CLARE SHAW trained and worked as a speech and language therapist before discovering that she preferred writing to talking. So she became a freelance writer, contributing to parents’ magazines and writing five books offering advice to parents, including Prepare Your Child for School and Help Your Child Be Confident. Clare then produced two daughters so that she could put her own advice into practice. This proved impossible, so she returned to speech therapy and started to talk to people again. But the call of the word processor was loud, and The Mother and Daughter Diaries is the result.

Behind every woman writer is a man bringing her cups of tea, and John boils her kettle at their home in Essex, with help from their two daughters, Emma and Jessica.

Further information can be found at

www.mirabooks.co.uk/clareshaw or www.clareshaw.com.

The Mother and Daughter Diaries

Clare Shaw

www.mirabooks.co.uk

To Abigail

Acknowledgements

My thanks to the families of Essex and Suffolk, who shared their stories of daughters and food with me. Thanks to agent extraordinaire, Judith Murdoch, and to Catherine Burke and everyone at MIRA for their hard work and enthusiasm. Also to Robyn Karney for her precision editing. Special thanks to John, Emma and Jessica for their endless support and encouragement. And to Mike Harwood for kickstarting me into this strange world of fiction.

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Acknowledgements

Dedication

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

Copyright

Read all about it…

MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

Questions for your reading group

Inspiration

Sources of help and information

MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Author biography

Q&A on writing

A writer’s life

Top ten books

A day in the life

WE RECOMMEND

Clare Shaw’s future projects

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ONE

SOMETIMES I look back and try and work out when I first started to worry about Jo, as if that’s when it all started to go wrong. But that’s a bit like asking yourself when you first fell in love or when you first grew up. These things tend to creep up on you slowly and one day you just notice them, notice something that has always been hovering there, waiting to be recognised. Perhaps I’ve always been worried about Jo—after all, I’m a mother and anxiety is on the job description. It all starts before your child is born, worrying in case he—or in my case she—comes out with three heads or twenty fingers. Then you worry about the contents of her nappies, whether she’ll make friends at playgroup, whether that marble she shoved up her nose will cause permanent damage and whether the teacher will know that you helped her to colour in her picture. But this is all just gentle preparation for the teenage years when suddenly the world seems to be flooded with alcohol, drugs and piercings in places you never knew could be pierced.

The worry may have always been there, but was there a day when it struck me that there was something I really did need to worry about? Something more than the usual adolescent anxieties? I can’t remember, but I’m always drawn back to the day of my niece’s wedding. Perhaps, underneath my camouflage of denial and pretence, I knew then.

At times I blame myself that Jo hit those difficult teenage years just as I was learning to play out my new role as a single mother, still raw and bleeding from the pain and confusion of divorce. Yet if only Jo had accepted the separation as easily as her younger sister had, then maybe we could all have held hands and taken the journey together, as a family, as one. Now I understand that we each had our own journey to take and that sometimes our paths would run parallel, sometimes converge and sometimes divert onto very different courses. And when Jo’s path led her off into what I believed was completely the wrong direction, I tried to pull her back onto mine. And yet that direction was wrong too. For her.

So perhaps the story really started with me. With me being plucked out of my comfortable existence, relabelled and thrown back into something unknown, frightening even. And as I struggled to make sense of my new life, I soon realised that my old life had been fraught with difficulty as well: that I had been hiding behind a veneer of perfect wife and mother, hoping that if I pretended long enough it would all come true. But it hadn’t really been a life after all.

As a sixteen-year-old teenager teetering from childhood to the brink of womanhood, Jo had every reason to be finding herself, breaking away to discover who she was and where she was going. But what on earth was I doing, in my forties, suddenly questioning what I, Lizzie Trounce, was all about? For somewhere along the way I had left myself behind and had carried on living with no real identity, just a few useful labels so that people would understand what I did—mother, sandwich maker, wife (now ex-wife), friend, neighbour, occasional beer drinker, part-time film buff.

I remember working at the sandwich bar alongside Trish the day before the wedding. Even then, I was trying to change direction, perhaps even hoping to find myself by looking somewhere different. But you can only change direction when you know exactly where you are in the first place and, unknowingly, I was lost.

‘The first rush is over—time for our own sustenance,’Trish said, pouring out a couple of coffees.

‘You know, this place would be better if we had room for more tables and chairs. It would make it more of a café than just a takeaway sandwich bar.’

‘There’s five stools.’ Trish nodded towards the long bar with the stools for any customers who might want to eat or drink on the premises. ‘And they’re usually empty.’

‘That’s because they’re not comfortable and the room is so narrow you have to drink while being pushed and shoved by the queue. The chances of getting an umbrella in the ear and being slapped around the bottom with a briefcase are extremely high. If only we had bigger premises.’

‘Yeah, great. So we have to serve tables as well. Twice the work for the same money,’ Trish pointed out. She was only ten years older than me but was content to float easily towards retirement.

‘But if we owned the café…’

Suddenly I saw myself as a businesswoman with a chain of restaurants to oversee, bank managers grovelling at my feet, power suit, shoes clicking authoritatively across the restaurant floor.

‘If only I’d done that business course Roger suggested,’ I sighed.

Trish laughed. ‘I really can’t see you on a business course. It’s not exactly you, is it?’

But what exactly was me? I’d been bright at school with three good A levels to my name, but then I took a gap year, before gap years even existed, and that turned into a gap five years as I happily drifted from job to job, travelling the world in between, until I met Roger. The next thing I knew, I’d given up my flat with the giant sunflowers in the window box and was trimming the privet hedge in a neat, four-bedroomed cube in a convenient location on the edge of town, with favourable commuter services into London. Desirable, quiet, sought after, practical. And dull.

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ I acknowledged, After all, how could I possibly run a business when I was struggling to make sense of the electricity bill, the car insurance, tax credit and all the things Roger had dealt with until six months earlier when everything, just everything, had been turned upside down and given a shake I could measure on the Richter scale. Of course, I thought, Roger’s new partner Alice could probably quote her National Insurance number at will, juggle bank accounts around like oranges and get a tax rebate on…well, whatever people got tax rebates for. I still cringe when I think of the first time I met her and described myself as a sandwich designer and beverage entrepreneur. And I’m still trying to convince myself that her stiff smile was one of admiration.

As Trish and I started to prepare a fresh supply of sandwiches for the lunch trade, I realised that my job was the one constant, unchanging, predictable event in my shaken-up life and I needed to keep it exactly as it was. So I set about losing myself in the routine of the day and shoved everything else to the back of my mind.

I got home from work that day feeling exhausted. Exhausted by responsibility, regret, bitterness and the intense love I had for the children I thought I’d let down. It was as if I had been pulling everything together so hard that my limbs were aching and my resolve slowly breaking down. My neighbour waved at me, and then stared at my overgrown lawn and the triffid-like borders of nettles and determined weeds. I waved back and shrugged my shoulders. It had hardly been an accusation from her and it wasn’t much of an explanation from me, but I sensed we understood each other. I would deal with the front garden when I could, but as yet I had no idea when that would be.

When I got to the front door, I turned round to look at the small wilderness behind me. There was something rather pleasing about the wild garden which somehow distracted from the predictable box of a house which stood symmetrically between two identical boxes. I liked it, and decided to put a bird table and sundial somewhere among the long grasses. It seemed rebellious and slightly daring, and I went into the house feeling a little better about myself.

I put the Chinese takeaway I had collected on the way home on the table and called the girls. Eliza danced in and gave me a hug.

‘Chinese—great,’ she enthused, and started pulling the lids off the cartons.

The dishwasher was packed full and I had forgotten to switch it on before work. I rummaged around in the cupboard and found some paper plates left over from Eliza’s birthday tea some months earlier.

‘Great, like a party,’ Eliza said, and as I waited for Jo to make an appearance, I reminded myself never to compare the two of them.

‘Shout up for Jo, would you, darling?’ I asked Eliza.

Eliza and I were halfway through our meal by the time Jo drooped in, wearing pyjama trousers and a baggy jumper which looked like an old one of Roger’s. She hung her head like a soft toy with no stuffing.

‘Not another bloody takeaway,’ she muttered. ‘I’ll get something later.’

‘I’m sorry, it’s just…’ But Jo was gone, leaving behind a large helping of guilt for me to digest with my dinner.

‘I can’t wait for the wedding tomorrow,’ Eliza said, helping herself to more spare ribs.

‘Yes, it should be fun,’ I tried to enthuse, but my voice sounded like a nervous children’s TV presenter.

My niece was getting married the next day and it would be our first big occasion as an incomplete family. Part of me was looking forward to it, part of me dreaded it. I knew I would be dying to announce to everyone that the breakdown of my marriage had not been my fault, that Roger had gone off with a younger woman as part of his mid-life crisis. I wanted to be able to laugh about it, to show the world that I was carefree, happy and in control. But was I? And had it in some way been my fault?

As Eliza ran out urgently to phone one of her friends, I looked around the kitchen. Roger had planned to decorate the whole house the previous year and had scheduled it into his diary as he scheduled everything in—meetings, DIY projects, liaison time with the girls, sex probably. Yet it had never happened, presumably because of his well-scheduled plans to leave me, so the house was beginning to look a little frayed: nothing extreme, just the odd scuff mark here and there, the occasional patch of peeling paint or faded curtain. But there was something more, something that had changed the feel of the entire kitchen, and I realised that it was my piles of, well, stuff. With Roger, there had been a place for everything. Anything that could be filed was filed, anything that could be put on a shelf was put on one and extra shelves had been continuously added to accommodate any item inadvertently left lying about.

Now I indulged myself in allowing things to be left lying about, and I specialised in piling up books and photos, magazines and CDs, letters and odd pieces of clothing. Every room in the house was littered with piles of miscellaneous objects so that the lounge carpet looked like a lake with stepping stones across the middle and my bedroom an entry for the Turner prize. Yet it was not chaotic, I knew where everything was and the piles were somehow neatly piled. And I had every intention of sorting them into something else—well-ordered piles maybe.

The truth was I missed Roger, not as a partner but as someone who had sorted out the bills, put things away and knew where the stopcock was. Now I had to do everything and there never seemed to be the time. I wasted so many hours just sitting in the cluttered kitchen wondering where it had all gone wrong, how I had ended up in this characterless house doing an unchallenging job, a divorce statistic with a stroppy teenager who could tear my self-worth apart just by walking into the kitchen and looking around at what it had become.

Still, I loved Jo more than anything and went upstairs to talk to her about the wedding the next day.

‘Hi, Jo, are you looking forward to tomorrow?’

‘Suppose.’

‘Looks like the weather’s going to be good.’

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s a bit of a long trek so we’ll have to set off about eight. Is that OK?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Sorry about the takeaway. We’ll have a roast on Sunday, shall we? Like old times.’

‘Except it won’t be like old times, will it?’

‘No, of course. Still, you like a roast. What about now? Shall I make you an omelette?’

‘I’m all right.’

‘Right, well, I’d better go and iron my dress for tomorrow. I don’t want to look like a wrung-out dishcloth.’

I laughed, I winked, I smiled, I patted Jo maternally.

I decided to go out into the garden and talk to the plants, reassure them that I cared and would soon be pulling out all those intrusive weeds which were strangling them and blocking the light. But perhaps I should have been saying the same things to Jo.

