Mothers & Daughters (46 page)

Towards the end wall of the boarded-off section I discovered a small disaster. A drum of varnish Phil had used to renovate the bedroom floor had fallen over and emptied itself. Everything in the immediate vicinity, I could see at a glance, was ruined – the fan heater, the fish tank, Mojo's cage, the spare shower head. Worse than that, the varnish had soaked into the hardboard and dripped through the join.

I came down to investigate the damage below. This was an area of the shed I hadn't bothered looking at before because it was all Phil's odds and sods, tins and jars of loose screws, nails, nuts, staples, bolts, drill bits, unidentifiable twists and fragments of metal. ‘Don't
ever
move my gear around,' he'd warned me repeatedly. But it was clear that a lot of it was now covered in a film of varnish, and that the contents of the top two shelves at least would need throwing. There was no point leaving it when I had a rubbish pile going. I picked up an open Walkers Shortbread tin and tipped it experimentally. Nothing inside moved. The mess of panel pins was stuck solid, like flies in amber.

So I set to, working my way down the wall where the varnish had flowed in a sticky river, tossing into the centre of the floor anything that was beyond redemption. If Phil had wanted
any of it, I reasoned, he should have come and taken it years ago. Sealant tube was welded to bracket, brush to bottle, sanding disc to match pot. In one corner a batch of oily rags had soaked up some of the varnish, and now they were stuck fast against the wall, and crispy. I had to pull hard to get them to lift, and even then they only came because the varnish cracking tore some of the threads. I was thinking, Phil'll need to get a chisel to this, when they ripped completely away, and I half-lost my balance and knocked a tin nearby right off.

It seemed to fly in slow motion, while my hand swiped ineffectually, striking against glass jars, skinning my knuckle on the sharp metal edge of the shelf. The tin crashed to the floor and the lid popped open, spilling out the contents.
Riley's Bunny-Bons
said the ancient label, over a badly scratched picture of a rabbit in a top hat and spats. Pre-war toffees, it must once have held. Now it seemed to be full of postcards and clippings.

I squatted down, turned over the first piece of paper.

It was an old photo, from the early Seventies, of Eileen and Phil together. He was dressed in a Homburg and a mackintosh, while she had on a man's pinstriped suit and a bowler hat. I recognised the occasion at once: Stackholme Grammar End of Year Review, and the Social Classes sketch from
Frost Over England
. They'd cast me as Common Man, in my dad's flat cap and muffler, and I remember it wasn't a role I was very comfortable with because it seemed to me they were mocking people like Dad, decent ordinary folk who kept their heads down and worked hard and were the backbone of the country. Every time I had to say the line ‘I know my place', it made me wince. Phil and Eileen hadn't been able to see the problem. In fact, they found rehearsals so wildly hilarious I used to wonder how we'd get through the actual performance.

I should have been on the end of this photograph, but someone had cut me off.

I drew the print aside, only to find that under it was another photo of Eileen, this time on her own, in our garden.

Then Eileen in her Vauxhall Viva, waving through the windscreen.

And underneath that, there were dozens more pictures of Eileen, not one of them put there by me.

Nowhere is as lonely as the middle of the night. While Matty slumbered upstairs, I sat on my living-room carpet reviewing the hundred thousand lies inside my photo albums. All those Eileens, smug with secrets. All those Phils with their scheming sideways glances and their hearts entirely full of self.

At ten I'd called my ex-husband and told him what I'd found.

‘Was it Eileen, or you?' I asked.

‘I haven't looked at them for years,' he said.

‘Was it Eileen, or you?'

‘Nothing happened, I swear.'

‘Why should I believe you?'

‘It just didn't. As God's my witness. On my life. On Jaz's life.'

‘Don't you
dare
!'

‘I'm trying to get you to see. I never so much as kissed her, nothing. She wouldn't let me. I made a pass, she said no. That's it.'

‘And the photos?'

‘I had a little crush for a couple of years.'

‘If she'd said yes?'

No answer.

And there I'd sat, feeling I should have been relieved, when in fact hearing the truth was more painful than I could have imagined.

