2108 Exeter Story Prize Winners
First Prize - Time to Come Home - Daniel Murphy
My Dad had suffered a stroke and I was on my way back to Edinburgh to see him. As the plane sat high over seas and deserts, its throbbing engines pulsing up through the cabin floor, overpowering my body like some monstrous mechanical heartbeat, I dozed and dreamed – the dreams that lie just below the surface – of Edinburgh, my youth, my home. I’d only been back a couple of times since Mum’s funeral, and the last time - four years earlier - things had gone wrong, right from the start.
‘I suppose you’ll be off out wi your poncey mates every night.’ That was the first thing my father said to me when I walked in the door. I just looked at him. ‘Aye, still the same look on your face,’ he said, ‘Still the same smart arse you eyewis were.’
‘Is that right?’ I said.
Mum was the one who allowed me to be my own kid, follow my own path - their only child, the only one in our street to go to University. He saw it differently. I was never the son he wanted – one who’d play football, climb trees, get into scrapes with other boys. Instead I studied literature, played violin, got out of scrapes with my smart tongue. It was as if I was some kind of a traitor to the cause, a turncoat, a disappointment. ‘If you go to University,’ he’d said to me, ‘You’ll become like one of them.’ He turned up at my graduation with my Mum but there were no words of pride or praise at my achievement. ‘I hope you’re gonnae use your fancy learnin for somethin good,’ he said, ‘No just tae line your own pockets.’
Immediately after graduation I left my childhood home, left Edinburgh altogether, for my roving career – here a few years, there a few years, teaching, advising teachers, an ambassador for the English language in foreign parts, with better weather, and more eager and attentive students. They always found it odd that their English teacher was called Mr. French. As I drifted in and out of sleep on the long flight, I prayed that if this was to be the last time I saw him, we would at least try to be kind to each other.
By the time we touched down, it’d been over 24 hours since I’d left my condo in Djarkarta. I was exhausted but took a taxi straight to the Royal Infirmary. They had him in a single room close to the nurse’s station. He was still sleeping. A scruffy three day growth covered his square jaw, one staring eye wide open as he slept, as always. As a little boy I told him that I was frightened by that eye. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘It means I can see what you’re doing even when I’m sleepin.’ That staring eye has had me ever since.
The hospital was over-heated. I tried to stay awake, but I found myself nodding off - saliva dribbling out the corner of my mouth as my head jerked back up, my bones still thrumming in tune with those big engines. I asked the duty nurse to phone me if he woke, then headed back to his sad little flat in Muirhouse, my childhood home. My bedroom lay almost untouched since my last visit, a thick layer of dust on the windowsill, on the frame of my faded graduation photo hanging above the bed. I opened the window. Sleep came quickly. I woke late to the sound of mid- morning traffic, motes of dust dancing in the sunlight that streamed through the window, a dull pain round my head as if my skull had shrunk and my brain no longer fitted. I phoned the hospital straight away. No change.
‘If he wakes,’ I said, ‘Let him know I’ll be in later in the afternoon.’
I’d made use of the trip back to arrange lunch at the National Library with my old literature Prof. He’d always shown an interest in me, Prof Dickinson, his ‘first student from Muirhouse to study Milton’. We’d lost touch as I moved round Asia, but a few months back I received a Facebook friend request from him - putting himself out there now he was in his eighties, his photo all silver beard, tweed jacket and check shirt. ‘Tell me’, he wrote, ‘of your deeds heroic, though in secret done.’ Just like the old prof to smuggle a quote from Milton into Facebook. ‘Unfortunately,’ I wrote back, still trying to impress him, just as I did all those years ago, ‘not yet Proof against all temptation, as a rock / Of adamant and as a centre, firm’.
They’d be about the same age, the Prof and my dad. I wonder how different my life might’ve been if that gentle scholarly man had been my father; what other opportunities I might’ve had; whether I’d have lived the same wandering life, hawking the English language around the globe. I used to believe my mission was education, but lately I’ve wondered if I’ve just been an unwitting footsoldier in the wider campaign of ‘imperialism 2.0’, the soft temptations of global English, building a new kind of empire, an empire of captive consumers.
I’d packed my own towel and took it into the bathroom. It was awful in there. Black mould had colonised the grouting. I could see spots of dried urine round the toilet bowl. I didn’t dare look at the plug hole. Last time I was home, I’d had to fish out wads of slimy hair. I opened the window and looked out at the street below, remembering how I’d confronted him about it.
‘You need to keep this place cleaner Dad,’ I’d said, ‘If you can’t do it, I’ll pay for a cleaner myself.’
He looked at me as if I’d suggested something despicable, a betrayal of my origins. ‘People likes o me,’ he said proudly, ‘we dinny employ cleaners. That’s a job people should dae for themselves.’ He talked as if he was taking the nobler part, as if he was some kind of crusader for virtue, for a better world where human value would never be calculated in pounds and pence, where there’d be no hierarchies of human worth, where we’d all do our own cleaning. Except, he didn’t.
‘It’s a pity Mum had to clean for you then, all these years,’ I said back to him, straight to his face. It took me till I was forty five, and Mum dead and gone, before I could confront him.
‘Her choice,’ he’d said.
Four years on, and the bathroom was worse than ever. His philosophy was just a cover for his laziness.
A gust of cold air blew in and I shivered. Below, in the street, bits and pieces of litter were tearing round and round after each other in some kind of wild impromptu dance. I closed the window and scrubbed the inside of the bath before taking a quick shower. At least the water from the showerhead was clean. As I stood in the spray, I decided that while he was in the hospital, I was definitely getting a professional cleaner in to go over the place, top to bottom. He could complain all he wanted. It would be a done deal.
I found one my old knitted beanies in a drawer – there’s not much call for them in Djarkata – and headed out for the bus stop.
It’s always a strange feeling, being back home. I stopped in the 1970s concrete precinct and looked round. The place didn’t look any better - worse, if anything. Every second shop was boarded up. I found myself looking at people, wondering if I used to know them back in the day. Would I recognise Rudi Lukas, or his brother Malksy, if I saw them now? It was right here that Rudi and his crowd had put me in fear of my life.
The whole incident came back to me in a rush. I’d been doing a late session at the Uni Library on some essay or other and sawthem as soon as I got off the bus, the last 27 of the night. I tried to slip past without them seeing me, but they can’t have had anything else interesting to do. ‘There’s that student,’ I heard one of them say. I ran, but they caught up with me in the precinct, dark under its vandalised street lights.
They pushed me from one to the other.
‘Student, ay? Smart arse more like.’
‘I bet yi spend all day smokin the wacky backy.’
‘Aye. N’shaggin the uni birds, ay?’
My knees were trembling alright, but it wasn’t the kind of knee-tremble they were thinking about.
One of them curled his leg behind mine and placed me down on my back, gently. ‘Bet you though you were a lucky bastard … ’ he whispered, his spittle on my face, his beery breath in my nose, his hand on my throat. ’… until tonight.’
They were all laughing then.
Rudi stood over me. ‘Goan tell us whit you’re studyin this year then, shitebag. Weez aw need educated, like.’
‘Town plannin,’ I croaked, ‘Likesay, makin better places for folk to live, ay?’ It wasn’t true of course, but it sounded better than telling them about the seminar I’d attended earlier that day on Intertextual Readings.
It was Malksy that saved me. ‘Leave him alane,’ he said, ‘Maybe he’ll dae somethin aboot this shit-hole.’ He aimed a lazy kick at me as I gathered up my bag and ran off. ‘Go on. Git!’ he said. They laughed, but they let me go.
As I walked through the precinct and on to the bus stop, remembering what Malksy had done for me, my pulse was racing as it had that night. I’d always liked Malksy. People said he was ‘a bit simple’, but when we were wee kids we used to play together, him and me, used to chum each other up the road to primary school. Once his mother invited me round to their house for his birthday. Rudi didn’t like me being there so it was never repeated. Rudi was a wiry, sharp-faced wee gadgie, a constant nervous tic, half wink half sneer, on the right side of his face. He could punch a hole through a brick wall. Malksy had the same sharp nose as his older brother, the same oily hair, combed straight back. But where Rudi was fast-talking, angry, resentful, Malksy’s voice was childlike, plaintive, almost angelic. And Malsky was much bigger - a man mountain, a small round head atop a pear-shaped body.
Back then you’d always see them together around Muirhouse – down the park, at the precinct, in The Gunner. Unlikely companions. They’d have made a good Lennie and George, or Jo Buck and Ratso –midday cowboys in the mean streets of North Edinburgh.
I smiled at the memory and walked on out of the precinct and over to the bus stop. My smile disappeared as I saw a 27 receding up the road. I was going to be late. Standing there waiting, I remembered another morning at that bus stop, back in the day, when those two had been in the queue ahead of me. Rudi was telling his brother off, poking at him, angry and petulant, and Malksy just took it. When the bus came, I followed them upstairs, still watching. I wanted Malksy to pick Rudi up, the little shit, and snap his back like a twig. He could’ve done it. Easy. Rudi saw me looking and must’ve read my mind.
‘You’re that radge student, ay?’ He pulled the library book I was carrying out of my hands. ‘Class, Codes and Control’ he read on the cover, ‘What the fuck’s that about?’ He ripped it down the spine and threw it back in my lap.
I was a smart-mouthed wee git in those days. ‘How appropriately symbolic Rudi, given Basil Bernstein’s main line of argument,’ I might’ve said. But I knew better than to smart-mouth Rudi. I said nothing.
He put his hand under my chin and forced me back against the seat, ‘Don’t fuckin look at us again,’ he said, ‘Get it? Cunt?’
‘Ah get it,’ I squeaked, ‘Nae problem Rudi, ay?’
The ease with which I could slip from standard English at the Uni into my lingua muirhoosia was one of the things that got me interested in language. I even did a research piece on diglossia in Edinburgh. Sociolinguistics. That’s what I was working on when Rudi tore up the Bernstein book. Restricted and elaborated codes. Those language skills served me well when I was chatting up the classy private-school birds in my literature tutorial. I could give them a little frisson of the dark glamour of another Edinburgh they’d only ever read about, the Edinburgh of gangs and drugs and violence. They didn’t know what a soft little weed I really was. They sometimes gave me back a little frisson too, a rather different kind of frisson. In my defence, I put Muirhouse on their literary map before Irvine Welsh was even a gleam in the eyes of Messrs Secker and Warburg.
* * *
These memories of the old days were keeping me occupied while I waited for the next 27.From the bus stop, I could see the bookies where Welsh has Renton losing his suppositories. Next to it The Gunner, a derelict hulk of 1960s concrete. I wasn’t surprised it was closed. ‘The beer,’ as they say around here, ‘was pish.’
Another 27 pulled up. I’ve been fond of the 27 since I was a wee laddie. It’s always been my lucky number. It’s the same number as our house, 27 Muirhouse Entry. And my birthday, 27thJune. In the old days this was the bus I took to go up to Uni for my morning lecture - The Puritan Imagination, or some such erudite topic, with Prof. Dickinson surveying the room, haughty and imperious. ‘Some of you may be surprised that the Puritans had imagination,’ he’d say, his right hand opening out towards us in supplication, ‘but let me ask you,’ a theatrical pause ‘do any of you have the imagination to imagine what it’s like to imagine, that before the beginning of time you were chosen by God to be saved?’ and then he’d be off, pacing, gesticulating, his deep sonorous tones reverberating around the room. It was lecturing as performance. And we loved it. He was a big influence on me, much more than I realised at the time.
I boarded the bus and sat upstairs as usual. As the driver lurched us round the corner into Ferry Road, jostling me from one side of my seat to the other, it put me in mind of long ago morning journeys to my summer job at the Festival Fringe when I smoked skinny wee rollups with a rich aroma - Old Holborn, or occasionally,if I was trying to impress some girl, Gauloises. I still get a catch in the throat when I think of my first fag upstairs on the 6am bus, the hit of tarry smoke, the sound of staccato coughing around me in the wordless fellowship of the top deck, as we the workers, headed into the city to prepare it for the tourists. No-one smokes on buses now. Two tracksuited boys were exercising their thumbs not on roll-ups, but on slimline smartphones.
Over the rugby fields of Inverleith, the skyline of the city looked as good as I remembered it - the castle, Tron Kirk, Arthur’s Seat. The bus was leaving behind the Edinburgh of council housing, plastic litter and stale beer and entering a different Edinburgh, the Edinburgh of tweedy school uniforms, of solid sandstone houses and the fey chatter of well-dressed ladies sipping morning coffee.
After Canonmills I noticed Clark’s Bar. I bumped into Malksy one morning outside Clark’s, not long after the incident in the precinct. I was on my way home from an overnight at a friend’s flat. Malksy was well into his shift, hefting full beer kegs off a lorry as if they were empty boxes and rolling them down into the cellar.
‘Hey Malksy, how you doin?’ I said.
He squinted at me. ‘Frenchy?’ he wheezed. ‘Zat you?’
‘Aye. Thanks for, you know, that night … Ah wiz dead meat if you hadnae, ken, helped us oot.’
He scratched his nose.
‘Ah’ve no seen your brither for a while, likes. Whit’s he up tae?’ I asked.
‘He goat banged up.’ Malksy shifted the weight of the keg on his shoulder, ‘He chibbed the guy. They said it was murder but it wisnae. Naw.’
‘When’s he get oot?’
‘Ah dinny ken. He goat life. Twenty five year minimum. Aggravated.’ Malksy looked around, as if Rudi might’ve been there behind him, listening. ‘Ah’d better get oan Frenchy,’ he said. He turned his back to me and heaved another barrel onto his shoulder.
‘See you Malksy,’ I said.
All these nostalgia-framed memories had passed the time, but it was well past 12 and the bus still hadn’t reached George Street. We were stuck behind a slow 23 and I was already late for lunch with the Prof. I don’t like the 23. It meanders from Trinity to Morningside through genteel Edinburgh, stopping at every stop to add to its cargo of elderly ladies. Why do they never have their bus passes ready before the bus arrives? It’s true the 27 shares part of its route with the 23, flirting with Inverleith and Craiglockhart on its way from Pennywell to Oxgangs, but it’s quite a different bus. I had some amazing nights on that bus, coming home to Muirhouse from the Uni.
I remember boarding the last 27 of the night after a long stint on an overdue essay in the George Square library. It was well after 11 and when we got to Rose Street a hen party piled in. They overspilled the top deck, but the driver knew better than to stop them. These were wimmen and they were fou. I slunk into my seat, trying not be noticed, as they started up a raucous chorus. By Canonmills we’d had ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’. At Goldenacre they cried ‘Don’t, Don’t You Want Me?’ I resisted the temptation to answer in the (double) negative, but as we rounded Crewe Toll and the full top deck chorus belted out ‘My Way’, I just had to join in. It maybe spoils my image to admit it, but it was joyous. All were welcome and the cares of tomorrow were a long way off. They got the driver to stop the bus at the top of Pennywell Road till the song was finished.
You’d never have that much fun on a number 23. Certainly not the one that was making me late. It was already past 12.30 when it began disgorging most of its silver-haired passengers at Princes Street. It toiled on up the Mound, with my bus in procession behind. But now the sun was shining through the window, warming my face, spreading its glow all around the city. Despite myself, I began to relax. I looked up at the Castle and realised how much I was enjoying being back in the city of my birth.
* * *
There’s a pleasant buzz of industry and learning among the earnest academics and retired professionals who frequent the National Library café. Prof Dickinson had already started his lunch. He stood up to greet me, the same mellow Morningside tones I remember. ‘Ah, Geoff,’ he said, ‘How nice to see you. I can recommend the soup.’
We talked for an hour or so.
He told me he’d become ‘emeritus’. ‘I have what I believe is called a ‘hot desk’ in the David Hume Tower,’ he said, with his customary polite disdain, ‘but I prefer to work here.’ He was researching a new book on Milton and Scottish literature. Did I know that Kelman’s Booker-winning novel was influenced by Samson Agonistes? I pretended I did, the old habits of student days bubbling up to the surface in his presence. Did I use Milton in Teaching English as a Second Language? No – too difficult, linguistically, philosophically, and every other -ly. Had I quit my British Council job? Not yet, but who knew? They were downsizing and outsourcing. I’d been offered a package.
He peered over his glasses. ‘And how’s Muirhouse? Still as rough as when you were a student?’