I listened at the lounge door but heard Eliza still chatting excitedly on the phone, underlining key words as she spoke.

‘It’s going to be wicked. You should see what I’m wearing. I’m on the stage practically all the time. And right at the front.’

Back in the kitchen, I thought about Jo again, although, looking back, I never stopped thinking about Jo. It was continuous. She had her own place in the worry zone of my brain, and I knew with intuitive certainty that there was something wrong, very wrong, with her. Of course she didn’t tell me everything, she was a teenager and was still adjusting to her parents’ separation, that was normal. But it was more than that. There was something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Out in the world she was often so different, speaking out eloquently, standing tall and proud and looking at her life ahead with some optimism. Was it this house that was stifling her, gagging her so that only a few words could be spluttered out of her mouth at one time? Or was it me?

I stared out of the window at the overgrown garden. It had begun to rain heavily so I put off my idea of going out and chatting to my neglected plants. I wondered if it would be all right to just shout out a few words of encouragement through the window, and immediately wondered what Roger would think. What he would think of my piles of stuff scattered across the floor like lilies; what he would make of me shouting out of the window at the plants…Would he despair of me phoning up the emergency gas line because I couldn’t work the timer on the central-heating system? I could taste his disapproval as if he were there in the room with me, and yet I knew that if only I let it, that very thought could set me free because I no longer needed anyone’s approval, except my own. But that was the most difficult approval to get.

I opened the window.

‘Hi, plants, how are you doing?’ I almost whispered—I wasn’t quite ready for this.

‘Hello, plants and trees.’A loud voice from behind me shouted over my shoulder. It was Eliza. We fell about like drunk chimpanzees and then I realised that the rain was slanting in and I shut the window. There was never any need to explain with Eliza.

‘Just getting a yoghurt,’ she said, and skipped out of the kitchen again.

My mind turned back to Jo as I tried to remember her preadolescent years. It had all been so different then. She had spent so many hours with Roger, talking about exams and how to invest her pocket money and planning her future. Now she was changed, and by more than adolescence. I knew then that I had to talk to someone about her, about me even, before we drowned in the sea of silence we found ourselves in. I picked up the phone and pressed out a number.

‘Hi, Trish. Just called to say thanks for doing my shift tomorrow. Gina should be there about nine.’

‘That’s great. You have a wonderful day, Lizzie. Enjoy the wedding.’

‘We certainly will. It’ll seem funny without…on my own.’

‘You won’t be on your own. You’ll have the girls with you.’

‘Of course I will. They’re really looking forward to it.’ ‘I bet they are.’

‘Trish?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ll bring you back a piece of cake.’

So, I’d got it all off my chest, then. For someone who found it so easy to talk, the words crashing out of my mouth like coins from a slot machine, I found it very difficult to actually say anything. Later I learnt that there are other powerful ways to communicate, but back then, on the eve of my niece’s wedding, I did at least manage to laugh at myself. You have to laugh, otherwise you end up crying, I thought. It was only after Lily came into our lives that I realised you sometimes have to cry as well. It took an enigmatic, mysterious stranger to teach me that, a stranger called Lily Finnegan.

TWO

BEFORE I started to write it all down, I wrote ‘Lily Finnegan’ at the top of the page. Then I found out Mum had done the same thing. Like this is all about Lily or something. Well, maybe it is. I’m not writing my life story—nothing like that. How can I? I’m still a teenager and everything stretches out before me. But I had to write about this slice of my life be-cause Lily told me to. And because it changed things. For ever.

Did I have a happy childhood? Kind of. My parents divorced. Shit time but a lot of kids go through it. It was easier for my sister, Eliza. She thinks she’s in a play or a film. That’s why she’s happier than me.

I was happy being me once. It was when I stopped being me that it went wrong. I couldn’t put a date on it—‘I got screwed up on 20th April 2001’—nothing like that. I just remember that I had to perform, so I started to pretend. And I guess the performance gradually took over from reality. I knew how to make other people happy—you just pretend to be who they want you to be. Act your knickers off. Smile on top, cry underneath. I can see all that now, but there was no set plan at the time. It just happened. I totally lost control of me.

One of my biggest performances was at my cousin Victoria’s wedding when I played the part of the perfect daughter. Oscar-winning stuff, but my mask slipped off. I went out of character. I let the real me show through, and raw emotions frighten people. I wasn’t the only one playing a part. I had a talented supporting cast. Mum was acting out the role of the perfect mother of a jolly happy Sunday roast family. Me? I was eager to please, but at that time I didn’t understand why.

When I got up that day and saw the dress hanging there, it looked boring and ordinary. It was suitable—for the weather, for the occasion, for someone who was frightened of standing out in the crowd yet who wanted to. The part of me that wanted to stand out felt a sort of regret. I draped the dress onto me and looked in the mirror. It looked better than it had in the shop. There would be boys at the wedding and I looked good. I had lost some weight for the event and the dress hung off me as if it were on a coat hanger. Perfect. Victoria would be the one in the wedding dress. I knew I would be envious. She was the one with the boyfriend, soon to be husband, but I was slim and very nearly elegant. And he might go off her.

Sixteen and no boyfriend. Sad or what?

Eliza came in.

‘Where’s your dress?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I’m wearing this,’ she explained casually, fiddling with the make-up on my table.

I was stunned. It hadn’t occurred to me that you could do that. Ignore the dress put out by your mother.

Eliza started to sing.

‘Get out, Eliza, there’s no singing in here.’

Eliza made me feel like a blob.

‘Hello, I’m Jo, Lizzie’s eldest daughter,’ I practised.

Mum came in and sighed. She was relieved to see the version of the daughter she wanted.

‘Do I look fat in this?’ I asked.

She laughed. People don’t always pick up their cues in this pantomime we call life. I told Mum I was excited about the wedding. I told Eliza it would be fun. Sometimes saying it can even make it happen and I think I was excited, but my feelings were damp that day. Ever since getting my GCSE results, it felt as if the only emotion that dared speak its mind was anger.

I remember sitting upright in the car when we drove up to the school on results day.

‘You’ll be fine,’ Mum had said. It was expected. By the school, by Mum, by me. Expectation had its own pressure. Failure would be a steep fall, and I was nervous when I glanced at the piece of paper in my sweaty palm. Eight A* grades, four A grades. Best results in the school. Nearly perfect. I felt relief and pride and ecstatic joy. For about four minutes, before a feeling of disappointment and then indifference misted up my mind and dampened the positive stuff. I felt like screaming out, ‘So what!’ I phoned up friends and relatives, hoping their pleasure and excitement would transfer to me. Like catching chickenpox. But I was immune. A blob.

Still, I think I really did feel excited about the wedding. Underneath. Perhaps I had just forgotten how to let my emotions show, like a Coke bottle with the cap stuck on. Even shaking it up wouldn’t help get the fizz out.

Mum sorted out the seating arrangements in the car. She organised who could choose the radio stations. She controlled the steering-wheel and the conversation. We sang and laughed and it sounded like happiness. Or something…We had to drive all the way to the end of Norfolk, miles and miles and miles. The end of the world.

Mum drove in trainers. She had gone on and on about her new shoes. Mostly she goes on and on about my exams, on and on about Eliza’s talents, on and on about the food she sells at work and on and on about how you have to laugh. No option—you have to laugh. These are permanent ramblings, they never change and she recycles them on a daily basis, like the repeats on TV—you know what’s coming but there’s nothing else to tune in to. Then there are the new episodes. Like the shoes.

When we arrived, Eliza leant over the back of the seat and retrieved the shoes. Giggling, we hid them behind our backs and waited for Mum to open the boot and think she’d forgotten them.

We often played jokes on Mum. And on Dad. Mum and I often played jokes on Eliza. But nobody ever played a joke on me. People were too careful with me. As if I had a ‘Handle with Care’ sticker across my soul. Was I really that fragile, even then?

The church was beautiful, with flowers and everyone dressed up and the choir and the organ. It was so traditional and sort of old-fashioned. And everyone was looking warmly at Victoria, pleased she was so happy. I wanted to be pleased for her, but jealousy is in my blood. I could feel it then, pumping around my arteries, and nothing could stop the flow. Jealousy is hot. It makes blood simmer, gently at first, then violently. You cannot see, hear, feel, taste or touch anything. Not in your own skin. Not if you want to be in someone else’s skin. Feel what they’re feeling, see what they’re seeing.

‘Very young, but in the circumstances…’

I could sense my mother’s thoughts, smug judgements as she perched between the daughters she thought she knew well. I thought about my life, I thought about love, I thought about meaning. Big thoughts. Scary thoughts. And then we laughed at a fat woman’s hat.

Outside Mum pushed me into talking to old ladies. I must impress them, make my mum look good—by proxy. I hated it. Didn’t they see my unease? Sense my reluctance? But maternal eyes were on me and I wanted to please. Why? I wanted to please and I wanted to rebel. The definition of unhappiness: wanting two opposite actions at the same time. Can’t choose. Can’t decide. Makes you feel like shit. I talked pleasantly. Kind of.

‘How’s your budgie doing?’ I asked sarcastically. I’d guessed correctly that the lavendered aunt kept a budgie. She was the sort. Liked garibaldi biscuits, crocheted cardigans, watched Countdown, supported animal charities, never said ‘vagina’ out loud.

We went to Uncle George’s house for the reception. Mum made the same joke to everyone about what a nice tent it was. Eliza escaped into her own world, I was stuck in this one. I was still on display. Here we have Lizzie’s fabulous daughter. How clever. How bright. How charming. How tall. What big hips. I stuck to the script—exams, hockey, university, violin lessons, youth hostelling. Don’t mention Dad—Mum’s unspoken law.

‘I haven’t decided yet but I’m thinking about medicine or maybe pharmacy…Yes, Eliza was brilliant in Annie… She’s got another show coming up…Maybe Cambridge. The school think I’ve got a chance…Not much time for boyfriends. I did have one but I’ve been really busy…That’s right, Eliza’s my sister. Yes, very talented…Duke of Edinburgh, yes—I’m doing my silver…Yes, Eliza is quite a character.’

Yes, I hate Eliza sometimes. Yes, I get fed up talking about her. Yes, I wish my whole existence wasn’t chained to exams. Yes, I do want to scream out loud. Yes, I do need to punch someone full on in the face. You and you and you. But mainly me. Don’t worry, I won’t. Mum can rely on me.

I was introduced to Stephen and Ben. Ben was just about to start sixth form like me. Stephen was younger.

‘They could do with some decent music in here later,’ suggested Ben. ‘Screamhead are local to these parts. They should have booked them.’

‘That would be totally awesome,’ I replied.

‘You like them?’

‘Yeah, I’ve got their CD—All Quiet.’ Well, I was thinking of getting it.

‘A girl of good taste as well as good looks.’

I looked in his eyes for a flicker of sarcasm, but he meant it. My diet had paid off. Nearly an hour with the hair straighteners had been worth it.

‘See you later, Jo, I’ve got to do the relative thing, yawn, yawn.’

‘Tell me about it, puke, puke.’

I found Eliza behind the marquee with another little girl.

‘Hey, I like your routine, that’s wicked.’

I loved my sister—at that moment.

