The House We Grew Up In (43 page)
There
, he’d thought,
there
. A key. A way in. Maybe.
He walked around the garden now, from corner to corner, trying to fill his head with more and more memories. It was as if he was rebuilding his childhood, step by step. The garden had been more important to him, growing up, than the house. This was where it all happened. Balls and dogs and water and mud, slides and swings and wrestling and horseplay. And egg hunts, of course. He remembered each nook and cranny now. The cracks in the stone walls. The flowerpots and crooks of trees. He heard the echo of the noise his wings might have made as he’d flown from home, so suddenly, so starkly, without a moment of nostalgia or regret. And then he ran his finger through the gaps in the wall, praying to the gods of all above,
Just one egg. Just one little egg
. Just to know that it had all been true, that he hadn’t imagined it. And there it was, a moment later, held between his thumb and his forefinger, a small pink egg. He held it triumphantly to the moon.
Then he put it in his pocket with the two little parcels he’d found in his mum’s drawer and the slip of paper with the password on, and headed back inside.
Bethan lay on her back in Vicky’s old bed, in Vicky’s old room, staring at the paper shade over Vicky’s old light. She’d gone straight to bed after Megan had driven her back.
Sophie had some friends over, young friends, squawking and shouting and talking over each other the way teenagers do. Sophie, eyes glazed and heavy with cider, had said, ‘Come in! Come in!’ There’d been pizza boxes everywhere and all eyes had come to rest on Beth’s bump as though it was the last thing anyone had expected to see, as though she’d brought a baby hippo into the room with her. She’d said, ‘No, thank you, I’m exhausted. But have fun.’
‘We’ll try and be quiet,’ Sophie had said.
‘You don’t have to,’ she’d replied.
She turned heavily on to her side at the sound of her phone receiving a text message, and squashed a cushion under her bump. It was from Megan:
Dad found a password, might be for Mum’s laptop. I’ll pick you up 9 a.m. and we’ll go via the repair shop. Sleep tight, Bethy. Sleep tight, baby bump. Love you both. x
Bethan’s eyes widened. Her heart filled with pleasure. Megan’s love. She had missed it so much. She kissed the screen of her phone. She typed back:
Love you too. xxx
Then she slept, deep and peaceful, for the rest of the night.
The repair shop had sent Lorelei’s laptop to a nephew in Tetbury. The nephew in Tetbury was not answering his phone so Megan, Beth and Molly had to drive all the way
there. The nephew opened the door of a tiny cottage in a back lane in just a towel, with a cigarette burning in his hand. He hurriedly stubbed it out when he saw Bethan’s bump and went up a tiny staircase in the middle of the house to get changed. A moment later he returned, dressed and combed, with Lorelei’s laptop in his hands.
Megan stared greedily at it. On there was the story of Jim. On there, potentially, was the story of why her mother had died in the front seat of her car, half a mile away from her own home.
‘I’m really sorry,’ said the nephew, whose name was Josh, ‘but I don’t think I’m going to be able to crack this for you.’ He then launched into a very technical, jargon-heavy explanation for his failure which Megan interrupted by waving a piece of paper with the hotel’s logo on the top at him and saying, ‘Yes, yes, thank you, but we think we’ve found it. The password.’
‘Oh,’ said Josh. He plugged the laptop into the wall and opened it up. Then, with large, bitten-down fingers, he typed the password into the login page. The laptop made a pretty noise, and then, there it was. Windows.
Megan smiled and brought her fist to her mouth. ‘Yes!’ she said in a loud whisper. ‘Yes!’
They whisked the laptop away from him, thanked him for his trouble and then drove, quite fast, back to the Bird House.
Wednesday 16th March 2011
Jim. I relived it. The whole thing. From beginning to end. I feel weak now. Weak and horribly sick. But I’ll write it down. So it’s there. Maybe for you to understand me better. Or maybe for someone to read, when I’m gone. I don’t mean to sound morbid, Jim, but I’m sixty-five. I’m not well. I’m not going to last for ever, am I?
So, back to that day, that same day I hoovered his room, that I wondered if anyone apart from me would ever love him, the day before Easter.
