The sound of Lilly’s sobbing filled the room, the messy, noisy, crying of regret, over which she had very little control.
‘Do you remember that time you called her, to tell her you’d met a boy?’
‘I do, I do.’ She remembered everything about it, every tiny detail, the smell inside the phone box, the feeling of joy rising in her chest like she might explode with happiness!Wilkie ...
‘You should have seen her.’ He shook his head. ‘Cor blimey, she danced around the flat – she looked sixteen! So happy! She thought that might have been the start of something, of you being in touch with her, and just the thought was enough for her to ...’ He shook his head. ‘She didn’t want much, your mum. What she did want, she never got; time with you, forgiveness, a chance to explain.’
‘Ex— explain what?’ she stuttered.
‘What it had been like for her.’ Derek took his time. ‘Your dad wasn’t a bad man, not at all, but as I say, he was a troubled one. The war changed lots of men; they came back scared, broken. Your mum tried very hard to make it work, but he didn’t want to talk about his problems, didn’t want to face it, as was his right. And it was her right to go, to have a life, to rest, to be heard and loved.’
‘I loved her.’ Her words were a whisper, words she had rarely spoken in her mum’s direction. ‘I did, I loved her! I loved my mum, and I missed her every day! I still miss her every day!’ The words poured from her on a wave of relief and love, love for her mum,who had made her bed, cooked her tea, sung along to Jimmy Ruffin, and danced with her dad when the mood was right. Her mum, who knew where to find things in jumbled drawers and the dark confines of cupboards, who knitted her jumpers by the electric fire on a winter’s night, who brushed her hair when it was ratty, who ran her bath and warmed a towel for her by the fire. Her mum, who told her that she looked pretty when she put on a frock, who showed her how to put on two coats of lipstick and gave her a leaflet about menstruation on her eleventh birthday, ‘just in case’. Her mum, who made her a birthday cake and covered the top with sprinkles and tiny pink, twisty candles bought from Woolworths that melted in drips quicker than everyone could sing or she could blow them out. Her mum, who’d made sure she had her mittens in the cold and her sun hat in the warm. Her mum, who made her soup when she was poorly, dabbed calamine lotion when she got chicken pox, read to her fromThe Wind in the Willowsand let Lilly rest her head on her shoulder and fall asleep on the bus. Her mum, agoodmum, a loving mum, whose leaving had left a giant hole in her life that Lilly had been trying to fill ever since.
‘Well, I told her you did in your own way. Whether I believed it or not is another thing.’
‘I did.’ She pictured her mum in the kitchen, making tea in her pinny, hair set, Max Factor Ruby Red lipstick on her pretty mouth. ‘I did.’
‘I think the saddest thing is that it’s all a matter of time, Lilly. The time we lived in. Women get divorced all the time nowadays; they don’t feel the pressure to get married in the first place, they have choices. So many choices! They make decisions for themselves, and no one bats an eyelid, but Jeannie was demonised! She paid a heavy price for saving herself, for putting herself first. It shamed her, always. All she wanted was to stop being a passenger in her ownlife. She wanted to grab the wheel and steer herself in the direction of happiness!’
It was as hard to hear as it was to imagine, and yet she was strangely grateful for his candour.
‘I’m sorry, Derek. Sorry for not ...’ She didn’t know quite what she was apologising for, certainly the latent hostility with which she had always greeted him, the cool, indifferent way she had treated her mother, who had made her a cake on her birthday, every year. A thought that now shredded her heart and an image that she knew would stay with her for ever. ‘Can I come and see you again, Derek?’
‘If you like.’ His words might have been verging on positive, but his expression was still impassive.
‘I would like.’
‘Well, there we go, then.’ He gave a small, fleeting smile. So fleeting she might have imagined it.
There was a beat of awkward silence while they both stared at the walls.
‘You heard about Lineker leavingMatch of the Day?’
‘Erm, yes, yes, I read about it.’ Football wasn’t and had never been her thing.
‘Bloody fools. How can they haveMatch of the Daywithout Lineker?’
‘I don’t know, Derek. I guess life goes on, right?’
He took a deep breath and gave her a nod, and this time she saw it, for sure. It felt a lot like he was accepting her apology, and she was entirely grateful for it. ‘I guess it does, Lilly-Bob. I guess it does.’
1983 – aged 28
Lilly had hardly slept.
She felt guilty, seeing Rex staring at her as she left him standing on the pavement. He’d taken a step forward, as if his body was still processing her words and he expected to come with her, planning no doubt to walk her back to the flat or persuade her to come back to his place, normal stuff after eighteen months of dating. He’d smiled at her, too, that crooked smile that she found irresistible, as if disbelieving her or expecting her to run back and shout,Just kidding!
She hadn’t run or looked back and certainly wasn’t kidding. It was only in her imagination that she saw him looking after her as she hailed a cab along the street and jumped in. His expression one she could easily conjure and which had kept her awake until the early hours.
There had, in the decade since Wilkie, been dates, sex, liaisons, thrills, moments, weekends away, and lovely, lovely Rex, who had lasted a whole eighteen months. Rex, who had broken through her barrier, smashed her shield and encouraged her to take a chance. The first since Wilkie who had managed such a thing, and he’d done so by disarming her with his honesty, his humour and his kindness. They’d met at a bus stop in Vauxhall, he trying to get back to the City, where he worked in finance, and she off to workat the gallery. In his suit, shirt and tie, he was struggling to make sense of the timetable.
‘I’ve left my glasses at home!’ he explained, and she liked his klutziness, the fact that he needed glasses to see and had forgotten them – who did that? It was endearing.
The bus was late.
They swapped numbers, and the rest, as they say, was history. Rex was funny, smart, kind – all the things that made for excellent boyfriend material, not that Lilly had been looking for a boyfriend, still a little broken and more than a little wary. A month after meeting and for their third date, he’d secured tickets for them to seeJapanat the Hammersmith Odeon – they had sung along loudly to ‘Life in Tokyo’,drunk warm lager and danced until their feet ached. She had felt the stirrings of deep, deep affection for the man. Not love, not that, something she felt almost incapable of, damaged as she was, but it had, nonetheless, been lovely, easy, predictable and a gorgeous diversion from her settled life.
Rex met her dad, who gave a wide-eyed nod of approval, and she had been invited to Sunday lunch at his parents’ house in Oxshott. His father had carved a large slab of roast beef in the dining room of their faux-Tudor dwelling, and his mum had told her funny anecdotes about Rex’s childhood that had made Lilly feel uneasy, knowing the story about her own mother doing a runner to shack up with her beau was the least funny story of all and yet the one that had shaped her the most. Not that she had shared the details with Rex, something that even now felt almost impossible to do, too personal, too hard.
