A psychological family drama: Past Imperfect Present Tense available on Amazon uk as a kindle book.
'Can you keep a secret? I wonder if you can.....
Samantha has a secret about a past lover which she thinks no one knows, not even her husband, until Daniel moves in next door. He's got some ideas of what she needs to do to keep him quiet, but could she trust him even if she gives him what he wants? And who is the stranger in the village who seems to be worming her way into Samantha's family? Is she a blessing or a threat?
When Samantha discovers that by keeping her secret the lives of other people may be destroyed, what should she do? Can she be brave enough to save the people she loves, when it may mean she will lose them forever?
Can you keep a secret? I’m not sure you can….. '
Available on Amazon U.K. Look for Past Imperfect Present Tense by Helena Rees.
A sample appears below.
Past Imperfect
Present Tense
Chapter One: The Birthmarked Eye
Samantha
Saturday July 7th
The playground gate clangs shut.
I turn my head and see a man in tight jeans and white shirt loping over the grass towards the bench where I'm sitting. Three little boys run, whooping, over to the roundabout where Ellie and Nicola are perched making daisy chains. When the man is right in front of me he pauses for a moment, grins, and sits down beside me, so close I have to shift along. He gives a sigh and then stretches - first his arms above his head, then his legs out in front of him - and shakes back his curly brown hair. I move again. Just a few inches. I don’t want to seem rude even if he is, but I've never seen him before and it's only us in the playground, even if I can see my house from where I'm sitting.
‘Hi, we haven't met before but I’m Daniel,’ he says in a voice that's husky and intimate. He holds out his hand and for a moment I hesitate, but then I slip mine into his. He has a firm grip. ‘We’ve just moved into number six on the Green. Me, Tish and the boys.’ He nods over at his children without taking his eyes off me, and I glance over and see my two girls standing stock still by the roundabout as the boys spin it round as fast as it will go.
‘Oh, right, I’m Samantha. I live at number four,’ I mumble. He lets go of my hand and there seems to be a pause. ‘Next door.’ I add, unnecessarily. There's a shrill cry from the children and over Daniel’s shoulder, I see my girls racing to the swings. I clear my throat and sit up straighter but he stays relaxed, crossing his long legs and shaking his hair back again.
‘Samantha,’ he says, rolling my name around in his mouth, ‘okay.’ Out of the corner of my eye I see him smile to himself, before continuing, ‘yeah, anyway, I saw you come over here so I thought I’d bring the boys and let my wife get on with unpacking.’
‘I suppose it’s easier without the kids getting into everything.’ I agree.
‘Tell me about it! And who’d have thought the junk that a family can have? Last time I moved I only had two suitcases.’
‘Your poor wife, she must be up to her ears.’ I say.
He laughs and then places his left hand, adorned by a thick gold ring on the fourth finger, in the narrow space between us, touching the spread out yellow cotton of my dress. He leans round towards me, forcing me to meet his eyes, and says, ‘but, Samantha, tell me - haven't we met before?’
I open my mouth to deny it but then something about him lights a spark in my brain. There is something familiar about him. His nose, the shape of his face? But he is dark haired and dark eyed and that other man was blond with eyes the colour of the summer sky. I say ‘no, never,’ and he leans back on the bench and sighs. Then he looks at me out of the corner of his eyes and gives a flicker of a wink.
I get up and call the girls.
When we’re home I let the girls watch a cartoon because of making them come home early. In the kitchen I pour myself a large glass of water because my mouth is so dry. I must have imagined that wink. And the coincidence of Daniel looking like that other man is just that, a coincidence.
Sunday July 8th
I am upstairs folding towels and as I glance out of the window I see Daniel washing the car. He is wearing jeans and no shirt and I can see the muscles in his arms as he lifts the hosepipe high in the air to jet a stream of water onto the roof. It’s a people carrier he’s cleaning, the family car. He has another one for himself, a sleek, shiny black sports car which he keeps in the garage. His shoulders are broad and his jeans sit low on his slim hips and I can see that he is not as tall as the man he reminded me of, nor as athletic in build. The boys come running out and he turns the hose on them, making them scream with laughter and run away. He drops the hose and chases the littlest one, picks him up and throws him in the air.
And then he turns and looks up at our house, his eyes fixed and penetrating, the child still held tight in his arms, but crying now.
I let the curtain fall back into place and go downstairs to make the girls supper. When Anthony comes in I throw my arms around him, and the girls laugh and scream, ‘me too, me too,’ and wrap themselves around our legs. Anthony says, ‘my lovely girls! I’m glad to be home!’
Monday July 9th
I have the dream again. After all these years, as fresh as the first time.
Tuesday July 10th
When I’m filling the dishwasher I have a sudden thought, about her. Without even calculating I know exactly how old she is now, today. She is eighteen years old, ten months and eight days. I know that, but I don’t know her name.
Wednesday July 18th
Anthony tells me he bumped into Daniel outside when he put out the rubbish. He says he seems very nice and we’re having a drink with him and his wife Tish next week.
‘You should have made more of an effort with Tish before now,’ he says. ‘It’s important they know what kind of people we are so that we don’t get any trouble with noise or anything. You need to establish good communications with her.’ I say I’m sorry but I don’t offer any excuses – there’s never any point.
Thursday July 19th
Just manage to exchange a few words with Tish when she’s in the front garden, which I report back to Anthony.
Friday July 20th
We go to the Crown at seven thirty, the four of us walking across the Green together. When we left our house the girls were in their pyjamas lying on the sofa watching ‘Snow White’ with the baby sitter knitting, but I could hear Daniel’s boys still squealing in their garden.
I sit between Anthony and Tish and opposite Daniel at one of the old oak tables in the main room. The French windows are open and the garden is full of people drinking and eating, although the food isn’t very good here. Anthony is talking about the village, about other neighbours around the Green setting out the atmosphere of quiet and respectability which he values so much, and Daniel says,
‘That’s just what we thought. And it’s great to be next door to a family – Tish was lonely in London and our house was way too small for three little boys.’ Tish and I say nothing. I try a smile but Tish just looks into the distance.
‘Do you like the country?’ I ask her.
‘Yes, of course.’ She replies, and then gets up to go to the Ladies.
‘Another round.’ Anthony says and goes to the bar.
Daniel leans across the table so that his face is only a half a metre away from me and says, ‘we’re so glad we came to this village. It’s so nice to have you right next door.’
I stare down at the tabletop, which is wooden and stained with the rings of beer glasses. When I look up again, he is just as close. He has long curly eyelashes and brown eyes and one of them has a little dark smudge in it which I know, some people say, is a birthmark in the eye. It brings back a memory so strong that it takes my breath away.
He, that man I have fought to forget, had a birthmark. It was on his right buttock, raised and chocolate brown, like a miniature doughnut. I can still feel it with my fingertips if I imagine my hand running over his body, even though it was so long ago. I haven’t thought of that little bump for years and yet, as my fingers lie on the table, my forefinger rubs over a breadcrumb and remembers the sensation.
‘What d’you think? Are you glad we’re here?’ Daniel’s voice is low, intimate.
‘Of course, it’s always nice to have new neighbours,’ I say. He smiles and leans back in his chair, staring at me.
‘I don’t know why I thought I knew you,’ he says. I say nothing. I stare down at the table again, at those rings, at the mark where a cigarette has been stubbed out from the days when you were allowed to smoke inside. ‘But it was a very strong feeling. Maybe it’s like kindred spirits,’ he says.
‘I don’t believe in kindred spirits.’ I say, briefly looking up.
Daniel smiles with his mouth but not his eyes. ‘What a shame,’ he says.
I get up to go to the Ladies. As I walk across the pub I can feel that birthmarked eye lingering on me.
Sunday July 22nd
I pop round to give Tish a copy of the re-cycling information that Anthony thinks they will need. The television is blaring and she turns to scream at the boys to turn it down.
‘Dan isn’t here at the moment,’ she says, ‘work as usual, ‘ and makes a little downward curve with her lips. ‘Is Anthony home?’
‘Yes,’ I smile, hovering on the doorstep,’ he’s free most weekends.’
‘Oh.’
‘And is usually home in the evenings by seven.’
‘Wow. Danny has really long hours. And now he’s got the commute as well.’ There’s a sudden loud crash from the sitting room and her eyes widen. ‘Better go,’ and she shuts the door.
I can see I’m going to have to try harder to be her friend, but the good thing is that Daniel won’t be around.
Tuesday July 24th
Manage to get Tish to come round for a coffee and somehow we get on to what it was like to give birth. She tells me that when Daniel was a little boy he liked to play football but that, one day, a bigger boy missed the ball and kicked him in the face and broke his nose. She says that he’s been afraid of blood ever since and when she had the kids he fainted. Each time. I tell her that Anthony didn’t fain but held my hand and told me that I would be fine because he was there. Maybe he was right, because I was ok, even though it hurt. Each of my two popped out like eggs from a bird.
What I don’t tell her is that no one held my hand the first time. I was alone in the delivery room, not even my mother or Babs was with me. As the pain gripped me I wondered if he knew, if somewhere, somehow he could feel what I was going through. Feeling it and hurting with me. When she was born I wasn’t allowed to hold her, not even for a minute, although I saw her. She had blue eyes, I remember that. The colour of cornflowers; the colour of the summer sky. Her face was pink and anxious, and they wrapped her tiny body tightly up in a white shawl. I held my arms out to hold her but they said, no, the decision has been taken. It’s better this way.
When I had Ellie I held her to my breast and cried, hysterically. Anthony was alarmed, he didn’t know I was crying because I was so happy to hold my baby and know she was mine to keep and love forever.
Friday July 27th
Around six thirty this morning I hear the bang of Daniel’s front door.
I get out of bed and peek out of the curtains and I see Daniel striding down the path to the car. Tish follows, still in her pyjamas, her hair all ruffled, and, by the gate, they both stop and she clings to him and they kiss. He holds her close and squeezes her bottom. She stays by the gate as he gets into his sports car and watches as he makes the roof go down. Then she waves him off, waits a moment, staring after the car, turns and slowly plods up the path back to her door, her head down and her arms folded around her as though she’s a bit chilly.