‘It’s all a-changing,’ I said, ‘They’ve demolished so much. My alma mater Craigroyston has been reborn – the old building’s gone and there’s a shiny new one at the foot of Pennywell Road. They’ve tried to tart up the shopping precinct. Without success. But there’s a Greggs. And the bookies of course.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Edinburgh‘s such a divided city. I don’t think we have a Greggsin Morningside – but we do have a Leaf and Beanand … oh …’ he said with a familiar mischievous twinkle in his eye, ‘…a new Marie Delices, which is just delightful.’
I caught sight of Rudi Lukas’s face appearing on the wall-mounted television behind the Prof. - the lunchtime news. My jaw must’ve dropped, for he turned round to see what I’d been looking at. ‘Terrible business,’ he said, ‘Lived down your way, didn’t he, that gangster? Lukas or something?’
Subtitles carried the story. Yesterday Rudi Lukas, recently released after serving a life sentence for murder, was found dead in his Muirhouse flat. Early this morning neighbours saw police detaining Malcolm Lukas, the victim’s brother, resident at the same address. ‘It’s been hard for the big man since his brother got out,’ a neighbour said, ‘Looks like he’d had enough.’
‘I knew them,’ I said, ‘Saw them around. Rudi was a twisted little guy. He was mean to everyone, including his brother. If big Malksy did it, I hope they let him off.’ The Prof raised an eyebrow. ‘Believe me,’ I said, ‘No-one should mourn the death of Rudi Lukas.’
We chatted on. My job situation. His retirement activities. It turned out the Prof. chaired a charity board, Edinburgh Haven, supporting refugees and asylum seekers. ‘If you do find yourself back in Edinburgh, Geoff,’ he said, ‘You could do worse that volunteer with us. Our clients need English language skills.’
‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘Maybe.’
I left him to the library and headed out to the hospital where I found my Dad sitting up. He’d lost muscle control on his left side - might not be able to walk properly again, he said - but his language was unaffected and he’d been able to eat a little. I told him I was organising a cleaner. ‘Fair enough,’ he slurred, ‘I ken the place is a mess.’
We sat in silence for a few minutes.
‘Son,’ he said, ‘It’s good to see you.’
The charge nurse pulled me aside before I left. He told me there would be a case review when it was time for my Dad to be discharged. Social Work would be involved. Since he lived alone, some kind of care-home placement was likely.
* * *
It was on the way back from the hospital that day that I realised what I had to do. I was on a 27 - front seat, top deck. The bus bumped and bustled up Hanover Street and, as it crested the rise over George Street, I could see all the way down to the River Forth, a gash of dazzling blue framed by the honeyed sandstone of Dundas Street’s Georgian townhouses.
It seems so obvious now but that was the moment when I understood what my visit was all about. After all these years away, it was time for me to come home.
‘I suppose you’ll be off out wi your poncey mates every night.’ That was the first thing my father said to me when I walked in the door. I just looked at him. ‘Aye, still the same look on your face,’ he said, ‘Still the same smart arse you eyewis were.’
‘Is that right?’ I said.
Mum was the one who allowed me to be my own kid, follow my own path - their only child, the only one in our street to go to University. He saw it differently. I was never the son he wanted – one who’d play football, climb trees, get into scrapes with other boys. Instead I studied literature, played violin, got out of scrapes with my smart tongue. It was as if I was some kind of a traitor to the cause, a turncoat, a disappointment. ‘If you go to University,’ he’d said to me, ‘You’ll become like one of them.’ He turned up at my graduation with my Mum but there were no words of pride or praise at my achievement. ‘I hope you’re gonnae use your fancy learnin for somethin good,’ he said, ‘No just tae line your own pockets.’
Immediately after graduation I left my childhood home, left Edinburgh altogether, for my roving career – here a few years, there a few years, teaching, advising teachers, an ambassador for the English language in foreign parts, with better weather, and more eager and attentive students. They always found it odd that their English teacher was called Mr. French. As I drifted in and out of sleep on the long flight, I prayed that if this was to be the last time I saw him, we would at least try to be kind to each other.
By the time we touched down, it’d been over 24 hours since I’d left my condo in Djarkarta. I was exhausted but took a taxi straight to the Royal Infirmary. They had him in a single room close to the nurse’s station. He was still sleeping. A scruffy three day growth covered his square jaw, one staring eye wide open as he slept, as always. As a little boy I told him that I was frightened by that eye. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘It means I can see what you’re doing even when I’m sleepin.’ That staring eye has had me ever since.
The hospital was over-heated. I tried to stay awake, but I found myself nodding off - saliva dribbling out the corner of my mouth as my head jerked back up, my bones still thrumming in tune with those big engines. I asked the duty nurse to phone me if he woke, then headed back to his sad little flat in Muirhouse, my childhood home. My bedroom lay almost untouched since my last visit, a thick layer of dust on the windowsill, on the frame of my faded graduation photo hanging above the bed. I opened the window. Sleep came quickly. I woke late to the sound of mid- morning traffic, motes of dust dancing in the sunlight that streamed through the window, a dull pain round my head as if my skull had shrunk and my brain no longer fitted. I phoned the hospital straight away. No change.
‘If he wakes,’ I said, ‘Let him know I’ll be in later in the afternoon.’
I’d made use of the trip back to arrange lunch at the National Library with my old literature Prof. He’d always shown an interest in me, Prof Dickinson, his ‘first student from Muirhouse to study Milton’. We’d lost touch as I moved round Asia, but a few months back I received a Facebook friend request from him - putting himself out there now he was in his eighties, his photo all silver beard, tweed jacket and check shirt. ‘Tell me’, he wrote, ‘of your deeds heroic, though in secret done.’ Just like the old prof to smuggle a quote from Milton into Facebook. ‘Unfortunately,’ I wrote back, still trying to impress him, just as I did all those years ago, ‘not yet Proof against all temptation, as a rock / Of adamant and as a centre, firm’.
They’d be about the same age, the Prof and my dad. I wonder how different my life might’ve been if that gentle scholarly man had been my father; what other opportunities I might’ve had; whether I’d have lived the same wandering life, hawking the English language around the globe. I used to believe my mission was education, but lately I’ve wondered if I’ve just been an unwitting footsoldier in the wider campaign of ‘imperialism 2.0’, the soft temptations of global English, building a new kind of empire, an empire of captive consumers.
I’d packed my own towel and took it into the bathroom. It was awful in there. Black mould had colonised the grouting. I could see spots of dried urine round the toilet bowl. I didn’t dare look at the plug hole. Last time I was home, I’d had to fish out wads of slimy hair. I opened the window and looked out at the street below, remembering how I’d confronted him about it.
‘You need to keep this place cleaner Dad,’ I’d said, ‘If you can’t do it, I’ll pay for a cleaner myself.’
He looked at me as if I’d suggested something despicable, a betrayal of my origins. ‘People likes o me,’ he said proudly, ‘we dinny employ cleaners. That’s a job people should dae for themselves.’ He talked as if he was taking the nobler part, as if he was some kind of crusader for virtue, for a better world where human value would never be calculated in pounds and pence, where there’d be no hierarchies of human worth, where we’d all do our own cleaning. Except, he didn’t.
‘It’s a pity Mum had to clean for you then, all these years,’ I said back to him, straight to his face. It took me till I was forty five, and Mum dead and gone, before I could confront him.
‘Her choice,’ he’d said.
Four years on, and the bathroom was worse than ever. His philosophy was just a cover for his laziness.
A gust of cold air blew in and I shivered. Below, in the street, bits and pieces of litter were tearing round and round after each other in some kind of wild impromptu dance. I closed the window and scrubbed the inside of the bath before taking a quick shower. At least the water from the showerhead was clean. As I stood in the spray, I decided that while he was in the hospital, I was definitely getting a professional cleaner in to go over the place, top to bottom. He could complain all he wanted. It would be a done deal.
I found one my old knitted beanies in a drawer – there’s not much call for them in Djarkata – and headed out for the bus stop.
It’s always a strange feeling, being back home. I stopped in the 1970s concrete precinct and looked round. The place didn’t look any better - worse, if anything. Every second shop was boarded up. I found myself looking at people, wondering if I used to know them back in the day. Would I recognise Rudi Lukas, or his brother Malksy, if I saw them now? It was right here that Rudi and his crowd had put me in fear of my life.
The whole incident came back to me in a rush. I’d been doing a late session at the Uni Library on some essay or other and sawthem as soon as I got off the bus, the last 27 of the night. I tried to slip past without them seeing me, but they can’t have had anything else interesting to do. ‘There’s that student,’ I heard one of them say. I ran, but they caught up with me in the precinct, dark under its vandalised street lights.
They pushed me from one to the other.
‘Student, ay? Smart arse more like.’
‘I bet yi spend all day smokin the wacky backy.’
‘Aye. N’shaggin the uni birds, ay?’
My knees were trembling alright, but it wasn’t the kind of knee-tremble they were thinking about.
One of them curled his leg behind mine and placed me down on my back, gently. ‘Bet you though you were a lucky bastard … ’ he whispered, his spittle on my face, his beery breath in my nose, his hand on my throat. ’… until tonight.’
They were all laughing then.
Rudi stood over me. ‘Goan tell us whit you’re studyin this year then, shitebag. Weez aw need educated, like.’
‘Town plannin,’ I croaked, ‘Likesay, makin better places for folk to live, ay?’ It wasn’t true of course, but it sounded better than telling them about the seminar I’d attended earlier that day on Intertextual Readings.
It was Malksy that saved me. ‘Leave him alane,’ he said, ‘Maybe he’ll dae somethin aboot this shit-hole.’ He aimed a lazy kick at me as I gathered up my bag and ran off. ‘Go on. Git!’ he said. They laughed, but they let me go.
As I walked through the precinct and on to the bus stop, remembering what Malksy had done for me, my pulse was racing as it had that night. I’d always liked Malksy. People said he was ‘a bit simple’, but when we were wee kids we used to play together, him and me, used to chum each other up the road to primary school. Once his mother invited me round to their house for his birthday. Rudi didn’t like me being there so it was never repeated. Rudi was a wiry, sharp-faced wee gadgie, a constant nervous tic, half wink half sneer, on the right side of his face. He could punch a hole through a brick wall. Malksy had the same sharp nose as his older brother, the same oily hair, combed straight back. But where Rudi was fast-talking, angry, resentful, Malksy’s voice was childlike, plaintive, almost angelic. And Malsky was much bigger - a man mountain, a small round head atop a pear-shaped body.
Back then you’d always see them together around Muirhouse – down the park, at the precinct, in The Gunner. Unlikely companions. They’d have made a good Lennie and George, or Jo Buck and Ratso –midday cowboys in the mean streets of North Edinburgh.
I smiled at the memory and walked on out of the precinct and over to the bus stop. My smile disappeared as I saw a 27 receding up the road. I was going to be late. Standing there waiting, I remembered another morning at that bus stop, back in the day, when those two had been in the queue ahead of me. Rudi was telling his brother off, poking at him, angry and petulant, and Malksy just took it. When the bus came, I followed them upstairs, still watching. I wanted Malksy to pick Rudi up, the little shit, and snap his back like a twig. He could’ve done it. Easy. Rudi saw me looking and must’ve read my mind.
‘You’re that radge student, ay?’ He pulled the library book I was carrying out of my hands. ‘Class, Codes and Control’ he read on the cover, ‘What the fuck’s that about?’ He ripped it down the spine and threw it back in my lap.
I was a smart-mouthed wee git in those days. ‘How appropriately symbolic Rudi, given Basil Bernstein’s main line of argument,’ I might’ve said. But I knew better than to smart-mouth Rudi. I said nothing.
He put his hand under my chin and forced me back against the seat, ‘Don’t fuckin look at us again,’ he said, ‘Get it? Cunt?’
‘Ah get it,’ I squeaked, ‘Nae problem Rudi, ay?’
The ease with which I could slip from standard English at the Uni into my lingua muirhoosia was one of the things that got me interested in language. I even did a research piece on diglossia in Edinburgh. Sociolinguistics. That’s what I was working on when Rudi tore up the Bernstein book. Restricted and elaborated codes. Those language skills served me well when I was chatting up the classy private-school birds in my literature tutorial. I could give them a little frisson of the dark glamour of another Edinburgh they’d only ever read about, the Edinburgh of gangs and drugs and violence. They didn’t know what a soft little weed I really was. They sometimes gave me back a little frisson too, a rather different kind of frisson. In my defence, I put Muirhouse on their literary map before Irvine Welsh was even a gleam in the eyes of Messrs Secker and Warburg.
* * *
These memories of the old days were keeping me occupied while I waited for the next 27.From the bus stop, I could see the bookies where Welsh has Renton losing his suppositories. Next to it The Gunner, a derelict hulk of 1960s concrete. I wasn’t surprised it was closed. ‘The beer,’ as they say around here, ‘was pish.’
Another 27 pulled up. I’ve been fond of the 27 since I was a wee laddie. It’s always been my lucky number. It’s the same number as our house, 27 Muirhouse Entry. And my birthday, 27thJune. In the old days this was the bus I took to go up to Uni for my morning lecture - The Puritan Imagination, or some such erudite topic, with Prof. Dickinson surveying the room, haughty and imperious. ‘Some of you may be surprised that the Puritans had imagination,’ he’d say, his right hand opening out towards us in supplication, ‘but let me ask you,’ a theatrical pause ‘do any of you have the imagination to imagine what it’s like to imagine, that before the beginning of time you were chosen by God to be saved?’ and then he’d be off, pacing, gesticulating, his deep sonorous tones reverberating around the room. It was lecturing as performance. And we loved it. He was a big influence on me, much more than I realised at the time.
I boarded the bus and sat upstairs as usual. As the driver lurched us round the corner into Ferry Road, jostling me from one side of my seat to the other, it put me in mind of long ago morning journeys to my summer job at the Festival Fringe when I smoked skinny wee rollups with a rich aroma - Old Holborn, or occasionally,if I was trying to impress some girl, Gauloises. I still get a catch in the throat when I think of my first fag upstairs on the 6am bus, the hit of tarry smoke, the sound of staccato coughing around me in the wordless fellowship of the top deck, as we the workers, headed into the city to prepare it for the tourists. No-one smokes on buses now. Two tracksuited boys were exercising their thumbs not on roll-ups, but on slimline smartphones.
Over the rugby fields of Inverleith, the skyline of the city looked as good as I remembered it - the castle, Tron Kirk, Arthur’s Seat. The bus was leaving behind the Edinburgh of council housing, plastic litter and stale beer and entering a different Edinburgh, the Edinburgh of tweedy school uniforms, of solid sandstone houses and the fey chatter of well-dressed ladies sipping morning coffee.
After Canonmills I noticed Clark’s Bar. I bumped into Malksy one morning outside Clark’s, not long after the incident in the precinct. I was on my way home from an overnight at a friend’s flat. Malksy was well into his shift, hefting full beer kegs off a lorry as if they were empty boxes and rolling them down into the cellar.
‘Hey Malksy, how you doin?’ I said.
He squinted at me. ‘Frenchy?’ he wheezed. ‘Zat you?’
‘Aye. Thanks for, you know, that night … Ah wiz dead meat if you hadnae, ken, helped us oot.’
He scratched his nose.
‘Ah’ve no seen your brither for a while, likes. Whit’s he up tae?’ I asked.
‘He goat banged up.’ Malksy shifted the weight of the keg on his shoulder, ‘He chibbed the guy. They said it was murder but it wisnae. Naw.’
‘When’s he get oot?’
‘Ah dinny ken. He goat life. Twenty five year minimum. Aggravated.’ Malksy looked around, as if Rudi might’ve been there behind him, listening. ‘Ah’d better get oan Frenchy,’ he said. He turned his back to me and heaved another barrel onto his shoulder.
‘See you Malksy,’ I said.
All these nostalgia-framed memories had passed the time, but it was well past 12 and the bus still hadn’t reached George Street. We were stuck behind a slow 23 and I was already late for lunch with the Prof. I don’t like the 23. It meanders from Trinity to Morningside through genteel Edinburgh, stopping at every stop to add to its cargo of elderly ladies. Why do they never have their bus passes ready before the bus arrives? It’s true the 27 shares part of its route with the 23, flirting with Inverleith and Craiglockhart on its way from Pennywell to Oxgangs, but it’s quite a different bus. I had some amazing nights on that bus, coming home to Muirhouse from the Uni.