I wandered around the garden. I was happy to be with my own thoughts, now that my thoughts were good ones. Amazing gardens. Uncle George and Auntie Sue are rich. I could be rich if I wanted. But I could end up poor. I didn’t want to think about the future. I didn’t want the future to happen. I was sixteen. That’s old enough. Listening to Screamhead is better than having a mortgage. The now that I know is better than the then that I don’t.

I saw Ben again on his mobile. He waved. I went over.

‘My girlfriend checking up on me,’ he said with a grin.

Victoria and her new husband were coming towards us. We watched them gliding along the lawn. It took a long time. We waited. Then we talked about weddings. Eventually I excused myself. I said I had to find my mother. As if. I walked around the outside of the marquee. The canvas rippled in the breeze and looked vulnerable. Surely torrential rain could get through the thin material. Surely a raging storm could blow it clean away. But storms and torrential rain rarely happen. Life is full of showers and brief interludes of sunny spells. Or so it seemed.

I slid into the marquee. A big cluster of guests was gathered at one end as if the ground had been tipped up and everyone had fallen together. A solitary figure stood staring at the food. My mother.

She loved food. All her plans were about food. Her plans for the day always included mealtimes, her plans for the future involved a restaurant. When I was little, there was always a picnic. A trip to the beach plus picnic. An outing to the zoo plus picnic. A tedious journey to a forgotten relative—plus a break for a picnic. Before we left, the kitchen would smell of picnics. A mixture of mayonnaise, coffee and plastic. The basket was like Little Red Riding Hood’s. Food bulging out like buttocks under a red and white checked cloth. Gross.

There was an excitement about a picnic—my mother would whisk off the tablecloth with a flick of her wrist, like a magician—but there was no surprise. It was always the same. Soggy egg sandwiches. Lemonade. A flask of coffee. Ginger cake. Bruised apples.

‘Eat up, eat up,’ my mother would trill, like the repetitive cry of a seagull.

And there she was, smiling at the wedding food. Then she turned around and smiled at me. I think she smiled—there was some distance between us. I heard Ben’s voice behind me, talking about football. Boys always talk about football at a wedding. My father tells a story about a wedding he went to on cup final day. All the men in front of the telly, missing the speeches.

Suddenly I knew that I didn’t want to eat the food. I felt sick. I needed some air.

Uncle George was on the bench. I sat down next to him.

‘Enjoying yourself?’

‘I’m feeling a bit sick.’

‘The car journey?’

‘Probably.’

‘Seen Victoria?’

‘Yeah. She looks great.’

‘Yes.’

‘You proud?’

‘Yes. After everything.’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s hard growing up.’

‘Yes.’

‘These days.’

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t do drugs, do you, Jo?’

‘No, nothing like that.’

‘I’m proud of you, Jo. Are you happy?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘That’s all you can expect. Sometimes. Don’t expect too much, that’s the secret Jo. Don’t expect too much of people.’

‘I won’t.’

But I did.

Women are meant to be better communicators, good with words, intuitive with the non-verbal stuff. But I prefer male speak. My mother uses too many words. So does Auntie Sue. Words to analyse, predict, accuse. Most of all, selfish words: look what this does to me, after everything I’ve done, what will people think about me? Me, me, me. You make me look good, you make me look bad.

If I’m sick, it’s me who’s sick. No one else need throw up on my behalf.

As my mother waved and called ‘Coo-ee,’ my stomach churned. My chest heaved. My throat went into spasm. I headed for the house. Walls make me feel safer than the open air. Or canvas.

Later, I was sitting in the marquee feeling a little better. My mother skipped over, full of sympathy. Sympathy for herself because her daughter couldn’t perform any more—she had pulled a sickie.

She said, ‘You must be a doctor when you grow up and you must eat this bread. Then I will tell you what else you must do.’ Or words to that effect.

Anger hides round corners. If you listen carefully, you’ll hear it rumbling, swishing. Like lava surfacing. You feel your body tightening as it grips your muscles and tendons and seeps into your nervous system, and you become hot, steamy, rigid. You can’t keep it trapped inside, it will make its escape.

I pushed the plate away with too much force. I spoke with too much aggression. Then I sat back and let my mother turn my anger into guilt.

‘Sorry, I was only trying to help, I forgot you weren’t feeling well. I thought you’d want to meet that medical student. It’s your life, but I’m here to support you, and it’s just that you need to gather all the information you can. Talk to people, ask questions, and something will come up and you’ll think, Yes, that’s for me. But there’s no hurry, just keep all your options open.’

‘I just feel like…I don’t know.’

‘Go on.’

‘I feel pushed. Kind of.’

‘Well, it’s you pushing yourself most of the time. No one else is pushing you in any way. You’re completely wrong about this, you have nothing to be angry about. I simply don’t want you to have any regrets, that’s all. Regret can niggle you for the rest of your life.’

‘Sorry.’

‘That’s all right. No harm done. Here you are, you can have my bread.’

‘Can I go and play outside?’ asked Eliza. She had scoffed down her food like eating’s an Olympic event or something.

‘I don’t suppose children have to stay for the speeches, Eliza. Off you go then. Jo and I will be here if you need us.’

Ben walked past and winked at me. I smiled. Then I saw him wink at the girl in the pink chiffon dress.

The wedding party was sitting in a line like they were waiting for a bus or something. Victoria and her husband kept looking at each other. Uncle George and Auntie Sue kept looking at each other. The in-laws kept looking at each other. People seem to come in pairs, like book ends. Or shoes. One by one, the men in the line stood up to speak. The audience joined in with romantic sighs, laughter, applause. I saw myself sitting up there in a white dress. My mum and dad beside me. Eliza one of a pair of identical bridesmaids. Everyone in pairs. Perfect.

I miss being a complete family. Two parents. Two children. Two gerbils. I like everything neat and tidy. Life arranged to perfection.

The speeches were over and Mum was chatting to some random man. Middle-aged men in suits all smell the same. She picked a piece of fluff off his shoulder. She smoothed down her skirt. She pushed a piece of hair behind her ear. She said it was a nice tent. She said the mother-in-law’s hat looked like a pancake. She threw back her head and laughed. He laughed too. She said, ‘You have to laugh.’

I stood up and went over.

‘Ah, my daughter, Jo. This is Gordon.’

‘I don’t feel well.’

‘Do you want to go and lie down in the house? Uncle George won’t mind.’

‘I really, really don’t feel well.’

‘Oh, dear, let me think…’

‘I want to go home.’

The challenge. Who comes first?

‘I’ll catch you later.’ Gordon slunk off quietly.

We got into the car in a cloud of apologies. Apology and regret equals blame. We stopped at the end of the village.

‘Jo, if you’re feeling sick, perhaps you’d better swap with Eliza and sit in the front. It was your turn to sit in the front anyway.’

‘It’s all right. I’m feeling much better.’

‘But it was your turn.’

‘Get a life.’

There are different types of silences. There’s the easy, comfortable silence you share with friends. I can sit with my best friend, Scarlet. We can sit in silence like soaking in a warm bath. Then there’s solitary silence, but your own thoughts make it a noisy, frantic silence. The silence in the car was thick and heavy. Like wet concrete waiting to set into something solid. Eliza eased into the silence with soft humming. I thought my mother would slice through it with laughter. Or a shrug-of-the-shoulders remark. Instead, she made us sit in it. She turned on the radio. Radio Two. She hummed along. But too high-pitched.

When did I first feel I’d let my parents down?

I remember when I was six years old. It was our school sports day. I was entered in the sack race and the obstacle race. Lucy Button was better than me. On the day, I stayed at home. I told my mother I hated school. I never wanted to go again. Mum and Dad argued. Dad had taken the day off work. Mum liked to talk to the other mums. I was off reading schemes. I could read what I wanted and Mum liked to tell everyone.

After that, I practised running in a sack all year. I practised crawling under tarpaulins. I practised throwing a bean bag into a hoop. The next year I won both my races but Mum was in hospital, having Eliza. Dad was with her. When I got home, I had to go to the hospital. I saw that Eliza was ugly. I didn’t want her to live in our house. She had my mother’s name and I didn’t. I asked why. I said what about me?

I think Dad was on my side. I don’t know, but there was shouting, right there in the hospital. I had caused a rift be-tween my parents. So? They’d missed me winning my races. Life needed to be balanced like that. Neat and tidy. Ordered and fair.

When we got home from the wedding, I went straight to bed. I was still feeling shitty. That night I dreamt I was running along a winding path towards a big house. I knew I had to run through the house and get to the other side. I didn’t know why, I just knew it had to be done. I ran along corridors but kept coming across dead ends. Then I realised I had to go down some stone steps into a dark cellar. That way I would be able to run through the cellar, climb up some steps at the other end and get through the house. But I lost my way in the dark. Then I woke up and my stomach felt full. I felt like I had been stuffed with cotton wool like a teddy bear. My throat was dry. My forehead was hot. In the morning, Mum left warm toast and a mug of steaming tea on my bedside table. She told me to rest.

There were two weeks left before term started. Sixth form waited ahead like a mountain. Daunting, imposing, frightening. Somehow the wedding had changed things. Another mountain was in view. The future was too steep to climb.

I would make a list. A list limited the time ahead you had to think about. I would make a list of what I needed to do in the remaining two weeks. I got out my pad and pen and stared at the blank page. I didn’t like blank pages. They looked uncertain, open, ambiguous. I started to write, to cure the page of its emptiness, to cure the future of its uncertainty.

• Read through AS curriculums.

• File away GCSE work.

• Tidy desk drawers.

• Keep dream diary.

• Buy Screamhead’s new album.

• Mend puncture on bike.

• Collect photographs.

• Get a new boyfriend.

• Lose a stone.

• Phone Scarlet.

I decided to start at the end and work backwards. Maybe life should be like that. Start off as a crinkly with all that experience. Then feel yourself getting younger and fitter. Life would get better, not worse.

‘Hi, Scarlet. Do you want to come over or shall we meet in town or something?’

Mum came into my room.

‘Only two weeks left of the holiday. It’s flown past, hasn’t it? Eliza’s round at Katie’s for the day. I thought you and I would hit the shops.’

‘I’m going out.’

‘Oh. Right. Where are you off to?’

‘Just out.’

‘Are you meeting Scarlet?’

‘Probably.’

‘Well, maybe we could meet up afterwards. I’ve got a few things to do in town. What do you say?’

But I said nothing. I don’t know why. The wedding seemed to have changed everything. Maybe that’s why I keep thinking back to that day. Even now. It was the start of something. Or the end of something. It was an unhappy day, I know that. It’s just been so hard to recall the feelings, the essence, of the day. All I really remember is the sequence of events, like it was a film or something.

I met Scarlet at Tramps coffee-bar. I had a black coffee. Scarlet had a latte. She spooned three sugars into it, automatically, and stirred it round and round and round. Her arm jangled with the rows of bracelets. The dolphin tattoo on her shoulder bobbed up and down. She put her elbow on the table and propped her head up with her hand. She carried on stirring.

Tramps had an uneven wooden floor and thick pine tables which wobbled when you leant on them. The hiss and splutter of the coffee-machines, the droning chatter of its young customers, the revs and buzz of the traffic outside drowned out our silence. The place smelt of froth and coffee beans and sweat and cinnamon.