I get back into bed and Anthony says, ‘what were you looking at?’
I say, ‘just our next door neighbours, I heard the bang of the door and I wondered what was happening.’
‘And what was happening?’ he says, sleepily.
‘Nothing.’ I reply and lie back down in bed beside him, the pillow soft and squishy, my arms up behind my head, looking at the ceiling. Who said the past was another country? Whoever it was, they were wrong. The past is another universe, as far away as that. What happened there stays there unless I remember it. And then I remember that there is not only her to fear, but the thing with the pearls, and my throat contracts and my stomach heaves as I feel them again, smooth and creamy running through my fingers, hard and unforgiving when they’re tight around my throat, cool and firm rubbing between my legs.
And yet there is Anthony breathing, gently, rhythmically, peacefully beside me and I remind myself that this is my reality, not a shameful past.
Saturday July 28th
This morning the children wake us up, bursting into the bedroom at six thirty.
I tell myself again that the shadow of the past is just that, a shadow. The present is me, Anthony and our two little girls cuddled up in bed on a Saturday morning.
When Anthony takes the girls to the pond to feed the ducks I go up to the attic. Holding my breath I move the case containing rolls of spare wallpaper and put my hand into the blackness between the rafters until I can feel it, the box. I have brought a tiny torch, the emergency one from the kitchen, and I shine it down on the black steel. I know it ‘s locked, but I put my hand down anyway and tug at the lid to make sure. It doesn’t budge. I visualize where the key lies, hidden underneath some cotton wool in a matchbox in my bedside drawer, untouched for fifteen years, unseen even.
My secrets are safe.
On my way downstairs I go into the bedroom and kneel down by my bedside drawer and for a moment I can’t see the matchbox, and my heart beats like a drum in my ears, but then, as I push my hand right to the back, I feel its rough sides. I pull it out. The key is there. For a moment it lies, faintly glinting in the palm of my hand, the guardian of my peace of mind, and then I put it back. The time will come to destroy the contents of that box, it’s just not quite yet.
Monday July 30th
I bump into Tish today and she looks tired. And preoccupied. Daniel has gone away on one of his business trips and I wonder if Tish is worried about his fidelity, if he is, as Hillary Clinton famously said, ‘a dog that’s hard to keep on the porch’? I think of that wink, about his talk of kindred spirits, and I know I wouldn’t want him as my husband, travelling alone and staying in 5star hotels, perhaps never telling me the truth of how he spends his evenings.
Sitting next to Anthony, suddenly I want to tell him the truth about my past. The thing that happened when I was a schoolgirl, when I took a wrong turn, when I acted against my nature. But I stop myself, because although I know that that girl doesn’t exist anymore, I can’t be sure that Anthony would think that. Worse, he might say, the girl is the precursor of the woman. And maybe then he would say I am not the woman he thought I was, the respectable wife and mother. How I hate that word ‘respectable’, what a cruel measure it can be. My father used it to cast me away, and I hear it too often on Anthony’s lips to make me feel sure of him.
Once Anthony’s brother -in-law told him he had cheated on his sister and Anthony said he would never speak to him again, and he hasn’t, even though his sister begged him to.
‘Please forget he told you anything, please welcome him back into the family,’ she said after she had forgiven him and taken him back into her life. But Anthony was adamant, Rob had been unfaithful and even if his sister had forgiven him, he wouldn’t. Rob had disrespected the family. He’d done it once, so he’d do it again. That is how men make judgements. I’ve seen it. They take a pride in being right and not changing their minds, in being unforgiving.
And Anthony has no secrets in his past. The only bad thing that happened I already know about, although not from him, but from his mother. He was engaged to a girl before me and one day she took the train to Brighton, just a one-way ticket, got drunk on her own on the beach, and then she took off all her clothes, piling them neatly, and walked into the sea and drowned herself. His mother told me because she said she wanted to assure me that it wasn’t anything Anthony had done, she was just a very neurotic young woman, with a troubled past. I never dared mention it to him because he never spoke about her to me, not about her death, only that he had once been engaged and it hadn’t worked out. His mother said the verdict was suicide whilst of unbalanced mind, so there’s nothing unknown to come out. His past is transparent. But if your past is opaque it seems eventually to catch up with you, whatever you do. Every programme I see on tv seems to be about someone’s secret past re-emerging to turn their lives upside down, to take away the certainties. Nothing and no one disappears, not nowadays. Except through choice, like him.
Now she’s eighteen one day I could open the door or pick up the phone and she could be there. Would I know her? Perhaps she looks like him, blonde and blue-eyed. Would I feel a connection of blood, a maternal yearning?
Thursday August 2nd
Pop round to invite Tish to meet some friends of mine who are coming round next Wednesday, and Daniel answers the door. He’s wearing shorts and a navy blue t shirt that looks as though it has been washed a hundred times, so it must be a favourite. He asks me to come in because Tish is upstairs getting a splinter out of Jamie's foot but I say I can just leave a message. He is holding a can of beer and his nails are short and clean and white and there is the tiniest bit of froth on his upper lip. He smiles and says I’m very kind and Tish is lucky to have me for a friend. His lips are the pink of a rose bud and I wonder if, while he was away, he was faithful, or if someone kissed him.
Then he leans closer towards me, so close I can feel his breath on my face, and his eyes are bright as he murmurs, 'you smell delicious,’ and I feel my heart give an uncomfortable thud and I stumble on the doorstep. He grasps my elbow to steady me, ‘watch yourself,’ he says, the palm of his hand encasing the joint of my arm. I get my balance and pull my arm away but as I walk down his path and up our own I feel his eye on me as he stands at his door taking long, slow drinks from his can.
Friday August 3rd
Sally and George, Daniel and Tish, me and Anthony all go to the cinema. Sally had arranged it, not including Daniel and Tish originally but when Tom and Ellen couldn't make it Anthony suggested that they might like to come instead as Sally already had the tickets. I make sure I don’t sit next to Daniel but between Anthony and Tish. During a scary bit she buries her head in Daniel’s shoulder and he puts his arm round her. When the lights come up his arm is still there, only two centimetres from me. I can see the individual hairs on his arm, dark and wiry.
They can’t stay for the meal afterwards because the babysitter has to be home by ten thirty and I ask Tish who she is using. She tells me the girl has come from an agency. I tell her that I have a whole list of reliable girls she should try and Daniel tells Tish that next time they need a baby sitter she must ask me. He turns to me and thanks me, looking directly into my eyes.
The way to our restaurant and where their car is parked lies along the same narrow pavement. At first I am beside Anthony, but then we go down to single file, and when there is space for two again Daniel slips into step beside me while Anthony is ahead with Tish. I hasten to catch up with them but Daniel places his hand on my forearm, slowing my steps and drawing me closer. His eyes are laughing as he leans down to my ear and whispers, ‘have you ever thought of doing something naughty?’ I say nothing but shake my arm free. He laughs quietly and touches my shoulder. ‘Hey,’ he says, ‘I know those big innocent eyes are just a disguise. You can’t fool me, even if you can fool your husband.’
‘Anthony,’ I call out. ‘Wait for me.’
Chapter Two: Grownup Ice-cream
Samantha
Saturday August 4th
Tish rings to ask if I can collect her kids to take them to the party that Ellie and Nicola are going to. She is in the middle of making the jam I gave her the recipe for and she says it’s crucial that it’s not left for a moment or it might burn. Daniel is out so he can’t bring them round.
When I go round to see Tish her kitchen is piled high with sticky pots and cut up fruit, so I say I’ll pick the boys up as well so she can have a bit more time to sort things out. She hesitates at first, she says she thinks it will be too much trouble, and then she wonders out loud if Daniel will be back and then he could pick all the kids up. I tell her not to worry about it, I am more than happy.
Then, when I bring the kids back, Daniel opens the door wide saying, ‘come in, come in, I’ve got ice cream’ and the kids stampede into the house.
‘Girls!’ I say, still on the doorstep, ‘you’ve had enough sugar already!’ But they’re already out of sight so I go in after them, asking, ‘has Tish finished the jam yet?’
But Tish isn’t in the kitchen.
‘She’s gone to the shops – something about buying jam jars.’ Daniel says, pointing to the garden, ‘go out there, sit down, take a break.’
I hesitate for a moment but I can hear the boys shouting, Ellie squealing and the splash of water so I go out. There are two wicker chairs on the patio, side by side, and I perch on the edge of one, watching the kids as they throw balls into the paddling pool, trying to splash each other. Daniel brings out Smarties cones and they storm up for them. He gives my girls their ice creams but he holds the boys cones high above their heads making them jump up and down like dogs before he will let them have them. When the little ones can’t peel off the wrappers he kneels down and rips them off, chucking the rubbish on the ground. He looks up at me and laughs.
'Little monsters,’ he says.
He goes inside again and comes out with two glasses of what looks like white wine.
‘No thanks,’ I say.
‘Go on, just a sip. Treat yourself. Grownup ice cream.’ He sits down beside me. ‘Cheers’.
I can see my house next door, tall and strong, and my apple tree over the fence. I take a sip of wine.
‘I was only joking the other night, you know. You don’t need to be afraid of me.’ He says. His eyes are twinkling. I nod. There’s a pause.
‘We’re all off on holiday to Italy soon. My parents have a house in Tuscany, near Siena. I love Italy, my best holidays have been there.’ I nod again. I can see the girls have almost finished their icecream. They are sitting on the ground with their legs crossed, concentrating, with the smallest of Daniel’s two sons, Ricky. The other two boys have finished eating and are picking grass and throwing it into the paddling pool.
‘I learnt Italian years ago,’ he continues.
‘Oh,’ I say.
‘Certo, parlo Italiano bennissimo!’ He says. Then he laughs at my puzzled face, and tells me what he said in English, and pats my arm, once, twice, three times. The third time his hand lingers and he gives my arm a little squeeze.
‘I’m a cosmopolitan lad.’ He smiles, ‘and a little bit of native lingo never did any harm with the ladies.’
I shift in my chair.
‘I think, ‘ he continues,’ that of all the women I’ve had the great pleasure of knowing, in Italy, England and Australia, I definitely prefer the English.‘ He pauses. ‘Women like Tish.’ He pauses again. ‘And you.’
