say that about my children too, so if you find any books on how to control them …’

  She laughs heartily at my joke, which isn’t a joke at all where our Susan’s concerned, but fortunately she doesn’t know that.

  ‘How old are they?’ she asks.

  ‘My daughter’s thirteen, and my son’s nine. Susan and Gary,’ I tell her, sounding as proud as Punch, when inside I’m crippled with shame for the way our Susan’s staying out at night and getting up to heaven only knows what with God only knows who. It was nearly midnight again on Thursday, and when she came in, chilled to the bone and stinking of cigarettes, I couldn’t get a word out of her about where she’d been.

  ‘Wherever it is, you’ve been smoking,’ I shouted at her, ‘and you know I won’t have it.’

  ‘No one’s asking you to.’

  ‘Don’t cheek me or you’ll get the back of my hand.’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘Test me once more and you’ll wonder what’s hit you. Now I want to know where you’re getting cigarettes. You’re not old enough to buy them, so who’s giving them to you?’

  ‘Mind your own business.’

  I grabbed her and started to shake. ‘Cigarettes can kill you, don’t you realise that?’ I shouted. ‘It’s because of them we’re in the position we’re in now.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘They kill people …’

  ‘I don’t care. I want to be dead.’

  ‘Don’t talk stupid.’

  ‘I’m not. I’d rather be dead than go on living here.’

  I pushed her to the bottom of the stairs. ‘I’ve had enough of you,’ I growled, as she fell, ‘now get up those stairs and you’d better start asking God’s forgiveness for the way you’re behaving, or you’re going to end up in a very sorry place.’

  ‘Good!’

  ‘You’re going to hell,’ Gary told her, over the banister.

  ‘Get lost,’ she snarled at him, and slamming her bedroom door behind her she screamed, ‘I hate you all. Do you hear me? I hate you, so go away and leave me alone.’

  Our Gary was upset, naturally, so I sat with him until he went back to sleep and stayed on sitting with him long after, too exhausted, too defeated to move. Thank God he’s not showing any signs of going the same way as our Susan, but the way she’s carrying on is definitely starting to affect him. I’m terrified I’ll end up calling in the authorities to help control her, because I have to keep things stable at home for our Gary’s sake. He doesn’t deserve any of this, and if we go on this way I could end up having them both taken away.

  My dear little souls. Eddress’s babies, Susan and Gary. They look to me to protect them, but no matter what I do it never seems to be right.

  ‘They’re very nice names,’ Anne says kindly.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say, managing to summon a smile.

  ‘I expect they’re good company, aren’t they?’

  Thinking only of Gary, I reply, ‘Oh, they have their moments. A bit of a handful at times though.’

  ‘Like most children, but it’s important for them to have character, is what I always say.’

  I think of our Susan and nearly smile at the wonderful euphemism of ‘character’. The moment of cheer soon fades as I wonder what kind of character she’s turning into. ‘They’re definitely not lacking in that,’ I say lightly.

  She looks round as an old lady comes into the shop, and when she greets her by name and starts to chat, I go on leafing through the manual, thinking I’d probably be wagging my tail if I had one, I’m so delighted with how gracious she was about accepting the chocolates. And for remembering that I was on the lookout for a dog book. My optimism hits a brick wall when I entertain the prospect of her meeting our Susan, but as it’s not likely to happen I cheer myself up by thinking about how well she’d probably get on with Gary.

  Realising I’m being very presumptuous indeed with my thoughts, I tuck the book under my arm, and carry on looking around to see what else has come in during the past couple of months.

  By t
he time the old lady’s gone I’ve found a very handy book on gardening, another on the discovery of Australia, and a Penguin edition of The Cloister and the Hearth, which sounds very interesting indeed.

  ‘Will that be all for you today, Mr Lewis?’ she asks, when I take them to the till to pay.

  I want to tell her to call me Eddie, but what I say is, ‘Four’s my limit, thank you,’ which is true, though I’m not sure why.

  ‘You’ve got a very eclectic taste,’ she comments, looking through them.

  I’m so thrilled by her use of such a scholarly word that I give her a little bow of thanks.

  She laughs and blushes, and then starts busying herself with putting my books in a bag, keeping her eyes down as she says, ‘Have you seen that film Paint Your Wagon that everyone’s talking about?’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ I admit. ‘Have you?’

  ‘Not yet, but they’re saying it’s very good.’

  ‘That’s what I hear too. Do you go to the pictures much?’

  ‘Whenever I can. What about you?’

  ‘I used to, but these days it’s usually only to take the children. Gary likes all the Westerns.’

  ‘I’m sure. And what about Susan?’

  ‘Oh, I suppose anything that’s romantic would be up her street, especially historical. That’s all she seems to read these days, Georgette Heyer, Anya Seton, Jean Plaidy, Jane Austen.’

  ‘Really? Then I’ll keep an eye out in case we get any of them in. Now, let me see, that’ll be one and ten please.’

  After counting out the coins, and giving her the exact amount, I pop the parcel under my arm and say, ‘Well, it’s been very nice talking to you, and thank you very much indeed for the dog book. I’ll make a start on the little scallywag as soon as I get home.’