‘Life is full of shit,’ sighed Scarlet eventually.

‘Something wrong?’

‘My parents are splitting up—no big surprise—and Blaise has dumped me and I think I’ve picked the wrong subjects for AS levels. It’s all happening at once and I feel like shite. I am so-o-o-o stressed.’

Scarlet started to cry. Large solitary tears like a tap dripping slowly. She cried easily, unashamedly, as if it was normal.

‘Look at me.’ She laughed, and brushed her tears away with the back of her hand.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ I asked, and put my hand on her shoulder. Then we hugged. Scarlet was the only person I touched, except perhaps Mum. Mum doesn’t know how to hug me any more. Except sometimes when she forgets I’m grown up. Am I grown up? Anyway, she hugs me like I’m three or something. Like she wants to kiss it better and put a plaster on it. Scarlet’s my best friend and her secrets are my secrets. And my secrets…Well, you have to know what they are yourself first. We hugged in the café so I could share some of my strength. If only I’d had any.

‘Not much to say really,’ she said.

But there was. Scarlet told me her dad was moving thirty miles away and that she had known it was coming but it was still a shock when it happened. That she’d racked her brains to see if there was anything she could have done. That Blaise was a bastard and she hated him. That she thought sciences would be too hard and would make her so-o-o stressed but she might stick with biology. That she felt uncertain and confused and muddled and shitty.

And all the time she cried and sniffed. She blew her nose on her napkin. She didn’t hide her face or go to the toilets. She seemed locked into that space, that time, that moment. The bustle of coffee-bar life ground on, but Scarlet seemed totally unaffected by everything around us.

Eventually she shrugged it off.

‘How was the wedding?’ she asked. ‘Any fit guys?’

‘Mostly mingers. But there was one cute guy, Ben.’

‘Tell me more.’

I leant over the table like there was someone listening or something.

‘He’s a Screamhead freak. We had so-o-o much in common. It was like we’d known each other years. I reckon he works out some. Muscles all over.’

I was whispering. Confiding in Scarlet. Confiding a lie, half a lie anyway.

‘All over?’ said Scarlet, and spluttered out a laugh so that the froth on her coffee went up her nose and made her cough.

We giggled and I nearly felt happy. I had made Scarlet laugh and that would make her feel better. Perhaps it would make me feel better. By osmosis or something.

‘Are you seeing him again?’

‘Might do. Bit of a distance.’

‘Still, you had a good time.’

Did I? Did I have a good time? I wasn’t well, there was something sad about it all, but otherwise…

‘So we’ve both got divorced oldies now,’ I said. I was sure I could help Scarlet out. That would make sense. I could tell her what it was like and then she’d understand and feel OK about it. Maybe.

I looked at Scarlet. How did she manage to cry without get-ting blotches? Her skin was perfect. Pale under her spiky blonde hair. She looked like a pretty pixie. Petite, small slightly turned-up nose, sparkling green eyes. I preferred long hair, but the style suited her. She made me feel clumsy. She said she wished she was tall. But she meant tall and elegant. Not tall and awkward. I liked my shoulder-length hair. I liked my brown eyes. I only got the occasional spot. But my body was all wrong. It was like a puzzle of different body parts all put together wrongly so that somebody else had some of my pieces. I had haphazard bulges here and there. In the wrong places.

We finished our drinks and Scarlet came to the music shop with me and to collect my photographs from Boots. While we were there, we fiddled around with the make-up samples. We sprayed perfume on our wrists and we weighed ourselves.

I got home with my photos and my CD and a number on a piece of paper. I looked at my list. I ticked off ‘Phone Scarlet’, ‘Collect photographs’, and ‘Buy Screamhead’s new album’. I got a pad out and wrote ‘DREAMS’ on the cover. I looked at the first blank page. I wrote about my dream of trying to run through the cellar. I wrote a number next to ‘Lose a stone’.

This was the first time I’d felt happy for months. Was it happiness? I’m not sure now. Can you have happiness without contentment? But I was organised. I was crossing items off a list. I was on a roll. And something felt right.

I rushed out to the bike shed and wrenched the wheel off my bike.

‘Coo-ee,’ shouted Mum. ‘I’m making myself a sandwich for lunch—do you want one?’

‘I ate in town.’

You would think Mum would want something different to eat on a Sunday, her day off from the sandwich shop.

I stayed in the shed while Mum ate her sandwich. Soon, I was glueing the small fabric square onto the inner tube. I left it to dry. I wondered what it would be like to live in the shed. It would be like having your own flat. Cool. I spent the next hour slowly and methodically filing away my work from my GCSE courses and another two tidying out my desk drawers. I threw away a bin bag of paper. More than could have fitted into the drawers. Or so it seemed.

I got out the curriculum papers for my AS level subjects and started to read.

‘Can I have mine in my room?’ I asked Mum at suppertime. I didn’t want to lose the momentum. Spaghetti Bolognese—better than a takeaway.

I carried on reading.

Three more items to tick off on my list.

I crossed off ‘Lose a stone’ and wrote ‘Eat less’ in its place. I crossed off ‘Get a new boyfriend’ and wrote ‘Prepare for a new boyfriend’. It was all in the wording, the semantics. Aims must be achievable, measurable, exact. Each day must have a new list. Each list must have ten items. I was in control.

My sister thinks she’s so bloody perfect. So does my mum. Perfect. Someone ought to tell them.

THREE

I was kneading the dough on the wooden kitchen table, my rose-print apron wrapped around my hand-made gingham dress, when I had a maternal impulse to pat my two daughters on their plaited heads as they looked up at me with awe and gratitude…

Well, if you have no hope of being a perfect mother, you might as well imagine it.

‘We’ve run out of milk again,’ Jo whinged, crashing the fridge door shut. I abandoned my Walton fantasy to deal with the latest domestic crisis. ‘There’s plenty in there if you’d only looked properly,’ I shouted in my best bad-mother screech.

‘I have skimmed milk now, I told you.’

‘You never…’ But Jo was out of the door, slamming it behind her as if I were on a train about to leave the station. If only.

I checked the fridge and there was plenty of ordinary milk there. Not much else, though. I thought about going up to Jo’s room to apologise for shouting but I sensed that might be the wrong tactic. I always felt so apologetic, apologetic for being inadequate, I suppose. But whenever I tried to say sorry or explain myself, Jo looked at me with an adolescent contempt as if admitting my shortcomings was in itself a shortcoming. I have always approached parenting as if trying to work a new washing machine without the instructions—by trial and error. What on earth does anyone else do? Yet part of me suspected that other mothers had received the instruction booklet with their children, while mine had been missing. Still, back to the Waltons…

Imagining is good strategy. It’s so easy to imagine fresh ironed sheets on the bed, an Aga in the kitchen and a nanny in the back bedroom—a perfect lifestyle maybe. But imagining yourself as perfect comes a little bit harder, although it can be done with practice. And back then I was well practised. When the girls were little, I used to walk around with a picnic basket in one hand, a copy of Parenting magazine in the other, smiling confidently should Eliza or Jo fling herself onto the floor at Tesco in a temper tantrum. As if I knew exactly how to handle the situation. As if I were in complete control. Still, I muddled through those early years well enough, a permanent splodge of jam on my blouse like a bullet wound, play dough under my finger nails. I always seemed to be wiping one of the girls down with a licked handkerchief while forgetting even to clean my own teeth some days. I can’t think why Roger left me and quickly moved in with the highly successful, designer-clothed, play-dough-free Alice.

Now I have a teenager, things are very different. I adore Jo, yet sometimes she is barely recognisable as the little girl I once knew. Sometimes she is barely recognisable as a human being, but I still adore her. If I’m honest, I would like to press my remote control and fast-forward her past the teenage years and straight into a mother and daughter bonding session in the spa pool, bypassing hormones completely. I desperately tried to hang on to my ideal vision of the future: shopping together without arguing; eating a meal together without an uncomfortable silence; talking together without…well, just talking together. Properly. I thought all it would take was for Jo to change, I didn’t realise I had to change too. Not then, not before Lily Finnegan.

When we went to Victoria’s wedding, I found myself chatting to a fellow parent-of-a-teenager, whom I’d spotted across the marquee—she had that tired, bewildered, confused expression we all share.

‘What are teenagers actually for?’ I asked her, as we stood looking at her daughter, who was sprawled on the ground in her pink frock and Doc Marten boots, with a Walkman plugged into her ears.

‘To make us feel permanently inadequate,’ she suggested.

‘To make sure we never dare see ourselves as anything more than a taxi driver.’

‘Or cash dispenser.’

As we tried to laugh about it all, I discreetly scanned the marquee to ensure Jo had not slouched off to sit in the car be-cause it was all ‘so sad’. In fact, Jo was in rather a good mood, chatting to all the relatives and smiling from time to time. Not a stray hormone in sight. I almost relaxed.

It was a happy day, as weddings so often are, and when Jo didn’t feel well, I didn’t give it another thought. The unwritten rule of teenage behaviour is to make a drama out of the mundane and Jo was no exception. One slight spot or blemish put her straight into quarantine in her own bedroom. One little tiff with her friend Scarlet had her announcing that nobody liked her, she might as well commit suicide, and when she did nobody would come to her funeral. So a slight period pain at the wedding meant leaving early with a view to hospitalisation later.

Should I have insisted she lie down in George’s spare bedroom so that Eliza and I could carry on enjoying our day out? Did I do more harm than good by giving in to Jo’s foibles? I have no idea, I simply made my decision knowing that it was probably the wrong one. As always.

There are no manuals on how to parent teenagers. It is assumed that once you get them sleeping through the night, using the potty and counting to ten, you can sit back and relax. Surely a parents’ magazine for those of us with teenagers would be snapped off the shelves. We would be able to read articles like ‘A Valium-free Method for Dealing with Your Child’s Mood Swings’ or ‘Just Giving You the Benefit of My Experience’—and other phrases never to say to your teenager. All I could do was carry on with the washing-machine approach to parenting.

When we got home from the wedding, I made a positive decision not to ask Jo accusing questions about her apparent stomach problems.

‘Are you better?You seem to have made a speedy recovery,’ I said, the message from my brain not quite reaching my lips.

I must check the hinges on Jo’s bedroom door, I thought, they may have worked loose by now.

The wedding had exhausted me. You never completely relax when you are out with growing children in an environment containing alcohol and collapsible tables. And I had sole responsibility for anything that might have gone wrong. The burden of being a parent on my own suddenly seemed to weigh heavily on me, for I had nobody to shift the responsibility onto, no one else to take the blame, no one else to share my doubts with. I sensed that the stress of lone parenting was beginning to take its toll on me.

The next day, I decided it was time her father got a taste of what I had to deal with, and time I had a desperately needed break. So I dialled Roger’s number, praying out loud as I held the receiver to my ear, ‘Please don’t let Alice answer, please don’t let Alice answer…’

I hadn’t heard the click on the line.

‘I’m afraid it is Alice,’ came the well-enunciated tones of my ex-husband’s partner.

I put the phone down quickly and stared at it. It rang.

‘Answer it, then,’ sang Eliza as she danced past me and into the kitchen.

‘Hello.’

‘That’s Lizzie, isn’t it?’

‘Well…yes.’

‘It’s Alice. I do believe you’ve just telephoned us.’