‘Don't blame her,' Phil had said.

I'd slammed the receiver down on him.

Twenty-six pictures he'd stored in his bloody tin. In some he'd physically sheared me off with scissors, so I was no more than an arm, or a scrap of material, or a shadow. Once, unforgivably, he'd cut away Jaz. I never knew betrayal could go so deep.

Eileen stared back at me, sometimes darkly, sometimes sunny and mischievous. There she was holding my arm, my wedding bouquet, my baby girl. You knew about this, I said to her, and you kept quiet. Why? Eileen tipped her head to one side and smirked at something lost to the camera. At least when you were dying, you could have told me then, I said.

What purpose would that have served?
she said.

I'd have known where I stood!

You weren't ready
.

It would have been honest of you, then.

Is honesty always the best policy, Carol?

I flung the album from me by its spine but I couldn't stop the photographs chattering. They had their own agenda.

CHAPTER 36

Photograph: unnumbered, loose in a Bunny-Bons toffee tin

Location: Grimeford Lane, Tannerside

Taken by: Phil

Subject: nothing except the empty road, stretching up towards the moors
.

Phil wants this photo for a souvenir. It's the best he's going to get. Eileen refuses to be in it, doesn't want to be here, is livid with him. She can't imagine why he'd want a reminder of this day
.

She thought she was coming up to help him take pictures of childhood haunts, as a surprise for his wife. ‘You invited me here on false pretences,' she rages. ‘If I'd had any idea you were going to start spouting this rubbish, I'd never have come near.'

Because he's claiming he's in love with her suddenly, à propos of nothing at all. He's sorry about the lie, but he's desperate
.

‘Don't be so stupid,' she tells him
.

‘You know what I'm talking about,' he says. ‘You've felt it too. We're two of a kind. When we were at school—'

‘When we were at school,' says Eileen dryly, ‘you had
every opportunity. But you chose Carol. She thinks the sun shines out of you.'

‘What if I made the wrong choice?' he says
.

‘Too late,' she says
.

‘It might not be,' he says
.

‘It is,' she says. ‘Sod off.'

Eventually she convinces him to go, and he drives away, watching her grow smaller in the rear-view mirror. He has no idea what he's doing. Is he simply scratching an itch? Is it just a crush, a product of post-wedding-panic? If she'd said yes, would the affair have burned itself out? The years are his to wonder
.

Eileen walks alone across the fields to the station and catches the train home
.

No one must ever know what it's cost her to turn this man away. You can't help who you fall for; he may be a fool, but he's a bloody handsome one. From the Second Form up, she thinks she's been in love with him. Not that he's ever looked at her in that way. Till now
.

She prays she was convincing enough, so that he feels too embarrassed to try again, because she doesn't know if she'll be able to resist him a second time
.

It was half-past midnight when I heard my doorbell go. Luckily I was still up, pottering about doing a final tidy because I hate coming down in the morning to a messy room. I can't sleep if I know there's washing not put away.

My heart jumped at the sudden noise. I dropped the pile of tea towels I was holding and ran out into the hall. It crossed my mind that the shape behind the glass might be a criminal, a madman come to rape me in my bed, except from what I understood, such types didn't tend to announce their arrival and formally request entrance. The letterbox opened, a pair of
fingers poked through and Josh's voice went, ‘Carol? Are you there?'

I let him in at once.

‘What in God's name are you up to?' I asked.

He grinned sheepishly. ‘I got locked out.'

‘Your mother locked you out?'

‘Sort of.'

‘Is she not in?'

‘Oh, she's in.'

I was having some trouble with the idea that if Josh was out after dark, Laverne would be tucked up peacefully in bed. Impossible.

I brought him through and switched the main light back on. Josh was wearing a jacket I hadn't seen before, and his T-shirt was tucked in on one side only. ‘You've not been in a fight, have you?'

He shook his head. ‘I was round my girlfriend's.'

‘I didn't know you had a girlfriend.'

‘Yeah, well.'

‘Not that one I saw you with at the bridge?' I remembered that sneering female shout, and shuddered inwardly.

