Coming Home (12 page)

‘One day, darling, this dress will be yours, and you’ll look like a princess, too. ‘Mum kissed my hair
.

On the day of the awards, I rushed through my spellings so I could watch TV before bed. Mum was having a bath. I’d called her through the bathroom door, but there was no reply. Not even the sound of water swishing. I banged on the door, shouted again
.

‘What is it, Evie?’ Dad had called from the bedroom. ‘What do you want?’

‘Can I watch telly? I’ve done my spellings.’

‘What did your mother say?’ Dad came to the bedroom door, fixing a cufflink as he spoke
.

‘She’s not answering.’

There was a pause then Dad crossed the landing and knocked loudly on the bathroom door. He shouted, but Mum didn’t reply. He banged on the door so hard I thought Lily would hear next door
.

‘Carole! Please answer me! Carole! Are you all right?’

We looked at each other, panic sliding into Dad’s eyes. He told me to stand back. He rammed his shoulder at the door like they do in movies. It must have hurt but nothing happened. Then he stepped back and kicked with his heel to the side of where the lock was. He kicked again and again and then suddenly the door splintered and burst open
.

I rushed towards the door but Dad got there first. He screamed at me not to come in. I’d never heard him scream before. I stopped, but it was too late. I’d already seen Mum’s blue-white feet floating, the water swirling red around them
.

‘Evie, call an ambulance. Call an ambulance!’ Dad was shouting. ‘Quickly! Run! Dial 999 and tell them she’s bleeding. Badly! Quickly, Evie, please!’

I knew what to do because we’d practised it, but I was frozen to the spot. It was like my legs wouldn’t work. I still feel guilty that I hadn’t been able to move; I still wake in the night, my heart hammering and my limbs glued to the bed because, in my dreams, I don’t get the ambulance to come in time
.

I stopped knitting and looked at Miss Dawson. ‘I saw her feet and I called the ambulance,’ I said, my voice a whisper. ‘I ran downstairs and called the ambulance.’

Miss Dawson nodded. ‘That’s excellent Evie. Very good. You know you saved your mother’s life?’

A
fter we’d done the dishes, I pulled Mum’s dresses out one by one from the boxes and held them up against myself as she watched from an armchair with her coffee and her glasses.

‘I feel like Sharon Osbourne on
The X Factor
.’ Mum let a little laugh slip out, so I played up to her, mincing about on the carpet with the dresses held up against me and pulling silly poses.

‘Ta da! Look at this gorgeous little number,’ I said of a white leather minidress with patent leather details. ‘Just add a pair of over-the-knee boots and it’s perfect for a ladies’ lunch at the golf club …’

‘Oh crumbs!’ said Mum. ‘Did I ever really wear that? What was I thinking? I bet it barely covered my bottom!’ She made an ‘X’ for ‘no’ with her forearms and the charity-shop pile grew.

‘And for her next outfit, Evie will be modelling a—’ I looked at the label ‘—maxi dress by Kenzo.’ Seeing that the buttercup-yellow concoction was roomy enough to fit over my clothes, I left the room and pulled it on over my head, reappearing with a catwalk mince. The fabric swirled around my ankles as I twirled in front of Mum.

‘Oh, that was from the seventies,’ she said. ‘I used to love that dress. It was so comfy. I saved up forever to buy that.’

‘Cut the memories. Keep or throw?’

Mum rubbed her temples. ‘Ohh … throw.’

I pulled the dress over my head, slung it on the reject pile and reached back into the box. My hands felt the satin silk of an evening gown; I’d pulled it almost all the way out before I realised what it was. I tried to stuff it back but Mum had seen.

‘Oh, what’s that one?’ she asked.

‘This?’ I pulled out a different dress. A safer one.

‘No, the black one. What was that?’

‘Oh … not sure.’ I rummaged in the box, trying to bury the evening gown. Mum came over.

‘This one, I meant.’ She grabbed the silk evening gown and pulled it out of the box, the fabric slipping through her hands as she took in the exquisite workmanship; the delicate beading; the lines of the elegant bias cut. It was an expensive dress.

‘I remember this,’ she said. ‘I bought it for the awards ceremony. You remember when your father won that award?’

My eyes glued to the dress, I gave a small nod. Words wouldn’t come.