‘No, it wasn’t me. I’ve just this minute got in—the girls and I were out shopping.’

‘That’s funny…I pressed 1471 and your number came up as the previous caller. So I made the obvious deduction.’ Ever the lawyer.

‘Oh, it was Jo probably.’

‘I thought she was out shopping with you.’

‘She ran on ahead.’

‘So does she want to speak to her father, then?’

‘Yes. No. She did but she changed her mind. I’ll speak to Roger, though, seeing as you’ve phoned.’

Roger and I have an amicable relationship.

When we split up, we gave each other leaving presents and vowed to remain best friends. I was so delighted when he met his young, attractive partner so soon after our separation that I sent Alice a bouquet of flowers…

Well, it could happen—in certain parts of America, perhaps. In reality, my main aim with Roger was to let him know how miserable he had made me.

‘Hi, Roger, sorry I took so long to get back to you—the girls and I have been out shopping and having a wonderful, wonderful time. Together.’

‘You phoned me.’

‘Did I? Oh, yes. Sorry, I’ve had so many calls to make today—work, the hairdressers, Gordon, of course—just someone I met at Victoria’s wedding. Now, what was it I needed to talk to you about?’

‘Jo and Eliza, presumably.’

‘Oh, yes, would you like Jo to stay for a few days next week?’

‘Yes, that suits me fine. Eliza?’

‘Rehearsals. But she could spend a couple of hours with you when I bring them over. If it’s Sunday. Then I could bring her back again.’

‘Fine. Look, you might as well stay to lunch. There’s no need to go all the way home and come back again.’

‘Fine. The only thing is, I would prefer it if your new partner wasn’t there. Well, Jo would prefer it, I don’t mind. After all, we’re both meeting new people. All the time. Practically on a daily basis.’

‘Alice lives here. Anyway, the girls have met her twice now and they all got on fine.’

‘It’s just something Jo said. About being just with you.’

‘Alice did offer to go to her mother’s but I think—’

‘That’s settled, then. About twelve-thirty.’

‘Fine. Alice should be out of the house by then.’

‘Will you be able to bring Jo back on the following Saturday?’

‘Yes, I should think so.’

‘About five o’clock would be good.’

‘I’d rather make it in the evening. About eight maybe.’

‘Six o’clock would be more convenient.’

‘Between six and seven, then.’

‘Fine.’

‘Can I speak to them now?’

‘They’re busy. You could phone back later.’

‘About six?’

‘Seven.’

‘Fine. It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.’

‘Bye, Roger.’

Roger had prepared a cold meat salad for us.

‘You didn’t tell me you were a vegetarian now, Jo,’ he said.

‘I thought Mum had told you.’

I had a choice of answers, starting with the fact that I didn’t know myself, or ‘it must have slipped my mind’, or ‘how come you ate my spaghetti Bolognese, then?’ (which was provocative). I decided to remain completely silent and resist saying something meaningless.

‘Well, there’s vegetarian and there’s vegetarian, isn’t there?’ I laughed.

Jo pushed her salad around on her plate as if she were designing a collage. She cut it up into smaller and smaller pieces, rearranged it, poked her fork into tomato and cucumber and hard-boiled egg and pulled it out again. Her mind was in orbit, it seemed, circling the world and searching for significance. When Jo thought, she thought deeply, penetrating her own soul, searching, probing, reasoning, analysing. She was a lot like I was at that age. Teenage angst, they call it. Eventually you learn to live on the surface, it’s safer.

‘Did you sign up for that additional course for next term?’ asked Roger.

‘Yes,’ muttered Jo, glancing at me.

‘What additional course?’ I almost whispered, hoarsely. I cleared my throat.

‘She’s doing an additional course in IT,’ explained Roger. He had clearly already done his additional course—in smugness.

After lunch, Roger sent the girls upstairs so that he and I could spend some quality time together. Maybe.

‘What’s happened to Jo?’ he asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘She looks like a hat stand, and she hasn’t eaten any lunch.’

‘For God’s sake, Roger, she’s a teenager—that’s what they do.’

‘Only Alice thought…’

‘What the hell does Alice know about having children? She probably thinks ovaries, uterus and fertility are a firm of solicitors.’

‘She’s my daughter, too.’

It is always tempting at such times to launch into the ‘I’m the one bringing them up and you’re the one who walked out’ speech, but I decided against it. Instead, I said nothing.

‘Haven’t you got anything to say on the subject?’ Roger asked, eventually.

‘Not really. I mean, I’m the one bringing them up and you, for whatever reason, decided to leave me to it.’

‘Lizzie, let’s not go over all that again.’

‘No, you’re right. Look, all her friends are the same, it’s nothing to worry about, but if you like I’ll talk to her when she gets back. Don’t make a thing of it.’

‘Fair enough. Does she eat at all?’

‘Of course she does. She had spaghetti Bolognese only yesterday.’

‘I thought she was a vegetarian.’

‘Only a part-time one.’

On the way home, I wanted to think about what Roger had just said, make sense of what he seemed to be implying, but I pushed the thought from my mind as if thinking about it would give it some truth. I screeched to a halt at traffic lights I hadn’t even noticed and banged hard on the steering-wheel, angry with myself for being so distracted, distracted by mere possibilities for nothing had actually happened. I started to sing, and right on cue Eliza joined in. There was a quiver in my voice, a quiver of fear, but I wasn’t even sure what I was frightened of. I slapped my thigh like a pantomime character, grinned and sang louder until everything seemed all right again.

We got home at two-thirty and Eliza had to rush to get ready for her first rehearsal. There was a buzz and excitement about her which rubbed off on me like chalk dust. We sang songs from Chicago all the way to the rehearsal rooms with the car windows open, oblivious to the reactions of passersby. This was what being a good mother was all about and I mentally awarded myself a gold star. I drove back home still feeling exhilarated by Eliza’s buoyant mood, as well as by a sense of freedom as if I had finally deposited my luggage with an airline and could wander around quite unencumbered. What Jo did or did not do for the next six days was not my problem. Or so I wanted to believe.

With both girls occupied elsewhere, I had the house to myself and three hours to do exactly what I wanted. So I chose a particular CD which normally caused groans of complaint, stripped off all my clothes and danced around in the lounge to the thump and grind of Queen. As an afterthought, I quickly closed the curtains then turned the heating up and let myself go.

When I had exhausted myself, I simply wandered aimlessly around the house, looking at the photos on the wall and fingering ornaments as if I were a tourist looking around a stately home.

I found myself in the chaos of Eliza’s room, clothes strewn across the floor like the last day of the January sales, half-finished homework scattered across her desk, an old banana skin on the window-sill. Then I wandered into Jo’s room with its tidy, ordered rows of books and files. An island in our chaotic household. Lists and reminders were drawing-pinned to her notice-board with symmetrical neatness and dated in the righthand corners. The bin had been emptied, clothes folded away, and her dressing-gown hung where it should be, on the back of her door. The walls had been painted magnolia when we had bought the house but the paintwork had become chipped and scuffed in places with the passing of time. Jo deserved some fresh gloss, some new colour and brightness as a fitting background to her tidiness.

I decided to go to the DIY store. Jo would have a surprise waiting for her when she returned from her father’s and I would show her what a supportive, caring mother I really was.

Once at the store, I found myself staring helplessly at row upon row of paint tins, stacked like a child’s cylindrical building blocks, reaching to the ceiling. A small shelf, angled like a lectern, sliced through the endless continuity of tins. On this shelf lay books and leaflets containing square upon square, each labelled with a reference number and name. It was like a colour-coded plan of a cemetery.

The spectrum of colours to choose from was overwhelming, not helped by my difficulty in visualising these tiny squares as complete walls in Jo’s bedroom. It was like being given a daisy and expecting to know what Kew gardens looked like. I stared at the colour charts as if in a hypnotic trance until one square seemed to merge into the next so that all I saw was a swirl of pinks, purples and greens, like melted flavours of ice cream slowly mixing to one murky hue.

‘Too many choices,’ muttered a bewildered-looking man next to me.

‘Like life really,’ I answered philosophically. ‘Easier when the decisions are made for you.’

‘It’s the names that put me off—Cornish Cream, Avocado Mousse, Blueberry Pie. It’s more like a cookery book.’

‘Or a holiday brochure. Look—Blue Lagoon, Californian Sunset, Icelandic River. They’re not even accurate, I’d call that one Polluted Canal and that one Gangrenous Wound. Oh, look, here’s Fungal Foot Infection.’

The man laughed and reached for two large tins.

‘Well, I’m too set in my ways,’ he sighed. ‘It’s Boring Old Fart for me, or Magnolia as it’s known in the trade.’

Jo was not set in her ways, I decided. Surely there was a rebellious side to her that would respond to a black ceiling and purple walls, or clashing colours of orange or mauve. But I knew Jo was practical and sensible for one so young and would immediately see that such dark colours wouldn’t reflect any natural light and would certainly not be conducive to studying. She would want something different, novel and young, but light, subtle and individual. I tried to recall the tone of her car-pet and the shades of her bedroom furniture, but everything I visualised seemed greyer than it should be. I kept returning to the squares of green, one of Jo’s favourite colours. There was a shade called Mint which almost tasted of those squares of mint chocolate. This, I felt sure, would be Jo’s choice.

I put the tins into my trolley and headed for the checkout. Then I heard a familiar voice. I looked up and saw Alice in a grey trouser suit and chiffon scarf helping an elderly lady who was waving a stick and hobbling up the aisle.

‘Come on, Mother,’ she was saying, ‘Let’s get some nice new paint and then I can make a start on your bathroom. I SAID, “LET’S GET SOME NICE NEW PAINT, MOTHER.” Oh, never mind.’

I swivelled my trolley round quickly to escape in another direction. If only the front wheel hadn’t caught the edge of the paint tin at the bottom of the pyramid, I might have made it.

‘Lizzie…Oh, dear. We can’t just leave these here. I’ll go and get someone.’

I couldn’t really leave her deaf, disabled mother unattended so I just stood there awkwardly.

‘Who are you?’ she barked.

‘LIZZIE, ROGER’S WIFE. Ex, I mean.’

‘There’s no need to shout. I’m not deaf. My daughter’s staying for a few days. Pain in the arse. Wants to paint my bathroom. I bet she makes me have it done in pink.’

‘You can choose what colour you want. It’s your bathroom.’

‘With Alice in charge? You’re joking. Help me along to the paint area, then we can choose.’

With that, she sprinted down the aisle, holding her stick out in front of her, and was stretching up towards the tins of black and purple paint before I caught up with her.

‘Take me to the checkout,’she said, linking her arm in mine.

Alice eventually caught up with us after her mother had bought the purple and black paint.

‘Mother, my goodness. I see you’ve already purchased your paint. Marvellous.’

Alice’s mother winked at me.

‘Thank you, Lizzie,’ Alice said. ‘I had a feeling you and I would end up very good friends.’

I stopped myself from wincing and made a dash for the car before Alice noticed her mother’s choice of paint and blamed me. With the paint in the boot, I just made it to the rehearsal rooms in time to pick up Eliza, congratulating myself on coordinating my afternoon so successfully. But as we approached the driveway, Eliza asked, ‘What’s for supper, Mum?’