‘I probably ought to go now.’ I say, putting down the glass of wine, and half getting up.
‘Oh, don’t be so silly. I’m just having a bit of fun. Can’t you take a joke?’
I sit down again.
‘Let’s talk about something else if you’re going to be so sensitive. Let’s see, have you ever been to Australia? It’s a great country. ‘
‘No,’ I say.
‘I’ve got relatives there,’ he says, raising his glass to his lips. He puts the glass down and looks at me. ‘Uncles, aunts. A cousin.’
‘Ah.’ I say.
‘You should go. I’m sure my cousin would be delighted to put you up.’ I am aware of that birthmarked eye watching me as I blush. He carries on. ‘Yes, he’s a good guy, my cousin - blond, blue eyed, typical Australian look, great sportsman…got a fantastic photograph collection…..’ He pauses, and then in a softer, huskier voice, as though to himself, he mentions the name I have not heard in over nineteen years. I say nothing. He puts his left hand on my knee, confidently. ‘You look pale,’ he says. ‘Are you alright?’ His eyes have darkened, his look inscrutable.
I push his hand away and get up, shakily, and say that I’ve suddenly remembered that I have to put a pie in the oven for dinner and must go now. I call out to the girls and practically run out of the garden and through the house, almost skidding on a patch of sticky jam on the floor, with my daughters racing to catch up with me.
When we get in to my house the girls are laughing and squealing and saying, ‘Mummy, you are so funny,’ ‘did you see Jamie pee in the pool? Is that why you ran away?’ I tell them to go and watch a film but Mummy must just go upstairs for a moment.
‘What for?’ Nicola says,’ I want you to watch with us.’
‘No, no,’ I say, ‘Mummy just has to quickly……do something Daddy asked her to help with. Something special for his work.’ I run upstairs and lie down on my bed, my head feeling as though it’s going to split open like an overripe fruit. Daniel’s cousin. Does Daniel know? Did they talk about me? Did Nick show him the photographs? Will he tell people? My husband?
The girls poke their heads around the door and whisper,
‘Mummy, are you alright?’
‘Poor Mummy,’ Ellie says and they creep in and pat me gently on my stomach.
When Anthony comes in he sniffs the air and says, ‘but where’s the pie? I just bumped into Daniel and he said you were putting a pie in the oven for dinner.’
‘Oh that,’ I say. ‘I thought it was in the fridge but it wasn’t. I’m cooking spaghetti bolognaise instead.’ I smile brightly and then I continue, ‘I’d dropped off the kids from the party and he asked me in for a drink and then I suddenly remembered the non-existent pie!’ I laugh. ‘Silly me.’
‘Yes, he told me you had a drink.’ He pauses and looks at me closely. ‘For a moment I thought you weren’t going to tell me.’
‘I didn’t want a drink, but I didn’t want to offend him,’ I say.
Anthony doesn’t say anything but just nods and goes into the garden.
Monday August 6th
Tish comes round to our house for a chat. She brings the kids and they play in the garden while we make coffee in the kitchen. Tish watches them through the window – they’re so little and the paddling pool is out. She asks me about Anthony’s estate agency, and I explain how he set it up years ago and after a long, long time it’s really coming to something. He loves knowing about houses and sometimes, when there’s a real beauty that comes on the market he lets me go round with him and look at it.
Tish doesn’t say anything. She is looking out of the window, watching the children to make sure they are safe, as agreed, while I bustle about making the coffee and even heating milk in the microwave, prattling about Anthony.
As I take the cups down from the dresser out of the corner of my eye I think I see her wipe away a tear.
She sighs and, not looking at me, says in a low, miserable voice that Daniel won’t talk about his work, he thinks that either she won’t understand or she would find it boring. Recently he’s been doing a lot of work in Paris but he’s never asked Tish to come along, although before the kids she used to go all the time. Usually, just for the weekend, tacked on here and there, but at least every other trip. She smiles faintly and looks directly at me, ‘Daniel thinks kids should only be looked after by their mothers,’ she says, ‘like he was.’
At that moment Ellie runs in shouting that Jamie has bitten her. She has bite marks on her arm, although her skin is not broken, and it takes some time to calm everybody down, but eventually peace is restored.
We go outside to drink our coffee and I see that now my two girls are playing by themselves in the Wendy house while the boys are battling in the pool, splashing water in each others faces, throwing toy boats rather than floating them. Tish doesn’t seem to notice. I take a deep breath and ask her if she knows the relatives in Australia. She shakes her head and says that she has never met them, although Daniel was close to them once and spent his early twenties in Australia. I ask her if she would like to go there and she says no, not really. She drops her voice and murmurs, ‘it would be just more of his family telling me what to do.’
There is a pause.
‘Tish, why did you come to this particular village? There are so many you could have chosen, why this one?’
She sighs and shakes her head. ‘Daniel chose it.’ She pauses, chewing her bottom lip. ‘Daniel, and I……we had some problems. I didn’t really want to leave London, my friends, the place I knew.’ She gives a small smile, more with her mouth than with her eyes, ‘I used to take the boys to the park and there was a little café in the middle where I met up with the other Mums. We’d have a coffee and the kids would play in the playground. It was fun.’ I pour her out another cup of coffee and she takes a sip. ‘Then I found out that Daniel was having an affair with one of my friends………’ She speaks so quietly I can barely hear her. I wonder if it was one of the women she sat with in the café.
‘How awful,’ I murmur.
‘Anyway,’ she continues, ’we got through it, but he thought it might be a good idea to come somewhere else away from ….my friend…..’ she presses her lips together, ‘but it needed to be commutable for him, and he’d heard of this place from someone as being nice….so, here we are.’
‘And why did you choose next door?’ I ask.
‘Well…it was pure chance we saw it, although I suppose it might have been on our list. I don’t really remember. Dan was in charge. But we drove down to look at the village and by the time we got here the boys were screaming, so we stopped to let them run around the pond. Then we saw the sweet shop, and the playground, and a great big ‘For Sale’ sign up outside the house, and we go, wow, a sweet shop, a pond, and a nice big house. It just seemed so easy.’
I nod.
‘And you like it?’
‘Yes. As much as anywhere.’ She adds, with a shadow of a smile.
I lean over and squeeze her hand.
At that moment Jamie jumps in the air and lands with a crash on the side of the paddling pool and all the water cascades out, and his brothers hold down the edges so that in seconds it’s almost empty. Ellie and Nicola come out of the Wendy house and Nicola bursts into tears.
Tish leaps up, saying, ‘sorry, sorry, sorry,’ and tries to make the boys stand up and save some of the water. They scream at her and Jamie pulls down the younger boys’ bathers and Tish shouts at them, ‘stop it you little monsters.’ Jamie stands in front of her, his legs stiff and rigid and spits in her face. Ellie, Nicola and I stare.
‘Right,’ Tish shrieks, ‘back home now all of you.’ They run off like a pack of wild dogs through the side gate with Tish chasing them saying, ‘wait a minute, what about your clothes?’
I call after her, ‘don’t worry I’ll bring them over later,’ as she races out. I close the gate and the girls and I look at each other.
‘Thank goodness those horrible boys are gone,’ says Nicola. I agree with her but only in my head.
Half an hour later I have gathered up the clothes and I take them round, the girls come with me but only because I don’t want to leave them on their own now that we have re-filled the paddling pool. They stand behind me and won’t look at Tish as she opens the door, I can hear the boys screaming and her hair is in a complete rats’ nest and her shirt is covered in paint splodges. She apologises again but I say it doesn’t matter. She asks if we would like to come in but I lie and say that I have left the girls’ tea in the oven and it will be inedible if we don’t go back immediately.
When we get back into the house Nicola says to me, ‘Mummy you told a lie. Does that mean you will go to hell and burn?’ Her eyes are round and innocent and I don’t know where she has heard this nonsense, although I have told her it is wrong to lie. But not the bit about hell and burning.
‘No, darling. What I told was a white lie.’ I say, and she frowns.
‘Does that mean that you won’t burn but perhaps freeze in ice?’ she says, sounding hopeful.
‘It means,’ I say, ‘that if I hadn’t told it you would be playing with those little boys and I would be having a cup of tea with their Mummy.’
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I like white lies then.’ She goes towards the door, ‘but I think you’ll still go to hell.’
Chapter Three: The Legend of Minty Barlow
Minty
OK, so here it goes. What does anyone do when they’re sitting for hours and hours in a Travelodge in the middle of nowhere? I’m fed up with Twitter and Tumblr, films and iplayer and any other bit of media I can access, so I’m going to write. I’m going to write about the adventure of my life, so far. The Legend of Minty Barlow.
It’s a story that starts with a stupid, thoughtless girl, a mean fucking bitch who gave her baby away when it was a few minutes old.
Yes, gave it away.
Yes, Samantha Collingwood, Birth Mother, Bitch Mother, I am writing about YOU!!!
The thing is, when you look at her photo, this girl, this soon to be a Mum but not showing yet, this Samantha, she looks like a really nice person. Big brown puppy eyes, long blonde hair, slim, an uncertain smile and, of course, the school uniform – mustn’t forget that, must we? Now, nearly nineteen years on, I can report that she still looks very much the same, although her hair is brown and short, cut in a bob with a fringe, but still slim and with those big, soft brown eyes. When I saw her she was also, funnily enough, wearing what you might call a uniform, a middle-class-rich-stay-at –home-Mum uniform - jeans, crisp white shirt and knee high boots. Jingling earrings (yes, I was that close!). Pretty. And with a handsome husband, two little girls, a big four by four and a thatched cottage.
I am not part of that set up of course.
I am the baby who was given away.
Yes, I am the baby, dear mother, but I am all grown up now and I’ve got a lot of questions. That’s why I’m here, just down the road from your lovely house.