I remember boarding the last 27 of the night after a long stint on an overdue essay in the George Square library. It was well after 11 and when we got to Rose Street a hen party piled in. They overspilled the top deck, but the driver knew better than to stop them. These were wimmen and they were fou. I slunk into my seat, trying not be noticed, as they started up a raucous chorus. By Canonmills we’d had ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’. At Goldenacre they cried ‘Don’t, Don’t You Want Me?’ I resisted the temptation to answer in the (double) negative, but as we rounded Crewe Toll and the full top deck chorus belted out ‘My Way’, I just had to join in. It maybe spoils my image to admit it, but it was joyous. All were welcome and the cares of tomorrow were a long way off. They got the driver to stop the bus at the top of Pennywell Road till the song was finished.
You’d never have that much fun on a number 23. Certainly not the one that was making me late. It was already past 12.30 when it began disgorging most of its silver-haired passengers at Princes Street. It toiled on up the Mound, with my bus in procession behind. But now the sun was shining through the window, warming my face, spreading its glow all around the city. Despite myself, I began to relax. I looked up at the Castle and realised how much I was enjoying being back in the city of my birth.
* * *
There’s a pleasant buzz of industry and learning among the earnest academics and retired professionals who frequent the National Library café. Prof Dickinson had already started his lunch. He stood up to greet me, the same mellow Morningside tones I remember. ‘Ah, Geoff,’ he said, ‘How nice to see you. I can recommend the soup.’
We talked for an hour or so.
He told me he’d become ‘emeritus’. ‘I have what I believe is called a ‘hot desk’ in the David Hume Tower,’ he said, with his customary polite disdain, ‘but I prefer to work here.’ He was researching a new book on Milton and Scottish literature. Did I know that Kelman’s Booker-winning novel was influenced by Samson Agonistes? I pretended I did, the old habits of student days bubbling up to the surface in his presence. Did I use Milton in Teaching English as a Second Language? No – too difficult, linguistically, philosophically, and every other -ly. Had I quit my British Council job? Not yet, but who knew? They were downsizing and outsourcing. I’d been offered a package.
He peered over his glasses. ‘And how’s Muirhouse? Still as rough as when you were a student?’
‘It’s all a-changing,’ I said, ‘They’ve demolished so much. My alma mater Craigroyston has been reborn – the old building’s gone and there’s a shiny new one at the foot of Pennywell Road. They’ve tried to tart up the shopping precinct. Without success. But there’s a Greggs. And the bookies of course.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Edinburgh‘s such a divided city. I don’t think we have a Greggsin Morningside – but we do have a Leaf and Beanand … oh …’ he said with a familiar mischievous twinkle in his eye, ‘…a new Marie Delices, which is just delightful.’
I caught sight of Rudi Lukas’s face appearing on the wall-mounted television behind the Prof. - the lunchtime news. My jaw must’ve dropped, for he turned round to see what I’d been looking at. ‘Terrible business,’ he said, ‘Lived down your way, didn’t he, that gangster? Lukas or something?’
Subtitles carried the story. Yesterday Rudi Lukas, recently released after serving a life sentence for murder, was found dead in his Muirhouse flat. Early this morning neighbours saw police detaining Malcolm Lukas, the victim’s brother, resident at the same address. ‘It’s been hard for the big man since his brother got out,’ a neighbour said, ‘Looks like he’d had enough.’
‘I knew them,’ I said, ‘Saw them around. Rudi was a twisted little guy. He was mean to everyone, including his brother. If big Malksy did it, I hope they let him off.’ The Prof raised an eyebrow. ‘Believe me,’ I said, ‘No-one should mourn the death of Rudi Lukas.’
We chatted on. My job situation. His retirement activities. It turned out the Prof. chaired a charity board, Edinburgh Haven, supporting refugees and asylum seekers. ‘If you do find yourself back in Edinburgh, Geoff,’ he said, ‘You could do worse that volunteer with us. Our clients need English language skills.’
‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘Maybe.’
I left him to the library and headed out to the hospital where I found my Dad sitting up. He’d lost muscle control on his left side - might not be able to walk properly again, he said - but his language was unaffected and he’d been able to eat a little. I told him I was organising a cleaner. ‘Fair enough,’ he slurred, ‘I ken the place is a mess.’
We sat in silence for a few minutes.
‘Son,’ he said, ‘It’s good to see you.’
The charge nurse pulled me aside before I left. He told me there would be a case review when it was time for my Dad to be discharged. Social Work would be involved. Since he lived alone, some kind of care-home placement was likely.
* * *
It was on the way back from the hospital that day that I realised what I had to do. I was on a 27 - front seat, top deck. The bus bumped and bustled up Hanover Street and, as it crested the rise over George Street, I could see all the way down to the River Forth, a gash of dazzling blue framed by the honeyed sandstone of Dundas Street’s Georgian townhouses.
It seems so obvious now but that was the moment when I understood what my visit was all about. After all these years away, it was time for me to come home.
Second Prize - Camelia Girl - Judith Wilson
It’s her again.
I’ve got Saturday viewings back-to-back and now she’s here, wanting to look. No appointment. ‘Fit her in, will you?’ Sherri barked earlier, and it wasn’t a question. Don’t get me wrong; this woman, she’s perfectly nice. But these apartments – they’re state-of-the-art, right? Quartz kitchen worktops and air flow systems. Aimed at Liverpool executives, fingers on the pulse.
She’s not one of them. Keeps asking: ‘Where’s the bath?’
Who takes a bath – these days?
Wet rooms, yes. Oh my! Mum would love that walk-in shower, glass cube, brushed nickel rose, four settings plus steam. Sometimes, while clients nose around, I stand in it, open and shut the noiseless door, ceramic tiling continuous with the floor. So sleek, so perfect for …
‘Sherri at the office – she said you’d squeeze me in?’
The woman smiles awkwardly, clutching a print out.
Who does a print out – these days?
‘It’s all online,’ I say. She looks embarrassed.
‘Sorry. I prefer my facts to hand.’
We’re standing in the hall, solid wood front door and low voltage lights, an orchid on a narrow console. I thinkit’s real. I bury my nose, no scent, perhaps not. She sees me looking; I jangle the keys, move off.
‘Flat Four?’
She’s seen it three times. All she does is walk slowly from room to room, stop at the windows and remark on the view. Yesterday I took a call, retreated to the corridor, returned to find her standing with one palm on the alcove.
Yeah. Stroking it like a cat.
Weird, if you ask me.
She definitely can’t afford it. Spinster. Clothes rumpled anyhow. We can all use an iron, right?
The woman hustles close.
‘Flat Four. Thanks. Just a few minutes, while I have another think.’
As we climb the stairs, I reel off the facts I’ve gathered, whilst watching TV with Mum. The prospective buyers are always impressed. They adore the mix of ‘contemporary with sensitive Grade II restoration’; this property developer, he’s pulled out all the stops. I’d fancy living here myself, if it wasn’t for the price tag …
The woman says nothing so I speak louder and add more facts:
‘Agnes Lodge was built in 1800, set in large grounds, originally part of Toxteth Park. This building was extended, Gothic style, in the late 19thcentury.’
She stays silent so I rattle on.
‘The place used to be a convent, or so I -’
‘Wait!’ She interrupts.
Up close, I see she’s wearing zero make-up. How old is she? Fifties, I’m guessing, but I try not to stare. I hate that dried-out look middle-aged women get – like Mum. I’ve slicked ‘Salmon Sunset’ lipstick today and I’m feeling ace.
I open the door:
‘Voila!’
She takes one look and walks out.
‘Not this one, sorry.’ She consults her crumpled printout. ‘Flat Six?’
Oh no, love – hands off. A couple this morning, all sweatpants and tight ponytail (her) and red Maserati (him), they said theywere interested.
‘Someone’s put in an offer,’ I say. ‘I’d have to make a call.’
Sherri would kill me because it’s not true; they haven’t, not yet. But the guy (they’re not married, I saw no ring), he winked behind tight-pony’s back and he slipped me his number.
‘Call me if there’s anyone else.’ He whispered it.
I know he meant a buyer. But maybe … was that code for something? Well, this will give me reason to phone.
He had broad shoulders and sparkling blue eyes, sexy in a soft way.
The woman is at the window, peering out as usual.
‘I can see Sefton Park, the Palm House,’ she says. ‘I wish …’
Her voice tails off.
But she’s right; it’s glorious round here. Aigburth is leafy and green, the streets resound with the luxury click of court heels on pavements, not the rat-tat-tat of stiletto on tarmac, where I live in Toxteth. I clear my throat.
‘The price?’ she asks. ‘Same as Flat Four?’
‘It’s over half a million,’ I breathe, dizzy with the facts and figures.
I love the slippery way that sum rolls off my tongue, like I’m worth riches too, standing here jangling the keys.
‘There’s a third bedroom, three en suites,’ I add tantalizingly.
She can’t afford it.
I can tell by her sensible shoes, thosecrumples in her M & S clothes.
She trails her finger around the Georgian sash window, exploring its contours. The property developer, he’s invested millions. There are 16 apartments and new-builds coming soon in the grounds; it’s a fancy, gated community. Only the historic façade remains, and inside each flat, he’s kept one original ‘character’ feature.
Flat Six, it has a narrow alcove rounded at the top.
She’s staring at it now. ‘I’d like to put down a deposit.’
I think of sexy Blue Eyes. He’d muttered ‘six weeks max’ to gather funds. I want to keep him on side.
‘There’s someone else in the frame,’ I say.
She fixes me with surprisingly steely eyes.
‘I’ll be ready. Monday morning.’
I’m so stunned my mouth is an O. She’s more ruthless than I thought. I’ll get good commission if I sell, so I warm up my voice, soft as butter, as I’ve heard Sherri do.
‘It’s Annabel, right?’ I pause. ‘Do you need time to sell your property – or, maybe not?’
She raises an unplucked eyebrow, but I’m no good at translating middle-aged expressions. Mum is the nearest equivalent, but these days, she only smiles.
‘No. I don’t.’
Annabel fastens her jacket and leaves. I watch her walk up the street and her step is light, she seems ten years younger, her clothes billowing in the breeze.
I phone Blue Eyes but it goes to voicemail. I whisper that there’s someone else on the scene.
‘Call my mobile over the weekend,’ I add, sugar sweet. ‘Any time.’
In the beginning, Annabel had thought Flat Four was ‘the one’. The windows certainly were contoured with the shape she’d dreamed of – and they were set high up, with a view of the shifting horse chestnuts and the brilliant green lime trees in Sefton Park. But that alcove; it appeared slightly different to the one in the estate agent’s photo. She’d woken one night, unsure. Absolutely had to check again.
It was a guess really. Prophetic, as it turned out.
The girl, Annabel ponders, she’s so young. She thinks I’m a timewaster.
But she’d be wrong – wouldn’t she?
In the hours since the latest viewing, Annabel has lolled on the swing chair at the end of Mother and Father’s garden, scanning the façade of their Victorian villa, Beach Lawn, Crosby, where she was raised. It’s hersnow. She’d guessed, after Mother’s stroke two years back, that Father would not last. Oh dear, she misses them. But there are silver linings. Newly retired, she has a modest pension.
Over coffee and custard creams, the solicitor had told her she was financially secure for life.
‘I’d rather share it with a sibling,’ Annabel had countered.
He’d smiledback. ‘I’m an only child myself.’
She swore she saw a tear in his eye. Or was it a glimmer of interest?
‘Anyone to pass it on to?’ he asked.
‘Absolutely not.’
In the warmth of a hazy Mersey sun, mid May, the peonies are coming along beautifully outside. Up above, an occasional plane heads to Liverpool John Lennon Airport. Annabel loves this house; it’s everything she’s ever known. So why buy a flat? She tests her subconscious, a busy tongue on a sore tooth. She’ll get three bedrooms, matching en suites; it’s only half a million pounds. (Cheap, by London standards.) No bath though!
She’s made up her mind.
It’ll be somewhere that’s all her own.
Somewhere she can call home.
When I make it back at five, I look in the bin. I shout to Mum.
‘You’ve had the chicken salad for lunch, then?’
I’m glad; it was nearly past its sell-by date.
‘Yes darling.’
‘Fancy fish and chips tonight?’
I’m being lazy but it’s been a stressful afternoon and my feet are killing me. Six more viewings, careful negotiation, and then Annabel, she has been the spanner in the works …
I pick up my phone, check to see if I’ve had a message but ...
Blue Eyes hasn’t replied.
‘Fish and chips yeah?’
‘Yes darling.’
I run a bath and sink beneath the alpine-herb bubbles, thinking about that shower.
Sometimes I just wish Mum would say something else.
Dusk is falling, so Annabel retreats inside. She locks the French doors and feeds Tabby. It’s still a shock to stand in the kitchen, which was once Mother’s domain. In the sitting room, the drapes are heavy, old gold velvet, but the carpet is threadbare. She opens Father’s drinks cabinet and pours herself a gin and tonic. She skim reads a book, half her mind on Flat Six, not fully concentrating.
She’s still thinking as she turns in and shuts her childhood bedroom door. She’d never move into Mother and Father’s bedroom, despite its prime view of the Irish Sea, the sun rising over the distant Welsh hills. It would feel wrong. She touches the photo of her parents before lights-out, hears the wind rippling the sands on Crosby Beach.
‘Goodnight Mother, Goodnight Father.’
It’s her ritual, to remind herself they loved her – even though they’re dead.
My phone buzzes Monday morning. I hope it is Blue Eyes.
It’s Annabel.
‘Forget the deposit,’ she says and hangs up. She’s over it, then.
I feel a rush of delight. B.E has been on the phone already, mighty pissed off at the competition. I’m afraid I was less than polite about Annabel. I called her an Old Maid, sided with him. I’d enjoyed our thread of collusion, his soft laugh, as if his girlfriend was nowhere near and I was coming for dinner.
I phone him back on the landline and deliver the good news.
‘That other buyer backed off.’
He asks if I’m free tonight. Bingo!
Then Annabel calls again. She speaks fast:
‘I’m a cash buyer. I want to close the deal today.’
When I break the news to B. E, he isn’t too annoyed. Instead he says:
‘Fancy a drink?’ His voice sounds like luxury. ‘Be At One, Seel Street? Happy Hour?’
Oh. It’s not convenient, there’s Mum and making supper and …
‘I’m a night owl,’ I whisper. ‘After 11pm is better.’
He chuckles and his voice grows louder, I guess someone’s listening.
‘Perfect. It’s open ‘til one.’
After hours is the best timing for me. Mum sleeps so well.
She’ll be out like a light.
Annabel is delighted Flat Six is hers. There’s still the technicality of contracts, but she’s lodged the money with the solicitor – no need, this time, for face-to-face and custard creams, though he suggested it. Now she can relax. She stands at Father’s rosewood drinks cabinet and pours herself a sweet sherry. She carries it up the lawn, humming.
‘To Mum.’ She raises her glass to the milky sky. ‘Here’s to us.’
Here’s to us. She shuts her eyes and tries to picture Mum, but it’s a feat beyond faded images. Even so, satisfaction descends. Details in hand, Annabel again scrutinizes the floor plan, enjoys those wide-angle photos. She smiles to see the alcove, rounded like a fingernail.
The developer has painted the walls white. She fancies ‘Down Pipe’ herself, trendy Farrow & Ball. She wonders which furniture she might transport from here. She’s not sure if Mother and Father’s antiques will be appropriate.
‘We’ll have a think, eh, Mum?’
She’s sure she hears Mum mutter assent.
B.E doesn’t disappoint. In the bar, he’s tucked way back, a discarded cocktail glass close by. The nuts are already gone; he must have been starving. He clocks my legs, with a razor sharp glance, but I don’t mind, they’re not bad. I run the streets every morning, down by Jericho Lane, keeping in shape, cheap as chips.
He whistles and touches my bare thigh.
‘Someone works out! Where d’you go?’
‘Harbour Health Club.’
He hesitates, sits up straighter. ‘Never seen you there.’
‘In and out – I’m a quick mover.’ I wink seductively.
He looks relieved. Summons the waiter.
‘It’s my sister’s gym too.’ Yeah right – your girlfriend’s more like. He touches my ear. ‘More nuts?’
