It’s the knowledge that she won’t ever wander in again that breaks me. And when the tears come, they come with a vengeance – as though they’re annoyed that I’ve been avoiding them for the last few days. Holding them back, imprisoning them behind chains made of to-do lists and meetings.
I retreat into the car, with the air con on, and just let them flow. Best to get them out of the way before putting my game face on. At least one grubby angel needs to try and stay strong enough to get through this.
I’m tired, and sad, and I want my old life back – the one where kicking the arses of the graphics team was the most trying thing on my schedule. Or, even better, the one before that. The one where I was a loud, proud angry young woman, preparing to do battle with the world. Preparing to battle with Rose on one side, and my mum on the other – safe in their love and secure in the knowledge that both of them would always be there for me.
Now, I have neither – and I’m finally being forced to think about it. To do like our mum asked, and look back at where it all started to go wrong. This is not my idea of a fun time, and it doesn’t help to stem the waterworks.
By the time I hear her car chugging up the lane, I’m a bit calmer, but a lot soggier. I have kept a box of tissues on the passenger seat for exactly this kind of occasion, and clean myself up, inspecting my face in the mirror when I’m done. Not perfect, but good enough under the circumstances.
I get out of the car, and arrange myself carefully, aiming to look fifty shades of okay by the time she actually arrives.
Part of me is terrified – part of me is relieved. She’s now forty minutes late, and I had been starting to wonder if she’d decided not to come. If I wasn’t worth the effort. If she’d just completely forgotten about me.
Because that, even if she doesn’t realise it, was one of the things she got really good at. And that, as far as I can see, is where the rot first started to set in.
Chapter 21
The Cottage, 1999 – Poppy’s 22nd Birthday
Iam still living at home, after doing my English degree. It’s weird being back, but I’m kind of between life choices at the moment. Floating between one stage and the other, like a once-shiny helium balloon running out of puff.
After I graduated, I did some travelling, but got so bored I ditched my friends in a beer cellar in Budapest, and made my way back to the UK. None the worse for wear, apart from the Buddha tattoo on my hip that had seemed like an excellent idea at the time.
Now I’m home, I’m stuck in a rut. An English degree doesn’t feel like the most useful thing in the world. I can’t go off and build wells in the Third World, or discover a new planet, or cure cancer. I can, of course, quote extensive passages ofBeowulfin Old English, but that isn’t a great consolation.
A lot of my friends are going into journalism, and there’s always teaching, of course. That phrase gets repeated so often it should have capital letters – There’s Always Teaching. I’m not set against that, but I don’t feel passionate about it either.
Still, it would be a shedload better than marketing, which one of my more ambitious friends has moved into – for a pharmaceutical company as well. I can’t think of anything worse than marketing – totally soul destroying.
What I’d really like to do is write a book, which doesn’t exactly make me special. Everyone wants to write a book, including our milkman, Fred. But wanting to write a book, and actually doing it, are very different things, I’ve discovered recently.
Truth is, I don’t have much to write about yet. Boyfriends: several; none serious enough to break my heart. Travel: backpacking around Europe, where every hostel seemed the same, and every night seemed to consist solely of drinking cheap local beer. Trauma: luckily, I suppose, very little. Family: oddly shaped, but brilliant.
So far, my books have been big on emotions, and low on action. Pretty much like myself right now, I think, rolling around on my bed and staring at a poster of The Doors. The Blu-Tack on one corner has died, and the paper is curling up on itself, making Jim Morrison look as though he only has one leather-clad leg.
I’m bored, but also gripped with some kind of paralysis that is stopping me doing anything else. It’s all just too …comfortablehere.
Mum makes it very easy to loll around at home, pottering in the village and watching crap telly and reading. Mum is glad of the company – she’s between gigs herself, as parts for middle-aged ladies don’t seem to come knocking that often. Patriarchal bullshit is alive and kicking in the world of show biz, it seems.
One day, perhaps I’ll move to London, and live in a Bohemian garret and write stirring literature with a feminist sub-plot – but not right now. For now, this will do – and at least I have the weekend to look forward to.
It’s my birthday today. I’m 22 years old, which sounds a lot more grown up than I feel. Up until 21, you get away with things. Your twenty-first is a birthday on which cash still falls out of your cards when you open them. You get shiny metallic-painted plastic keys, and cakes, and parties, and older people look all misty-eyed and reminiscent as they buy you booze.
Nobody expects anything of you when you’re 21, not even yourself. It still feels like you’re just starting out. Twenty-two, though … well, it’s a bit of a nothing birthday, isn’t it? Nothing, but old.
Still, the one advantage of having a birthday is that Rose will be coming home. She’s still in Liverpool, and shows no signs of budging. She’s done her degree – got a first, obviously – and her Masters. Now she’s taking a year off, working in a lab where they do something frightfully clever with plant cells, and is considering taking on a PhD. So she’ll eventually be Dr Rose.
She’s already made it very clear that if she does go down that route, she will fully be expecting everyone in the family to refer to her as Dr Rose at all times.
I like this idea, and the ways I could have fun with it: ‘Would you like salt and vinegar on your chips, Dr Rose?’ ‘Pint of lager please, Dr Rose.’ ‘Was it you who let out that terrible fart, Dr Rose? It smells like a gerbil crawled up your bum and died, Dr Rose.’
She’s not quite decided yet, but I hope she does it purely for the comedy value. And, you know, because it would add value to the world. Unlike me, Rose could potentially cure cancer, or at least make coffee for someone who is curing cancer. Rose is brilliant; a huge, clever cake, with awesome sauce and sprinkles on top.
I miss her so much, and I can’t wait for the weekend. She came home for Christmas, but then disappeared back up North for the New Year – she invited me to go along, but I didn’t want to leave Mum on her own.
Mum had taken me in, cooked my dinners, pretended the tattoo wasn’t awful, and lent me the car whenever I needed to escape. Mum had been great.
The least I could do was spend New Year with her. It had even turned out to be a laugh – we downed several chilled G&Ts, made in a jug with cucumber just how she likes them, and then saw the year in with the rest of the village at the Farmer’s Arms.