She saw me when I saw her. Her eyes slipped over me and then returned, in the way that a lot of peoples eyes return, just to check me out, can’t quite believe what they see, but when they realize I know they’re doing it, they look away, embarrassed. Anyone would think I had a deformity or something. It hurt, her doing that. Of course it hurt. My own biological mother did not recognize me, her blood did not call out to my blood, she looked and then she looked away and went back to getting on with her own life. But it’s not going to be that easy. Not if I have my way. I just need a plan, and until I have one, I am playing a waiting game. A waiting in a Travelodge in the middle of nowhere but only a mile or so away from you, Mummy, game. And while I wait, what better way than to write the story of Samantha Collingwood nee Parsons aka Birth Mother and her daughter Minty? Although it's got a way to go yet, we're only just beginning.
Well, let us start with some facts.
First fact. I was born nearly nineteen years ago in a hospital to a schoolgirl who gave me away immediately to Brenda and Richard Barlow, a childless couple. Biological father unknown.
Second, for ten glorious years I lived under the illusion that I was Brenda and Richard’s natural child, that I had a place in their family by right. I even had a brother, Pete (really their son, I remember Brenda being pregnant – couldn’t fit on her knee). I was a totally normal, quite bright, ok kid.
Third fact. When I was ten my mother took me aside and told me that I was not their biological child. Pete was, but I wasn’t. I was, in fact, nothing to do with them, genetically, although of course they loved me to bits, I was chosen, a dream come true etc etc etc….. I mean now, looking back, it was blatantly obvious and I can’t think why I hadn’t realized it myself – I didn’t look anything like them. I am blonde, blue eyed, tall and slim and they are dark, short and fat. So, she told me and I was upset. Hugely upset. Who wouldn’t be?
At first I was convinced that they had stolen me from my real Mum. I was furious, I ran away several times trying to find my Mum, caused trouble, screamed and yelled a lot about them not being my ‘real’ parents. Then, one day, I took a long cool look at my situation and I realized that I was in a good place, and also that, if I was too bad, they could chuck me out. Pete took the trouble to come up with this little gem of course, so I settled down, stopped shouting and asked no questions. I tried to pretend it wasn’t true.
Fourth fact. There are trigger points when the past crashes into the present, and they are inescapable. It happened to me when I was fifteen, bunking off school (double geography – what a yawn) with a couple of lads. We were in the park having a smoke and then, after a bit, one of them wanted me to go for a walk. We wandered along the paths side by side, not talking, not touching, just walking. It was a spring day and I fell to wondering if this was how my BM had been. A girl in school uniform, with a bag and her books, skiving off to be with a boy and then…then it just happened. I stole a glance at Steve. He was staring at the ground, a dogged expression on his face, his hand in his pocket fiddling with some coins. I could hear them chink. His hair was long and floppy and fell forwards and back as he strode along and he had a fair smattering of spots on his cheeks. Not the big yellow ones, just the little pimply ones, so not too gross. At that moment he looked up and caught my eye, grinned, and took my hand. ‘Let’s go in here,’ he said and led me into the bushes that just happened, oh so conveniently, to be beside the path. We plunged in, I wasn’t unwilling, I wanted to see how far this would go, and I can’t lie but I was curious.
In amongst the bushes he suddenly sat down on the dry earth and pulled me down beside him. He grabbed my neck and yanked my face towards his and pushed his tongue down my throat. Everyone has probably had the same first experience, a sudden intrusion of a wet, warm tongue between your lips and half way down your throat, while you’re thinking, ‘and this is meant to be fun?’ but you stick with it because it’s what everyone does and because he seems to like it so much. There was a lot of saliva around and I could smell the cigarettes on his breath and thought I could feel the chewing gum he still had in his mouth with my tongue. Steve’s heart was beating like a drum, shaking his body, shaking his sweaty hands as he struggled to get them inside my shirt and I struggled to prevent him. We both paused for breath at the same time, I was gasping, and he said, ‘come on then,’ and slid his hand up my skirt and down my knickers. I grabbed his arm and pulled his hand out, rolled over and stood up, panting. ‘What’s wrong with you? Why d’you come in here if you didn’t want it?’ He said, his eyes cold. And he was right, why had I? My chest was heaving as I stared down at him but I didn’t reply. I re-adjusted my skirt, picked up my bag and hastened out from the bushes, probably still breathing a little heavily, and went home. My first sexual experience, at fifteen, a sort of tussle. Was that what had happened with BM? Had I been conceived so thoughtlessly? Without love? Just a bit of tumbling around on hard earth? I wasn’t on any kind of contraception so if I had let Steve do it to me then I could have got pregnant. As pointlessly and unromantically as that. Bang!
When I got home, as I plodded up the stairs, these thoughts rattling in my head, I decided I needed to know more. I knew where Mum kept special things and she was out. Everyone was out.
I slipped off my shoes and went into her bedroom; it smelt of the cologne of which she was very fond (such an easy present, she must have had a cupboard full of bottles I had given her over the years). I went softly round the bed, trailing my hand over the white corduroy counterpane, letting my fingers bump gently over the ridges as I passed, feelings of guilt rising and subsiding.
I opened the wardrobe door and it made the very slightest creaking sound. I knew no one was in the house but it still sent a thrill of fear through me. I knelt down. My mouth was dry and I licked my lips, my heart pounding. I counted up to ten, ten heart beats, my knees deep in the soft carpet, my thighs tense as I held my head rigid, listening, making sure there really was silence. Then I leant forward, my forehead snuzzling aside the dresses, and began to rummage and poke amongst Mums’ private stuff. There were old letters and diaries, which I ignored, not looking; her jewellery box with the string of pearls and the diamond ring she sometimes wore on special occasions. I put that to one side as well. Then, at the very back, I found the box labelled ‘Melinda’. I brought it out and my breath felt thin and scratchy as I held it up to my chest, both hands hanging onto it as though I expected it to sprout wings and fly away.
It wasn’t an exciting box to look at, just a shoebox, so not big and not made of any precious material, not even a nice colour. Pale green, ‘minty’ ha ha, like a box from Clarks, and actually, when I examined it, I saw that it was a box from Clarks and that someone, presumably Mum, had brought home a pair of size 6 black court shoes, ‘Giselle’, in it. But now it had my name on it. It was my box. I put it down carefully beside me and hastily pushed everything back, closed the door and, taking it up, tip toed back to my room. I laid the box on my bed, sat down beside it and for a while just stared at it. Supposing Mum had lied and it was full of newspaper clippings saying I had been found in the loo at Heathrow? Or perhaps it would have a cutting about my BM and she had been a murder victim, or a prostitute, or a drug addict or a woman who had had so many children she just couldn’t bear to keep another one?
I was frightened. But what sustained me, and it was funny when you think about it, because I’d been pretty rotten to Mum sometimes, was that I trusted that she had broadly told me the truth about my birth. Just not enough. This was the treasure chest of Minty Barlow’s history, the stash of information that would tell me who I was.
I heard a car go by. That decided me, the tick of the clock was measuring the minutes to when someone would come back and interrupt. I opened the box. There was not a lot inside.
A photo. BM. Samantha. As I said, sweet looking.
I put it aside to study more closely, later. My birth certificate was not here, it was downstairs in the filing cabinet with the passports, I knew that. But there were documents about the adoption. Quite a little pile. Two more photos of a family group, two girls standing under a tree beside an old couple, so fuzzy you couldn’t really make out their features. They all stood stiffly with serious faces as though they were waiting for some disaster to occur. Which it had of course. Me. I had occurred. I put them down and riffled through the official papers, and there, tucked in amongst them, was a sheet of yellowing paper, thin like the kind that an old aunt might have written on, not modern paper at all. I unfolded it with trembling hands. What did I think would be on it? Was I hoping that Samantha had written a loving note for her baby on it? Of course I was.
This is what it said.
‘Oh baby, baby, it’s a wild world
It’s hard to get by just upon a smile.
Sam P.’
That’s all. The Sam P was done in scrawly italics and there was a little smiley face drawn in the middle of the P. I was excited. Look at that, I thought, here is a poem Sam P wrote for her baby, for me, and Mum had kept it from me. Sam P had loved me! Mum had lied! Or at the very least omitted an important piece of evidence of my BM's love. Well, the only evidence. Probably she had been desperately poor and longed to keep me but had been prevented by horrible parents, the two in the photos – the man had a thin, cruel face from what I could make out – and Sam’s smile simply hadn't been enough. My heart soared. I shoved all the other papers back in the box, leaving the photos and the poem on the bed, and ran back into Mum’s room. I knelt down and pushed the box right to the back of the wardrobe again and heaped some of the other stuff on top. Then, for several days I walked around with a light hearted buzz in my head, feeling like a princess. I couldn’t stop smiling.
Fifth fact in the Minty legend. There’s always something to let you down. Those stupid words – they were just the words of an old pop song, nothing special at all, not meant for me, just a bit of scribble. I heard it on the radio in the kitchen. Mum was singing along to it, waving a wooden spoon, ‘Oh Minty, I love this song! Listen!’ Why was it there amongst the serious stuff? Probably no reason, just an accident of fate, like me.
That was when I really kind of flipped, just for a while. Not a good part of the story so I’ll leave that out for the moment.
Sixth fact. I’m a stupid, fucking sucker, clinging to hope, giving myself reasons for doing idiotic things. That’s why I’m here in this Travelodge, which some people would say is crazy, because I believe in a dream, proof positive of stupidity. This is how it happened.
I had been out three nights on the go, drinking, dancing, snogging, smoking, popping the odd pill, getting shouted at by Dad, dragging around school trying to keep my eyes open, having Mum trying to hug me and ‘have a chat’. Anyway, I went to bed on Friday afternoon, exhausted, and a little bit tearful and sorry for myself. Nobody loved me, nobody spoke to me except to tell me off, you know the kind of thing. I fell into a deep sleep from which I was woken by the ringing of the front door bell. I stumbled groggily downstairs and when I opened the door I was dazzled by a blinding white light (I know, pretty standard so far, a little bit of a cliché even) and out of the light stepped my BM. I couldn’t see her face properly but I knew it was her and I could feel her arms around me and the softness of her breasts as I laid my head against them (keep with me, this is not a lesbian fantasy but a mother/daughter thing) and I heard her whisper to me, ‘my love, my Minty,' and I felt a wave of total happiness.
That was it.