‘Sure,’ I say, feeling ten feet tall. ‘If you fancy some too –‘
I hope he does, cos I’m starving, never got round to my own dinner.
When I get home, past 2am, I hesitate outside Mum’s bedroom but she doesn’t call out. When I was 15 and always in trouble, she’d be on the doorstep checking me in. I’m grown up now, nearly 22. But sometimes, I wish she still did.
Annabel fetches the keys the day the deal completes. She’s not forgotten the girl who showed her round, those glossy lips and high heels. For all her bravado, Annabel sensed sadness beneath the fake tan; fragility only the fellow vulnerable can see. She’s heard the way the boss, Sherri, talks to her. The girl looked like a frightened sixth former and Annabel should know.
Annabel has brought her a camellia.
It has scarlet petals and rounded leaves with a dark, waxy gloss. The girl will have a patch of garden, for sure. Annabel pictures Mother at home, tending on summer hazy days to iris and rhododendrons, blooming in the temperate air, and those multi-coloured carnations, salmon and pink, spilling the lawn.
She opens the estate agent’s door, stands expectant.
‘I’ve completed. Sherri says you’ll give me the key?’
At first the girl pretends she doesn’t recognize her, but Annabel merely waits.
‘Oh. It’s you.’ At last the girl’s face clears. ‘Flat Six - isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ Annabel proffers the camellia. ‘It’s a small gift, a thank-you for your patience. Showing me around. I know I came a LOT.’
‘Just doing my job.’ The girl is still typing.
‘Ah.’ Annabel smiles. ‘I don’t have a job any more – time on my hands.’
The girl smiles back now. She looks tired beneath the overdone make-up.
‘Lucky. What did you do?’
‘I was a headmistress.’ Annabel touches the camellia. ‘Listen, it’s flowering a little late, so the sooner you plant it … well, they thrive on an acid soil.’
The girl appears speechless. Annabel wonders if she’ll push it away, say ‘No gifts necessary.’ Instead, her eyes fill with diaphanous tears.
‘It’s lovely,’ she says. ‘Thank-you. And – enjoy that power shower.’
After Annabel leaves, I go to the bog and I bawl. I’m glad Sherri’s out today shagging her fancy man (she doesn’t know I know but I see those texts.) Perhaps it’s my guilt at trying to swipe Flat Six off Annabel for B.E. But the truth is -
No one ever gave me a plant before. Mum was always light on gifts.
I take it home and I show Mum. I tell her about Annabel, the Old Maid with a spanking new flat and a power shower to die for.
‘D’you like the camellia?’ I finger its satiny petals. ‘Mum?’
‘Yes darling.’
Later in my bedroom I crank open the casement window and wedge it with an A4 file. (I keep property facts in it. Very handy.) The sill is just wide enough to accommodate the plant, scarlet blooms and all.
‘It can reach three metres!’ Annabel had said. ‘Tend it carefully.’
I smile to myself. I feel warm and proud inside. I must look like a successful career girl with a gorgeous garden, drooping laburnums, and a lawnmower in the garage. I pick up my glass of water and pour its dregs on the camellia. I recall that Annabel had still been in her crumpled clothes.
Shame, she should make more of herself.
She’s not bad looking for someone in her Fifties.
And - this plant looks the business right here.
It’s been a month since Annabel took possession of Flat Six. She hired a Man-with-a-Van to move selected pieces from Mother and Father’s house, including the small chesterfield from the sunroom. Now there are spaces yawning everywhere.
The Man-with-a-Van was cheery, with strong arms and minty breath, and he downed the teas she prepared like orange squash on a sparkling day.
He helped arrange the furniture in the new sitting room, under Annabel’s direction – an L-shape configuration, facing the alcove. She’d added a June sale-bargain coffee table, cherry wood and glass, contemporary lines. Man-with-a-Van stood, hands on hips, nodded to the Georgian windows.
‘Curtains or blinds?’ he asked. ‘I favour chintz myself.’
‘No drapes,’ she said. ‘I want the view.’
Since then, she’s visited every day; added linen cushion covers in block colours, tried out the shower (Not so bad!) and unwrapped ornaments. There’s no mantelpiece, the flame-effect gas fire is flush with the wall - very modern. She quite likes it. And at night those flames glitter and dance.
Today it’s time for picture hanging. Annabel has a favourite black and white image; she’s had it specially framed.
It’s never been displayed, but there’s a first time for everything.
At eleven o’clock the light shifts, fragmenting sunshine onto the charcoal-painted wall. Annabel will hang it here, right in the alcove. She bangs a nail, adjusts the photo. She sits on Mother and Father’s chesterfield, stares at the grainy figures. She thinks the image is the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen.
Summer has been and gone. I’ve dated B.E all this time, though it’s taken me a while to realize he only wants me for sex. He can’t come to mine, and we can’t go to his. Whenever I ask, he says: ‘Sis gets jealous.’
He must think I’m daft.
At night in his Maserati, parked near Otterspool – dog-walkers only – I cling on when he holds me tight, and sometimes I cry. It’s the only comfort I get. I used to love Mum’s arms around me, when I was ten and upset. B.E doesn’t mind hugging me close, and then he pisses off home.
Today, Sherri has sent me back to Agnes Lodge; there’s one apartment left to sell. The price was slashed yesterday. It’s the bum one, no quartz in the kitchen, only one bedroom. Beyond the sandblasted glass window, there’s a brick wall. I watch the potential buyer lock his car. Looks as if he can afford it (just). He has a firm handshake and a soft, rolling gait. Oh, and I like good manners.
Turning left, ground floor, I give him my standard chat.
‘Agnes Lodge was built in 1800, set in large grounds, originally part of Toxteth Park. This building was extended, Gothic style, in the late 19thcentury.’
He says nothing so I rattle on.
‘The place used to be a convent, or so I …’
We come to a stop on the landing. He actually looks interested.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I know. And then it became a Mother and Baby home.’
I didn’tknow that.
‘In the Fifties and early Sixties, girls came from Ireland, pregnant and nowhere to go. I’m a History teacher. I’m a magpie for local facts.’
He has a kind face. I put the key in the door. Over the summer, the new timber has warped and I have to shove. But today I’m tired and Mum …
‘Let me.’ He pushes it open, he’s quite the proper gentleman. ‘What’s your name, love?’
‘Katy. Yours?’
For the first time, it is I who follows my client in. Matthew says the apartment is perfect and he loves the courtyard garden, newly turfed. He turns to me.
‘What d’you grow in your garden, Katy?’
I can’t help smiling. Still got it girl – he thinks I have a garden! Normally I’d have rolled with the illusion, but not today.
‘Window sill only,’ I say. I think of Annabel’s camellia, lush and thriving. I feed it compost and I water it right. I bloody love that plant.
Afterwards, when Matthew has gone, making sure he got my number (he wrote it with a fountain pen, classy), I hesitate after locking the door. I raise my eyes to the staircase and I walk upstairs. I knock at Flat Six.
It’s the sales girl from the estate agency.
Perhaps it’s a summer’s worth of gardening, but she looks healthier today. Annabel sees her freshly flushed cheeks, as if she’s had a glorious surprise.
‘How’s the camellia? Do you want to - come in?’
Annabel holds tight to the door, hopes she will, suddenly shy. Now September is here, she’s feeling the pull of the new Autumn Term, but school has begun without her. The girl crosses the threshold. It’s good to have a visitor.
I’m impressed – Annabel’s taste isn’t too bad. She’s kept the furniture almost modern, only one dodgy sofa in the lounge. But she’s still crumpled – her dress is OK, but it just needs attention, a few accessories. Perhaps I could advise …
In the lounge I look at the alcove; there’s a black and white photo hanging, it’s softly lit by sunshine. I step closer. Annabel stares too.
There’s a woman in the image – no, it’s a girl - perhaps she’s 16. She’s wearing real-life vintage, a dress with a full skirt. There’s something about the way she’s standing that looks familiar. I think –
‘Zone in,’ Annabel says, standing close behind. Her breath smells of tea and digestives. The girl in the photograph has her back to a wall, and behind her I see the same alcove, its gentle curve at the top … swooping like a fingernail.
Annabel must be older than I’d thought. The girl is in a Fifties dress.
I turn to her.
‘Is it you?’
Of course it is, Annabel thinks. She nods.
‘So that’s why you wanted this flat?’ The girl hesitates. ‘Were you a –‘
‘No, not a nun.’ Annabel sees confusion flit her face. ‘I lived here, briefly. When I heard this house had been converted, I wanted to view each room – find the right one.’
Her voice tails off. Annabel knows the girl has understood only half the detail. But then again –
‘Oh. It was a Mother and Baby home!’ The girl seems aghast. ‘So did you –‘
Annabel nods. Says no more.
We have a cup of tea, and then I say Ta-ra. Now Annabel has revealed she’s been a mother, I’ve got respect. She’s not an Old Maid, after all.
‘Come again,’ she says. I will. I’m sure Mum won’t mind.
There’s a John Lewis delivery in the hall. I see it as I leave.
It’s an ironing board. Thank God for that. It’s about time she spruced up, right?
After the girl’s departure, Annabel stands in the quiet, the window open to early autumn and the damp of Mersey air. We see what we want to see. Annabel understands the girl thinks she was a teenage mum. But she wasn’t really looking, was she? She’d focused on the girl in the image.
Not the baby, clasped tight in her arms.
Annabel touches the newborn with careful fingertips.
It’s the only image she has, her and Mum, together.
Her parents showed it only once, when she was 12, then whipped it away. Mother and Father spoke of the day they’d collected Annabel, a nervous walk around Sefton Park, skirting the Palm House, then onwards joyfully to Agnes Lodge.
‘Hope you’ll enjoy it here, Mum,’ Annabel speaks out loud. ‘It’s ours now.’
Something we can share.
A month later, Matthew and I are dating. I’ve dumped B.E. Matthew loves me for what I am, no fairytales or lies. We eat dinner with Mum.
‘Did you like him?’ I ask her afterwards, when he’s gone.
‘Yes darling.’
Somehow, it doesn’t matter so much today.
I’ve told Matthew about Mum’s early-onset dementia. She’s only 54 and she’s forgotten I’m hers, that she’s my Mum. He’s kind about it. I tell him about Annabel too. ‘She’s weird,’ I say. ‘Seems to have money to burn, but crumpled clothes. I sort of like her, though. We might become friends.’
He shakes his head.
‘Don’t you know?’ he asks. ‘What the nuns made them do, those poor scared pregnant girls, to earn their keep?’
His hazel eyes swivel to mine, and I see they are full of love. I’m in love, too.
‘Laundry,’ he says. ‘Every day, 24/7, washing filthy linen, ironing pestilential creases, atoning for their dirty sins.’
Oh Annabel. Now I understand.
Tonight at the flat, Annabel has a special task. She’s set up the ironing board, carefully peels off the plastic.
At her Crosby home, the incessant seagulls always sounded so lonesome and jittery, but the songbirds in Sefton Park, close by here, they’re soothing. It’s the silvery sound Mum would have heard, clutching baby Annabel tight for the photo.
Snap!
Annabel bends and switches on the iron. It heats up.
Then she presses the steel nose deep into a linen shirt. As the steam hisses, Annabel feels hopeful and light. She watches the creases fall away as they give up their fight.
‘We’re OK here,’ she whispers.
She lifts her head. She stares at the girl in the photo, a face so youthful, scared and sweet. Annabel is filled with longing and love.
‘We’re OK Mum – aren’t we? Together, you and I.’
And she’s sure she hears Mum mutters assent.
I’ve got Saturday viewings back-to-back and now she’s here, wanting to look. No appointment. ‘Fit her in, will you?’ Sherri barked earlier, and it wasn’t a question. Don’t get me wrong; this woman, she’s perfectly nice. But these apartments – they’re state-of-the-art, right? Quartz kitchen worktops and air flow systems. Aimed at Liverpool executives, fingers on the pulse.
She’s not one of them. Keeps asking: ‘Where’s the bath?’
Who takes a bath – these days?
Wet rooms, yes. Oh my! Mum would love that walk-in shower, glass cube, brushed nickel rose, four settings plus steam. Sometimes, while clients nose around, I stand in it, open and shut the noiseless door, ceramic tiling continuous with the floor. So sleek, so perfect for …
‘Sherri at the office – she said you’d squeeze me in?’
The woman smiles awkwardly, clutching a print out.
Who does a print out – these days?
‘It’s all online,’ I say. She looks embarrassed.
‘Sorry. I prefer my facts to hand.’
We’re standing in the hall, solid wood front door and low voltage lights, an orchid on a narrow console. I thinkit’s real. I bury my nose, no scent, perhaps not. She sees me looking; I jangle the keys, move off.
‘Flat Four?’
She’s seen it three times. All she does is walk slowly from room to room, stop at the windows and remark on the view. Yesterday I took a call, retreated to the corridor, returned to find her standing with one palm on the alcove.
Yeah. Stroking it like a cat.
Weird, if you ask me.
She definitely can’t afford it. Spinster. Clothes rumpled anyhow. We can all use an iron, right?
The woman hustles close.
‘Flat Four. Thanks. Just a few minutes, while I have another think.’
As we climb the stairs, I reel off the facts I’ve gathered, whilst watching TV with Mum. The prospective buyers are always impressed. They adore the mix of ‘contemporary with sensitive Grade II restoration’; this property developer, he’s pulled out all the stops. I’d fancy living here myself, if it wasn’t for the price tag …
The woman says nothing so I speak louder and add more facts:
‘Agnes Lodge was built in 1800, set in large grounds, originally part of Toxteth Park. This building was extended, Gothic style, in the late 19thcentury.’
She stays silent so I rattle on.
‘The place used to be a convent, or so I -’
‘Wait!’ She interrupts.
Up close, I see she’s wearing zero make-up. How old is she? Fifties, I’m guessing, but I try not to stare. I hate that dried-out look middle-aged women get – like Mum. I’ve slicked ‘Salmon Sunset’ lipstick today and I’m feeling ace.
I open the door:
‘Voila!’
She takes one look and walks out.
‘Not this one, sorry.’ She consults her crumpled printout. ‘Flat Six?’
Oh no, love – hands off. A couple this morning, all sweatpants and tight ponytail (her) and red Maserati (him), they said theywere interested.
‘Someone’s put in an offer,’ I say. ‘I’d have to make a call.’
Sherri would kill me because it’s not true; they haven’t, not yet. But the guy (they’re not married, I saw no ring), he winked behind tight-pony’s back and he slipped me his number.
‘Call me if there’s anyone else.’ He whispered it.
I know he meant a buyer. But maybe … was that code for something? Well, this will give me reason to phone.
He had broad shoulders and sparkling blue eyes, sexy in a soft way.
The woman is at the window, peering out as usual.
‘I can see Sefton Park, the Palm House,’ she says. ‘I wish …’
Her voice tails off.
But she’s right; it’s glorious round here. Aigburth is leafy and green, the streets resound with the luxury click of court heels on pavements, not the rat-tat-tat of stiletto on tarmac, where I live in Toxteth. I clear my throat.
‘The price?’ she asks. ‘Same as Flat Four?’
‘It’s over half a million,’ I breathe, dizzy with the facts and figures.
I love the slippery way that sum rolls off my tongue, like I’m worth riches too, standing here jangling the keys.
‘There’s a third bedroom, three en suites,’ I add tantalizingly.
She can’t afford it.
I can tell by her sensible shoes, thosecrumples in her M & S clothes.
She trails her finger around the Georgian sash window, exploring its contours. The property developer, he’s invested millions. There are 16 apartments and new-builds coming soon in the grounds; it’s a fancy, gated community. Only the historic façade remains, and inside each flat, he’s kept one original ‘character’ feature.
Flat Six, it has a narrow alcove rounded at the top.
She’s staring at it now. ‘I’d like to put down a deposit.’
I think of sexy Blue Eyes. He’d muttered ‘six weeks max’ to gather funds. I want to keep him on side.
‘There’s someone else in the frame,’ I say.
She fixes me with surprisingly steely eyes.
‘I’ll be ready. Monday morning.’
I’m so stunned my mouth is an O. She’s more ruthless than I thought. I’ll get good commission if I sell, so I warm up my voice, soft as butter, as I’ve heard Sherri do.
‘It’s Annabel, right?’ I pause. ‘Do you need time to sell your property – or, maybe not?’