‘I looked so beautiful in it.’

Tears pricked my eyes. ‘Mum, please.’

She looked at the dress appraisingly. It was as if she didn’t even remember the night she’d tried to slash her wrists. ‘It looks big for a twelve,’ she said. ‘I wonder if I can still get into it.’

A
t first glance, my old junior school looked the same as I remembered. As I cycled towards the gates, my hair streaming out behind me in the cold wind, my head swam with memories: cars, parents and children crowding this same narrow street at pick-up time; the Friday afternoons when I was given a few coins to spend in the sweet shop; walking home with friends’ mums for play dates, good as gold and slightly nervous; the last day of school when we all came out, our shirts inked with messages from our friends. There was a time when this tiny part of Woodside had been the centre of my universe.

The high metal gates where Mum used to wait for Graham and me each afternoon now sported huge padlocks and a notice outside explained that, for safety’s sake, they were locked during school hours. Still out of breath from the sudden burst of exercise, I peered through the wire fence at the classrooms where I’d learned to read and write; at the gritty playground where I’d cut my knees too many times to count. It was paved with that multicoloured rubber stuff now, and I hoped it was impossible to rub people’s knees in it till they bled.

There was a phone number for the school office on the sign outside the gates. I toyed with calling it and asking to have a look around, but then thought the better of it. I’d not been there for seventeen years—the likelihood of any of the teachers either being there or remembering me was slight. The thought of trying to explain myself was too exhausting. They’d probably think I was a paedophile.

I looked at my watch, swung my leg over the saddle and set off on my old route home from school. I reckoned I had about half an hour. I hadn’t been able to put Dad’s bike out with the rubbish. Instead, I’d convinced myself that it would make no difference to Mum if I got it fixed and gave it away to someone who could use it. What she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her, right? While she was out, I’d managed to pump up the tyres enough to get to the bike shop, where I’d had the moving parts properly re-greased and new sets of brakes and tyres fitted. Now the bike was roadworthy I was going to take it to the charity shop; even so, I really wanted to be back home, with it all done and dusted, before Mum got back.

I passed a parade of shops: the sweet shop where Graham and I used to buy bubble gum, sherbet pips and aniseed balls with our weekly sweet allowance was now a Tesco Metro; the shops next to that converted into contemporary flats.

My head full of memories, I pedalled on up the hill to the park. On the left of the tennis courts (now with a lick of new paint and bookable online) was what used to be the tarmacked play area with its swings, roundabout and massive,
daredevil slide—now replaced with far safer, more child-friendly apparatus and kid-friendly wood-chip flooring—and, on the right, the little copse where we’d spent whole days playing cowboys and Indians, creating dig-outs behind the bushes and blowing whistles made from reeds of wild grass.

After leaning the bike up against a tree, I walked into the woods, breathing in the cold air, sucking up the earthy scent of the vegetation and remembering the intense excitement of being chased by the other team; how my heart had pounded as I stalked one of theirs back to their hide-out. Twigs cracked under my shoes and my stomach leapt with remembered excitement. But the copse looked small now; the bushes not big enough to hide whole villages of mud-smeared cowboys. My phone rang. It was Mum.

‘Where are you?’

‘In the park. I just popped by school for a quick look. I’ll be back soon.’

‘How did you get there? Did you take the bike? It’s gone, and it’s not rubbish day.’

My stomach constricted.

‘No. I walked. I, umm, took the bike to the charity shop first.’ Again, I felt six years old.

‘Really, Evie? What use is that bike to anyone in that state? They wouldn’t want it. Don’t lie to me.’ Her voice was rising. ‘Don’t lie to me, Evie Stevens. What did you do with the bike?’

‘OK. I took it to the bike shop and had new tyres put on it. All right? The rubbish men would never take it. It’s too
big. I’m just giving it a quick test run before I take it to the charity shop. I thought it may as well be of use to someone.’

Mum was suddenly screaming. Not even screaming like a normal person, but like someone demented. I could picture her face contorted with rage, spit on her lips as she screamed down the phone.

‘How
dare
you? How
dare
you take that bike
—that bike—
after I told you to
throw it out?
Have you any idea how that makes me
feel
? Get back here at once!
Get back here now!’

‘But, Mum …!’

