reading. Tell me what happens in Doctor Who. Tell me anything you want. Even when you become a grown-up. Please keep on telling me. And please
find somewhere good to bury the Time Capsule. Then come back and open it when you have children of your own. Bring them with you and tell them about me.
Your (best) friend,
Lucas. xxx
For the first time in weeks I feel happy. Tear drops are falling onto the paper but they are happy ones. Lucas is still my best friend even though I can’t see him or touch
him or breathe in his currant bun smell.
The next day Mother and I (and a disgruntled Andy) move into the Shop. Bob has insisted that this is the solution to our accommodation problem. He has plenty of space in the
maisonette above and he’d appreciate the company. So while he and mother and Wink do their best to make this new arrangement work, I sit in the yard with Lucas’ tin and contemplate
where to bury it. The most obvious place is the Bone Yard but how can I be sure the box won’t get dug up to make room for new residents? So I decide here is as good a place as any. Here in
Bob’s backyard. I add one or two of my own items to Lucas’ precious collection – my booty from the outside lav – before foraging in Bob’s lean-to for a trowel. I find
the perfect spot in a corner under his one and only unidentifiable shrub.
Now I just have to sit back and wait until I am grown up.
2006
So now we’re on the ward, babies either side of us, opposite us, screaming, feeding, sleeping. You, on the other hand, are lying sweetly in your plastic crib. No murmur,
no cry. Surely you must be hungry by now?
Fran has this funny look in her eye that she’s trying to hide from me by scribbling frantically in your notes which are growing more and more copious by the minute, like a barrister off to
defend some beyond-hope criminal from a life sentence.
“Everything alright, Fran?” I ask.
“Time to take your blood pressure,” she says and wraps that vicious Velcro thing round my arm, squeezing it in a Chinese burn – the type that Terry would give me if I set foot
in his garage looking for Toni’s roller skates.
I want to breastfeed you. Fran doesn’t care what I do as long as we get something inside your little body. There’s been whispers of feeding tubes if you don’t get on with it
sharpish. You don’t really seem that bothered. I don’t know why they don’t just let you sleep. That’s what you’re supposed to do isn’t it, when you’re this
tiny? I’d know if you were starving, wouldn’t I? Isn’t that the sort of thing mothers intuitively know? Did Helena know? She plied me with a constant stream of bottles.
That’s why I was so ‘bonny’. You don’t look ‘bonny’. You look scrawny and pale. Dark-eyed and small like Lucas. Maybe Fran’s right. I don’t know.
What would Helena do?
Chapter Six: 1972
Saturday Night Takeaway
Mother now looks less like Audrey Hepburn and more like Carole King. She has relaxed her make-up and fashion standards in the interests of comfort (it gets hot and clammy in
the shop in summer and she likes to go bare-footed). She has also become proficient at sweet-serving, stock-taking and being polite to old ladies, and performs all these duties (and countless
others) in her stride. Bob says he doesn’t know how he ever managed without her. Mother reminds him that he probably didn’t.
Bob and Mother are becoming a partnership. They move around the shop – and each other – with ease. When one of them bends down to retrieve a sweet wrapper from the floor, the other
will reach over them to restack a shelf. However their paths cross, however busy it gets – and it can get very busy, especially on half-day closing when the whole neighbourhood wants their
pools coupons – they never bump or crash into each other. Their movements are slick and smooth. It is a choreographed dance. A double act. But that is what time does. It makes you find your
place, slot in.
find somewhere good to bury the Time Capsule. Then come back and open it when you have children of your own. Bring them with you and tell them about me.
Your (best) friend,
Lucas. xxx
For the first time in weeks I feel happy. Tear drops are falling onto the paper but they are happy ones. Lucas is still my best friend even though I can’t see him or touch
him or breathe in his currant bun smell.
The next day Mother and I (and a disgruntled Andy) move into the Shop. Bob has insisted that this is the solution to our accommodation problem. He has plenty of space in the
maisonette above and he’d appreciate the company. So while he and mother and Wink do their best to make this new arrangement work, I sit in the yard with Lucas’ tin and contemplate
where to bury it. The most obvious place is the Bone Yard but how can I be sure the box won’t get dug up to make room for new residents? So I decide here is as good a place as any. Here in
Bob’s backyard. I add one or two of my own items to Lucas’ precious collection – my booty from the outside lav – before foraging in Bob’s lean-to for a trowel. I find
the perfect spot in a corner under his one and only unidentifiable shrub.
Now I just have to sit back and wait until I am grown up.
2006
So now we’re on the ward, babies either side of us, opposite us, screaming, feeding, sleeping. You, on the other hand, are lying sweetly in your plastic crib. No murmur,
no cry. Surely you must be hungry by now?
Fran has this funny look in her eye that she’s trying to hide from me by scribbling frantically in your notes which are growing more and more copious by the minute, like a barrister off to
defend some beyond-hope criminal from a life sentence.
“Everything alright, Fran?” I ask.
“Time to take your blood pressure,” she says and wraps that vicious Velcro thing round my arm, squeezing it in a Chinese burn – the type that Terry would give me if I set foot
in his garage looking for Toni’s roller skates.
I want to breastfeed you. Fran doesn’t care what I do as long as we get something inside your little body. There’s been whispers of feeding tubes if you don’t get on with it
sharpish. You don’t really seem that bothered. I don’t know why they don’t just let you sleep. That’s what you’re supposed to do isn’t it, when you’re this
tiny? I’d know if you were starving, wouldn’t I? Isn’t that the sort of thing mothers intuitively know? Did Helena know? She plied me with a constant stream of bottles.
That’s why I was so ‘bonny’. You don’t look ‘bonny’. You look scrawny and pale. Dark-eyed and small like Lucas. Maybe Fran’s right. I don’t know.
What would Helena do?
Chapter Six: 1972
Saturday Night Takeaway
Mother now looks less like Audrey Hepburn and more like Carole King. She has relaxed her make-up and fashion standards in the interests of comfort (it gets hot and clammy in
the shop in summer and she likes to go bare-footed). She has also become proficient at sweet-serving, stock-taking and being polite to old ladies, and performs all these duties (and countless
others) in her stride. Bob says he doesn’t know how he ever managed without her. Mother reminds him that he probably didn’t.
Bob and Mother are becoming a partnership. They move around the shop – and each other – with ease. When one of them bends down to retrieve a sweet wrapper from the floor, the other
will reach over them to restack a shelf. However their paths cross, however busy it gets – and it can get very busy, especially on half-day closing when the whole neighbourhood wants their
pools coupons – they never bump or crash into each other. Their movements are slick and smooth. It is a choreographed dance. A double act. But that is what time does. It makes you find your
place, slot in.
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