She raises an unplucked eyebrow, but I’m no good at translating middle-aged expressions. Mum is the nearest equivalent, but these days, she only smiles.
‘No. I don’t.’
Annabel fastens her jacket and leaves. I watch her walk up the street and her step is light, she seems ten years younger, her clothes billowing in the breeze.
I phone Blue Eyes but it goes to voicemail. I whisper that there’s someone else on the scene.
‘Call my mobile over the weekend,’ I add, sugar sweet. ‘Any time.’
In the beginning, Annabel had thought Flat Four was ‘the one’. The windows certainly were contoured with the shape she’d dreamed of – and they were set high up, with a view of the shifting horse chestnuts and the brilliant green lime trees in Sefton Park. But that alcove; it appeared slightly different to the one in the estate agent’s photo. She’d woken one night, unsure. Absolutely had to check again.
It was a guess really. Prophetic, as it turned out.
The girl, Annabel ponders, she’s so young. She thinks I’m a timewaster.
But she’d be wrong – wouldn’t she?
In the hours since the latest viewing, Annabel has lolled on the swing chair at the end of Mother and Father’s garden, scanning the façade of their Victorian villa, Beach Lawn, Crosby, where she was raised. It’s hersnow. She’d guessed, after Mother’s stroke two years back, that Father would not last. Oh dear, she misses them. But there are silver linings. Newly retired, she has a modest pension.
Over coffee and custard creams, the solicitor had told her she was financially secure for life.
‘I’d rather share it with a sibling,’ Annabel had countered.
He’d smiledback. ‘I’m an only child myself.’
She swore she saw a tear in his eye. Or was it a glimmer of interest?
‘Anyone to pass it on to?’ he asked.
‘Absolutely not.’
In the warmth of a hazy Mersey sun, mid May, the peonies are coming along beautifully outside. Up above, an occasional plane heads to Liverpool John Lennon Airport. Annabel loves this house; it’s everything she’s ever known. So why buy a flat? She tests her subconscious, a busy tongue on a sore tooth. She’ll get three bedrooms, matching en suites; it’s only half a million pounds. (Cheap, by London standards.) No bath though!
She’s made up her mind.
It’ll be somewhere that’s all her own.
Somewhere she can call home.
When I make it back at five, I look in the bin. I shout to Mum.
‘You’ve had the chicken salad for lunch, then?’
I’m glad; it was nearly past its sell-by date.
‘Yes darling.’
‘Fancy fish and chips tonight?’
I’m being lazy but it’s been a stressful afternoon and my feet are killing me. Six more viewings, careful negotiation, and then Annabel, she has been the spanner in the works …
I pick up my phone, check to see if I’ve had a message but ...
Blue Eyes hasn’t replied.
‘Fish and chips yeah?’
‘Yes darling.’
I run a bath and sink beneath the alpine-herb bubbles, thinking about that shower.
Sometimes I just wish Mum would say something else.
Dusk is falling, so Annabel retreats inside. She locks the French doors and feeds Tabby. It’s still a shock to stand in the kitchen, which was once Mother’s domain. In the sitting room, the drapes are heavy, old gold velvet, but the carpet is threadbare. She opens Father’s drinks cabinet and pours herself a gin and tonic. She skim reads a book, half her mind on Flat Six, not fully concentrating.
She’s still thinking as she turns in and shuts her childhood bedroom door. She’d never move into Mother and Father’s bedroom, despite its prime view of the Irish Sea, the sun rising over the distant Welsh hills. It would feel wrong. She touches the photo of her parents before lights-out, hears the wind rippling the sands on Crosby Beach.
‘Goodnight Mother, Goodnight Father.’
It’s her ritual, to remind herself they loved her – even though they’re dead.
My phone buzzes Monday morning. I hope it is Blue Eyes.
It’s Annabel.
‘Forget the deposit,’ she says and hangs up. She’s over it, then.
I feel a rush of delight. B.E has been on the phone already, mighty pissed off at the competition. I’m afraid I was less than polite about Annabel. I called her an Old Maid, sided with him. I’d enjoyed our thread of collusion, his soft laugh, as if his girlfriend was nowhere near and I was coming for dinner.
I phone him back on the landline and deliver the good news.
‘That other buyer backed off.’
He asks if I’m free tonight. Bingo!
Then Annabel calls again. She speaks fast:
‘I’m a cash buyer. I want to close the deal today.’
When I break the news to B. E, he isn’t too annoyed. Instead he says:
‘Fancy a drink?’ His voice sounds like luxury. ‘Be At One, Seel Street? Happy Hour?’
Oh. It’s not convenient, there’s Mum and making supper and …
‘I’m a night owl,’ I whisper. ‘After 11pm is better.’
He chuckles and his voice grows louder, I guess someone’s listening.
‘Perfect. It’s open ‘til one.’
After hours is the best timing for me. Mum sleeps so well.
She’ll be out like a light.
Annabel is delighted Flat Six is hers. There’s still the technicality of contracts, but she’s lodged the money with the solicitor – no need, this time, for face-to-face and custard creams, though he suggested it. Now she can relax. She stands at Father’s rosewood drinks cabinet and pours herself a sweet sherry. She carries it up the lawn, humming.
‘To Mum.’ She raises her glass to the milky sky. ‘Here’s to us.’
Here’s to us. She shuts her eyes and tries to picture Mum, but it’s a feat beyond faded images. Even so, satisfaction descends. Details in hand, Annabel again scrutinizes the floor plan, enjoys those wide-angle photos. She smiles to see the alcove, rounded like a fingernail.
The developer has painted the walls white. She fancies ‘Down Pipe’ herself, trendy Farrow & Ball. She wonders which furniture she might transport from here. She’s not sure if Mother and Father’s antiques will be appropriate.
‘We’ll have a think, eh, Mum?’
She’s sure she hears Mum mutter assent.
B.E doesn’t disappoint. In the bar, he’s tucked way back, a discarded cocktail glass close by. The nuts are already gone; he must have been starving. He clocks my legs, with a razor sharp glance, but I don’t mind, they’re not bad. I run the streets every morning, down by Jericho Lane, keeping in shape, cheap as chips.
He whistles and touches my bare thigh.
‘Someone works out! Where d’you go?’
‘Harbour Health Club.’
He hesitates, sits up straighter. ‘Never seen you there.’
‘In and out – I’m a quick mover.’ I wink seductively.
He looks relieved. Summons the waiter.
‘It’s my sister’s gym too.’ Yeah right – your girlfriend’s more like. He touches my ear. ‘More nuts?’
‘Sure,’ I say, feeling ten feet tall. ‘If you fancy some too –‘
I hope he does, cos I’m starving, never got round to my own dinner.
When I get home, past 2am, I hesitate outside Mum’s bedroom but she doesn’t call out. When I was 15 and always in trouble, she’d be on the doorstep checking me in. I’m grown up now, nearly 22. But sometimes, I wish she still did.
Annabel fetches the keys the day the deal completes. She’s not forgotten the girl who showed her round, those glossy lips and high heels. For all her bravado, Annabel sensed sadness beneath the fake tan; fragility only the fellow vulnerable can see. She’s heard the way the boss, Sherri, talks to her. The girl looked like a frightened sixth former and Annabel should know.
Annabel has brought her a camellia.
It has scarlet petals and rounded leaves with a dark, waxy gloss. The girl will have a patch of garden, for sure. Annabel pictures Mother at home, tending on summer hazy days to iris and rhododendrons, blooming in the temperate air, and those multi-coloured carnations, salmon and pink, spilling the lawn.
She opens the estate agent’s door, stands expectant.
‘I’ve completed. Sherri says you’ll give me the key?’
At first the girl pretends she doesn’t recognize her, but Annabel merely waits.
‘Oh. It’s you.’ At last the girl’s face clears. ‘Flat Six - isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ Annabel proffers the camellia. ‘It’s a small gift, a thank-you for your patience. Showing me around. I know I came a LOT.’
‘Just doing my job.’ The girl is still typing.
‘Ah.’ Annabel smiles. ‘I don’t have a job any more – time on my hands.’
The girl smiles back now. She looks tired beneath the overdone make-up.
‘Lucky. What did you do?’
‘I was a headmistress.’ Annabel touches the camellia. ‘Listen, it’s flowering a little late, so the sooner you plant it … well, they thrive on an acid soil.’
The girl appears speechless. Annabel wonders if she’ll push it away, say ‘No gifts necessary.’ Instead, her eyes fill with diaphanous tears.
‘It’s lovely,’ she says. ‘Thank-you. And – enjoy that power shower.’
After Annabel leaves, I go to the bog and I bawl. I’m glad Sherri’s out today shagging her fancy man (she doesn’t know I know but I see those texts.) Perhaps it’s my guilt at trying to swipe Flat Six off Annabel for B.E. But the truth is -
No one ever gave me a plant before. Mum was always light on gifts.
I take it home and I show Mum. I tell her about Annabel, the Old Maid with a spanking new flat and a power shower to die for.
‘D’you like the camellia?’ I finger its satiny petals. ‘Mum?’
‘Yes darling.’
Later in my bedroom I crank open the casement window and wedge it with an A4 file. (I keep property facts in it. Very handy.) The sill is just wide enough to accommodate the plant, scarlet blooms and all.
‘It can reach three metres!’ Annabel had said. ‘Tend it carefully.’
I smile to myself. I feel warm and proud inside. I must look like a successful career girl with a gorgeous garden, drooping laburnums, and a lawnmower in the garage. I pick up my glass of water and pour its dregs on the camellia. I recall that Annabel had still been in her crumpled clothes.
Shame, she should make more of herself.
She’s not bad looking for someone in her Fifties.
And - this plant looks the business right here.
It’s been a month since Annabel took possession of Flat Six. She hired a Man-with-a-Van to move selected pieces from Mother and Father’s house, including the small chesterfield from the sunroom. Now there are spaces yawning everywhere.
The Man-with-a-Van was cheery, with strong arms and minty breath, and he downed the teas she prepared like orange squash on a sparkling day.
He helped arrange the furniture in the new sitting room, under Annabel’s direction – an L-shape configuration, facing the alcove. She’d added a June sale-bargain coffee table, cherry wood and glass, contemporary lines. Man-with-a-Van stood, hands on hips, nodded to the Georgian windows.
‘Curtains or blinds?’ he asked. ‘I favour chintz myself.’
‘No drapes,’ she said. ‘I want the view.’
Since then, she’s visited every day; added linen cushion covers in block colours, tried out the shower (Not so bad!) and unwrapped ornaments. There’s no mantelpiece, the flame-effect gas fire is flush with the wall - very modern. She quite likes it. And at night those flames glitter and dance.
Today it’s time for picture hanging. Annabel has a favourite black and white image; she’s had it specially framed.
It’s never been displayed, but there’s a first time for everything.
At eleven o’clock the light shifts, fragmenting sunshine onto the charcoal-painted wall. Annabel will hang it here, right in the alcove. She bangs a nail, adjusts the photo. She sits on Mother and Father’s chesterfield, stares at the grainy figures. She thinks the image is the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen.
Summer has been and gone. I’ve dated B.E all this time, though it’s taken me a while to realize he only wants me for sex. He can’t come to mine, and we can’t go to his. Whenever I ask, he says: ‘Sis gets jealous.’
He must think I’m daft.
At night in his Maserati, parked near Otterspool – dog-walkers only – I cling on when he holds me tight, and sometimes I cry. It’s the only comfort I get. I used to love Mum’s arms around me, when I was ten and upset. B.E doesn’t mind hugging me close, and then he pisses off home.
Today, Sherri has sent me back to Agnes Lodge; there’s one apartment left to sell. The price was slashed yesterday. It’s the bum one, no quartz in the kitchen, only one bedroom. Beyond the sandblasted glass window, there’s a brick wall. I watch the potential buyer lock his car. Looks as if he can afford it (just). He has a firm handshake and a soft, rolling gait. Oh, and I like good manners.
Turning left, ground floor, I give him my standard chat.
‘Agnes Lodge was built in 1800, set in large grounds, originally part of Toxteth Park. This building was extended, Gothic style, in the late 19thcentury.’
He says nothing so I rattle on.
‘The place used to be a convent, or so I …’
We come to a stop on the landing. He actually looks interested.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I know. And then it became a Mother and Baby home.’
I didn’tknow that.
‘In the Fifties and early Sixties, girls came from Ireland, pregnant and nowhere to go. I’m a History teacher. I’m a magpie for local facts.’
He has a kind face. I put the key in the door. Over the summer, the new timber has warped and I have to shove. But today I’m tired and Mum …
‘Let me.’ He pushes it open, he’s quite the proper gentleman. ‘What’s your name, love?’
‘Katy. Yours?’
For the first time, it is I who follows my client in. Matthew says the apartment is perfect and he loves the courtyard garden, newly turfed. He turns to me.
‘What d’you grow in your garden, Katy?’
I can’t help smiling. Still got it girl – he thinks I have a garden! Normally I’d have rolled with the illusion, but not today.
‘Window sill only,’ I say. I think of Annabel’s camellia, lush and thriving. I feed it compost and I water it right. I bloody love that plant.
Afterwards, when Matthew has gone, making sure he got my number (he wrote it with a fountain pen, classy), I hesitate after locking the door. I raise my eyes to the staircase and I walk upstairs. I knock at Flat Six.
It’s the sales girl from the estate agency.
Perhaps it’s a summer’s worth of gardening, but she looks healthier today. Annabel sees her freshly flushed cheeks, as if she’s had a glorious surprise.
‘How’s the camellia? Do you want to - come in?’
Annabel holds tight to the door, hopes she will, suddenly shy. Now September is here, she’s feeling the pull of the new Autumn Term, but school has begun without her. The girl crosses the threshold. It’s good to have a visitor.
I’m impressed – Annabel’s taste isn’t too bad. She’s kept the furniture almost modern, only one dodgy sofa in the lounge. But she’s still crumpled – her dress is OK, but it just needs attention, a few accessories. Perhaps I could advise …
In the lounge I look at the alcove; there’s a black and white photo hanging, it’s softly lit by sunshine. I step closer. Annabel stares too.
There’s a woman in the image – no, it’s a girl - perhaps she’s 16. She’s wearing real-life vintage, a dress with a full skirt. There’s something about the way she’s standing that looks familiar. I think –
‘Zone in,’ Annabel says, standing close behind. Her breath smells of tea and digestives. The girl in the photograph has her back to a wall, and behind her I see the same alcove, its gentle curve at the top … swooping like a fingernail.
Annabel must be older than I’d thought. The girl is in a Fifties dress.
I turn to her.
‘Is it you?’
Of course it is, Annabel thinks. She nods.
‘So that’s why you wanted this flat?’ The girl hesitates. ‘Were you a –‘
‘No, not a nun.’ Annabel sees confusion flit her face. ‘I lived here, briefly. When I heard this house had been converted, I wanted to view each room – find the right one.’
Her voice tails off. Annabel knows the girl has understood only half the detail. But then again –
‘Oh. It was a Mother and Baby home!’ The girl seems aghast. ‘So did you –‘
Annabel nods. Says no more.
We have a cup of tea, and then I say Ta-ra. Now Annabel has revealed she’s been a mother, I’ve got respect. She’s not an Old Maid, after all.
‘Come again,’ she says. I will. I’m sure Mum won’t mind.
There’s a John Lewis delivery in the hall. I see it as I leave.
It’s an ironing board. Thank God for that. It’s about time she spruced up, right?
After the girl’s departure, Annabel stands in the quiet, the window open to early autumn and the damp of Mersey air. We see what we want to see. Annabel understands the girl thinks she was a teenage mum. But she wasn’t really looking, was she? She’d focused on the girl in the image.
Not the baby, clasped tight in her arms.
Annabel touches the newborn with careful fingertips.
It’s the only image she has, her and Mum, together.
Her parents showed it only once, when she was 12, then whipped it away. Mother and Father spoke of the day they’d collected Annabel, a nervous walk around Sefton Park, skirting the Palm House, then onwards joyfully to Agnes Lodge.
‘Hope you’ll enjoy it here, Mum,’ Annabel speaks out loud. ‘It’s ours now.’
Something we can share.
A month later, Matthew and I are dating. I’ve dumped B.E. Matthew loves me for what I am, no fairytales or lies. We eat dinner with Mum.
‘Did you like him?’ I ask her afterwards, when he’s gone.
‘Yes darling.’
