Kitabı oku: «The Mother And Daughter Diaries»

ONE

SOMETIMES I look back and try and work out when I first started to worry about Jo, as if that’s when it all started to go wrong. But that’s a bit like asking yourself when you first fell in love or when you first grew up. These things tend to creep up on you slowly and one day you just notice them, notice something that has always been hovering there, waiting to be recognised. Perhaps I’ve always been worried about Jo—after all, I’m a mother and anxiety is on the job description. It all starts before your child is born, worrying in case he—or in my case she—comes out with three heads or twenty fingers. Then you worry about the contents of her nappies, whether she’ll make friends at playgroup, whether that marble she shoved up her nose will cause permanent damage and whether the teacher will know that you helped her to colour in her picture. But this is all just gentle preparation for the teenage years when suddenly the world seems to be flooded with alcohol, drugs and piercings in places you never knew could be pierced.

The worry may have always been there, but was there a day when it struck me that there was something I really did need to worry about? Something more than the usual adolescent anxieties? I can’t remember, but I’m always drawn back to the day of my niece’s wedding. Perhaps, underneath my camouflage of denial and pretence, I knew then.

At times I blame myself that Jo hit those difficult teenage years just as I was learning to play out my new role as a single mother, still raw and bleeding from the pain and confusion of divorce. Yet if only Jo had accepted the separation as easily as her younger sister had, then maybe we could all have held hands and taken the journey together, as a family, as one. Now I understand that we each had our own journey to take and that sometimes our paths would run parallel, sometimes converge and sometimes divert onto very different courses. And when Jo’s path led her off into what I believed was completely the wrong direction, I tried to pull her back onto mine. And yet that direction was wrong too. For her.

So perhaps the story really started with me. With me being plucked out of my comfortable existence, relabelled and thrown back into something unknown, frightening even. And as I struggled to make sense of my new life, I soon realised that my old life had been fraught with difficulty as well: that I had been hiding behind a veneer of perfect wife and mother, hoping that if I pretended long enough it would all come true. But it hadn’t really been a life after all.

As a sixteen-year-old teenager teetering from childhood to the brink of womanhood, Jo had every reason to be finding herself, breaking away to discover who she was and where she was going. But what on earth was I doing, in my forties, suddenly questioning what I, Lizzie Trounce, was all about? For somewhere along the way I had left myself behind and had carried on living with no real identity, just a few useful labels so that people would understand what I did—mother, sandwich maker, wife (now ex-wife), friend, neighbour, occasional beer drinker, part-time film buff.

I remember working at the sandwich bar alongside Trish the day before the wedding. Even then, I was trying to change direction, perhaps even hoping to find myself by looking somewhere different. But you can only change direction when you know exactly where you are in the first place and, unknowingly, I was lost.

‘The first rush is over—time for our own sustenance,’Trish said, pouring out a couple of coffees.

‘You know, this place would be better if we had room for more tables and chairs. It would make it more of a café than just a takeaway sandwich bar.’

‘There’s five stools.’ Trish nodded towards the long bar with the stools for any customers who might want to eat or drink on the premises. ‘And they’re usually empty.’

‘That’s because they’re not comfortable and the room is so narrow you have to drink while being pushed and shoved by the queue. The chances of getting an umbrella in the ear and being slapped around the bottom with a briefcase are extremely high. If only we had bigger premises.’

‘Yeah, great. So we have to serve tables as well. Twice the work for the same money,’ Trish pointed out. She was only ten years older than me but was content to float easily towards retirement.

‘But if we owned the café…’

Suddenly I saw myself as a businesswoman with a chain of restaurants to oversee, bank managers grovelling at my feet, power suit, shoes clicking authoritatively across the restaurant floor.

‘If only I’d done that business course Roger suggested,’ I sighed.

Trish laughed. ‘I really can’t see you on a business course. It’s not exactly you, is it?’

But what exactly was me? I’d been bright at school with three good A levels to my name, but then I took a gap year, before gap years even existed, and that turned into a gap five years as I happily drifted from job to job, travelling the world in between, until I met Roger. The next thing I knew, I’d given up my flat with the giant sunflowers in the window box and was trimming the privet hedge in a neat, four-bedroomed cube in a convenient location on the edge of town, with favourable commuter services into London. Desirable, quiet, sought after, practical. And dull.