…So I prepared her a farmhouse stew full of goodness and vitamins, went out into the yard to milk the cow and prepared to invite the neighbours round for a game of charades…

Actually, I’d somehow forgotten about the small matter of eating, and Eliza deserved a treat, I told myself. So we phoned for a takeaway pizza, slumped onto the settee and glued ourselves to her favourite film, Chicago. It should have been boring by this, our twentieth viewing, but I never tired of taking sideways glances to watch Eliza watch her two heroines.

If I looked right into Eliza’s eyes, I could almost see her mind turning herself into Catherine Zeta Jones or Renee Zellweger. This time her focus was on Zeta Jones and Eliza was there in the film, tapping out every dance step in her mind, reaching for every note, feeling every emotion. Melted cheese and tomato dripped down her chin as she fed herself by touch, her eyes fixed firmly on the oblong screen in front of her. My vision as a perfect mother did not include slobbing in front of the telly with a pizza. Still, I told myself, it was a special occasion. Was that what it was? A special occasion because we did not have the adolescent tension of Jo in the air? I felt I had failed in some way but I quickly replaced that thought with a vision of Eliza and me singing a duet in a Hollywood musical. In Eliza’s world, everyone would create a song and dance about everything.

Monday morning came and I had to put Jo’s room on hold while I went to work.

I put on my black executive suit, threw some extremely important papers into my executive briefcase and made a quick phone call to ensure my executive car was on its way to pick me up and take me to the city where I would be handling investments of millions of pounds.

I arrived at the sandwich bar and put my vision on hold for later—I did still have that idea of running my own café. I rushed in, late as usual, washed my hands and got stuck into scraping butter across bread and spooning in the fillings for workers picking up their lunch sandwiches on the way in. Trish busied herself by dispensing caffeine to a hundred lethargic businessmen and we kept up this frantic pace for nearly an hour.

It was only later, when Trish went out in the delivery van, that I could no longer ignore my screaming thoughts about what Roger had said. Of course I had noticed that Jo was looking a bit thinner and of course I had been a bit worried. But Jo losing weight? That didn’t fit. She had always been active and healthy, not one of those children who pick up every little cough and cold going round, always with a runny nose and alarmingly pale skin. In fact, I had rarely been to the doctor with Jo, for she had never suffered from anything more than the usual childhood ailments, which she always shook off very quickly, and she had barely missed a day of school. As I chopped up tomatoes and cucumbers, the word ‘cancer’ floated into my mind uninvited, but I soon pushed it out again. I clung to more logical explanations and somehow managed to keep my anxiety in check.

I reminded myself that Jo was pretty good for a teenager. She had largely conformed, and had kept her mood swings firmly locked in her bedroom, never opting for the throwing-crockery-at-your-mother option. I had had many a long chat with Scarlet’s mother, who had torn clumps of her own hair out in the frustration of trying to control her daughter.

‘If I tell Scarlet to be home by half past eleven, she’ll turn up at a quarter to twelve just to prove a point. If I ask her to clear the coffee-cups out of her bedroom, she’ll bring down just the one and then take up a new cup of coffee and a plate.’

Not much to complain about but I had noticed that Scarlet’s mother had started to chew her fingernails lately. Scarlet had a belly piercing, one dolphin tattoo on her shoulder and another on her arm which nobody has dared ask the meaning of, and she had brought home at least three inarticulate, nicotine-stained boyfriends. A tame rebellion compared with many, but more than Jo had succumbed to. Jo didn’t seem to have this drive to battle with authority, she had other priorities. It was much later that I realised she was rebelling in her own way, and I would gladly have swapped what happened next with any number of body piercings.

‘I’m not sure I want this,’ muttered one of my regular customers.

I looked at his sandwich. It did look rather thin and lank. He lifted up the top layer of bread to reveal a very thick spreading of butter but no filling whatsoever. He then lifted up the lid of his coffee-cup where, like a magician, he slowly revealed the whereabouts of the missing filling, which was floating on the coffee like seaweed in the ocean.

‘Sorry, Reg, I was miles away.’

‘Last week you were imagining yourself serving food in a beach bar on Mars. Where were you today?’

‘I was solving the mystery of adolescence, but I think serving coffee on Mars is more realistic.’

That night it was fish and chips in front of a quiz, justified by my plan to make a start on the decorating. After supper, I creaked up the stairs to Jo’s room, looked around, and decided I could muster up enough energy to shift the furniture to the centre of the room, pull back the carpet and get all my decorating gear ready.

I stood for a while and stared at the room. Beginning any-thing was always hard and I imagined Michelangelo must have felt the same as he stood inside the Sistine Chapel. Before I allowed my imagination to let me plan something rather too ambitious for Jo’s ceiling, I went back to the kitchen and found a couple of cardboard boxes. I carted them upstairs and filled them up with books and ornaments.

Once I had begun the task, my earlier enthusiasm returned and I began to enjoy myself as I stripped the bed and lifted the notice-board off the wall. There was something very sat-isfying about this sort of job. It reminded me of taking down Christmas decorations, hoovering up the pine needles and starting a fresh new year with the old one wiped clean away along with its stale habits, overdone arguments, regrets and remorse.

I began to hum and whistle like a jovial morning milkman as I went about the business of dismantling Jo’s room. It was as if I was taking her life apart to spring clean it, give it a lick of paint and then put it back together again—as if I was certain that that was what was needed.

It didn’t take long to pack the loose items away and I set about the task of hauling the bed and chest into the middle of the room. I slid the top drawer out and found it neatly lined with underwear. At the back were two chocolate bars which Jo must have forgotten about.

The second drawer jammed and I had to rattle and shake it to pull it right out. It was full of black and grey tops and a couple of pairs of shorts which looked like Eliza’s cast-offs. At the back of this drawer were two sandwiches which were as hard and dry as cardboard, the edges bending up like brittle autumn leaves. I took one out and held it in my palm studying it, trying to work out why it was there. Like frantic moths, answers flew into my mind but could not settle.

I placed the stale food on the window-sill and tugged out the remaining drawers, pulling jumpers and tops aside frantically, desperately, like a hungry dog trying to dig up a buried bone. Nothing.

Smiling at my own stupidity, I dropped the stale food into the bin liner and grabbed the radio from the hallway. I switched it on and allowed the rhythmic thump of some old rock music to smother any remaining illogical fears.

Almost cheerily, I pushed the bed away from the wall and picked up Jo’s school bag which had been lying underneath. As I moved it, some books and a lunch box slapped down onto the floor. The lunch box was unexpectedly heavy and I peered through the plastic lid at its contents. There was no mistaking it. I peeled off the top to reveal the spaghetti bolognese I had served up days earlier. I stood still and stared at it for what seemed like hours. Then my brain jolted into action again and I tried to apply some logic.

Of course Jo had already unexpectedly declared herself a vegetarian so why hadn’t she told me instead of stuffing the meat into a plastic box and hiding it under her bed? I supposed she must have thought I would be disapproving or critical. Would I have been? Possibly. I had always cracked jokes about vegetarians being wind-powered and likened tofu to small pieces of mattress. I cringed when I thought of all those stupid remarks I had made about deep-fried Brussels sprouts and plastic sandals. Perhaps the answer was to become a vegetarian myself and declare the house a meat-free zone, but then I thought about bacon. I could almost smell it. Still, surely I just had to reassure Jo that she didn’t have to eat meat, and she simply had to reassure me that she would get her nutrition in other ways.

Yet I knew that such easy communication had broken down between us. Something told me that this wasn’t going to be at all straightforward. If Eliza hadn’t bounced into the room at that moment, I do believe I would have slumped down onto the bed and cried.

‘What’s wrong, Mum?’

‘Nothing sweetie, it’s just…Jo’s become a…’

‘Lesbian?’

‘No.’

‘Drug pusher?’

‘No.’

‘Prostitute?’

‘Of course not. Jo’s become a vegetarian.’

‘Oh, is that all? How boring, everyone’s a vegetarian.’

‘Actually, Eliza, I don’t think she’s eating properly.’

‘No one eats properly, Mum.’

‘But Jo’s so thin.’

‘Then make sure she eats more.’

It didn’t seem right to be confiding in a ten-year-old. Yet sometimes it takes a young soul to see everything in its simplest terms.

‘How an earth can I get her to eat?’

‘Use your imagination.’

Yes, I was good at that. Wasn’t I?

FOUR

I WANTED to go to Dad’s in August. Not because it ‘made a pleasant change’ as Mum said, but because he always left me alone to get on with it. To get on with what? Thinking, working it all out, making lists. He never went in for talking much. Talking can interfere with thinking. He’d moved to the country. It was only just under an hour’s drive from us, but as you got nearer it got greener. Fields full of cows. That sort of thing. Decent cottage, I suppose. Bit small. In a kind of village full of commuters and ladies making jam and divorced fathers. There was a town nearby—market town, they call it. Never seen a market there, though. You could walk into town in twenty minutes. The bus was quicker, but always full of ladies with baskets, wearing brown macs and staring.

Mum and Eliza stayed for lunch. That was when I found out I couldn’t eat in front of Mum. Eating is a bodily function and like all bodily functions it should be done in private. When Dad lived at home they would shout at each other. They would say what they thought. Everything would be on the surface, on view, like portraits in a gallery. Now they sit and smile and clip their words so they do not fly off in the wrong direction. It is the gaps between the sentences you have to listen out for. I preferred the arguing, the obvious tension.

Tension makes the air thick and difficult to breathe in. It makes voices high-pitched and annoying. It was like sitting in glue that lunchtime. Mum and Dad were trying to do and say the right thing. I knew how hard that was. I wanted to tell them not to bother, that it wasn’t worth the effort. But effort made them feel noble and righteous, or something.

When Mum and Eliza left, the air cleared like the morning fog lifting and the sun coming through. We cleared the plates and talked of this and that. I asked about Alice.

‘It’s a pity Alice isn’t here this week,’ I said.

‘She had to go and look after her mother.’

I wanted to ask whose idea it had been. I hesitated.

‘Did Mum make her go?’

‘Of course not, it’s just how it worked out.’

I wished I hadn’t asked. I invited the lie and then was disappointed when it came. Let down. Kind of.

‘I’m playing darts tonight. Come along if you want, but I told Keith and Bev next door you might babysit—thought you could do with the money—but it’s up to you, your choice.’

‘Yeah, I’ll babysit.’

The next morning I woke up and my period had started. It was about ten days early, dragged forward by a vicious moon. I hadn’t come prepared. I padded my knickers out with toilet roll and went downstairs.

‘No breakfast for me yet, I’m just going to the shop.’

The best thing about Dad—you didn’t always have to explain yourself.

‘I’ll come too. We need some more milk.’

‘I’ll get the milk.’

‘OK.’

The next best thing about Dad was he didn’t feel the need to shadow me. And he was practical.

‘Great. That gives me some more time. We’re playing in a tournament at Brampton. Got to rush.’ Dad coached an under-sixteens football team.

The worst thing about Dad? He never changed his arrangements because of me. Maybe that was good, I could never work it out.

I walked to the village shop two streets away. My body was slow and heavy. Every step was an effort, like I’d already walked ten miles or something. I folded my arms across my aching breasts. As if I could stop them getting bigger. I felt messy and grubby and infected. I had a disease that I didn’t want and the only cure was to travel backwards in time.