Somehow, it doesn’t matter so much today.
I’ve told Matthew about Mum’s early-onset dementia. She’s only 54 and she’s forgotten I’m hers, that she’s my Mum. He’s kind about it. I tell him about Annabel too. ‘She’s weird,’ I say. ‘Seems to have money to burn, but crumpled clothes. I sort of like her, though. We might become friends.’
He shakes his head.
‘Don’t you know?’ he asks. ‘What the nuns made them do, those poor scared pregnant girls, to earn their keep?’
His hazel eyes swivel to mine, and I see they are full of love. I’m in love, too.
‘Laundry,’ he says. ‘Every day, 24/7, washing filthy linen, ironing pestilential creases, atoning for their dirty sins.’
Oh Annabel. Now I understand.
Tonight at the flat, Annabel has a special task. She’s set up the ironing board, carefully peels off the plastic.
At her Crosby home, the incessant seagulls always sounded so lonesome and jittery, but the songbirds in Sefton Park, close by here, they’re soothing. It’s the silvery sound Mum would have heard, clutching baby Annabel tight for the photo.
Snap!
Annabel bends and switches on the iron. It heats up.
Then she presses the steel nose deep into a linen shirt. As the steam hisses, Annabel feels hopeful and light. She watches the creases fall away as they give up their fight.
‘We’re OK here,’ she whispers.
She lifts her head. She stares at the girl in the photo, a face so youthful, scared and sweet. Annabel is filled with longing and love.
‘We’re OK Mum – aren’t we? Together, you and I.’
And she’s sure she hears Mum mutters assent.
Third Prize - Twin Bees - Christine Mustchin
I see the cliffs of St Bees Head as soon as I reach the end of the driveway. I should be glad to escape their towering menace for a couple of hours, but I’m not. The cliffs are in bright sunlight but that doesn’t stop the familiar churning inside me. Today it’s more intense, more insistent than usual.
It stays with me as I drive off into the Cumbrian countryside to collect Mel from Oxenholme station. The so-called Gateway to the Lake Districtis crowded with visitors when I arrive. They are milling around in variously coloured tee-shirts and shorts, together with walking sandals. It’s far too hot for anoraks, fleeces and boots. I wonder what Mel will be wearing.
It’s bright pink when she emerges from the hordes.A floral, flimsy dress to match the weather but hardly appropriate in the circumstances. She’s flushed and irritated.
‘What a hassle. Kids who’ve never heard of headphones, idiots shouting into mobiles, and all that pushing and shoving.’
‘Why didn’t you come by car?’
‘I couldn’t face the Manchester rush-hour.’
‘You couldn’t get Si to drive you, then?’
‘I never even asked. No point, not after what happened when he came over to meet Mother.’
I’d been there for that culture clash: millionaire A-list rock celebrity versus old lady with wealth and taste handed down the generations.
‘Well, it didn’t help when he told her to lighten up and stop insisting on being called Mother instead of Mum.’
Mel doesn’t appear to be listening. She’s peering into my car.
‘What’s all that junk on the backseat, Emma?’
‘That junk, as you put it, is some of Mother’s stuff. I was going to take it to the charity shop but I ran out of time.’
‘Can’t you put it in the boot? It looks awful piled up like that.’
‘There’s no room.’
Mel slumps down into her seat. I rev the engine and drive off.
‘There’s no time for you to see her now.’
‘I’d not even thought of it’
‘Well, I popped in this morning.’
Mel gives me a withering look. ‘You would, wouldn’t you?’
‘It just seemed the right thing to do.’
‘Why aren’t you in black then?’
I’m wearing dark grey. Rather like my life
‘I think I’m very suitably dressed. You could’ve worn something a bit more subdued.’
The same old bickering. Never ending. Years of it. Mother never did anything to stop it. Not after what happened to our twin brothers.
I concentrate on the road back to St Bees. Mel stares out of the passenger window in a familiar sulk. She soon gives up. Silence is not her strong point.
‘Is Greg coming today?’
‘No idea. I shouldn’t think so. He didn’t say when I phoned him with the news. He never liked Mother anyway. After our divorce he said he’d never have anything more to do with her.’
‘What about your boys?’
‘Mother didn’t want them to come.’
‘Pity, I was looking forward to seeing them, it must be ages.’
‘They’re really tall now. Taking their GCSEs next year.’
‘Poor things. I hated exams.’
I feel as though I’m taking an exam when I go into St Bees church. Mother had given very precise details. I’d followed them to the letter. Mel had shown no inclination to get involved. I try and remember if I’ve forgotten anything. It’s no use telling myself it doesn’t matter now. I still expect Mother to be sitting in the front pew, ready to criticise me. I’m glad when it’s over and I’m turning the key to the front door. Mel kicks off her Jimmy Choo stilettos and pads into the kitchen. I hear her opening and closing cupboard doors until she returns with a large iced drink.
‘Gin and tonic. What about you?’
She slumps down on the sitting room sofa. I feel sick from the tension of the day and go off to get a green tea. When I come back Mel starts chattering.
‘That was weird, going to a funeral in the middle of a heat-wave. I’m glad it’s over. It quite spooked me, seeing her buried next to the twins.’
‘That’s what she wanted.’
I think of her coffin in the ground and wish my memories could be as easily interred.
‘I wonder how much she left in her will? Must be loads.’
‘I’ve no idea. It’s not exactly the day to be thinking about that.’
‘But it’s crossed your mind, I bet.’ Mel gulps down her gin. ‘Well, I wouldn’t touch her money. She’ll leave it all to you, anyway. I bet you can’t wait to get out of this awful house.’
This awful housewas our childhood home: a rambling house near the parish church, with views to the sea.
‘Someone had to be here to take care of her.’
‘I’d never have moved back. She had enough money to pay for help but she knew if she called, you’d come running. And it was her own fault, after all. All those cigarettes. I never saw her without one. You only get, what did the doctor call it?’
‘COPD, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.’
‘Right. Well, you only get that from smoking.’
‘Not always.’
But I knew it was true in Mother’s case. Even after Father’s lung cancer carried him off with a painful death, it didn’t stop Mother from smoking. She could never give up the habit. You couldn’t get away from the smell of stale tobacco. It seeped into every room. There was always an ashtray brimful of stubs on her desk and a curl of smoke from the next one in the chain.
‘It wasn’t easy going back but she’d wangled that job for me in St. Bees prep department. It made it very difficult to refuse.’
‘You’ve never stood up to her. That’s your problem. Look at your boys.’
Mother had insisted on paying for Ben and Oliver to go to boarding school despite my objections.
‘They’re both doing very well at Keswick School, actually.’
‘I don’t suppose Mother worried about that. She just wanted to make sure they were out of the way.’
‘Thanks for the thought.’
I knew Mother had never forgiven me for producing twins that looked just like the ones she’d lost but I resented the reminder.
Mel finishes her gin and looks at her watch.
‘I’ll have to go soon.’
‘What’s the rush?’
‘Si’s got a mega gig at the Manchester Arena this evening. Big party afterwards with the sponsors too. I need to be there. No way I can be late.’
‘Oh, the pains of PR work. I hope Si appreciates it.’ I can’t help that bit of sarcasm.
Mel glares at me. I’ve never approved of her odd mix of love-life and work.
Am I jealous?
Goodbyes at the station are all false smiles and platitudes, papering over our true feelings. But the quietness of the house on my return is unsettling. I open the window to hear the sea but, for once, it’s eerily quiet. I switch on the TV and pour myself a glass of wine. The newscaster is giving details of a celebrity divorce and talking of sums of money that seem obscene. I think about what Mel said about Mother’s money then drag myself off to bed.
The build-up to the end of the school year is as frenetic as ever. With that, and odd rumours about the future of St. Bees school, I’m too preoccupied to make an appointment with Mother’s solicitors to find out about her will. When I do get around to it, I learn that Mother has managed a final shock. I wonder whether I should tell Mel myself before she’s officially notified. I’ve not yet decided when she calls me.
‘Hi, Emma. Just a quickie. I need to come and crash at your place for a while. I’ll drive over at the weekend. Thought I should let you know first.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘I’ll tell you everything when I see you. Must rush. I’ve got a thousand things to sort out.’
‘So, how long are you staying?’ But she’s already cut the call.
It’s raining hard when she arrives, typical Cumbrian weather. I can hear the sound of the waves crashing on the beach and around the groynes, even inside the house. Water pours down onto the driveway and splashes up between the gravel. I watch Mel pull up by the house, windscreen wipers on at full blast. We get drenched running between the car and front door, unloading her stuff into the hall where it drips onto the polished wood.
‘You’ll have to get that into the conservatory or it’ll ruin the floor.’
‘Give me a chance. I’ve only just arrived.’
I’m not in the mood for an argument so I go into the kitchen and open a bottle of wine. We stand facing each other across the old wooden table as I fill up two glasses. I was going to tell Mel about the will straightaway but decide it can wait. I want to know why she’s here.
‘So, what’s going on?’ I take a sip of my Beaujolais while Mel gulps it down and pours herself another glass.
‘Bit of a pain really. Si’s just taken off with some bimbo. Says he’s sick of Manchester and is moving back to London, more going on in the music scene there. What a toe-rag.’
I should say I’m sorry but I don’t.
‘You’ve lost your job, then?’ It’s the best I can manage.
‘I’m not worried about that. Si’s already fixed me up with something else in Manchester. Nowhere near as well paid so I’ve had to get out of my flat. I’ll sort out something else when the new job starts. That’s not for a couple of months.’
There’s no need to ask how long she’ll be staying with me. No discussion: is it convenient, do you mind?
‘It’s lucky there’s so much room here. Where am I sleeping?’
‘I’ve put you in the large room at the back, the one just across the landing from the twins’ rooms.’
‘That back room is really creepy.’
It looks out on the cliffs. I avoid going into it as much as possible.
‘Well, the boys and I have all the front bedrooms.’
‘Can’t I have one of their rooms?’
I imagine how Ben and Oliver would take that idea.
‘And who would I kick out? It’s bad enough trying to stop them arguing at the best of times.’
The curse of non-identical twins, a family legacy.
Mel stomps off in search of a brandy. She takes it up to her room. I make myself a coffee and drink it alone and in silence. Black and hot, its bittersweet taste lingers on my tongue. Outside the light fades and in the gloom of the room, dark images of past arguments begin to clog my memory. Does losing someone do that to you? Make you look back, wonder what might have been. Wonder how different things could have been if our little twin brothers hadn’t died. After that, we girls simply chafed at Mother’s grief and the arguing began.
A pile of exercise books teetering on the edge of the coffee table crashes to the floor. It snaps me out of the past. I pick up one of the books and open it. A ten year old’s view of the seaside: enjoying an ice cream cone, laughing at the wind blowing away a beach towel, groaning at the slimy touch of seaweed, squealing from an icy paddle in the sea, simple things to cherish that were never there for me as a child.
I’m late getting up the next morning but Mel’s not around yet. The post has already arrived: an envelope with an official crest in one corner. I take it into the kitchen and make my usual mug of black coffee. After a few gulps I open the letter. As I read it my hands begin to tremble and I wish I were drinking something much stronger than coffee. I’m too engrossed in the letter to hear Mel’s footsteps. She appears in the kitchen doorway and I’m quick to stuff the letter in a drawer. She looks too hung over to notice and concentrates on consuming vast quantities of coffee before saying a single word. Then she just goes on about the fact that she hasn’t slept well.
I put off telling her about the will. I’m not sure how she’ll react and I can’t face any dramas after what I’ve just read in the letter. Melclatters around the kitchen preparing a mound of toast and marmalade for her breakfast. Then she follows me into the garden and makes unhelpful suggestions as I try to prune away the bushes, overgrown from a term’s neglect. I’m already counting the days till she leaves. By midday I’m too wound up to broach the subject of Mother’s will. The thought of lunch face-to-face across the kitchen table makes me suggest we go out to eat.
After lunch we go down to the sea. We follow the promenade away from the cliffs. The sea is calm and blue between the groynes. It’s easier to talk walking side-by-side so I tell her about the will. Mel stops and turns to face me, open-mouthed. Then she starts to bombard me with questions.
‘Why? It doesn’t make any sense, does it? What are we going to do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What a bummer. I can’t believe she left all her money to St Bees school. I was counting on a legacy to put a deposit on a flat.’
‘You said you’d never go anywhere near her money.’
‘That was before all this thing with Si blew up.’
‘At least you’ve only got yourself to think about. I’ve got the boys.’
I can see all sorts of problems. There’s finding somewhere else to live, not to mention the school fees. I’ll have to look for a state school. No way Greg will cough up now he has a new wife and baby. Not that I object to comprehensive schools, it’s what I always wanted, but it’s not a good time to move the boys. And there’s another problem too. What to do about that letter?
‘We’ll have to challenge the will.’ Mel is clearly not giving up.
‘I think you mean contest.’
‘Whatever.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘What’s the alternative? You get kicked out of the house and Ben and Oliver get kicked out of their school. You just want to accept that? You’re crazy.’
‘No, you’re the crazy one. Have you thought about all those solicitor’s bills? We’ll be bankrupt if we don’t win, which is most likely.’
Mel’s cheeks flush with two bright spots, the way they did when we were young and she knew I was right but wouldn’t admit it. She stomps off to the shops for a spot of retail therapy. I carry on walking, listening to the sound of the Solway drifting forwards and backwards over the beach. The air has a sharp tang you can almost taste. I watch the sunlight sparkling on the sea but there’s nothing bright about my thoughts, it’s as if Mother’s shadow is sitting on my shoulder. My feet feel like lead. I have to snap out of it. Tomorrow I’m collecting the twins for the holidays.
I’ve had no chance to warn them about Mel and she stays behind when I go to pick them up from boarding school. On the journey back home, it’s impossible to interrupt their incessant chatter. They don’t mention their Grandma. Mel is standing on the doorstep when we park outside the house.
‘What’s Mel doing here?’
‘She’s staying for a bit, Oliver.’
‘That’s cool.’
‘Yeah. Yonks ago she came over one holiday and gave Ollie and me the dope on some music gigs.’
‘Don’t tell me she got drugs for you.’
‘No, Mum, dope, inside information. She’s met Zed-M, you know.’
‘And who, Ben, is Zed-M?’
‘Oh, Mum, you’re so not cool. He’s a rapper.’
‘Yeah, like awesome.’
They scramble out of the car and rush over to Mel, all hugs and high-fives. Nothing like the shoulder shrugs and grunts when I picked them up. I call them back to help me unload the car and they slope over with long faces. Smiles reappear when Mel produces pizza for lunch. She gets further Brownie points by spending a good part of the afternoon with them on the trampoline in the garden, the one thing I have bought since Mother died. I’m left to unpack and listen to their excited shouts through the open windows. Later, I let them escape upstairs to the company of whatever is this week’s digital craze.
Mel and I attempt some sort of conversation by chatting about books, films, TV programmes, avoiding anything personal. I’m not really interested in what either of us are saying. I’ve too much else to think about. I have to meet the Head of St Bees tomorrow. When I mention it to Mel she offers to entertain the boys. I should be grateful.
I leave the next morning with them all huddled together on her bed watching a YouTube video on her iPad. When I return, later than I expected, there’s no sign of them. I don’t have to wait long before they burst into the hallway.
‘Had a good day?’
‘It was brill.’
I try not to feel envious of Mel.
Ollie adds some detail to Ben’s comment. ‘Mel took us to Blackpool. We walked all the way down the promenade to the pier.’
‘Yeah, and you know that stuff you never let us have, candy floss, well we had a whole load of it. It was ace.’
‘And we had an ice cream and milkshake.’
‘You didn’t really go to Blackpool, did you, Mel?’
‘Why not? None of us had been before.’
I turn to Ben and Oliver. ‘I thought we agreed…’
I stop and think better of what I was about say. It’s not their fault.
‘Why don’t you two go upstairs for a while?’
No need to ask twice. They are off to their rooms as I call after them.
‘Just until suppertime.’
Mel looks tanned with a wind blush to her cheeks. I notice a faint smell of the sea as she brushes past me.
‘Must have a shower. I don’t know how I kept up with those two.’
I wait until she comes back: a half hour spent fermenting my discontent. She’s wearing a fresh, brightly coloured sundress, her hair still a little damp. I regret not changing out of my work clothes; my shirt and trousers are sticking uncomfortably to my skin. She pours herself a mineral water from the fridge and offers me one. I follow her into the coolness of the sitting room.