He hadn’t come out of his room all day. That was normal. Normal for him, normal for a lot of teenage boys, I suppose. But it was the day before Easter and Megan was back. We were all having so much fun together, down in the kitchen, we were playing a game. Trivial Pursuit, I think. And there was wine and music and teasing and, oh, all that lovely family stuff. So I went up to try and tempt him down. I took him a bowl of sticky toffee pudding. I sat next to him on the bed. He looked so sad, Jim. I said, ‘What’s the matter, my darling
boy? Why do you look so sad?’ He just shrugged. He always just shrugged.
He was always my favourite, you know. Not in that OH MY GLORIOUS PERFECT CHILD way, just in that he was my baby. He’d been so small. The weight of him in my hands when they passed him to me, like a bag of air. He was my shadow, he followed me about. He was always looking to me, for guidance, for approval, for everything, long after the others had lost interest in me. Always looking at me, watching me with those sad, empty eyes.
I brought his head against my shoulder. I was a bit tipsy. He said, ‘Get off, you smell of wine.’ But he was only joking, so I tapped him on the arm and said, ‘Hold your breath then, I want to hold my baby boy.’
He resisted at first. Struggled, in that way that children do when they think they’re too old for cuddles but still have this residual need to be held by Mummy. It was obvious to me he wanted the hug, he wanted the attention. I squeezed him hard and I felt him soften, I felt him allow it. And then, he was suddenly there, his face against my face and I thought it was a joke, that he was trying to smell my breath. I was about to say something like, ‘OK, OK. I’ll get off you.’ But then his mouth was on top of mine and I realised he was trying to kiss me! My God! My own son! My tiny little baby boy. His thin boy’s body pressed sharp up against mine.
Oh, Jim.
I pushed him off and he fell back against the wall. He stared ahead. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. I should have said something, Jim. I know I should have. I should have found a way to talk about it. My baby. I shouldn’t have just left him there. But I did. I ran from his room, as though running from a monster.
I bumped into Beth coming out. I saw her look at me. Then look into Rhys’s room. She asked me if I was OK. I think I managed to squeak that I was.
We went downstairs and we finished the game. Nobody asked about Rhys. Nobody wondered why I’d come down without him. Nobody noticed.
I didn’t see him the next day, it was Easter Day, we had guests. I wanted to talk it through with Colin, what had happened. I wanted to find the right moment. I wanted it to be right. It had to be right. And then there was Vicky, standing in my hallway with a bottle of Beaujolais and I just thought, Not yet. I can’t deal with this JUST YET. So we drank and we laughed and I put it off. I thought, TOMORROW. I’ll deal with this tomorrow. When Megan’s gone. When the house is quiet. And of course by then it was TOO FUCKING LATE.
So, darling, what do you think? Was it my fault? I’m so confused, Jim. He was my favourite. And I let him down. I let him down so horribly. Drinking wine when I could have been saving his soul. And can you see now, why I might have tried to avoid thinking about this? Talking about this? Because
I
can. I didn’t just lose a son, you see, I lost a sense of myself as a mother. And a mother was the only thing I’d ever really known how to be.
Oh, Jim. Write back soon. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I need you to tell me it was OK. PLEASE.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Thursday 17th March 2011
Thank you, darling. Thank you. You are so insightful, Jim, so, what is it they say? –
emotionally intelligent
. I can’t believe I had never thought before of the parallels running through everything, the threads that connected it all together. Of course that is why I reacted so strongly to Beth’s affair with Bill, to Colin getting together with Kayleigh. And yes, even the man who raped my mother touching me the way he did. It’s all vaguely incestuous, isn’t it? It’s all just a shade away from natural. And you know something, Jim, you know something terribly, terribly sad? I never hugged my children properly again after that day. I’d give them a squeeze, you know, or an arm around a shoulder, but I never ever held them properly again. I was always ready to back off. Poor Beth, I think she suffered the most.
Well, my love, I’m too tired to type much more now. (This blasted, blasted chest infection. The antibiotics are making no difference at all and I honestly cannot face another trip to that awful place, surrounded by all those ghastly ill people and that woman’s beefy hands all over the place.)
I’ll type more later, darling, but for now, you have no idea how much better your thoughtful, loving and intelligent words have made me feel. About everything.
God, I love you.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Friday 25th March 2011
Oh, God, Jim, don’t do this to me now, darling, please. I need
you now, so much. I feel so raw, like someone’s peeled off all my skin and left me out on the beach. It’s been over a week since I heard from you. I can’t bear it. You’ve never gone this long before without writing. Oh, Christ, are you OK? You’re not hurt, are you, you’re not in trouble? I just can’t be on my own right now. I opened Pandora’s box, darling, I opened it for you, and I’m glad I did, it had to happen. But I’m not dealing with it very well. And I’m not well. I’m really not well. I can’t even think about making it to the docs. I can barely move.