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ I acknowledged, After all, how could I possibly run a business when I was struggling to make sense of the electricity bill, the car insurance, tax credit and all the things Roger had dealt with until six months earlier when everything, just everything, had been turned upside down and given a shake I could measure on the Richter scale. Of course, I thought, Roger’s new partner Alice could probably quote her National Insurance number at will, juggle bank accounts around like oranges and get a tax rebate on…well, whatever people got tax rebates for. I still cringe when I think of the first time I met her and described myself as a sandwich designer and beverage entrepreneur. And I’m still trying to convince myself that her stiff smile was one of admiration.

As Trish and I started to prepare a fresh supply of sandwiches for the lunch trade, I realised that my job was the one constant, unchanging, predictable event in my shaken-up life and I needed to keep it exactly as it was. So I set about losing myself in the routine of the day and shoved everything else to the back of my mind.

I got home from work that day feeling exhausted. Exhausted by responsibility, regret, bitterness and the intense love I had for the children I thought I’d let down. It was as if I had been pulling everything together so hard that my limbs were aching and my resolve slowly breaking down. My neighbour waved at me, and then stared at my overgrown lawn and the triffid-like borders of nettles and determined weeds. I waved back and shrugged my shoulders. It had hardly been an accusation from her and it wasn’t much of an explanation from me, but I sensed we understood each other. I would deal with the front garden when I could, but as yet I had no idea when that would be.

When I got to the front door, I turned round to look at the small wilderness behind me. There was something rather pleasing about the wild garden which somehow distracted from the predictable box of a house which stood symmetrically between two identical boxes. I liked it, and decided to put a bird table and sundial somewhere among the long grasses. It seemed rebellious and slightly daring, and I went into the house feeling a little better about myself.

I put the Chinese takeaway I had collected on the way home on the table and called the girls. Eliza danced in and gave me a hug.

‘Chinese—great,’ she enthused, and started pulling the lids off the cartons.

The dishwasher was packed full and I had forgotten to switch it on before work. I rummaged around in the cupboard and found some paper plates left over from Eliza’s birthday tea some months earlier.

‘Great, like a party,’ Eliza said, and as I waited for Jo to make an appearance, I reminded myself never to compare the two of them.

‘Shout up for Jo, would you, darling?’ I asked Eliza.

Eliza and I were halfway through our meal by the time Jo drooped in, wearing pyjama trousers and a baggy jumper which looked like an old one of Roger’s. She hung her head like a soft toy with no stuffing.

‘Not another bloody takeaway,’ she muttered. ‘I’ll get something later.’

‘I’m sorry, it’s just…’ But Jo was gone, leaving behind a large helping of guilt for me to digest with my dinner.

‘I can’t wait for the wedding tomorrow,’ Eliza said, helping herself to more spare ribs.

‘Yes, it should be fun,’ I tried to enthuse, but my voice sounded like a nervous children’s TV presenter.

My niece was getting married the next day and it would be our first big occasion as an incomplete family. Part of me was looking forward to it, part of me dreaded it. I knew I would be dying to announce to everyone that the breakdown of my marriage had not been my fault, that Roger had gone off with a younger woman as part of his mid-life crisis. I wanted to be able to laugh about it, to show the world that I was carefree, happy and in control. But was I? And had it in some way been my fault?

As Eliza ran out urgently to phone one of her friends, I looked around the kitchen. Roger had planned to decorate the whole house the previous year and had scheduled it into his diary as he scheduled everything in—meetings, DIY projects, liaison time with the girls, sex probably. Yet it had never happened, presumably because of his well-scheduled plans to leave me, so the house was beginning to look a little frayed: nothing extreme, just the odd scuff mark here and there, the occasional patch of peeling paint or faded curtain. But there was something more, something that had changed the feel of the entire kitchen, and I realised that it was my piles of, well, stuff. With Roger, there had been a place for everything. Anything that could be filed was filed, anything that could be put on a shelf was put on one and extra shelves had been continuously added to accommodate any item inadvertently left lying about.

Now I indulged myself in allowing things to be left lying about, and I specialised in piling up books and photos, magazines and CDs, letters and odd pieces of clothing. Every room in the house was littered with piles of miscellaneous objects so that the lounge carpet looked like a lake with stepping stones across the middle and my bedroom an entry for the Turner prize. Yet it was not chaotic, I knew where everything was and the piles were somehow neatly piled. And I had every intention of sorting them into something else—well-ordered piles maybe.