I woke up with a jolt and realized I had been dreaming but then I thought, Jesus! What if I found my BM and it was like that, not the bright light of course, but the happiness? There was a chance that it could be like that, I told myself, that she would want me. It was possible that when she met me she would say, ‘I've missed you so much, I need you back in my life.’
So that’s it, the six facts that have put me here, sitting in a Travelodge, alone, but only half a mile from the most important person in my life – the woman who gave me life. And denied me her love.
Present Tense
Chapter One: The Birthmarked Eye
Samantha
Saturday July 7th
The playground gate clangs shut.
I turn my head and see a man in tight jeans and white shirt loping over the grass towards the bench where I'm sitting. Three little boys run, whooping, over to the roundabout where Ellie and Nicola are perched making daisy chains. When the man is right in front of me he pauses for a moment, grins, and sits down beside me, so close I have to shift along. He gives a sigh and then stretches - first his arms above his head, then his legs out in front of him - and shakes back his curly brown hair. I move again. Just a few inches. I don’t want to seem rude even if he is, but I've never seen him before and it's only us in the playground, even if I can see my house from where I'm sitting.
‘Hi, we haven't met before but I’m Daniel,’ he says in a voice that's husky and intimate. He holds out his hand and for a moment I hesitate, but then I slip mine into his. He has a firm grip. ‘We’ve just moved into number six on the Green. Me, Tish and the boys.’ He nods over at his children without taking his eyes off me, and I glance over and see my two girls standing stock still by the roundabout as the boys spin it round as fast as it will go.
‘Oh, right, I’m Samantha. I live at number four,’ I mumble. He lets go of my hand and there seems to be a pause. ‘Next door.’ I add, unnecessarily. There's a shrill cry from the children and over Daniel’s shoulder, I see my girls racing to the swings. I clear my throat and sit up straighter but he stays relaxed, crossing his long legs and shaking his hair back again.
‘Samantha,’ he says, rolling my name around in his mouth, ‘okay.’ Out of the corner of my eye I see him smile to himself, before continuing, ‘yeah, anyway, I saw you come over here so I thought I’d bring the boys and let my wife get on with unpacking.’
‘I suppose it’s easier without the kids getting into everything.’ I agree.
‘Tell me about it! And who’d have thought the junk that a family can have? Last time I moved I only had two suitcases.’
‘Your poor wife, she must be up to her ears.’ I say.
He laughs and then places his left hand, adorned by a thick gold ring on the fourth finger, in the narrow space between us, touching the spread out yellow cotton of my dress. He leans round towards me, forcing me to meet his eyes, and says, ‘but, Samantha, tell me - haven't we met before?’
I open my mouth to deny it but then something about him lights a spark in my brain. There is something familiar about him. His nose, the shape of his face? But he is dark haired and dark eyed and that other man was blond with eyes the colour of the summer sky. I say ‘no, never,’ and he leans back on the bench and sighs. Then he looks at me out of the corner of his eyes and gives a flicker of a wink.
I get up and call the girls.
When we’re home I let the girls watch a cartoon because of making them come home early. In the kitchen I pour myself a large glass of water because my mouth is so dry. I must have imagined that wink. And the coincidence of Daniel looking like that other man is just that, a coincidence.
Sunday July 8th
I am upstairs folding towels and as I glance out of the window I see Daniel washing the car. He is wearing jeans and no shirt and I can see the muscles in his arms as he lifts the hosepipe high in the air to jet a stream of water onto the roof. It’s a people carrier he’s cleaning, the family car. He has another one for himself, a sleek, shiny black sports car which he keeps in the garage. His shoulders are broad and his jeans sit low on his slim hips and I can see that he is not as tall as the man he reminded me of, nor as athletic in build. The boys come running out and he turns the hose on them, making them scream with laughter and run away. He drops the hose and chases the littlest one, picks him up and throws him in the air.
And then he turns and looks up at our house, his eyes fixed and penetrating, the child still held tight in his arms, but crying now.
I let the curtain fall back into place and go downstairs to make the girls supper. When Anthony comes in I throw my arms around him, and the girls laugh and scream, ‘me too, me too,’ and wrap themselves around our legs. Anthony says, ‘my lovely girls! I’m glad to be home!’
Monday July 9th
I have the dream again. After all these years, as fresh as the first time.
Tuesday July 10th
When I’m filling the dishwasher I have a sudden thought, about her. Without even calculating I know exactly how old she is now, today. She is eighteen years old, ten months and eight days. I know that, but I don’t know her name.
Wednesday July 18th
Anthony tells me he bumped into Daniel outside when he put out the rubbish. He says he seems very nice and we’re having a drink with him and his wife Tish next week.
‘You should have made more of an effort with Tish before now,’ he says. ‘It’s important they know what kind of people we are so that we don’t get any trouble with noise or anything. You need to establish good communications with her.’ I say I’m sorry but I don’t offer any excuses – there’s never any point.
Thursday July 19th
Just manage to exchange a few words with Tish when she’s in the front garden, which I report back to Anthony.
Friday July 20th
We go to the Crown at seven thirty, the four of us walking across the Green together. When we left our house the girls were in their pyjamas lying on the sofa watching ‘Snow White’ with the baby sitter knitting, but I could hear Daniel’s boys still squealing in their garden.
I sit between Anthony and Tish and opposite Daniel at one of the old oak tables in the main room. The French windows are open and the garden is full of people drinking and eating, although the food isn’t very good here. Anthony is talking about the village, about other neighbours around the Green setting out the atmosphere of quiet and respectability which he values so much, and Daniel says,
‘That’s just what we thought. And it’s great to be next door to a family – Tish was lonely in London and our house was way too small for three little boys.’ Tish and I say nothing. I try a smile but Tish just looks into the distance.
‘Do you like the country?’ I ask her.
‘Yes, of course.’ She replies, and then gets up to go to the Ladies.
‘Another round.’ Anthony says and goes to the bar.
Daniel leans across the table so that his face is only a half a metre away from me and says, ‘we’re so glad we came to this village. It’s so nice to have you right next door.’
I stare down at the tabletop, which is wooden and stained with the rings of beer glasses. When I look up again, he is just as close. He has long curly eyelashes and brown eyes and one of them has a little dark smudge in it which I know, some people say, is a birthmark in the eye. It brings back a memory so strong that it takes my breath away.
He, that man I have fought to forget, had a birthmark. It was on his right buttock, raised and chocolate brown, like a miniature doughnut. I can still feel it with my fingertips if I imagine my hand running over his body, even though it was so long ago. I haven’t thought of that little bump for years and yet, as my fingers lie on the table, my forefinger rubs over a breadcrumb and remembers the sensation.
‘What d’you think? Are you glad we’re here?’ Daniel’s voice is low, intimate.
‘Of course, it’s always nice to have new neighbours,’ I say. He smiles and leans back in his chair, staring at me.
‘I don’t know why I thought I knew you,’ he says. I say nothing. I stare down at the table again, at those rings, at the mark where a cigarette has been stubbed out from the days when you were allowed to smoke inside. ‘But it was a very strong feeling. Maybe it’s like kindred spirits,’ he says.
‘I don’t believe in kindred spirits.’ I say, briefly looking up.
Daniel smiles with his mouth but not his eyes. ‘What a shame,’ he says.
I get up to go to the Ladies. As I walk across the pub I can feel that birthmarked eye lingering on me.
Sunday July 22nd
I pop round to give Tish a copy of the re-cycling information that Anthony thinks they will need. The television is blaring and she turns to scream at the boys to turn it down.
‘Dan isn’t here at the moment,’ she says, ‘work as usual, ‘ and makes a little downward curve with her lips. ‘Is Anthony home?’
‘Yes,’ I smile, hovering on the doorstep,’ he’s free most weekends.’
‘Oh.’
‘And is usually home in the evenings by seven.’
‘Wow. Danny has really long hours. And now he’s got the commute as well.’ There’s a sudden loud crash from the sitting room and her eyes widen. ‘Better go,’ and she shuts the door.
I can see I’m going to have to try harder to be her friend, but the good thing is that Daniel won’t be around.
Tuesday July 24th
Manage to get Tish to come round for a coffee and somehow we get on to what it was like to give birth. She tells me that when Daniel was a little boy he liked to play football but that, one day, a bigger boy missed the ball and kicked him in the face and broke his nose. She says that he’s been afraid of blood ever since and when she had the kids he fainted. Each time. I tell her that Anthony didn’t fain but held my hand and told me that I would be fine because he was there. Maybe he was right, because I was ok, even though it hurt. Each of my two popped out like eggs from a bird.
What I don’t tell her is that no one held my hand the first time. I was alone in the delivery room, not even my mother or Babs was with me. As the pain gripped me I wondered if he knew, if somewhere, somehow he could feel what I was going through. Feeling it and hurting with me. When she was born I wasn’t allowed to hold her, not even for a minute, although I saw her. She had blue eyes, I remember that. The colour of cornflowers; the colour of the summer sky. Her face was pink and anxious, and they wrapped her tiny body tightly up in a white shawl. I held my arms out to hold her but they said, no, the decision has been taken. It’s better this way.
When I had Ellie I held her to my breast and cried, hysterically. Anthony was alarmed, he didn’t know I was crying because I was so happy to hold my baby and know she was mine to keep and love forever.
Friday July 27th
Around six thirty this morning I hear the bang of Daniel’s front door.
I get out of bed and peek out of the curtains and I see Daniel striding down the path to the car. Tish follows, still in her pyjamas, her hair all ruffled, and, by the gate, they both stop and she clings to him and they kiss. He holds her close and squeezes her bottom. She stays by the gate as he gets into his sports car and watches as he makes the roof go down. Then she waves him off, waits a moment, staring after the car, turns and slowly plods up the path back to her door, her head down and her arms folded around her as though she’s a bit chilly.
I get back into bed and Anthony says, ‘what were you looking at?’
I say, ‘just our next door neighbours, I heard the bang of the door and I wondered what was happening.’
‘And what was happening?’ he says, sleepily.
