me here.
W hen you do a jigsaw puzzle you start with the corners, then hunt out the edges, then try to pull them into order. Finally you can think about looking for some sense in the middle section. Without knowing it, that’s how my early years felt. And without understanding why, the older I got I was happy if I could just get the borders lined up. Much more than that was a real bonus.
School wasn’t the problem. There you are compartmentalised and everyone knows where they should be and roughly what they should be doing. It was the journeys to and from Tavistock that threw up the problems. I’d suddenly be aware of walking and not remember where I was going. If I had my school uniform on then it was a good guess that it was a school day. If there were others around I could work out whether they were heading for lessons or escaping home.
Once I found myself alone near the gates. I didn’t know how I’d got there or where I’d come from. Nothing unusual about that.
I did the standard checks: I was carrying my school bag and wearing my uniform. It was a weekday.
But the path was deserted. Either everyone was already in and I was running late, or they’d left hours ago and I was still here. Or was I ridiculously early for some reason? I studied the building. There were a few lights on. That didn’t help.
Is it morning or evening?
Should I go in or walk home?
Either could get me in real trouble if it was the wrong choice.
Where are my friends? Where’s Clare? Where’s Irene?
I must have stood there for a quarter of an hour, anguishing over which way to head. Then I noticed something familiar.
Cooking! One of the nearby houses had the oven on.
That was all the information I needed. It was dinner time.
I have to get home.
Getting home after an episode like that would usually follow the same pattern.
Mum: ‘Where have you been?’
Me: ‘I don’t know.’
Mum: ‘Fine. Be like that. Dinner’s ready.’
She never probed any further. I suppose she thought I was keeping secrets. What would I have said? ‘I sometimes appear in places or with people I don’t know.’ I wasn’t even sure that was what was happening. How could I put it into words?
In itself, the fact that Mum, or Nan for that matter, never questioned my behaviour reassured me that everything was normal. If people act weird around you, then you ask them if they’re all right. That’s the natural response, isn’t it? That’s how I am with my daughter. Get everything out in the open. If no one questions you for acting oddly, you infer from that that they know what you’re going through. That it’s how they live as well, even if you can’t necessarily see evidence of it. And so you just carry on as normal. Carry on in the only way you know how.
Mum had her own problems, of course. The whole family did. I was only a child but I could see that things with Dad were at best tolerable and at worst downright unpleasant. At the same time as never telling us anything, neither made any attempt to hide anything either. I just wasn’t considered important enough to be informed. If they wanted to fight, they did it right in front of me. I heard all sorts of accusations flung in Dad’s direction. Then he’d take off as usual. It didn’t matter if I was in front of them or safely upstairs. Even from the sanctity of my room I’d feel the shudder of the front door slamming.
I don’t remember discussing anything with Nan. Maybe she didn’t know what was going on either. In the evenings we would sit together and she would stroke my hair. But we never spoke. Not really. We all just concentrated on our own lives.
I noticed Lorraine start to pop round more and more often. She’d begun to moan about her husband, which was a shame. They’d only been married five minutes but I suppose they’d been together since they were young. You’re not the same person at nineteen that you were at fourteen. Hearing her suspicions of his behaviour made me
W hen you do a jigsaw puzzle you start with the corners, then hunt out the edges, then try to pull them into order. Finally you can think about looking for some sense in the middle section. Without knowing it, that’s how my early years felt. And without understanding why, the older I got I was happy if I could just get the borders lined up. Much more than that was a real bonus.
School wasn’t the problem. There you are compartmentalised and everyone knows where they should be and roughly what they should be doing. It was the journeys to and from Tavistock that threw up the problems. I’d suddenly be aware of walking and not remember where I was going. If I had my school uniform on then it was a good guess that it was a school day. If there were others around I could work out whether they were heading for lessons or escaping home.
Once I found myself alone near the gates. I didn’t know how I’d got there or where I’d come from. Nothing unusual about that.
I did the standard checks: I was carrying my school bag and wearing my uniform. It was a weekday.
But the path was deserted. Either everyone was already in and I was running late, or they’d left hours ago and I was still here. Or was I ridiculously early for some reason? I studied the building. There were a few lights on. That didn’t help.
Is it morning or evening?
Should I go in or walk home?
Either could get me in real trouble if it was the wrong choice.
Where are my friends? Where’s Clare? Where’s Irene?
I must have stood there for a quarter of an hour, anguishing over which way to head. Then I noticed something familiar.
Cooking! One of the nearby houses had the oven on.
That was all the information I needed. It was dinner time.
I have to get home.
Getting home after an episode like that would usually follow the same pattern.
Mum: ‘Where have you been?’
Me: ‘I don’t know.’
Mum: ‘Fine. Be like that. Dinner’s ready.’
She never probed any further. I suppose she thought I was keeping secrets. What would I have said? ‘I sometimes appear in places or with people I don’t know.’ I wasn’t even sure that was what was happening. How could I put it into words?
In itself, the fact that Mum, or Nan for that matter, never questioned my behaviour reassured me that everything was normal. If people act weird around you, then you ask them if they’re all right. That’s the natural response, isn’t it? That’s how I am with my daughter. Get everything out in the open. If no one questions you for acting oddly, you infer from that that they know what you’re going through. That it’s how they live as well, even if you can’t necessarily see evidence of it. And so you just carry on as normal. Carry on in the only way you know how.
Mum had her own problems, of course. The whole family did. I was only a child but I could see that things with Dad were at best tolerable and at worst downright unpleasant. At the same time as never telling us anything, neither made any attempt to hide anything either. I just wasn’t considered important enough to be informed. If they wanted to fight, they did it right in front of me. I heard all sorts of accusations flung in Dad’s direction. Then he’d take off as usual. It didn’t matter if I was in front of them or safely upstairs. Even from the sanctity of my room I’d feel the shudder of the front door slamming.
I don’t remember discussing anything with Nan. Maybe she didn’t know what was going on either. In the evenings we would sit together and she would stroke my hair. But we never spoke. Not really. We all just concentrated on our own lives.
I noticed Lorraine start to pop round more and more often. She’d begun to moan about her husband, which was a shame. They’d only been married five minutes but I suppose they’d been together since they were young. You’re not the same person at nineteen that you were at fourteen. Hearing her suspicions of his behaviour made me
Similar Books