The truth was I missed Roger, not as a partner but as someone who had sorted out the bills, put things away and knew where the stopcock was. Now I had to do everything and there never seemed to be the time. I wasted so many hours just sitting in the cluttered kitchen wondering where it had all gone wrong, how I had ended up in this characterless house doing an unchallenging job, a divorce statistic with a stroppy teenager who could tear my self-worth apart just by walking into the kitchen and looking around at what it had become.

Still, I loved Jo more than anything and went upstairs to talk to her about the wedding the next day.

‘Hi, Jo, are you looking forward to tomorrow?’

‘Suppose.’

‘Looks like the weather’s going to be good.’

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s a bit of a long trek so we’ll have to set off about eight. Is that OK?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Sorry about the takeaway. We’ll have a roast on Sunday, shall we? Like old times.’

‘Except it won’t be like old times, will it?’

‘No, of course. Still, you like a roast. What about now? Shall I make you an omelette?’

‘I’m all right.’

‘Right, well, I’d better go and iron my dress for tomorrow. I don’t want to look like a wrung-out dishcloth.’

I laughed, I winked, I smiled, I patted Jo maternally.

I decided to go out into the garden and talk to the plants, reassure them that I cared and would soon be pulling out all those intrusive weeds which were strangling them and blocking the light. But perhaps I should have been saying the same things to Jo.

I listened at the lounge door but heard Eliza still chatting excitedly on the phone, underlining key words as she spoke.

‘It’s going to be wicked. You should see what I’m wearing. I’m on the stage practically all the time. And right at the front.’

Back in the kitchen, I thought about Jo again, although, looking back, I never stopped thinking about Jo. It was continuous. She had her own place in the worry zone of my brain, and I knew with intuitive certainty that there was something wrong, very wrong, with her. Of course she didn’t tell me everything, she was a teenager and was still adjusting to her parents’ separation, that was normal. But it was more than that. There was something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Out in the world she was often so different, speaking out eloquently, standing tall and proud and looking at her life ahead with some optimism. Was it this house that was stifling her, gagging her so that only a few words could be spluttered out of her mouth at one time? Or was it me?

I stared out of the window at the overgrown garden. It had begun to rain heavily so I put off my idea of going out and chatting to my neglected plants. I wondered if it would be all right to just shout out a few words of encouragement through the window, and immediately wondered what Roger would think. What he would think of my piles of stuff scattered across the floor like lilies; what he would make of me shouting out of the window at the plants…Would he despair of me phoning up the emergency gas line because I couldn’t work the timer on the central-heating system? I could taste his disapproval as if he were there in the room with me, and yet I knew that if only I let it, that very thought could set me free because I no longer needed anyone’s approval, except my own. But that was the most difficult approval to get.

I opened the window.

‘Hi, plants, how are you doing?’ I almost whispered—I wasn’t quite ready for this.

‘Hello, plants and trees.’A loud voice from behind me shouted over my shoulder. It was Eliza. We fell about like drunk chimpanzees and then I realised that the rain was slanting in and I shut the window. There was never any need to explain with Eliza.

‘Just getting a yoghurt,’ she said, and skipped out of the kitchen again.

My mind turned back to Jo as I tried to remember her preadolescent years. It had all been so different then. She had spent so many hours with Roger, talking about exams and how to invest her pocket money and planning her future. Now she was changed, and by more than adolescence. I knew then that I had to talk to someone about her, about me even, before we drowned in the sea of silence we found ourselves in. I picked up the phone and pressed out a number.

‘Hi, Trish. Just called to say thanks for doing my shift tomorrow. Gina should be there about nine.’

‘That’s great. You have a wonderful day, Lizzie. Enjoy the wedding.’

‘We certainly will. It’ll seem funny without…on my own.’

‘You won’t be on your own. You’ll have the girls with you.’

‘Of course I will. They’re really looking forward to it.’ ‘I bet they are.’

‘Trish?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ll bring you back a piece of cake.’

So, I’d got it all off my chest, then. For someone who found it so easy to talk, the words crashing out of my mouth like coins from a slot machine, I found it very difficult to actually say anything. Later I learnt that there are other powerful ways to communicate, but back then, on the eve of my niece’s wedding, I did at least manage to laugh at myself. You have to laugh, otherwise you end up crying, I thought. It was only after Lily came into our lives that I realised you sometimes have to cry as well. It took an enigmatic, mysterious stranger to teach me that, a stranger called Lily Finnegan.