I opened the shop door to let an old lady out. Then I backed in. I resented spending my babysitting money on tampons and paracetamol. I didn’t look at the girl when I paid for them. I envied Eliza her pre-menstrual childhood.

When I was ten I would run everywhere. There was an urgency about life, as if time was running out. I ran to see friends, I ran up the stairs, I ran races with myself in the garden. Now, as if I wanted time to stand still, I swung my legs slowly back up to Dad’s. I hauled myself up the path to the front door and heaved along the corridor to fall heavily onto the bed.

‘Do you want to come to the football?’

‘No, I’ll get the bus into town.’

‘OK, see you later.’

I had enough money to buy a new top. There was a freedom about shopping in a strange town. Nobody knew me which meant I could be who I liked. I wanted to be myself but I’d forgotten how. Instead I would be a model, an actress, someone with style, money, good taste. I would buy a top to suit the new me. Buy a top she would buy. Something classy and sophisticated, and very very different. Something Eliza would envy and Mum would be unsure of.

I went to the usual shops and saw all the usual clothes. Then I saw a local shop called Hidden Scream and it sounded like a good omen. The interior was lit dimly and smelt of burning musk. I saw a rack of red tops. Crimson, rose, scarlet, blood. I picked out a crimson velvety bodice with a laced neckline and loose, Tudor sleeves. It was theatrical, bohemian, historical, vampish. I paid more than I’d meant to which made me feel daring.

I was thirsty but not daring enough to sit in a coffee-bar on my own. I bought a bottle of diet Coke and found a park near the bus station. A mother and two daughters were feeding the ducks. The eldest girl was about eight or nine. She was pleasing her mother by pulling off fistfuls of bread from a stale loaf and throwing them to the waddling birds.

‘That one hasn’t had any,’ the mother was pointing out.

The girl threw the bread farther and looked at her mother to see if she’d done well.

‘Well done, Georgie. Now try that one over there.’

It was as if the mother was conducting an orchestra. The eldest child was the lead violin and was playing to please. She in turn was encouraging her sister. The eagerness of the girl made me feel sad. No, not sad. More like numb.

My stomach felt heavy, pressing down as if it was trying to escape. A dull ache had spread across my front and down into my legs. I didn’t want to stand up. I imagined sitting on this park bench into the night. Dew would form on my clothes, my bones would slowly turn rigid. Would anyone mind? Who would blame who? I opened my carrier bag and took out the new top. It wouldn’t go with anything I had in my cupboard.

I can’t remember going back to Dad’s on the bus. It was as if I was in a trance, not wanting to think. Not wanting to feel. All I knew was the continuous ache.

The next day I felt better. The first day of my period was always the worst. I had some black coffee and a bowl of cereal. Dad had to go to work. He’d had one day off for the football tournament but couldn’t take any more time. He was sorry, but he could drop me in town. We could go out for a meal in the evening. And to the cinema. I decided to stay at his house and read.

After he’d shut the front door, I felt free. I wandered around the house. I had a shower. I read a bit. I found some DVDs and slotted one in. The film and the space and the solitude made me feel vaguely happy.

The phone rang.

‘Just phoning to say how much I’m missing you. It’s not the same without you.’

Scarlet. So obviously Scarlet. Her words.

‘I miss you too,’ I said. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Usual stuff. What about you? What’s it like being at your dad’s?’

I looked around the empty hallway. I listened to the silence.

‘Cool,’ I said. ‘Once you get used to it. It’s better. I’ve forgotten what it was like when they were together now.’

‘I love you, Jo. You always make me feel better. Hey, guess what?’

‘What?’

‘Cathy’s dumped Alfie.’

‘No! Why?’

‘Fran heard him telling Rob that he liked blondes the best, that he’d go for a blonde any time. Blonde with blue eyes and big tits, he said.’

‘She could dye her hair.’

‘Yeah, yeah, and get coloured contacts and a boob job. No, she’s well out of it. No decent girl would change herself for a guy. Can you imagine a guy getting a penis extension just to please you, I mean, come on…’

I laughed. I wished I was like Scarlet.

‘I wish I was funny like you,’ I said.

‘You are, you are. You just don’t realise it. Got to go—text me, yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

The hall was silent again. I thought about Scarlet. Missing me, loving me, thinking I’m funny. Funny in a good way. She should have been my sister. That would have worked better. I went and sat in the lounge and did nothing. And didn’t think much. That was good, not thinking much.

Then Mum phoned.

It was as if she was there, in my space. Intruding. The silence had been invaded by voices. My freedom was slashed by her interrogation.

‘Are you having a good time?’, ‘Is it raining where you are?’, ‘Did Scarlet get hold of you? I gave her the number.’

I kept my answers short. I wanted my time back again. Anything lost could never be retrieved. The questions were time-wasters, pointless, conversational, lightweight fillers that didn’t mean anything. The next question had more weight.

‘Has your tummy settled down now?’

‘Yeah.’

I waited. It was a short, split-second of a wait that felt longer.

‘Only the funniest thing happened. Well, it was going to be a surprise but you know how useless I am at surprises. I mean, remember your surprise party last year—mind you, I blame Scarlet for that—anyway, that’s all under the bridge. Now, what was I saying?’

Yeah, what had she been saying? So many words, so little content. I knew what was coming. Like the punchline of an old schoolboy joke.

‘I’m decorating your room as a surprise. There, I’ve told you.’

But she hadn’t told me yet. I hung on for the punchline.

‘The silly thing is…well, I found some food under your bed and in your drawer. I wasn’t looking, I was decorating and, well…you know. I don’t know if it’s to do with this vegetarian thing or if it’s your tummy. Still, well, you know…I had to laugh, seeing all those sandwiches you’d obviously forgotten about, then I thought, Oh, dear, perhaps you’re not well. Only I could make a doctor’s appointment if you want. I only mentioned it because I was phoning anyway.’

Why ask questions if you’re going to supply your own answers? Why ask questions if you know the answer but will accept a different one? I remember Eliza’s questions when she was about three. ‘Why?’ was enough to keep the conversation going. Any answer would do.

‘I knew you were worried about my stomach,’ I explained. ‘I didn’t want you to worry any more. I’m fine now.’

‘I knew there was a simple explanation. Eliza’s fine, by the way—her rehearsals are going well.’

‘Great.’

‘What are you up to today, then?’

If you have a dry, gristly piece of meat, cover it with pas-try or sauce or aromatic herbs. Disguise the feel of it, the flavour, the quality. Maybe nobody will notice. But I always do.

I needed to make a list. No, two lists. A list for the day and a list for the week.

List One (Tuesday):

• Wash hair.

• Buy magazine.

• Text Scarlet.

• Cook tea for Dad.

• Shave legs.

• Sew button on shirt.

• Try on new top.

• Read through chemistry curriculum.

• Find scales and weigh myself.

• Do fifty sit-ups.

List Two (Weds—Sat):

• Weigh self every day.

• Send postcard to Scarlet.

• Go to library and look at university prospectuses/ career books.

• Run every day.

• Measure waist.

• Start a novel.

• Bake a cake.

• Get money off Dad.

• Get hair cut.

• Make a plan for a better life.

The day was my own again. I had reclaimed my space. I started at the end of my list. After fifty sit-ups I lay back on the lounge floor. It didn’t seem enough. I did another fifty.

I went to The bathroom but there were no scales. I went into Dad’s bedroom and opened the cupboard. Suits and shirts, dresses and skirts hung there like a row of headless people waiting in a bus queue. I glanced over at the bed. The bed where Dad and Alice slept. And didn’t sleep. The middle-aged having sex is a thought to be pushed aside. Especially if a parent is involved. I was a sixteen-year-old virgin. I didn’t want to save myself for love, I wanted it over and done with. Like an exam. But I was frightened of failing. I swotted up on it by talking to Scarlet. I studied magazines. I thought I would need to do it before I was eighteen—if I was to keep on schedule. But eighteen would roll around too quickly. The spin of the earth had speeded up, surely it had speeded up.

The scales were lying at the bottom of the cupboard, like a slab of concrete. They looked heavy and cumbersome but they were deceptively light. I weighed myself. I had lost another three pounds. Was it good enough? Was anything ever good enough? Were my results good enough? Probably. Would my next set of results be good enough? Good enough for who? Was I a good enough daughter, a good enough friend, a good enough sister, a good enough citizen? And who decides?

It’s your own thoughts that try you, judge and condemn you. I wanted thoughts out of my head. I wanted to put my hand in and pull out what I didn’t want. Give my mind a wash and a rinse. Being on my own made my thoughts my only company. I phoned Scarlet. No reply. I went to the shop for a magazine. I decided to smile at people on the way. I would pass a comment to the girl in the shop. I would discard the real me and be a friendly shopper. Everybody loves a friendly shopper.

I made the week pass slowly. I was a Time Lord. Or maybe that should be Lady. I worked out that when I got back home, there would be two days before term started. That was fixed. Not even a Time Lord could change it.

Mum looked nervous. I went upstairs and Mum, Dad and Eliza followed me. Like bodyguards. The room was green and everything was back in its place. It was like I’d been burgled or something. Worse than that—molested, violated. The space around me had been raped. It could never be the same. I had to be in that space and it was no longer mine.

‘Do you like it?’

Did I? I didn’t really know. The colour was OK. It didn’t really matter.

‘It’s great. Thanks, Mum.’

I could hear the relief. We all knew it could have gone the other way. We all had a cup of tea. Everyone was happy. I sat in the lounge to read.

I felt sick again that night. Mum said she would phone the doctor. Just to be on the safe side.

The next day I wanted the house to myself, like it was at Dad’s. But it was Sunday and Mum and Eliza were there. They take up a lot of space.

I phoned Scarlet. She was bored.

‘I’ve got no money but we could go and sit in the park.’

So we did. We sat on the grass. The sun shone down on us. We talked. We laughed. We just sat. Doing nothing. Being us.

‘What’s it like, going to your dad’s?’ Scarlet asked again.

‘It’s cool.’

‘I’m going to my dad’s new place next weekend.’

‘It’ll be fine, honestly it’ll be fine.’

‘It’ll seem odd, though, him in a different place. At the moment, it’s just like he’s away on business, but living somewhere else…I can’t imagine it. I don’t think he can even cook. And what will we talk about? We can’t really talk about Mum, but I want to tell him about her, how she’s crying and everything. Do you think he still cares? I don’t want him to be bitchy about Mum. Can men be bitchy? Anyway, it all seems so shitty, you know—awkward.’

‘You get used to it. Don’t worry.’

Scarlet looked into me, pleading with me, wanting more than I could give.

‘Sorry, I’m being a shit friend,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s just I don’t know what to say, everyone’s different.’

‘You’re right, Jo. If you told me about how it is with your dad, I’d expect the same, but it won’t be the same, will it? I think what you’re saying is that I’ve got to work it out for myself. I suppose it just gets easier.’

‘It does.’

‘I just didn’t expect to feel this churned up. Did you feel churned up?’

She asked like it was in the past, like I was over it. At the time, I cried. I think I might have cried a lot. Then I learnt not to.

‘I guess I did. It’s only natural.’

‘Of course it is. Thanks, Jo.’