‘Feeling better?’ There’s an edge to my voice, which she picks up on at once.
‘Anything wrong?’
With Ben and Oliver out of the way, I tell her how she has undone, in one afternoon, the patient and thankless efforts of keeping my boys away from what I consider some of the undesirable aspects of the Northern seaside.
‘You’re not telling me they’ve never eaten ice cream.’
‘No, of course not. But, I mean, Blackpool and the pier and all the rest. Really.’
‘Oh, lighten up, Emma. Where’s the harm in a few goes on slot machines or a funfair ride?’
‘They’re my kids. I decide.’
‘You’re a real snob, just like Mother.’
‘Well, at least I did my best for her.’
‘It didn’t achieve much did it? She left us both out of her will.’
I resist the urge to slap Mel in the face and instead run upstairs to the shower where I spend half an hour under its powerful jets.
When I come back downstairs Mel is studying the letter I’d hidden in the drawer.
‘So you’re out of a job, too.’
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
Mel ignores my angry question.
‘Well this decides it.’ She waves the letter like a flag.
‘Decides what?’
‘What to do next.’
‘What on earth are you getting at?’
‘Fighting the will. The school can’t just take Mother’s money and throw you out.’
‘I’ve told you; there’s no point in contesting the will. I’m not going to do it.’
Mel frowns. ‘Well, if that’s the case then you’ll just have to tackle the school directly.’
‘It won’t make any difference. They’re closing the lower school section; there won’t be any jobs. That’s what the Head wanted to tell me today.’
‘Can’t you get them to transfer you to the upper school?’
‘I’m not qualified for that.’
‘You’ll have to push for a good redundancy payment, then.’
‘I’ve got enough to worry about without thinking about that.’
I wait for an explosive response from Mel but instead she starts stoking her nose, like she used to do when she was dreaming up some scheme that always got us into trouble with Mother.
‘Look, Emma, instead of being stuck in this backwater you can come to Manchester, start getting a life again. The boys will love the city.’
‘This backwater, as you call it, is one of the most beautiful places on the Solway coast.’ I’m the one who’s exploded.
‘Yes, and full of horrible memories. Mother’s dead. You can move on now.’
Mel’s suggestion does nothing to improve my mood. What a nerve! If she thinks she can start telling me what to do just because Mother’s dead, she can think again. I glare at Mel and stomp off for a sleepless night wrestling with the gnawing feeling that she’s probably right.
In the morning I decide I need a break from Mel. I resolve to get away and spend the whole day with the twins. The weather is glorious so I plan a picnic. Surely even teenagers enjoy a picnic? I’m hoping to escape while Mel’s still asleep but, as the twins’ loud complaints about a picnic reach a crescendo, her bedroom door opens.
‘What the hell’s the matter with you two?’ Mel fumbles into her dressing gown.
‘Mum’s forcing us to go on a picnic.’ Oliver wrinkles his nose as if the very idea smells bad.
‘She thinks we’re still kids,’ adds Ben.
‘Downstairs, both of you, and not another word.’ I bite back my disappointment and push them away from Mel.
‘Hang on a minute.’ Mel dives back into her room and returns with a parcel, which she hands to the twins. Suddenly they’re all smiles.
‘You’d forgotten all about it, hadn’t you?’
‘Come on, Mum, let’s get going.’ Ben tugs at my hand to reinforce Oliver’s plea.
‘What have you got there?’ I ask. But the boys are already dashing out to the car and putting the parcel in the boot. I resign myself to discovering its identity later, relieved that the boys are embracing the idea of a picnic. But if I’m grateful to Mel for her intervention, I’m far less pleased to see her appear on the driveway as I finish loading the car.
‘Don’t think you’re going without me.’ She plumps herself down in the front passenger seat and fastens her seatbelt. There’s little I can do without starting an argument in front of the boys.
‘Where are we going, Mum?’
‘I thought we’d drive up the coast to Allonby, Ben.’
‘But it’s miles away. It’ll take ages.’
‘It’ll be worth it. It’s got the best sandy beach for miles.’
‘I threw up in the car last time we went.’
‘If I remember correctly, Oliver, you were stuffing yourself with chocolate on the sly.’
‘Can’t we just go up on the cliffs here?’
Ben and Oliver are both tapping my shoulder.
‘Please, Mum. You never take us there and it’s perfect for…..’
‘For what, Ben?’ I can feel my stomach churning at the idea of walking across St. Bees’ Head. I’ve no wish to go near the cliffs. It’s bad enough having to look at them everyday.
‘She’ll have to wait and see, won’t she, Ollie?’
‘Please, Mum. We’ll even promise not to argue, won’t we Ben?’
From the corner of my eye, I see Mel turning her head in my direction. I shift my head to look at her.
‘Why not?’ she says.
I start the engine. Oliver plugs in his earphones and settles down to listen to music on his iPod and Ben contents himself playing a computer game on his smartphone. They’re being true to their word, so far. As we reach the end of the driveway, I indicate left, away from the cliffs. If I’m hoping to get my way because of their lack of attention, I’m wrong.
Immediately the earphones are out and the smart phone abandoned.
‘Mum, that’s not the right way to the cliffs.’ For once the twins are in agreement. Mutiny threatens. I change the indicator to the opposite direction and head for the nearby car park.
Mel wisely says nothing and spends the short journey, tapping and scrolling on her iPhone. As we pull into a space, I hardly have time to park the car before the boys are racing round to the car boot. They haul the parcel out and head off up the grassy slopes towards the cliff top. Mel and I follow at a steady pace, picking our way over the patches of mud where the grass has been eroded by the tramp of other footsteps. Gusts of wind rise up out of the soft sea breeze and leave a salty taste on the lips. The boys choose a spot and tear the wrapping off the parcel. I stare in horror at the object they’re holding between them.
‘What’s the matter, Mum? You must’ve seen a kite before.’
I stare back at Oliver, unable to speak.
‘Hey, Mum, you look as though you’re going to throw up.’
‘Don’t be rude, Oliver.’ It sounds more like a plea then a telling off.
Either way, Oliver ignores me. ‘Come on, Ben, we’ve got to get this thing in the air.’
I should be pleased to see my techno-savvy boys grappling with such a simple toy but I’m just angry and frightened. As the boys busy themselves reading the instructions, I confront Mel.
‘How could you?’
‘Don’t tell me the boys have never come here and flown a kite. No wonder they were so keen for me to buy it.’
‘I’ve never brought them up here. You can’t have forgotten.’
‘As if I could. It was awful but life moves on.’
Ben and Oliver are now wrestling with the kite to get it up into the air. Their success is intermittent but they are persistent and reject Mel’s offer to help. Suddenly the wind gathers strength and they’re off, tugging at the kite string, watching it spiral upwards. The boys follow the kite’s course, staring up at its bright red and yellow shape like a fire in the sky. They seem to have eyes only for the kite. They’re blown along by the wind, running and racing to keep up with the kite’s trajectory. Mel is smiling and waving at them.
My stomach feels as if I’m on a roller coaster ride and my face feels hot. In my head the figures of my boys have morphed into my little twin brothers forty years ago, running after their kite, heading blindly towards the cliff edge. With an effort I rub out the image and concentrate on Ben and Oliver laughing and shouting to each other. I think about what Mel said about moving on. My boys are the future, my future. It doesn’t have to be in Manchester, there are plenty of places to choose from and there’s a shortage of primary school teachers. The boys would survive a change of schools or they might even get a hardship bursary at Keswick School, if I asked.
I turn towards Mel but I see she’s stopped smiling. She grips my arm and points to where the boys are running towards the edge of the cliff. We begin shouting at the same time but the sound of our voices dies on the wind. I catch my breath, too frightened to move. I can feel Mel trembling as we watch and wait for the inevitable. But my twins aren’t six-year-old boys overcome by the thrill of flying a kite for the first time. They’re clever teenagers who know what they’re doing. They turn away from the unprotected brink and bring the kite back toward Mel and I. Their cheeks are flushed and their eyes bright and they cannot stop laughing.
‘Hey, what’s the matter with you two?’ Oliver puts the kite down on the ground. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
Mel is still pale from the fright they’ve just given us and I can’t stop shaking. The boys are only interested in the kite. Ben is keen for us to have a turn.
‘Why don’t you and Mel have a go?’
He pushes the kite into my hands. My instinct is to tear it pieces. I’m not sure what to do as I wrestle with myself. Holding it is like touching a pain that has ruled my life.
‘Go on, Mum, you can do it. It’s fun.’ Oliver is as keen as Ben to see us join in.
I hesitate then I start to run with the kite, up towards the top of slope where the wind is stronger. Mel is quick to follow as the boys shout out instructions to us. It’s harder than I imagined to launch the kite into the air and I begin to laugh as it keeps falling to the ground. Then, at last, the wind lifts it up and Mel and I are tugging at the kite string together as it makes its ascent. The boys are waving and shouting encouragement. Soon we’re all running and laughing together, chasing the kite, guiding it away from the cliff edge. The kite flutters above us, and I smile at the sight of it flying free, as it soars into a bright cloudless sky.
It stays with me as I drive off into the Cumbrian countryside to collect Mel from Oxenholme station. The so-called Gateway to the Lake Districtis crowded with visitors when I arrive. They are milling around in variously coloured tee-shirts and shorts, together with walking sandals. It’s far too hot for anoraks, fleeces and boots. I wonder what Mel will be wearing.
It’s bright pink when she emerges from the hordes.A floral, flimsy dress to match the weather but hardly appropriate in the circumstances. She’s flushed and irritated.
‘What a hassle. Kids who’ve never heard of headphones, idiots shouting into mobiles, and all that pushing and shoving.’
‘Why didn’t you come by car?’
‘I couldn’t face the Manchester rush-hour.’
‘You couldn’t get Si to drive you, then?’
‘I never even asked. No point, not after what happened when he came over to meet Mother.’
I’d been there for that culture clash: millionaire A-list rock celebrity versus old lady with wealth and taste handed down the generations.
‘Well, it didn’t help when he told her to lighten up and stop insisting on being called Mother instead of Mum.’
Mel doesn’t appear to be listening. She’s peering into my car.
‘What’s all that junk on the backseat, Emma?’
‘That junk, as you put it, is some of Mother’s stuff. I was going to take it to the charity shop but I ran out of time.’
‘Can’t you put it in the boot? It looks awful piled up like that.’
‘There’s no room.’
Mel slumps down into her seat. I rev the engine and drive off.
‘There’s no time for you to see her now.’
‘I’d not even thought of it’
‘Well, I popped in this morning.’
Mel gives me a withering look. ‘You would, wouldn’t you?’
‘It just seemed the right thing to do.’
‘Why aren’t you in black then?’
I’m wearing dark grey. Rather like my life
‘I think I’m very suitably dressed. You could’ve worn something a bit more subdued.’
The same old bickering. Never ending. Years of it. Mother never did anything to stop it. Not after what happened to our twin brothers.
I concentrate on the road back to St Bees. Mel stares out of the passenger window in a familiar sulk. She soon gives up. Silence is not her strong point.
‘Is Greg coming today?’
‘No idea. I shouldn’t think so. He didn’t say when I phoned him with the news. He never liked Mother anyway. After our divorce he said he’d never have anything more to do with her.’
‘What about your boys?’
‘Mother didn’t want them to come.’
‘Pity, I was looking forward to seeing them, it must be ages.’
‘They’re really tall now. Taking their GCSEs next year.’
‘Poor things. I hated exams.’
I feel as though I’m taking an exam when I go into St Bees church. Mother had given very precise details. I’d followed them to the letter. Mel had shown no inclination to get involved. I try and remember if I’ve forgotten anything. It’s no use telling myself it doesn’t matter now. I still expect Mother to be sitting in the front pew, ready to criticise me. I’m glad when it’s over and I’m turning the key to the front door. Mel kicks off her Jimmy Choo stilettos and pads into the kitchen. I hear her opening and closing cupboard doors until she returns with a large iced drink.
‘Gin and tonic. What about you?’
She slumps down on the sitting room sofa. I feel sick from the tension of the day and go off to get a green tea. When I come back Mel starts chattering.
‘That was weird, going to a funeral in the middle of a heat-wave. I’m glad it’s over. It quite spooked me, seeing her buried next to the twins.’
‘That’s what she wanted.’
I think of her coffin in the ground and wish my memories could be as easily interred.
‘I wonder how much she left in her will? Must be loads.’
‘I’ve no idea. It’s not exactly the day to be thinking about that.’
‘But it’s crossed your mind, I bet.’ Mel gulps down her gin. ‘Well, I wouldn’t touch her money. She’ll leave it all to you, anyway. I bet you can’t wait to get out of this awful house.’
This awful housewas our childhood home: a rambling house near the parish church, with views to the sea.
‘Someone had to be here to take care of her.’
‘I’d never have moved back. She had enough money to pay for help but she knew if she called, you’d come running. And it was her own fault, after all. All those cigarettes. I never saw her without one. You only get, what did the doctor call it?’
‘COPD, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.’
‘Right. Well, you only get that from smoking.’
‘Not always.’
But I knew it was true in Mother’s case. Even after Father’s lung cancer carried him off with a painful death, it didn’t stop Mother from smoking. She could never give up the habit. You couldn’t get away from the smell of stale tobacco. It seeped into every room. There was always an ashtray brimful of stubs on her desk and a curl of smoke from the next one in the chain.
‘It wasn’t easy going back but she’d wangled that job for me in St. Bees prep department. It made it very difficult to refuse.’
‘You’ve never stood up to her. That’s your problem. Look at your boys.’
Mother had insisted on paying for Ben and Oliver to go to boarding school despite my objections.
‘They’re both doing very well at Keswick School, actually.’
‘I don’t suppose Mother worried about that. She just wanted to make sure they were out of the way.’
‘Thanks for the thought.’
I knew Mother had never forgiven me for producing twins that looked just like the ones she’d lost but I resented the reminder.
Mel finishes her gin and looks at her watch.
‘I’ll have to go soon.’
‘What’s the rush?’
‘Si’s got a mega gig at the Manchester Arena this evening. Big party afterwards with the sponsors too. I need to be there. No way I can be late.’
‘Oh, the pains of PR work. I hope Si appreciates it.’ I can’t help that bit of sarcasm.
Mel glares at me. I’ve never approved of her odd mix of love-life and work.
Am I jealous?
Goodbyes at the station are all false smiles and platitudes, papering over our true feelings. But the quietness of the house on my return is unsettling. I open the window to hear the sea but, for once, it’s eerily quiet. I switch on the TV and pour myself a glass of wine. The newscaster is giving details of a celebrity divorce and talking of sums of money that seem obscene. I think about what Mel said about Mother’s money then drag myself off to bed.
The build-up to the end of the school year is as frenetic as ever. With that, and odd rumours about the future of St. Bees school, I’m too preoccupied to make an appointment with Mother’s solicitors to find out about her will. When I do get around to it, I learn that Mother has managed a final shock. I wonder whether I should tell Mel myself before she’s officially notified. I’ve not yet decided when she calls me.
‘Hi, Emma. Just a quickie. I need to come and crash at your place for a while. I’ll drive over at the weekend. Thought I should let you know first.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘I’ll tell you everything when I see you. Must rush. I’ve got a thousand things to sort out.’
‘So, how long are you staying?’ But she’s already cut the call.
It’s raining hard when she arrives, typical Cumbrian weather. I can hear the sound of the waves crashing on the beach and around the groynes, even inside the house. Water pours down onto the driveway and splashes up between the gravel. I watch Mel pull up by the house, windscreen wipers on at full blast. We get drenched running between the car and front door, unloading her stuff into the hall where it drips onto the polished wood.
‘You’ll have to get that into the conservatory or it’ll ruin the floor.’
‘Give me a chance. I’ve only just arrived.’
I’m not in the mood for an argument so I go into the kitchen and open a bottle of wine. We stand facing each other across the old wooden table as I fill up two glasses. I was going to tell Mel about the will straightaway but decide it can wait. I want to know why she’s here.
‘So, what’s going on?’ I take a sip of my Beaujolais while Mel gulps it down and pours herself another glass.
‘Bit of a pain really. Si’s just taken off with some bimbo. Says he’s sick of Manchester and is moving back to London, more going on in the music scene there. What a toe-rag.’