Please, Jim, write to me. Anything. Even if it’s bad. PLEASE.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Thursday 31st March 2011
So, is that it, then, Jim? Are we done? Did you finally tire of me? Oh, GOD, I don’t blame you. How could I? I mean, look at me! I’ve been wearing the same clothes for over a week. I smell, Jim. I know I do. Of illness and old hair and dehydration. I’m losing the plot, Jim. Where are you???????
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Wednesday 6th April 2011
I can’t be here any more, I hate this house now I’ve let Rhys back into it. I’m tired and I’m cold and I’m dirty and I’m coming to see you. I’ll find my way to Gateshead, somehow. Please be there for me. I’ve
lost my way. I’m half-gone. I’ll see you in a few hours. Don’t try and stop me.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
April 2011
The heatwave finally broke on Good Friday and as the bank holiday weekend began, more people arrived at the house. Pandora, from Corfu, freshly divorced and terribly brown. Sophie and Maddy, Lorna and her new husband, even Ben. The house was filled with people, the pavement outside parked up with cars; shift systems were devised, to take things to the landfill, to take other things to charity shops. Lorna’s husband, an antiques dealer, usefully ferreted out things of worth. Pandora and Megan led the cleaning team of Molly, Maddy, Sophie and Rory. Bethan sat sedately and sorted through the boxes of smaller objects, sifting through for things worth keeping. Ben collapsed boxes and took them to be recycled. They all sat each evening in grubby clothes, eating at the huge kitchen table, uncorking cheap wine, eating bread and fancy cheeses from the fancy cheese shop in the village. Ben played guitar, Molly moved the focus of her attentions from Rory to Ben. They talked, they gossiped, they laughed, they cried. It was one of the best Easter weekends Megan could remember.
And then it was over. Ben, Maddy, Lorna and her husband headed back to work, Sophie went back to college, Pandora had things to do in London. By Monday evening it was just the five of them again.
And by Monday evening, the hallway had been cleared, the staircase had been cleared, the living room had been cleared and the rooms that had once made up Colin’s half of the house had been cleared. Carpets had been ripped up, rolled up and taken away, revealing untouched marquetry parquet underneath. All the old lampshades had gone, and been replaced with white paper balloons from the Asda megastore. The curtains had been taken away and burned, windows scrubbed and vinegared, paintwork bleached back to white. The two tatty sofas in the living room were disguised under white throws, two nice pieces of walnut cabinetry polished back to life and everything else taken to the tip.
Megan walked through the house now, Molly following behind. It bore no relationship to the house she’d grown up in. It was so subdued and empty. So calm and elegant. The rooms felt enormous without the ever-present sacks of crap and boxes of clutter, the shelves loaded with ornaments and paperwork, broken clocks and obsolete party invitations, the patterned rugs and bits of ethnic tat. The walls looked so blank and broad without the higgledy-piggledy arrangements of junk-shop art and framed photos and posters torn from magazines, all randomly adhered to the wall with Blu-tack. The staircase was so wide, the light through the windows so bright. As she walked Megan realised that even before the awful events of Easter 1991, this house had been a depository
for all of Lorelei’s deepest buried issues and emotional unrest. She had wanted, as she said to Jim in Gateshead, to give her children the childhood she hadn’t had. A childhood without secrets. Without resentment. But even before Rhys had subverted the mother/child relationship and turned her world on its head, she had been building up to this. Piece by piece. Minute by minute. If it hadn’t been Rhys, it would have been something else. Because the damage had been done long before that day. Long before any of them were even born.
And so, in the end, it had been no one’s fault. No one’s fault at all. It wasn’t Lorelei’s parents’ fault, or the fault of the man who’d raped her mother, or of God above for taking away their baby daughter before she’d drawn her first breath. It wasn’t Rory’s fault, it wasn’t Bethan’s fault, it wasn’t Colin’s fault. It certainly wasn’t Lorelei’s fault. (‘
Poor poor Mum, all those years, carrying that burden alone
.’) It was life. One of those things. Somewhere along the line a seed had been sown in Rhys’s little heart, maybe even in the womb, and that seed had grown into something completely unconnected to any of them.