and jeans that I’d picked out myself; and I lay on my stomach onthe lawn underneath the elder tree, reading and reading; and then I moved away, and it was as if I’d never lived here at all.
The radiator gurgles as the central heating shuts off for the night. I shift position in the narrow bed, looking at the shadow the pendant lampshade casts across the ceiling, trying to remember what it felt like, growing up in my parents’ house. I don’t remember being especially happy or unhappy here. Childhood just happened to me, as I suppose it happens to most people. At the time, I suppose it seemed an endless succession of fears and dreams and secrets, but from this distance it looks as dull as the life I’ve gone on to lead. Did I tell my mother when things went wrong or well at school? I’m fairly sure I did not. She was never at leisure to be interested in me. She had other things to worry about.
Hester was always kicking off, throwing down challenges, sneaking out to meet boys. I remember the general relief when she went off to university. But I wasn’t like that. I was the good girl: biddable, compliant. I did what I was told, I kept my nose clean, I was no trouble to anyone. But the farther I travelled from the house where I’d grown up, the less I seemed to belong; the less it looked like home.
The Pearsons are coming for a quick drink before Sunday lunch. And Terry and Val Croft might look in, if they have time, although there’s an antiques fair at Fulbury Norton that they’re hoping to visit. Before retirement, Terry and my father were partners. Thorpe & Croft Solicitors. The office was on Beck Street, between the precinct and the leisure centre.
While I was at school, if I missed the bus home, I used to head up there and wait for my father to give me a lift back. There were two wing-backed chairs in reception and I’d sit on one of them and do my French homework on the coffeetable, clearing a space between the elderly Sunday supplements with the recipes ripped out of them. If she happened to be in a good mood, Penny, the secretary, used to make me a cup of tea and slip me a pink wafer from the tin she kept in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. I wonder what happened to Penny. There was always something funny about her, and then one day I realised that she wore a hair-piece.
My mother is almost beside herself with anxiety.
‘You’ll have to find your own way around, I’m afraid, dear,’ she says, with an air of extravagant restraint, as I appear for breakfast. ‘You know where everything is. I’m a little tied up, as you can see … Weetabix in the cupboard, muesli, cornflakes, so on and so forth. No, not that milk, dear, there’s one open on the lower shelf. Bread in the breadbin. Jam’s in the cupboard, or perhaps you’d like Bovril?’
The dishwasher is roaring away, there are pans on the stove, and the counters are covered with trays of glasses and napkins. As I pour milk on my cereal, my mother drains the green beans and pops them into the top of the oven, ready for lunch in three hours’ time.
My father has been out to buy the paper – they don’t take the
Questioner
, it’s too left wing – and now sits on the sofa, systematically working his way through it. Every so often, he’ll laugh or shake his head, and when I’ve come through to join him, he starts reading out random paragraphs to me: stories about a killer virus afflicting horse chestnuts, or the latest transgressions of a minor royal, a particularly withering passage in a restaurant review. ‘Listen to this one, love,’ he says, wrestling the paper into shape. ‘You’ll like this.’
‘Don’t bother to strip your bed,’ my mother calls through. ‘Just leave it. I’ll do all the sheets on Tuesday.’
‘Right,’ I say, getting up.
I’ve just stepped out of the bath when I hear the doorbell.The Pearsons and the Crofts have arrived simultaneously, and when I get downstairs, I see my mother has her special
The radiator gurgles as the central heating shuts off for the night. I shift position in the narrow bed, looking at the shadow the pendant lampshade casts across the ceiling, trying to remember what it felt like, growing up in my parents’ house. I don’t remember being especially happy or unhappy here. Childhood just happened to me, as I suppose it happens to most people. At the time, I suppose it seemed an endless succession of fears and dreams and secrets, but from this distance it looks as dull as the life I’ve gone on to lead. Did I tell my mother when things went wrong or well at school? I’m fairly sure I did not. She was never at leisure to be interested in me. She had other things to worry about.
Hester was always kicking off, throwing down challenges, sneaking out to meet boys. I remember the general relief when she went off to university. But I wasn’t like that. I was the good girl: biddable, compliant. I did what I was told, I kept my nose clean, I was no trouble to anyone. But the farther I travelled from the house where I’d grown up, the less I seemed to belong; the less it looked like home.
The Pearsons are coming for a quick drink before Sunday lunch. And Terry and Val Croft might look in, if they have time, although there’s an antiques fair at Fulbury Norton that they’re hoping to visit. Before retirement, Terry and my father were partners. Thorpe & Croft Solicitors. The office was on Beck Street, between the precinct and the leisure centre.
While I was at school, if I missed the bus home, I used to head up there and wait for my father to give me a lift back. There were two wing-backed chairs in reception and I’d sit on one of them and do my French homework on the coffeetable, clearing a space between the elderly Sunday supplements with the recipes ripped out of them. If she happened to be in a good mood, Penny, the secretary, used to make me a cup of tea and slip me a pink wafer from the tin she kept in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. I wonder what happened to Penny. There was always something funny about her, and then one day I realised that she wore a hair-piece.
My mother is almost beside herself with anxiety.
‘You’ll have to find your own way around, I’m afraid, dear,’ she says, with an air of extravagant restraint, as I appear for breakfast. ‘You know where everything is. I’m a little tied up, as you can see … Weetabix in the cupboard, muesli, cornflakes, so on and so forth. No, not that milk, dear, there’s one open on the lower shelf. Bread in the breadbin. Jam’s in the cupboard, or perhaps you’d like Bovril?’
The dishwasher is roaring away, there are pans on the stove, and the counters are covered with trays of glasses and napkins. As I pour milk on my cereal, my mother drains the green beans and pops them into the top of the oven, ready for lunch in three hours’ time.
My father has been out to buy the paper – they don’t take the
Questioner
, it’s too left wing – and now sits on the sofa, systematically working his way through it. Every so often, he’ll laugh or shake his head, and when I’ve come through to join him, he starts reading out random paragraphs to me: stories about a killer virus afflicting horse chestnuts, or the latest transgressions of a minor royal, a particularly withering passage in a restaurant review. ‘Listen to this one, love,’ he says, wrestling the paper into shape. ‘You’ll like this.’
‘Don’t bother to strip your bed,’ my mother calls through. ‘Just leave it. I’ll do all the sheets on Tuesday.’
‘Right,’ I say, getting up.
I’ve just stepped out of the bath when I hear the doorbell.The Pearsons and the Crofts have arrived simultaneously, and when I get downstairs, I see my mother has her special
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