There was a clatter, like she’d hurled the handset back onto the phone, and the line went dead.

‘Shit. Shit, shit, shit.’ I rammed the phone back in my pocket, stomped through the copse and slumped onto the first bench I reached, not caring that it was damp. Now what? I could see Mum’s point of view but … Oh God, what had I been thinking? Again, I could have handled it better.

‘Shit,’ I said to the pavement. ‘Seriously? Shit.’

I covered my face with my hands. What was I doing sitting here in suburban London, hiding from my mum like a child? So much for brave Evie forging a new life in Dubai. Rain started to fall, a few spots at first, then steadily harder and at last I cried—for Dad, for Graham and, ultimately, for me. Sitting there on the bench, it all came out, all the pent-up emotion, the sadness about Dad, the worry about Mum, the old feelings of loss for Graham and even the break-up with James. I was full of self-pity. Is this what my life had come to? Sobbing on a bench in the rain?

I don’t know how long I sat there, but eventually the rain petered out and so did my tears. I heaved myself up, retrieved the bike and dried the saddle as best I could with the sleeve of my jumper. I wheeled it slowly out of the park, sucking in lungfuls of the cold air as I walked. At the other end of the park, I saw a florist’s; outside on the pavement were buckets of colourful flowers, £4 a bunch. I stopped and looked. They had white lilies. On a whim, I went in and asked for a few stems tied with a blue ribbon. Wedging the bundle of flowers carefully under one arm, I cycled lopsided up to The Crossing.

Trying not to focus on the road, on that particular spot of tarmac where my brother had breathed his last breath, I laid the lilies gently on the low wall next to the pavement, blew a kiss to the moody sky, then turned for the charity shop, followed by the slow walk home, the spectre of the inevitable row with Mum chafing at my subconscious like my wet socks chafed against my heels.

At Mum’s gate my steps slowed; I hesitated before crunching across the gravel, the sound of my footsteps announcing my arrival. Was Mum watching me from inside? Pausing in the porch where she hopefully couldn’t see me, I took a few deep, calming breaths to gather myself and rolled my shoulders backwards and forwards to release the steel cables of tension I could feel running up to my neck. I couldn’t challenge Mum. I was in the wrong. I knew that; I was just going to have to suck up her anger. Pick my battles.

I put the key in the lock, my body on the defensive. I fully
expected Mum to be waiting in the hall ready to launch her fury at me. It wouldn’t surprise me if she was waiting on the stairs. I could see now that I shouldn’t have taken Dad’s bike. How could I have been so stupid?

Inside, the house was silent. I stood still, listening for a clue as to where Mum was, but I could hear nothing—no television, no radio, no clattering about in the kitchen. Had she gone out again? I went through to the kitchen and then I saw her. She was in the garden with Richard, both of them closely examining the lawn. Slipping on Mum’s spare gardening shoes, I walked slowly towards them, dread crawling through my intestines.

‘Oh hello, darling,’ she said. ‘Glad you’re back. Nice bike ride?’

‘Hello,’ said Richard. He didn’t look alarmed; didn’t seem to have any idea of the storm about to be unleashed.

‘Mmm,’ I said to Mum. Was she setting me up before laying into me? I examined her face. No signs of anger; in fact, it looked like she may have applied a little extra powder and blusher. I looked from her to Richard and back, confused, nervous. I remembered his words to me when I’d first got the bike in the kitchen. Were they in this together? Was it some sort of good-cop, bad-cop double act?

‘Jolly good,’ said Mum. ‘Good you got the bike fixed. I’m sure someone will be thrilled to have it. Richard was just looking at the moss for me. It’s starting to choke the lawn and I was going to try to get a grip on it for the new people. I bought some moss-killer from the garden centre but it hasn’t worked.’

‘I was telling your mum that the garden’s probably too shady,’ said Richard, straightening up. ‘Moss likes cool, shady spots. Trimming back those oaks might give the grass a bit more light. We also need to make the lawn a bit more resilient. It’s a constant battle with acidic soil in Woodside.’

I looked hard at Richard. Had he seen Mum’s outburst? Had he been the one to calm her down?

‘Have you been here long?’ I asked.

He looked at his watch, frowning as he looked at the dial and then up at the sky as if it could remind him what time he’d come.