I set to work, sifting through dozens of cardboard boxes. They are all unlabelled, so only when I peel off the brown tape and open the flaps do I discover what’s inside. Some are files containing paperwork, but they’re only old bank statements and bills. Others contain Mum’s out-of-fashion clothes, my and her school reports, and old rolls of partially used wallpaper.
A box of my school exercise books sidetracks me, and I remove one at random and flick through it. I stop at an English assignment where my eight-year-old self is asked to write an essay on where I hope I will be at the age of thirty. I smile at my naive ambitions. Back then, all I wanted was to marry George Michael, live together in a house by the seaside and look after sick ponies.
My search risks becoming a trip down memory lane as I stumble across boxes of my old toys too. Barbie and Ken dolls, Sylvanian Families, Beanie Babies and board games all bring back long-lost memories. There’s a three-storey white doll’s house that I used to spend hours playing with. I remove from its kitchen one of the three wooden figures that make up the perfect family; he’s dressed in a small blue suit, carries a briefcase in his hand and I’ve drawn a red smile on his face in felt-tip pen. I realise I’ve been painting on my own smile for most of my adult life.
I wonder why Mum has never thrown any of this away. Perhaps it’s her way of holding on to a past she longs to return to, when she was happily married and mother to a little girl who hadn’t lost her innocence.
It brings a lump to my throat when I stumble across a memory box my dad made for me. Inside are posters and song lyrics fromSmash Hits, postcards, birthday cards and other odds and ends. I choose meaningful objects from the other boxes in front of me and add them to the box. I long to remain here in a thirteen-year-old’s world and never leave, but I have a mission.
I’m unaware of the time until I glance at my watch – it’s past 1.30 a.m. and I’ve already been down here for hours. Yet I’m no closer to uncovering the depth of Mum’s lies. Another hour, and yet more boxes pass until there is nothing left to search. I sit on an old wooden stool with my head in my hands, defeated and frustrated by failure. The only place I haven’t looked is outside in the garden shed. But I’m sure I’d have spotted paperwork in there over the years.
I rise to my feet and let out the longest of yawns. I’m shattered, but I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight with so many questions left unanswered. As I return to the staircase, I catch sight of a dustsheet draped over objects in a shaded gap under the stairs. Curious, I pull it aside; underneath are six upright suitcases and Dad’s golf bag. The latter gives me goosebumps. I read the cardboard labels tied with string to the luggage handles. I can just about make out Dad’s writing in the faded ink: his and Mum’s names and address. They also contain flight luggage tags from Spain, France and Germany, all places I’ve never been to but which they must have visited before I was born. Sometimes I forget they had a life before me. All have small padlocks attached, and it doesn’t take much force to snap them open with the heel of my shoe. I lay the first suitcase on the floor, unbuckle the sides and lift the lid.
Inside are scores of empty white-and-red medication boxes. They all appear to be for the same tablets. Each one has a typed name and address label on it; the same four strangers’ names and addresses are repeated over and over again. It takes time, but I examine each of them; the earliest dates back to July 1995 and the most recent is for May 1996. The last few packets are still sealed. The labels reveal they’ve been provided by seven different chemists located in different parts of town.
I pull my phone from my pocket and google the drug’s name, Moxydogrel. It’s a medication that has been withdrawn from use. I read a Wikipedia entry:
Moxydogrel was a sedative licenced in 1993 and available by prescription only until 1996. Developed primarily for long-term usage by adults with behavioural issues and/or crippling anxiety, its purpose was to keep patients sedated and in a more manageable, pacified and less aggressive state. If used on an ongoing basis, it could lead to long periods of dormancy, memory loss and compliance.
I let out a breath I’m unaware I am holding and look at the box from all angles. ‘She was using it on me,’ I say out loud in disbelief. Mum must have been stealing prescription pads from work, making them out in different people’s names and rotating her way between chemists to have them filled. It explains why antidepressants weren’t in my medical records – I hadn’t been prescribed them. This Moxydogrel is the reason why so much of the period after Dylan’s birth is hazy. She was drugging me.
I return to my phone and carry on reading the web page, when the words ‘side effects’ catch my attention.
Moxydogrel was withdrawn from the worldwide market in November 1996 when it was discovered that long-term usage can bring about early menopause, and infertility in both sexes. It is unknown how many victims of the drug there have been, although a number of out-of-court cases have been settled.
‘Infertility. Early menopause.’
I repeat those words over and over again, just to be sure that the lateness of the hour and the stress of the last few days aren’t combining to mess with my thinking. I don’t want to believe it, so I park it to process later.
I’m about to close the suitcase when I notice one box is different to the others. It’s called Clozterpan. Again, I rely on websites to explain that it’s a medication used to induce the termination of a foetus.‘It will help the user to miscarry at home.’Mum must have given it to me the first time I fell pregnant. Nature didn’t make me lose the baby; she did.
I have no frame of reference to know what to do next, so I sit on the floor, dumbstruck. Not only did Mum kill my first baby, but she gave my second away, then made me infertile. I have no control over the tears streaming down my face.
Now the dark cloud above me swallows me whole. I don’t want to be down here any more. I don’t like the truth because it hurts too much. I’m ready to crawl on my hands and knees up two flights of stairs, lock myself in my bedroom and never come out again.
Yet I find strength from somewhere to continue. I break open the padlock to another suitcase, and inside are adult clothes and brown envelopes containing paperwork. This is what I have been searching for – files and documentation relating to Dylan. There’s also another copy of his birth certificate.
I read the summary page of a social worker’s reports on Dylan and Mum.
Following several meetings at her home, Margaret has made it clear that her son was unplanned and unwanted. She has steadfastly refused the opportunity to be reunited with him and explained that she is married but that the child was born as the result of an extramarital affair. Her husband worked away and she did not want him to know about the baby. Despite our best efforts, she has remained determined not to see the child and would not reconsider keeping him.
By the date of the reports, these meetings and discussions were all taking place just metres away from me while I was drugged and unconscious upstairs.
There are two suitcases left and I don’t want to open them. It comes as a relief to discover they’re filled with more old clothes. Musty-smelling shirts, jeans, T-shirts, underwear, socks, coats and shoes are crammed inside, balled up as if they’ve been put there in a hurry. I rummage through them and find more than a dozen white envelopes in my handwriting. They are stamped and addressed to my dad but there are no postmarks. Every letter I wrote and that Mum told me she posted to him never made it further than the basement.
I’m about to close the fifth and final case when it dawns on me that they only contain men’s clothing. And then a coat catches my eye. It’s a denim jean jacket that Dad often wore. I remember the patch on the elbow where he caught it on a barbed-wire fence and Mum repaired it with a needle and thread. Now I can picture him wearing some of the other items, like his Adidas trainers and work ties. Finally, in a coat pocket, I find his passport and his wallet. Inside it is £65 in notes that are no longer legal tender, his expired credit cards and driver’s licence. It doesn’t make sense. Why would he have left all of this behind when he disappeared? Even his golf clubs? You don’t leave one life for the next without taking something with you.
Then it hits me.
Unless Dad never left us.
CHAPTER 49
NINA
TWO YEARS EARLIER
Cold shivers race across the surface of my skin and I place my hands flat on the floor to stop myself from toppling over. I take deep breaths but my vision is beginning to blur and the colours around me are changing into shades of black and red. I tighten my fists and concentrate hard so as not to black out.
