Her Perfect Family(47)

Because that’s precisely the message I would like to send to ‘S’’s wife.





CHAPTER 31


THE MOTHER


I reach for Gemma’s laptop and rest it on the end of her bed in front of me, waiting for it to fire up. I’ve found the pictures from her birthday tea and click on the file. Gemma looks so happy. So pretty. There are photos of me and Ed too and it makes my stomach lurch to think of us back then. With no idea of what was to come.

I’ve looked through some of her other files – curiosity – but it’s mostly coursework as far as I can see. A lot of essays. She was always telling me how much time she spent on them; pushing for that first.

I scroll through some headings. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and another about someone I haven’t even heard of. I just read the essay title and click away. I love books but wouldn’t have a clue where to start; I feel out of my depth. I look again at some of the photographs – random shots with friends. Fancy-dress parties.

I let out a sigh and put the laptop back on the cabinet next to Gemma’s bed. Extraordinary how the whole process of storing memories has changed in just a generation.

My mother’s always loved taking and storing photographs. She began back in the day when you had to take your camera film to a chemist and wait for the photographs and the negatives. I remember telling a friend of Gemma’s about ‘negatives’ and she didn’t even know what I was talking about. I couldn’t find any so had to show them online. Images of the long, dark strips with punched holes along the edges.

Mum also has stacks of photo albums on a shelf in that under-stairs cupboard; likes to get them out and re-tell the stories we’ve already heard a million times over. Me learning to ride a bike. Me learning the recorder. Me with my pigtails in the school nativity.

I think of my mother at home now. Flu or just a virus; we can’t tell. Recovering well but still unable to visit Gemma. Messaging each day. I try so hard to keep upbeat when we talk but I know she watches the news and I worry how she will cope when she first sees Gemma. Like this.

And then I think again of when I was little. My mother looking after me when I was unwell. Her voice. I’ve brought you some soup. All those photo albums. Sometimes, you know, I wonder if childhood memories are all real or if we conjure some of them from the photographs and anecdotes shared by our parents. When I listen to the story and look at a picture in my mother’s albums, I feel sure that I remember the incident. Smells come back to me – the floor polish in school. That soup on the stove at home. But with other photos, I suspect it’s my mother’s version I remember from her constant cycle of storytelling. I see images but fear I’m conjuring them to fit my mother’s nostalgia.

All I can say for sure is this: my father didn’t always drink.

I have some clear and real memories of outings in the car when I was little when my parents didn’t argue. And when I wasn’t afraid. Or anxious. Or confused.

I remember that we went to the New Forest once to see the ponies. We stayed in a small hotel for a long weekend treat and went on outings every day. Walks and picnics. I enjoyed the ponies but was a little bit scared as they had quite big mouths. I watched one chewing the grass and I could see huge teeth.

Why don’t you offer the pony a Polo mint, Rachel? My father’s voice.

No way. And I remember thinking the pony would ‘have my hand off’.

I also remember my parents laughing and I’m sure that picture is real. I can’t be certain of my age – six, maybe seven, I reckon. But I don’t think my dad was drinking then.

My mum was a nurse. A really good one. She specialised in premature babies and worked part-time when I was in primary school while my father worked in a car factory. It was a very ordinary and solid sort of start, I guess. We owned our own little semi with a small garage and a small garden. My father worked hard and spent the weekends in the garden. And if you’d asked the little girl on that trip to the New Forest if she was happy, she would have said yes. But she would like a sister, please. Not a pony.

And then things started to change. Raised voices. More and more arguments. I don’t know what triggered the change but I would see my dad staying up late with a glass of Scotch. He liked crystal glasses and expensive Scotch. It upset my mum.

Why don’t you come to bed, love?

This went on for a while and then my dad lost his job. I learned much later that this was because of the drinking. I can only guess that towards the end of his time at the factory, he was what you would now call a functioning alcoholic. I didn’t see him drunk back then. I saw him with a beer often. I saw him with those glasses of Scotch. But I don’t remember as a small child seeing him drunk. Or difficult. Or belligerent.

That all came after he lost his job.

I’ve never properly talked it through with my mum. I don’t know why. I don’t want to cause her more pain or make her feel guilty. It wasn’t her fault. And there’s not much point now, so I’ve put all this together myself. I may have some of it wrong but I do remember the creeping awareness of a dangerous change. It was like playing Jenga when someone has much too early removed the wrong blocks and made the tower prematurely unstable. You know it’s all going to come down but you just have to keep playing. Moving ever so carefully.

Bottom line – my father couldn’t get another job and so his drinking got much worse.