‘Nothing.’ I reply and lie back down in bed beside him, the pillow soft and squishy, my arms up behind my head, looking at the ceiling. Who said the past was another country? Whoever it was, they were wrong. The past is another universe, as far away as that. What happened there stays there unless I remember it. And then I remember that there is not only her to fear, but the thing with the pearls, and my throat contracts and my stomach heaves as I feel them again, smooth and creamy running through my fingers, hard and unforgiving when they’re tight around my throat, cool and firm rubbing between my legs.
And yet there is Anthony breathing, gently, rhythmically, peacefully beside me and I remind myself that this is my reality, not a shameful past.
Saturday July 28th
This morning the children wake us up, bursting into the bedroom at six thirty.
I tell myself again that the shadow of the past is just that, a shadow. The present is me, Anthony and our two little girls cuddled up in bed on a Saturday morning.
When Anthony takes the girls to the pond to feed the ducks I go up to the attic. Holding my breath I move the case containing rolls of spare wallpaper and put my hand into the blackness between the rafters until I can feel it, the box. I have brought a tiny torch, the emergency one from the kitchen, and I shine it down on the black steel. I know it ‘s locked, but I put my hand down anyway and tug at the lid to make sure. It doesn’t budge. I visualize where the key lies, hidden underneath some cotton wool in a matchbox in my bedside drawer, untouched for fifteen years, unseen even.
My secrets are safe.
On my way downstairs I go into the bedroom and kneel down by my bedside drawer and for a moment I can’t see the matchbox, and my heart beats like a drum in my ears, but then, as I push my hand right to the back, I feel its rough sides. I pull it out. The key is there. For a moment it lies, faintly glinting in the palm of my hand, the guardian of my peace of mind, and then I put it back. The time will come to destroy the contents of that box, it’s just not quite yet.
Monday July 30th
I bump into Tish today and she looks tired. And preoccupied. Daniel has gone away on one of his business trips and I wonder if Tish is worried about his fidelity, if he is, as Hillary Clinton famously said, ‘a dog that’s hard to keep on the porch’? I think of that wink, about his talk of kindred spirits, and I know I wouldn’t want him as my husband, travelling alone and staying in 5star hotels, perhaps never telling me the truth of how he spends his evenings.
Sitting next to Anthony, suddenly I want to tell him the truth about my past. The thing that happened when I was a schoolgirl, when I took a wrong turn, when I acted against my nature. But I stop myself, because although I know that that girl doesn’t exist anymore, I can’t be sure that Anthony would think that. Worse, he might say, the girl is the precursor of the woman. And maybe then he would say I am not the woman he thought I was, the respectable wife and mother. How I hate that word ‘respectable’, what a cruel measure it can be. My father used it to cast me away, and I hear it too often on Anthony’s lips to make me feel sure of him.
Once Anthony’s brother -in-law told him he had cheated on his sister and Anthony said he would never speak to him again, and he hasn’t, even though his sister begged him to.
‘Please forget he told you anything, please welcome him back into the family,’ she said after she had forgiven him and taken him back into her life. But Anthony was adamant, Rob had been unfaithful and even if his sister had forgiven him, he wouldn’t. Rob had disrespected the family. He’d done it once, so he’d do it again. That is how men make judgements. I’ve seen it. They take a pride in being right and not changing their minds, in being unforgiving.
And Anthony has no secrets in his past. The only bad thing that happened I already know about, although not from him, but from his mother. He was engaged to a girl before me and one day she took the train to Brighton, just a one-way ticket, got drunk on her own on the beach, and then she took off all her clothes, piling them neatly, and walked into the sea and drowned herself. His mother told me because she said she wanted to assure me that it wasn’t anything Anthony had done, she was just a very neurotic young woman, with a troubled past. I never dared mention it to him because he never spoke about her to me, not about her death, only that he had once been engaged and it hadn’t worked out. His mother said the verdict was suicide whilst of unbalanced mind, so there’s nothing unknown to come out. His past is transparent. But if your past is opaque it seems eventually to catch up with you, whatever you do. Every programme I see on tv seems to be about someone’s secret past re-emerging to turn their lives upside down, to take away the certainties. Nothing and no one disappears, not nowadays. Except through choice, like him.
Now she’s eighteen one day I could open the door or pick up the phone and she could be there. Would I know her? Perhaps she looks like him, blonde and blue-eyed. Would I feel a connection of blood, a maternal yearning?
Thursday August 2nd
Pop round to invite Tish to meet some friends of mine who are coming round next Wednesday, and Daniel answers the door. He’s wearing shorts and a navy blue t shirt that looks as though it has been washed a hundred times, so it must be a favourite. He asks me to come in because Tish is upstairs getting a splinter out of Jamie's foot but I say I can just leave a message. He is holding a can of beer and his nails are short and clean and white and there is the tiniest bit of froth on his upper lip. He smiles and says I’m very kind and Tish is lucky to have me for a friend. His lips are the pink of a rose bud and I wonder if, while he was away, he was faithful, or if someone kissed him.
Then he leans closer towards me, so close I can feel his breath on my face, and his eyes are bright as he murmurs, 'you smell delicious,’ and I feel my heart give an uncomfortable thud and I stumble on the doorstep. He grasps my elbow to steady me, ‘watch yourself,’ he says, the palm of his hand encasing the joint of my arm. I get my balance and pull my arm away but as I walk down his path and up our own I feel his eye on me as he stands at his door taking long, slow drinks from his can.
Friday August 3rd
Sally and George, Daniel and Tish, me and Anthony all go to the cinema. Sally had arranged it, not including Daniel and Tish originally but when Tom and Ellen couldn't make it Anthony suggested that they might like to come instead as Sally already had the tickets. I make sure I don’t sit next to Daniel but between Anthony and Tish. During a scary bit she buries her head in Daniel’s shoulder and he puts his arm round her. When the lights come up his arm is still there, only two centimetres from me. I can see the individual hairs on his arm, dark and wiry.
They can’t stay for the meal afterwards because the babysitter has to be home by ten thirty and I ask Tish who she is using. She tells me the girl has come from an agency. I tell her that I have a whole list of reliable girls she should try and Daniel tells Tish that next time they need a baby sitter she must ask me. He turns to me and thanks me, looking directly into my eyes.
The way to our restaurant and where their car is parked lies along the same narrow pavement. At first I am beside Anthony, but then we go down to single file, and when there is space for two again Daniel slips into step beside me while Anthony is ahead with Tish. I hasten to catch up with them but Daniel places his hand on my forearm, slowing my steps and drawing me closer. His eyes are laughing as he leans down to my ear and whispers, ‘have you ever thought of doing something naughty?’ I say nothing but shake my arm free. He laughs quietly and touches my shoulder. ‘Hey,’ he says, ‘I know those big innocent eyes are just a disguise. You can’t fool me, even if you can fool your husband.’
‘Anthony,’ I call out. ‘Wait for me.’
Chapter Two: Grownup Ice-cream
Samantha
Saturday August 4th
Tish rings to ask if I can collect her kids to take them to the party that Ellie and Nicola are going to. She is in the middle of making the jam I gave her the recipe for and she says it’s crucial that it’s not left for a moment or it might burn. Daniel is out so he can’t bring them round.
When I go round to see Tish her kitchen is piled high with sticky pots and cut up fruit, so I say I’ll pick the boys up as well so she can have a bit more time to sort things out. She hesitates at first, she says she thinks it will be too much trouble, and then she wonders out loud if Daniel will be back and then he could pick all the kids up. I tell her not to worry about it, I am more than happy.
Then, when I bring the kids back, Daniel opens the door wide saying, ‘come in, come in, I’ve got ice cream’ and the kids stampede into the house.
‘Girls!’ I say, still on the doorstep, ‘you’ve had enough sugar already!’ But they’re already out of sight so I go in after them, asking, ‘has Tish finished the jam yet?’
But Tish isn’t in the kitchen.
‘She’s gone to the shops – something about buying jam jars.’ Daniel says, pointing to the garden, ‘go out there, sit down, take a break.’
I hesitate for a moment but I can hear the boys shouting, Ellie squealing and the splash of water so I go out. There are two wicker chairs on the patio, side by side, and I perch on the edge of one, watching the kids as they throw balls into the paddling pool, trying to splash each other. Daniel brings out Smarties cones and they storm up for them. He gives my girls their ice creams but he holds the boys cones high above their heads making them jump up and down like dogs before he will let them have them. When the little ones can’t peel off the wrappers he kneels down and rips them off, chucking the rubbish on the ground. He looks up at me and laughs.
'Little monsters,’ he says.
He goes inside again and comes out with two glasses of what looks like white wine.
‘No thanks,’ I say.
‘Go on, just a sip. Treat yourself. Grownup ice cream.’ He sits down beside me. ‘Cheers’.
I can see my house next door, tall and strong, and my apple tree over the fence. I take a sip of wine.
‘I was only joking the other night, you know. You don’t need to be afraid of me.’ He says. His eyes are twinkling. I nod. There’s a pause.
‘We’re all off on holiday to Italy soon. My parents have a house in Tuscany, near Siena. I love Italy, my best holidays have been there.’ I nod again. I can see the girls have almost finished their icecream. They are sitting on the ground with their legs crossed, concentrating, with the smallest of Daniel’s two sons, Ricky. The other two boys have finished eating and are picking grass and throwing it into the paddling pool.
‘I learnt Italian years ago,’ he continues.
‘Oh,’ I say.
‘Certo, parlo Italiano bennissimo!’ He says. Then he laughs at my puzzled face, and tells me what he said in English, and pats my arm, once, twice, three times. The third time his hand lingers and he gives my arm a little squeeze.
‘I’m a cosmopolitan lad.’ He smiles, ‘and a little bit of native lingo never did any harm with the ladies.’
I shift in my chair.
‘I think, ‘ he continues,’ that of all the women I’ve had the great pleasure of knowing, in Italy, England and Australia, I definitely prefer the English.‘ He pauses. ‘Women like Tish.’ He pauses again. ‘And you.’
‘I probably ought to go now.’ I say, putting down the glass of wine, and half getting up.
‘Oh, don’t be so silly. I’m just having a bit of fun. Can’t you take a joke?’
I sit down again.
‘Let’s talk about something else if you’re going to be so sensitive. Let’s see, have you ever been to Australia? It’s a great country. ‘
‘No,’ I say.
