Going Home

Thirty- five years, a lifetime ago, I met my new dad. Mum was twenty-six, with her long red hair glinting in the sun, beautiful enough to slow traffic on a busy through- road. But it wasn’t just that. There was something about her that could make a blind man want to sidle up next to her and hold her hand. I’d call it an innate goodness. She could never watch or hear about an animal being hurt. If there was something on the telly, or in the newspaper, there was this little dance she’d do and flap her hands about and say: ‘don’t tell me’, as if that would make all the hurt in the world go away.

That day she had on her false face, a painted on smile, and was extra anxious for me to like him. I didn’t realize it at that time, just accepted the situation. One new dad was much like another. Perhaps there was something reptilian about his eyes, but I might just have added that detail later. Mum had a jigsaw view of the world and a missing piece for our happiness was always a dad-for me. The other parts I had to put into place myself, and because I wanted mum to be happy, it was husband shaped pieces, for her. Even with his arm protectively around mum’s shoulder, so that he was part of her, his cloying stink of Brut aftershave, in that small kitchen, overwhelmed all our senses, and that was the start of our surrender. I can still taste it on my tongue now, as if time had stood still. I was a good girl then. I was. I have many names for him now, all mapped out in my mind, like familiar street names.

Of course I was never his. I was always hers. It looked like a normal house, three bedrooms, dining room and even a porch at the back for happy families to sit on. Leaving was never going to be easy. My heart exploded like a Catherine Wheel in my chest when mum pulled the front door shut. The neighbours were all scared of him, terrified, in that polite way. I thought Mrs Richie next door, the Ferriers across the road, everybody, would be able to hear us and it would waken him up. She posted the key through the letterbox and it clunked onto the carpet like a ten-penny banger.

‘Aren’t you supposed to tell him when you’re going out? Give him the key to…?’

She shushed me with a red lipstick smile that touched her eyes; her hips swayed and heels clacked down the garden path as if there were big band music playing. And she was wearing enough of that perfume she wasn’t supposed to wear to confuse a heavenly host of early morning bees around the border lilies.

‘What if I get lost?’

Her warm hand, slipped into mine and she squeezed my fingers. Usually I’d have jerked it away, but since there was nobody about it seemed fine. The train station wasn’t far with her beside me. I’d an old battered tartan suitcase that mum had said was once hers.

She packed and repacked it that many times, in the past weeks, carefully folding and refolding each shirt, each pair of trousers and each pair of socks that I’d thought they’d be worn out before I got there. Once when she’d went to the toilet, Tiggy the cat had seized its chance and rolled around purring with delight at the scent of newly ironed clothes. He sat snug, with his ears pointed outwards for combat and little black and white paws sheathed for play, ready to jab and dab, head up, looking at her in much the same way I did. Even though I’d laughed and said it was ok; I didn’t mind cat hair, but mum dabbed at her eyes and cried, little jerking sobs with her eyes closed, without making a sound.

Later, I’d betrayed Tiggy, showing off that I knew his hiding place, pointing it out, up in the cupboard behind the wicker basket that we’d kept odds and ends in. I didn’t think cats fitted into cages like birds. A hissing sack of indignation looked out at me, somehow finding enough room to turn right around and avoid the fingers I’d pushed through the bars to pet him.

‘Don’t worry, we’ve got him a good home.’ Mum whispered the next part to me in the kitchen, so only I could hear, ‘Dad’s allergic’.

He made me call him that. It sounded as if it was some kind of contagious disease that him in the living room had. I secretly hoped he’d die from it. I knew better than to say anything. That would start him off.

Our dog, Max, was next to go. He hid under the kitchen table his paws crossed over as if in prayer and sad eyes looking out as if to say it’s come to this.

‘He’s old,’ said mum, holding onto me as I sobbed as if I’d never stop.

That night I heard him whining in my dreams as if he was outside waiting patiently to be allowed into the warmth of the kitchen. I ran down to let him in and kicked the blankets off my bed and kicked myself awake.

I got sick and headachey over the next couple of days. Mum said I didn’t need to go to school. She took me to the shopping centre for new things. I didn’t want new things. Mum had to keep nipping into the toilet because of her nerves. I kept saying I didn’t want new things. I wanted her.

‘New things are better than old.’ Mum sounded like him. Like Dad. Only he wasn’t my dad. We got a taxi home, which was a big thing. He didn’t like taxis. Thought they charged too much. He’d never tell taxi drivers that; just us. When we got home I didn’t tell him the taxi driver was nice and laughed and joked with mum in the back of his cab and made her young again, because that would have made him mad. Everything made him mad. Especially me. And my lies about him.

I kept expecting his black BMW to sneak silently into the train station car park and the tinted windows to roll down and his finger to motion me to get in. I clutched at my suitcase and tried to make the train hurry up by looking all the way –forever-down the track for it.

‘I need the toilet.’

‘You can go on the train. Won’t be long.’ Mum still had my hand clenched in hers. She squeezed my fingers and smiled and pulled me into her in a giant hug, so that as a last gift I was enveloped in her sunshine smell.

‘What if I don’t like it?’

‘You’ll like it.’ Mum slowly let me surface and looked me straight in the eye. She’d little yellow flecks of gold in her eye. I’d never seen that before. The train appeared on the bend of the tracks.

‘But what if, what if, granny and granddad don’t like me?’

‘They’ll love you.’ Mum squeezed both my hands and looked as if she was going to cry, which started me off. ‘They’ll love you because you’re you.’

As the train doors opened and passengers got off mum wrapped me in one last bear hug. She was crying almost as much as me and pushed me towards the open doors.

‘Gran and Grandad will be waiting for you at the other end.’

Tears were streaming down my face and snot was running from my nose. I shook my head to clear it.

‘You’ll be ok. It only takes a few hours.’ She wobbled on her high heals and her nose was red and I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t leave her. I stepped off the train and put the suitcase down on the ground between us. The guard was leaning out of the windows, waiting to signal the all clear. Mum took my hand again and it was like falling into a pool of water. We did it together, jumping into the compartment on the train just before the doors shushed closed. She planted a lipstick smile on my cheek. ‘Let’s get a window seat’. I wouldn’t let go of her hand. Mum had the best smile ever. That’s what I’ll remember.