I should say I’m sorry but I don’t.
‘You’ve lost your job, then?’ It’s the best I can manage.
‘I’m not worried about that. Si’s already fixed me up with something else in Manchester. Nowhere near as well paid so I’ve had to get out of my flat. I’ll sort out something else when the new job starts. That’s not for a couple of months.’
There’s no need to ask how long she’ll be staying with me. No discussion: is it convenient, do you mind?
‘It’s lucky there’s so much room here. Where am I sleeping?’
‘I’ve put you in the large room at the back, the one just across the landing from the twins’ rooms.’
‘That back room is really creepy.’
It looks out on the cliffs. I avoid going into it as much as possible.
‘Well, the boys and I have all the front bedrooms.’
‘Can’t I have one of their rooms?’
I imagine how Ben and Oliver would take that idea.
‘And who would I kick out? It’s bad enough trying to stop them arguing at the best of times.’
The curse of non-identical twins, a family legacy.
Mel stomps off in search of a brandy. She takes it up to her room. I make myself a coffee and drink it alone and in silence. Black and hot, its bittersweet taste lingers on my tongue. Outside the light fades and in the gloom of the room, dark images of past arguments begin to clog my memory. Does losing someone do that to you? Make you look back, wonder what might have been. Wonder how different things could have been if our little twin brothers hadn’t died. After that, we girls simply chafed at Mother’s grief and the arguing began.
A pile of exercise books teetering on the edge of the coffee table crashes to the floor. It snaps me out of the past. I pick up one of the books and open it. A ten year old’s view of the seaside: enjoying an ice cream cone, laughing at the wind blowing away a beach towel, groaning at the slimy touch of seaweed, squealing from an icy paddle in the sea, simple things to cherish that were never there for me as a child.
I’m late getting up the next morning but Mel’s not around yet. The post has already arrived: an envelope with an official crest in one corner. I take it into the kitchen and make my usual mug of black coffee. After a few gulps I open the letter. As I read it my hands begin to tremble and I wish I were drinking something much stronger than coffee. I’m too engrossed in the letter to hear Mel’s footsteps. She appears in the kitchen doorway and I’m quick to stuff the letter in a drawer. She looks too hung over to notice and concentrates on consuming vast quantities of coffee before saying a single word. Then she just goes on about the fact that she hasn’t slept well.
I put off telling her about the will. I’m not sure how she’ll react and I can’t face any dramas after what I’ve just read in the letter. Melclatters around the kitchen preparing a mound of toast and marmalade for her breakfast. Then she follows me into the garden and makes unhelpful suggestions as I try to prune away the bushes, overgrown from a term’s neglect. I’m already counting the days till she leaves. By midday I’m too wound up to broach the subject of Mother’s will. The thought of lunch face-to-face across the kitchen table makes me suggest we go out to eat.
After lunch we go down to the sea. We follow the promenade away from the cliffs. The sea is calm and blue between the groynes. It’s easier to talk walking side-by-side so I tell her about the will. Mel stops and turns to face me, open-mouthed. Then she starts to bombard me with questions.
‘Why? It doesn’t make any sense, does it? What are we going to do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What a bummer. I can’t believe she left all her money to St Bees school. I was counting on a legacy to put a deposit on a flat.’
‘You said you’d never go anywhere near her money.’
‘That was before all this thing with Si blew up.’
‘At least you’ve only got yourself to think about. I’ve got the boys.’
I can see all sorts of problems. There’s finding somewhere else to live, not to mention the school fees. I’ll have to look for a state school. No way Greg will cough up now he has a new wife and baby. Not that I object to comprehensive schools, it’s what I always wanted, but it’s not a good time to move the boys. And there’s another problem too. What to do about that letter?
‘We’ll have to challenge the will.’ Mel is clearly not giving up.
‘I think you mean contest.’
‘Whatever.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘What’s the alternative? You get kicked out of the house and Ben and Oliver get kicked out of their school. You just want to accept that? You’re crazy.’
‘No, you’re the crazy one. Have you thought about all those solicitor’s bills? We’ll be bankrupt if we don’t win, which is most likely.’
Mel’s cheeks flush with two bright spots, the way they did when we were young and she knew I was right but wouldn’t admit it. She stomps off to the shops for a spot of retail therapy. I carry on walking, listening to the sound of the Solway drifting forwards and backwards over the beach. The air has a sharp tang you can almost taste. I watch the sunlight sparkling on the sea but there’s nothing bright about my thoughts, it’s as if Mother’s shadow is sitting on my shoulder. My feet feel like lead. I have to snap out of it. Tomorrow I’m collecting the twins for the holidays.
I’ve had no chance to warn them about Mel and she stays behind when I go to pick them up from boarding school. On the journey back home, it’s impossible to interrupt their incessant chatter. They don’t mention their Grandma. Mel is standing on the doorstep when we park outside the house.
‘What’s Mel doing here?’
‘She’s staying for a bit, Oliver.’
‘That’s cool.’
‘Yeah. Yonks ago she came over one holiday and gave Ollie and me the dope on some music gigs.’
‘Don’t tell me she got drugs for you.’
‘No, Mum, dope, inside information. She’s met Zed-M, you know.’
‘And who, Ben, is Zed-M?’
‘Oh, Mum, you’re so not cool. He’s a rapper.’
‘Yeah, like awesome.’
They scramble out of the car and rush over to Mel, all hugs and high-fives. Nothing like the shoulder shrugs and grunts when I picked them up. I call them back to help me unload the car and they slope over with long faces. Smiles reappear when Mel produces pizza for lunch. She gets further Brownie points by spending a good part of the afternoon with them on the trampoline in the garden, the one thing I have bought since Mother died. I’m left to unpack and listen to their excited shouts through the open windows. Later, I let them escape upstairs to the company of whatever is this week’s digital craze.
Mel and I attempt some sort of conversation by chatting about books, films, TV programmes, avoiding anything personal. I’m not really interested in what either of us are saying. I’ve too much else to think about. I have to meet the Head of St Bees tomorrow. When I mention it to Mel she offers to entertain the boys. I should be grateful.
I leave the next morning with them all huddled together on her bed watching a YouTube video on her iPad. When I return, later than I expected, there’s no sign of them. I don’t have to wait long before they burst into the hallway.
‘Had a good day?’
‘It was brill.’
I try not to feel envious of Mel.
Ollie adds some detail to Ben’s comment. ‘Mel took us to Blackpool. We walked all the way down the promenade to the pier.’
‘Yeah, and you know that stuff you never let us have, candy floss, well we had a whole load of it. It was ace.’
‘And we had an ice cream and milkshake.’
‘You didn’t really go to Blackpool, did you, Mel?’
‘Why not? None of us had been before.’
I turn to Ben and Oliver. ‘I thought we agreed…’
I stop and think better of what I was about say. It’s not their fault.
‘Why don’t you two go upstairs for a while?’
No need to ask twice. They are off to their rooms as I call after them.
‘Just until suppertime.’
Mel looks tanned with a wind blush to her cheeks. I notice a faint smell of the sea as she brushes past me.
‘Must have a shower. I don’t know how I kept up with those two.’
I wait until she comes back: a half hour spent fermenting my discontent. She’s wearing a fresh, brightly coloured sundress, her hair still a little damp. I regret not changing out of my work clothes; my shirt and trousers are sticking uncomfortably to my skin. She pours herself a mineral water from the fridge and offers me one. I follow her into the coolness of the sitting room.
‘Feeling better?’ There’s an edge to my voice, which she picks up on at once.
‘Anything wrong?’
With Ben and Oliver out of the way, I tell her how she has undone, in one afternoon, the patient and thankless efforts of keeping my boys away from what I consider some of the undesirable aspects of the Northern seaside.
‘You’re not telling me they’ve never eaten ice cream.’
‘No, of course not. But, I mean, Blackpool and the pier and all the rest. Really.’
‘Oh, lighten up, Emma. Where’s the harm in a few goes on slot machines or a funfair ride?’
‘They’re my kids. I decide.’
‘You’re a real snob, just like Mother.’
‘Well, at least I did my best for her.’
‘It didn’t achieve much did it? She left us both out of her will.’
I resist the urge to slap Mel in the face and instead run upstairs to the shower where I spend half an hour under its powerful jets.
When I come back downstairs Mel is studying the letter I’d hidden in the drawer.
‘So you’re out of a job, too.’
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
Mel ignores my angry question.
‘Well this decides it.’ She waves the letter like a flag.
‘Decides what?’
‘What to do next.’
‘What on earth are you getting at?’
‘Fighting the will. The school can’t just take Mother’s money and throw you out.’
‘I’ve told you; there’s no point in contesting the will. I’m not going to do it.’
Mel frowns. ‘Well, if that’s the case then you’ll just have to tackle the school directly.’
‘It won’t make any difference. They’re closing the lower school section; there won’t be any jobs. That’s what the Head wanted to tell me today.’
‘Can’t you get them to transfer you to the upper school?’
‘I’m not qualified for that.’
‘You’ll have to push for a good redundancy payment, then.’
‘I’ve got enough to worry about without thinking about that.’
I wait for an explosive response from Mel but instead she starts stoking her nose, like she used to do when she was dreaming up some scheme that always got us into trouble with Mother.
‘Look, Emma, instead of being stuck in this backwater you can come to Manchester, start getting a life again. The boys will love the city.’
‘This backwater, as you call it, is one of the most beautiful places on the Solway coast.’ I’m the one who’s exploded.
‘Yes, and full of horrible memories. Mother’s dead. You can move on now.’
Mel’s suggestion does nothing to improve my mood. What a nerve! If she thinks she can start telling me what to do just because Mother’s dead, she can think again. I glare at Mel and stomp off for a sleepless night wrestling with the gnawing feeling that she’s probably right.
In the morning I decide I need a break from Mel. I resolve to get away and spend the whole day with the twins. The weather is glorious so I plan a picnic. Surely even teenagers enjoy a picnic? I’m hoping to escape while Mel’s still asleep but, as the twins’ loud complaints about a picnic reach a crescendo, her bedroom door opens.
‘What the hell’s the matter with you two?’ Mel fumbles into her dressing gown.
‘Mum’s forcing us to go on a picnic.’ Oliver wrinkles his nose as if the very idea smells bad.
‘She thinks we’re still kids,’ adds Ben.
‘Downstairs, both of you, and not another word.’ I bite back my disappointment and push them away from Mel.
‘Hang on a minute.’ Mel dives back into her room and returns with a parcel, which she hands to the twins. Suddenly they’re all smiles.
‘You’d forgotten all about it, hadn’t you?’
‘Come on, Mum, let’s get going.’ Ben tugs at my hand to reinforce Oliver’s plea.
‘What have you got there?’ I ask. But the boys are already dashing out to the car and putting the parcel in the boot. I resign myself to discovering its identity later, relieved that the boys are embracing the idea of a picnic. But if I’m grateful to Mel for her intervention, I’m far less pleased to see her appear on the driveway as I finish loading the car.
‘Don’t think you’re going without me.’ She plumps herself down in the front passenger seat and fastens her seatbelt. There’s little I can do without starting an argument in front of the boys.
‘Where are we going, Mum?’
‘I thought we’d drive up the coast to Allonby, Ben.’
‘But it’s miles away. It’ll take ages.’
‘It’ll be worth it. It’s got the best sandy beach for miles.’
‘I threw up in the car last time we went.’
‘If I remember correctly, Oliver, you were stuffing yourself with chocolate on the sly.’
‘Can’t we just go up on the cliffs here?’
Ben and Oliver are both tapping my shoulder.
‘Please, Mum. You never take us there and it’s perfect for…..’
‘For what, Ben?’ I can feel my stomach churning at the idea of walking across St. Bees’ Head. I’ve no wish to go near the cliffs. It’s bad enough having to look at them everyday.
‘She’ll have to wait and see, won’t she, Ollie?’
‘Please, Mum. We’ll even promise not to argue, won’t we Ben?’
From the corner of my eye, I see Mel turning her head in my direction. I shift my head to look at her.
‘Why not?’ she says.
I start the engine. Oliver plugs in his earphones and settles down to listen to music on his iPod and Ben contents himself playing a computer game on his smartphone. They’re being true to their word, so far. As we reach the end of the driveway, I indicate left, away from the cliffs. If I’m hoping to get my way because of their lack of attention, I’m wrong.
Immediately the earphones are out and the smart phone abandoned.
‘Mum, that’s not the right way to the cliffs.’ For once the twins are in agreement. Mutiny threatens. I change the indicator to the opposite direction and head for the nearby car park.
Mel wisely says nothing and spends the short journey, tapping and scrolling on her iPhone. As we pull into a space, I hardly have time to park the car before the boys are racing round to the car boot. They haul the parcel out and head off up the grassy slopes towards the cliff top. Mel and I follow at a steady pace, picking our way over the patches of mud where the grass has been eroded by the tramp of other footsteps. Gusts of wind rise up out of the soft sea breeze and leave a salty taste on the lips. The boys choose a spot and tear the wrapping off the parcel. I stare in horror at the object they’re holding between them.
‘What’s the matter, Mum? You must’ve seen a kite before.’
I stare back at Oliver, unable to speak.
‘Hey, Mum, you look as though you’re going to throw up.’
‘Don’t be rude, Oliver.’ It sounds more like a plea then a telling off.
Either way, Oliver ignores me. ‘Come on, Ben, we’ve got to get this thing in the air.’
I should be pleased to see my techno-savvy boys grappling with such a simple toy but I’m just angry and frightened. As the boys busy themselves reading the instructions, I confront Mel.
‘How could you?’
‘Don’t tell me the boys have never come here and flown a kite. No wonder they were so keen for me to buy it.’
‘I’ve never brought them up here. You can’t have forgotten.’
‘As if I could. It was awful but life moves on.’
Ben and Oliver are now wrestling with the kite to get it up into the air. Their success is intermittent but they are persistent and reject Mel’s offer to help. Suddenly the wind gathers strength and they’re off, tugging at the kite string, watching it spiral upwards. The boys follow the kite’s course, staring up at its bright red and yellow shape like a fire in the sky. They seem to have eyes only for the kite. They’re blown along by the wind, running and racing to keep up with the kite’s trajectory. Mel is smiling and waving at them.
My stomach feels as if I’m on a roller coaster ride and my face feels hot. In my head the figures of my boys have morphed into my little twin brothers forty years ago, running after their kite, heading blindly towards the cliff edge. With an effort I rub out the image and concentrate on Ben and Oliver laughing and shouting to each other. I think about what Mel said about moving on. My boys are the future, my future. It doesn’t have to be in Manchester, there are plenty of places to choose from and there’s a shortage of primary school teachers. The boys would survive a change of schools or they might even get a hardship bursary at Keswick School, if I asked.
I turn towards Mel but I see she’s stopped smiling. She grips my arm and points to where the boys are running towards the edge of the cliff. We begin shouting at the same time but the sound of our voices dies on the wind. I catch my breath, too frightened to move. I can feel Mel trembling as we watch and wait for the inevitable. But my twins aren’t six-year-old boys overcome by the thrill of flying a kite for the first time. They’re clever teenagers who know what they’re doing. They turn away from the unprotected brink and bring the kite back toward Mel and I. Their cheeks are flushed and their eyes bright and they cannot stop laughing.
‘Hey, what’s the matter with you two?’ Oliver puts the kite down on the ground. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
Mel is still pale from the fright they’ve just given us and I can’t stop shaking. The boys are only interested in the kite. Ben is keen for us to have a turn.
‘Why don’t you and Mel have a go?’
He pushes the kite into my hands. My instinct is to tear it pieces. I’m not sure what to do as I wrestle with myself. Holding it is like touching a pain that has ruled my life.
‘Go on, Mum, you can do it. It’s fun.’ Oliver is as keen as Ben to see us join in.
I hesitate then I start to run with the kite, up towards the top of slope where the wind is stronger. Mel is quick to follow as the boys shout out instructions to us. It’s harder than I imagined to launch the kite into the air and I begin to laugh as it keeps falling to the ground. Then, at last, the wind lifts it up and Mel and I are tugging at the kite string together as it makes its ascent. The boys are waving and shouting encouragement. Soon we’re all running and laughing together, chasing the kite, guiding it away from the cliff edge. The kite flutters above us, and I smile at the sight of it flying free, as it soars into a bright cloudless sky.