‘I’ve got relatives there,’ he says, raising his glass to his lips. He puts the glass down and looks at me. ‘Uncles, aunts. A cousin.’
‘Ah.’ I say.
‘You should go. I’m sure my cousin would be delighted to put you up.’ I am aware of that birthmarked eye watching me as I blush. He carries on. ‘Yes, he’s a good guy, my cousin - blond, blue eyed, typical Australian look, great sportsman…got a fantastic photograph collection…..’ He pauses, and then in a softer, huskier voice, as though to himself, he mentions the name I have not heard in over nineteen years. I say nothing. He puts his left hand on my knee, confidently. ‘You look pale,’ he says. ‘Are you alright?’ His eyes have darkened, his look inscrutable.
I push his hand away and get up, shakily, and say that I’ve suddenly remembered that I have to put a pie in the oven for dinner and must go now. I call out to the girls and practically run out of the garden and through the house, almost skidding on a patch of sticky jam on the floor, with my daughters racing to catch up with me.
When we get in to my house the girls are laughing and squealing and saying, ‘Mummy, you are so funny,’ ‘did you see Jamie pee in the pool? Is that why you ran away?’ I tell them to go and watch a film but Mummy must just go upstairs for a moment.
‘What for?’ Nicola says,’ I want you to watch with us.’
‘No, no,’ I say, ‘Mummy just has to quickly……do something Daddy asked her to help with. Something special for his work.’ I run upstairs and lie down on my bed, my head feeling as though it’s going to split open like an overripe fruit. Daniel’s cousin. Does Daniel know? Did they talk about me? Did Nick show him the photographs? Will he tell people? My husband?
The girls poke their heads around the door and whisper,
‘Mummy, are you alright?’
‘Poor Mummy,’ Ellie says and they creep in and pat me gently on my stomach.
When Anthony comes in he sniffs the air and says, ‘but where’s the pie? I just bumped into Daniel and he said you were putting a pie in the oven for dinner.’
‘Oh that,’ I say. ‘I thought it was in the fridge but it wasn’t. I’m cooking spaghetti bolognaise instead.’ I smile brightly and then I continue, ‘I’d dropped off the kids from the party and he asked me in for a drink and then I suddenly remembered the non-existent pie!’ I laugh. ‘Silly me.’
‘Yes, he told me you had a drink.’ He pauses and looks at me closely. ‘For a moment I thought you weren’t going to tell me.’
‘I didn’t want a drink, but I didn’t want to offend him,’ I say.
Anthony doesn’t say anything but just nods and goes into the garden.
Monday August 6th
Tish comes round to our house for a chat. She brings the kids and they play in the garden while we make coffee in the kitchen. Tish watches them through the window – they’re so little and the paddling pool is out. She asks me about Anthony’s estate agency, and I explain how he set it up years ago and after a long, long time it’s really coming to something. He loves knowing about houses and sometimes, when there’s a real beauty that comes on the market he lets me go round with him and look at it.
Tish doesn’t say anything. She is looking out of the window, watching the children to make sure they are safe, as agreed, while I bustle about making the coffee and even heating milk in the microwave, prattling about Anthony.
As I take the cups down from the dresser out of the corner of my eye I think I see her wipe away a tear.
She sighs and, not looking at me, says in a low, miserable voice that Daniel won’t talk about his work, he thinks that either she won’t understand or she would find it boring. Recently he’s been doing a lot of work in Paris but he’s never asked Tish to come along, although before the kids she used to go all the time. Usually, just for the weekend, tacked on here and there, but at least every other trip. She smiles faintly and looks directly at me, ‘Daniel thinks kids should only be looked after by their mothers,’ she says, ‘like he was.’
At that moment Ellie runs in shouting that Jamie has bitten her. She has bite marks on her arm, although her skin is not broken, and it takes some time to calm everybody down, but eventually peace is restored.
We go outside to drink our coffee and I see that now my two girls are playing by themselves in the Wendy house while the boys are battling in the pool, splashing water in each others faces, throwing toy boats rather than floating them. Tish doesn’t seem to notice. I take a deep breath and ask her if she knows the relatives in Australia. She shakes her head and says that she has never met them, although Daniel was close to them once and spent his early twenties in Australia. I ask her if she would like to go there and she says no, not really. She drops her voice and murmurs, ‘it would be just more of his family telling me what to do.’
There is a pause.
‘Tish, why did you come to this particular village? There are so many you could have chosen, why this one?’
She sighs and shakes her head. ‘Daniel chose it.’ She pauses, chewing her bottom lip. ‘Daniel, and I……we had some problems. I didn’t really want to leave London, my friends, the place I knew.’ She gives a small smile, more with her mouth than with her eyes, ‘I used to take the boys to the park and there was a little café in the middle where I met up with the other Mums. We’d have a coffee and the kids would play in the playground. It was fun.’ I pour her out another cup of coffee and she takes a sip. ‘Then I found out that Daniel was having an affair with one of my friends………’ She speaks so quietly I can barely hear her. I wonder if it was one of the women she sat with in the café.
‘How awful,’ I murmur.
‘Anyway,’ she continues, ’we got through it, but he thought it might be a good idea to come somewhere else away from ….my friend…..’ she presses her lips together, ‘but it needed to be commutable for him, and he’d heard of this place from someone as being nice….so, here we are.’
‘And why did you choose next door?’ I ask.
‘Well…it was pure chance we saw it, although I suppose it might have been on our list. I don’t really remember. Dan was in charge. But we drove down to look at the village and by the time we got here the boys were screaming, so we stopped to let them run around the pond. Then we saw the sweet shop, and the playground, and a great big ‘For Sale’ sign up outside the house, and we go, wow, a sweet shop, a pond, and a nice big house. It just seemed so easy.’
I nod.
‘And you like it?’
‘Yes. As much as anywhere.’ She adds, with a shadow of a smile.
I lean over and squeeze her hand.
At that moment Jamie jumps in the air and lands with a crash on the side of the paddling pool and all the water cascades out, and his brothers hold down the edges so that in seconds it’s almost empty. Ellie and Nicola come out of the Wendy house and Nicola bursts into tears.
Tish leaps up, saying, ‘sorry, sorry, sorry,’ and tries to make the boys stand up and save some of the water. They scream at her and Jamie pulls down the younger boys’ bathers and Tish shouts at them, ‘stop it you little monsters.’ Jamie stands in front of her, his legs stiff and rigid and spits in her face. Ellie, Nicola and I stare.
‘Right,’ Tish shrieks, ‘back home now all of you.’ They run off like a pack of wild dogs through the side gate with Tish chasing them saying, ‘wait a minute, what about your clothes?’
I call after her, ‘don’t worry I’ll bring them over later,’ as she races out. I close the gate and the girls and I look at each other.
‘Thank goodness those horrible boys are gone,’ says Nicola. I agree with her but only in my head.
Half an hour later I have gathered up the clothes and I take them round, the girls come with me but only because I don’t want to leave them on their own now that we have re-filled the paddling pool. They stand behind me and won’t look at Tish as she opens the door, I can hear the boys screaming and her hair is in a complete rats’ nest and her shirt is covered in paint splodges. She apologises again but I say it doesn’t matter. She asks if we would like to come in but I lie and say that I have left the girls’ tea in the oven and it will be inedible if we don’t go back immediately.
When we get back into the house Nicola says to me, ‘Mummy you told a lie. Does that mean you will go to hell and burn?’ Her eyes are round and innocent and I don’t know where she has heard this nonsense, although I have told her it is wrong to lie. But not the bit about hell and burning.
‘No, darling. What I told was a white lie.’ I say, and she frowns.
‘Does that mean that you won’t burn but perhaps freeze in ice?’ she says, sounding hopeful.
‘It means,’ I say, ‘that if I hadn’t told it you would be playing with those little boys and I would be having a cup of tea with their Mummy.’
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I like white lies then.’ She goes towards the door, ‘but I think you’ll still go to hell.’
Chapter Three: The Legend of Minty Barlow
Minty
OK, so here it goes. What does anyone do when they’re sitting for hours and hours in a Travelodge in the middle of nowhere? I’m fed up with Twitter and Tumblr, films and iplayer and any other bit of media I can access, so I’m going to write. I’m going to write about the adventure of my life, so far. The Legend of Minty Barlow.
It’s a story that starts with a stupid, thoughtless girl, a mean fucking bitch who gave her baby away when it was a few minutes old.
Yes, gave it away.
Yes, Samantha Collingwood, Birth Mother, Bitch Mother, I am writing about YOU!!!
The thing is, when you look at her photo, this girl, this soon to be a Mum but not showing yet, this Samantha, she looks like a really nice person. Big brown puppy eyes, long blonde hair, slim, an uncertain smile and, of course, the school uniform – mustn’t forget that, must we? Now, nearly nineteen years on, I can report that she still looks very much the same, although her hair is brown and short, cut in a bob with a fringe, but still slim and with those big, soft brown eyes. When I saw her she was also, funnily enough, wearing what you might call a uniform, a middle-class-rich-stay-at –home-Mum uniform - jeans, crisp white shirt and knee high boots. Jingling earrings (yes, I was that close!). Pretty. And with a handsome husband, two little girls, a big four by four and a thatched cottage.
I am not part of that set up of course.
I am the baby who was given away.
Yes, I am the baby, dear mother, but I am all grown up now and I’ve got a lot of questions. That’s why I’m here, just down the road from your lovely house.
She saw me when I saw her. Her eyes slipped over me and then returned, in the way that a lot of peoples eyes return, just to check me out, can’t quite believe what they see, but when they realize I know they’re doing it, they look away, embarrassed. Anyone would think I had a deformity or something. It hurt, her doing that. Of course it hurt. My own biological mother did not recognize me, her blood did not call out to my blood, she looked and then she looked away and went back to getting on with her own life. But it’s not going to be that easy. Not if I have my way. I just need a plan, and until I have one, I am playing a waiting game. A waiting in a Travelodge in the middle of nowhere but only a mile or so away from you, Mummy, game. And while I wait, what better way than to write the story of Samantha Collingwood nee Parsons aka Birth Mother and her daughter Minty? Although it's got a way to go yet, we're only just beginning.