‘God, no, not her. Sheesh. Not her. Kirsty's
nice
.'

‘OK. And where does Kirsty live?'

‘Near the park. Bargates.'

‘So what happened?'

‘That's it.'

‘And your mother knows you're out?'

Josh treated that question with the contempt it deserved. ‘Can I borrow your front door key, Carol?'

‘You went out without a key?'

‘No, I have a key, but it's to the back door and Mum's put the bolt on. I left via the front. I failed to think my strategy through.' His face was very open and friendly, the way it used
to be when I gave him lifts to school. He might have been asking me to help with a tricky piece of homework.

‘But you'll wake her up, she'll hear you.'

‘No, she won't, because she's taking sleeping tablets and they knock her out. She had one tonight, I watched her take it.'

‘And then you sneaked out?'

‘Yup.'

I noticed that all the while he was talking, he was struggling not to smile. I didn't know what to make of it.

‘But if she wakes up and I'm not there,' he went on, ‘she'll freak. The shock'll send her mental. Then she'll be on tranx as well as sleeping pills.'

That was true enough.

‘Oh, honestly, Josh. Right, listen, I will let you in,
this once
, but for Laverne's sake. And I'm not thrilled about being put in this position. You're not in any sort of trouble, are you?'

‘Do I look like I've been in trouble?'

‘You look a bit drunk, if I'm being honest.'

‘I'm not. I've not been near any booze. Smell my breath.' He opened his mouth wide and huffed over me.

‘No thanks,' I said, stepping back. All I could pick up were mints and body-spray.

I left him in the lounge while I went to fetch from the kitchen the biscuit tin with Laverne's key inside it. When I came back he was grinning to himself again.

‘Hey, do you like shortbread, Carol?'

‘Why?'

‘'Cause I can get you a load from Healey's. A carrier bag full, if you want. They throw them when they get to their sell-by date, and there's nothing wrong with them.'

‘I don't want paying,' I said sternly. ‘Especially in dodgy biscuits. You know, you're damn lucky I was awake.'

‘Mum goes to bed at ten.'

‘Well, I had a few things on my mind this evening.' I extracted the key and put the tin down. ‘Do you absolutely promise me you've not been doing anything illegal? Because you're putting me in a very difficult situation here.'

Josh hung his head. ‘I know. You're a mate, Carol, you really are. I just lost track of time, that's all it was, I swear.'

‘And this girl's parents?'

‘On holiday.' Again, that smirk.

‘You know, you could try asking your mum straight out whether you can go round to your girlfriend's house.'

‘I could, couldn't I?'

I held out the key to him. ‘Wherever did that good little boy who used to live next door go?'

‘He got wazzed off at being pushed around all the time.'

‘I see.'

‘So he pushed back and found he liked it.'

‘And while we're on the subject, that teacher who used to make bother?'

‘Oh, the Hungarian? Currently the subject of a formal complaint. With any luck, he'll be suspended, his career in ruins. Couldn't happen to a nicer bloke. I'll post your key back tomorrow.'

‘You'll open up and then you'll bring it straight back now,' I said.

I waited on my front step, listened for his trainers crunching along their path, silence, the clicking of metal against metal, his footsteps coming back.

‘And if your mum finds out,' I said, ‘I shall claim you stole my key. I'm not being held responsible. She'll have my guts for garters.'

He flicked his fringe to one side, roguish in my porch light. ‘In that case, you'll just have to stand up to her, won't
you? Don't let yourself be bullied, Carol. That would never do.'

Then he turned and disappeared into the dark.

The evening after Matty's second birthday, Ian and Jaz brought him round for his usual Saturday night sleepover. I had everything ready for him, the curtains were drawn and the fire lit.

Ian carried him in, swooping him round the room like a human battering ram before dropping him onto the sofa. This kind of treatment always made me wince to watch, but Matty loved it. For a split second I remembered Phil holding a squealing infant Jaz upside down, the ribbons on her bunches streaming down his trouser legs. Then the image was gone. Matty was standing against the back of the settee, holding up his arms for more.