Well, let us start with some facts.
First fact. I was born nearly nineteen years ago in a hospital to a schoolgirl who gave me away immediately to Brenda and Richard Barlow, a childless couple. Biological father unknown.
Second, for ten glorious years I lived under the illusion that I was Brenda and Richard’s natural child, that I had a place in their family by right. I even had a brother, Pete (really their son, I remember Brenda being pregnant – couldn’t fit on her knee). I was a totally normal, quite bright, ok kid.
Third fact. When I was ten my mother took me aside and told me that I was not their biological child. Pete was, but I wasn’t. I was, in fact, nothing to do with them, genetically, although of course they loved me to bits, I was chosen, a dream come true etc etc etc….. I mean now, looking back, it was blatantly obvious and I can’t think why I hadn’t realized it myself – I didn’t look anything like them. I am blonde, blue eyed, tall and slim and they are dark, short and fat. So, she told me and I was upset. Hugely upset. Who wouldn’t be?
At first I was convinced that they had stolen me from my real Mum. I was furious, I ran away several times trying to find my Mum, caused trouble, screamed and yelled a lot about them not being my ‘real’ parents. Then, one day, I took a long cool look at my situation and I realized that I was in a good place, and also that, if I was too bad, they could chuck me out. Pete took the trouble to come up with this little gem of course, so I settled down, stopped shouting and asked no questions. I tried to pretend it wasn’t true.
Fourth fact. There are trigger points when the past crashes into the present, and they are inescapable. It happened to me when I was fifteen, bunking off school (double geography – what a yawn) with a couple of lads. We were in the park having a smoke and then, after a bit, one of them wanted me to go for a walk. We wandered along the paths side by side, not talking, not touching, just walking. It was a spring day and I fell to wondering if this was how my BM had been. A girl in school uniform, with a bag and her books, skiving off to be with a boy and then…then it just happened. I stole a glance at Steve. He was staring at the ground, a dogged expression on his face, his hand in his pocket fiddling with some coins. I could hear them chink. His hair was long and floppy and fell forwards and back as he strode along and he had a fair smattering of spots on his cheeks. Not the big yellow ones, just the little pimply ones, so not too gross. At that moment he looked up and caught my eye, grinned, and took my hand. ‘Let’s go in here,’ he said and led me into the bushes that just happened, oh so conveniently, to be beside the path. We plunged in, I wasn’t unwilling, I wanted to see how far this would go, and I can’t lie but I was curious.
In amongst the bushes he suddenly sat down on the dry earth and pulled me down beside him. He grabbed my neck and yanked my face towards his and pushed his tongue down my throat. Everyone has probably had the same first experience, a sudden intrusion of a wet, warm tongue between your lips and half way down your throat, while you’re thinking, ‘and this is meant to be fun?’ but you stick with it because it’s what everyone does and because he seems to like it so much. There was a lot of saliva around and I could smell the cigarettes on his breath and thought I could feel the chewing gum he still had in his mouth with my tongue. Steve’s heart was beating like a drum, shaking his body, shaking his sweaty hands as he struggled to get them inside my shirt and I struggled to prevent him. We both paused for breath at the same time, I was gasping, and he said, ‘come on then,’ and slid his hand up my skirt and down my knickers. I grabbed his arm and pulled his hand out, rolled over and stood up, panting. ‘What’s wrong with you? Why d’you come in here if you didn’t want it?’ He said, his eyes cold. And he was right, why had I? My chest was heaving as I stared down at him but I didn’t reply. I re-adjusted my skirt, picked up my bag and hastened out from the bushes, probably still breathing a little heavily, and went home. My first sexual experience, at fifteen, a sort of tussle. Was that what had happened with BM? Had I been conceived so thoughtlessly? Without love? Just a bit of tumbling around on hard earth? I wasn’t on any kind of contraception so if I had let Steve do it to me then I could have got pregnant. As pointlessly and unromantically as that. Bang!
When I got home, as I plodded up the stairs, these thoughts rattling in my head, I decided I needed to know more. I knew where Mum kept special things and she was out. Everyone was out.
I slipped off my shoes and went into her bedroom; it smelt of the cologne of which she was very fond (such an easy present, she must have had a cupboard full of bottles I had given her over the years). I went softly round the bed, trailing my hand over the white corduroy counterpane, letting my fingers bump gently over the ridges as I passed, feelings of guilt rising and subsiding.
I opened the wardrobe door and it made the very slightest creaking sound. I knew no one was in the house but it still sent a thrill of fear through me. I knelt down. My mouth was dry and I licked my lips, my heart pounding. I counted up to ten, ten heart beats, my knees deep in the soft carpet, my thighs tense as I held my head rigid, listening, making sure there really was silence. Then I leant forward, my forehead snuzzling aside the dresses, and began to rummage and poke amongst Mums’ private stuff. There were old letters and diaries, which I ignored, not looking; her jewellery box with the string of pearls and the diamond ring she sometimes wore on special occasions. I put that to one side as well. Then, at the very back, I found the box labelled ‘Melinda’. I brought it out and my breath felt thin and scratchy as I held it up to my chest, both hands hanging onto it as though I expected it to sprout wings and fly away.
It wasn’t an exciting box to look at, just a shoebox, so not big and not made of any precious material, not even a nice colour. Pale green, ‘minty’ ha ha, like a box from Clarks, and actually, when I examined it, I saw that it was a box from Clarks and that someone, presumably Mum, had brought home a pair of size 6 black court shoes, ‘Giselle’, in it. But now it had my name on it. It was my box. I put it down carefully beside me and hastily pushed everything back, closed the door and, taking it up, tip toed back to my room. I laid the box on my bed, sat down beside it and for a while just stared at it. Supposing Mum had lied and it was full of newspaper clippings saying I had been found in the loo at Heathrow? Or perhaps it would have a cutting about my BM and she had been a murder victim, or a prostitute, or a drug addict or a woman who had had so many children she just couldn’t bear to keep another one?
I was frightened. But what sustained me, and it was funny when you think about it, because I’d been pretty rotten to Mum sometimes, was that I trusted that she had broadly told me the truth about my birth. Just not enough. This was the treasure chest of Minty Barlow’s history, the stash of information that would tell me who I was.
I heard a car go by. That decided me, the tick of the clock was measuring the minutes to when someone would come back and interrupt. I opened the box. There was not a lot inside.
A photo. BM. Samantha. As I said, sweet looking.
I put it aside to study more closely, later. My birth certificate was not here, it was downstairs in the filing cabinet with the passports, I knew that. But there were documents about the adoption. Quite a little pile. Two more photos of a family group, two girls standing under a tree beside an old couple, so fuzzy you couldn’t really make out their features. They all stood stiffly with serious faces as though they were waiting for some disaster to occur. Which it had of course. Me. I had occurred. I put them down and riffled through the official papers, and there, tucked in amongst them, was a sheet of yellowing paper, thin like the kind that an old aunt might have written on, not modern paper at all. I unfolded it with trembling hands. What did I think would be on it? Was I hoping that Samantha had written a loving note for her baby on it? Of course I was.
This is what it said.
‘Oh baby, baby, it’s a wild world
It’s hard to get by just upon a smile.
Sam P.’
That’s all. The Sam P was done in scrawly italics and there was a little smiley face drawn in the middle of the P. I was excited. Look at that, I thought, here is a poem Sam P wrote for her baby, for me, and Mum had kept it from me. Sam P had loved me! Mum had lied! Or at the very least omitted an important piece of evidence of my BM's love. Well, the only evidence. Probably she had been desperately poor and longed to keep me but had been prevented by horrible parents, the two in the photos – the man had a thin, cruel face from what I could make out – and Sam’s smile simply hadn't been enough. My heart soared. I shoved all the other papers back in the box, leaving the photos and the poem on the bed, and ran back into Mum’s room. I knelt down and pushed the box right to the back of the wardrobe again and heaped some of the other stuff on top. Then, for several days I walked around with a light hearted buzz in my head, feeling like a princess. I couldn’t stop smiling.
Fifth fact in the Minty legend. There’s always something to let you down. Those stupid words – they were just the words of an old pop song, nothing special at all, not meant for me, just a bit of scribble. I heard it on the radio in the kitchen. Mum was singing along to it, waving a wooden spoon, ‘Oh Minty, I love this song! Listen!’ Why was it there amongst the serious stuff? Probably no reason, just an accident of fate, like me.
That was when I really kind of flipped, just for a while. Not a good part of the story so I’ll leave that out for the moment.
Sixth fact. I’m a stupid, fucking sucker, clinging to hope, giving myself reasons for doing idiotic things. That’s why I’m here in this Travelodge, which some people would say is crazy, because I believe in a dream, proof positive of stupidity. This is how it happened.
I had been out three nights on the go, drinking, dancing, snogging, smoking, popping the odd pill, getting shouted at by Dad, dragging around school trying to keep my eyes open, having Mum trying to hug me and ‘have a chat’. Anyway, I went to bed on Friday afternoon, exhausted, and a little bit tearful and sorry for myself. Nobody loved me, nobody spoke to me except to tell me off, you know the kind of thing. I fell into a deep sleep from which I was woken by the ringing of the front door bell. I stumbled groggily downstairs and when I opened the door I was dazzled by a blinding white light (I know, pretty standard so far, a little bit of a cliché even) and out of the light stepped my BM. I couldn’t see her face properly but I knew it was her and I could feel her arms around me and the softness of her breasts as I laid my head against them (keep with me, this is not a lesbian fantasy but a mother/daughter thing) and I heard her whisper to me, ‘my love, my Minty,' and I felt a wave of total happiness.
That was it.
I woke up with a jolt and realized I had been dreaming but then I thought, Jesus! What if I found my BM and it was like that, not the bright light of course, but the happiness? There was a chance that it could be like that, I told myself, that she would want me. It was possible that when she met me she would say, ‘I've missed you so much, I need you back in my life.’
So that’s it, the six facts that have put me here, sitting in a Travelodge, alone, but only half a mile from the most important person in my life – the woman who gave me life. And denied me her love.