The park was spotted with small groups of people. Families mostly and some groups of kids and teenagers. Anonymous faces. People I wouldn’t recognise again in a line-up.

Everyone was smiling but they couldn’t all be happy. Statistically impossible. I glanced at Scarlet. Her lips were turned up and her eyes were narrowed as she squinted towards the sun. Sad but smiling, it seemed. I held a mirror to myself. I put my hand towards my face. I was smiling too. In spite of everything. It was the hot August sun. It creased up people’s faces into grimaces with laughter lines. Very deceptive.

‘The bigger the arse, the more likely the chance of them wearing shorts,’ I declared, nodding my head towards an obese woman, ice cream smeared across her chins. It was cruel, but it made Scarlet laugh. That was kind, making her laugh.

‘If I looked like that, I wouldn’t leave the house.’ Scarlet could out-cruel me.

I scanned the horizon for more fat people. There were plenty to choose from. Disgusting white flesh oozing over tight clothes. Like lard in the gravy tray. I pointed to a fat husband and wife.

‘How do they actually do it?’ I asked Scarlet. ‘They couldn’t get near enough to each other.’

Scarlet rolled over with laughter. Her arms and legs splayed out like she was having a fit. Hysterical. Out of control. She really let herself go. I laughed too but swallowed some of it back again.

‘Earthquake alert,’ I whispered as a flabby woman jogged past. Thump, thump, wheeze.

Shared cruelty made us a team. It glued us together.

‘That’s more like it.’ Scarlet sat up and smoothed her clothes down. She was looking at two guys with their tops off, kicking a football about. Showing off. Brown skin sweating in the heat. Aware of Scarlet’s gaze. And mine. I turned away, looking for more people to laugh at. Scarlet nudged me; drew me back again.

‘I’m boiling,’ I moaned. ‘Let’s go and find some shade.’

We bought a couple of Cokes from the van and went and sat under the trees near the bandstand. It was sweltering. I thought about death.

‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Scarlet lazily.

‘School tomorrow.’

School tomorrow, exams at the end of the year, more exams, a job, house, mortgage, life insurance, marriage maybe, children, middle age, menopause, stair lifts, death. Death is at the end of every list. Whatever route you take, whatever path you choose, they all end in the same place. Nowhere.

I remember when I was four years old. I lay on my bed. I couldn’t sleep. I called for my mother.

‘What if I die in the night?’ I asked.

‘You won’t.’She smiled. ‘You’ll still be here in the morning.’

‘Where do you go when you die?’

‘To heaven. Everybody goes to heaven.’

Life was easy then. Somebody had all the answers. Total trust. Then one day you wake up and it hits you. Your parents know nothing. They make it up. They know about as much as you do. So you search for a guru.

Mrs Simms—my first teacher, Miss Castle next door, Mr Bradshaw, Katie’s mum, Mrs Moore. They all promised such knowledge. Facts and figures, meaningless information. But they knew no more than I did, really. When I eventually met my real guru, I learnt that a guru didn’t need to know more than I did. I just needed to be shown what I already knew deep inside. Lily Finnegan: my guru. On that day in the park, my guru was already getting her stuff together, preparing for the journey. Perhaps I was, too.

‘Are you all right?’ Scarlet asked.

‘Do you think I’m depressed, Scarlet?’

‘I don’t know. Do you feel depressed?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’

‘Well, then.’

‘I don’t want to go to school tomorrow.’

‘Neither do I.’

So I was normal, then. That was a relief. But my mind flipped over. I wanted to be normal, fit in, blend into the background. I also wanted to be special, unusual, better than the rest. There it was again. Wanting two opposite things at the same time equals unhappiness. I kicked my thoughts out and looked at the sun.

We sat in an easy silence, thinking, watching, being. The park buzzed with the children chattering. Now and then a shout rang out as an anonymous name was shrieked. I heard my own name and looked up startled. A young girl ran to her mother. A different Joanna.

Flies flitted round where we sat and I swatted them away from my face. The grass felt dry and brittle. I scuffed up the grainy dirt with my heels. Time must have been ticking by but it was going slowly. My thoughts were running ahead, bouncing from one thing to the next, but Scarlet was still thinking about school. Thoughts, for Scarlet, needed airing. Hung up against the skyline for all to see.

‘The reason we don’t want to go to school is that we don’t have to. That’s what I think, anyway. Till now it was the law, see. Now we have a choice. Perfectly legal to leave school, get a job. Leave home if you want. Get married at Gretna Green. We’re going back to school because we want to, and because our parents want us to, I suppose. But there’s bound to be a bit of us that says, shit, I might leave. I reckon it was easier last year when we had to go. No choice, so there was nothing to think about really. Out of our control. Well, that’s what I think anyway.’

I looked at Scarlet and smiled. I didn’t know what to say.

‘Do I talk too much?’ she asked, seriously.

‘Yeah, way too much.’ I laughed, and I pushed her over on the grass and tickled her. Like we were ten or something.

The spots and splashes of yellow and white circled Scarlet’s head like a spring aura. Daisies. I looked across the grassy area in front of us. They had been there all along. I hadn’t seen what was in front of my eyes. I remembered picnics in a daisied field by a stream. Always by a stream. Dad, Mum, Eliza, Me. A complete daisy chain.

‘Daisies!’ I announced to Scarlet. Still ten.

I touched the tiny flowers carefully, picking the ones with the thicker stalks. They felt padded, pliable. Slowly, with my finger nail, I made a tiny slit in the centre of the first stalk. I took another daisy and threaded its stalk through the slit. I focused and took great care. I didn’t want to waste a daisy by ripping at the slit. I picked them so that the stalks were long. I chose ones with the larger flowers, like egg yolks and feathers. I took my time.

‘Hey!’ said Scarlet. She started to thread daisy stalks too. At first she was careless. She threw discarded daisies over her shoulder but then it got her gripped. It was hypnotic like you were in a trance or something. You made a daisy chain, you cleared your mind. How long is a daisy chain? It doesn’t matter.

I held mine up and it hung there so delicately. Fragile. Vulnerable. It needed careful handling. I added more and more daisies. Slowly. It grew into a necklace, or something like it. I completed the circle. I finished the chain. Immediately I started another. Shorter this time. Total absorption. Partial amnesia.

Soon Scarlet was lifting her chain over my head. I bobbed down to let it pass over and sit on my shoulders. I put mine onto her head. A crown of flowers. She laughed. The chain broke. A fly got into the corner of my eye. I wiped away the salt water with the back of my hand.

Duty caught up with us. Scarlet felt she ought to go and support her mother. I felt I ought to go home too. Get my stuff ready for the next day.

One day my mother will greet me with a question: about my day or if I feel OK or ask me my news. Any greeting which did not contain the word ‘sandwich’ would do.

‘We’ve eaten, you’ll have to make yourself a sandwich,’ was the greeting waiting for me when I got back from the park.

She was tense, uptight, edgy. And it was contagious.

‘I feel a bit sick.’ (My greetings were no better.)

‘You’ll have to go to the doctor.’

‘I think I’ll go and lie down.’

‘You ought to get your bag ready for tomorrow. It’s bound to be a rush in the morning.’

The snap of the elastic band.

‘Lucky I’ve got you to tell me what to do—have to, ought to, should, that’s all I ever hear.’

I wasn’t looking for an argument, just an outlet. I didn’t want a reply, I didn’t want any interaction, so I turned away quickly and stomped upstairs. I slammed my bedroom door shut. Obligatory for a teenager and I was playing myself as a teenager. I lay on my bed. I stared at the green walls. I had wanted blue. I hated my mother. I loved my mother. I couldn’t do both, surely I couldn’t do both. I was torn between two emotions like they were both grabbing an arm each and ripping me down the middle. So I cried. I cried in blood for being ripped apart by my feelings. By my mother. By my bloody mother. I thought I would run at my pristinely decorated wall and splatter myself across it. Let my guts drip down onto the floor. Then she’d be sorry. If I were in pieces. If I were dead. I opened my mouth to scream but it didn’t come out properly. It was stifled, half-hearted, too quiet. I couldn’t do anger properly. I was a failure at being a failure. She didn’t understand. I wanted her to understand. About school. About me. About eating. And not eating. But my bloody mother didn’t understand. I sobbed. I sobbed with my head down on my arm, stifling the sound. When it was done, I felt better. But bad, too, like I’d done something wrong. And I did love my mother. Underneath all the pain.

I reached for my pad and pen. I needed a new list.

• Don’t forget to take Scarlet’s book in tomorrow.

• Don’t eat too much.

• Don’t wear my new top to school.

• Don’t put myself down for school lunches.

• Don’t gossip about Scarlet’s parents.

• Don’t have a lift with Mum in the morning.

• Don’t get chocolate out of the machine.

• Don’t forget to sign up for aerobics or something.

• Don’t let the work blob me out.

• Don’t talk to Andy tomorrow.

I stared at the last item. Why had I written that? Andy and I had gone out for three months. I’d only had one boyfriend before that. Piers. Lasted for four days. What was good about pulling Andy? Telling my friends, starting sentences with ‘my boyfriend’, borrowing his jumper, writing about it in my diary, being seen in the coffee-bar, being seen in the cinema, being seen in the precinct, being seen in the high street.

Kissing was OK. Holding hands was good. Him telling me I had great breasts was good. And bad. Him wanting sex with me was bad. And good. I dumped him so I didn’t have to say no. The next day he pulled Melissa. A known slapper. Someone who says yes a lot. Now I talked about my ex-boyfriend—my two ex-boyfriends. Some street cred in that.

There was something churning round in my stomach. It wasn’t my period. That heavy, pushing ache you get was gone. This was more like a cement mixer, turning over and over. When I lay down, I got the taste of stale bread in my mouth. When I sat up, I tasted my own sick. Then my mouth suddenly filled up with saliva and I spat down the sink. I felt hot and then cold. I felt weak and dizzy. I was ill, there was no doubt. And I needed to take something. Pills, medicine—something to get this stuff out of my stomach, this stuff that was churning around.

Suddenly I felt drowsy. I could still feel the sun on my face. I had a dull ache at the back of my head, and closed my eyes. I remembered to lie on my right side. Best for dreaming. I willed myself to remember my dream. Daytime sleeping was the best. I could sleep right through till morning—but I had an alarm clock, my mother. My mother would wake me up and tell me to pack my school bag. And eat a sandwich.

As it happened I dreamt the same dream I had dreamt before. The one where I’m trying to get through a house and out the other side. This time I arrive at the house on a bicycle and tie it up to a post like it’s a dog or something. There’s someone there to help me. The person is telling me which way to go but I don’t want to listen. I tell the person to take my bicycle and go back home. Now I can go down into the cellar on my own. Then I realise that I have no bicycle and I know that I have to get another. I feel frustrated that I don’t know where I’m going to get one from. Just as I think I’ve worked it out, I hear my name. I open my eyes and see Mum.

‘Looks like you’ve got sunstroke,’ she said.

Was she sympathetic? Accusing? Then she laughed. ‘Your face is like a raspberry!’

Did she really have to laugh?

‘It’s all right,’ she reassured me. ‘It isn’t really burnt. Only a little bit red. Do you feel all right?’

‘Sick. Dizzy. Tired.’ I was monosyllabic with sleep.

‘Too much sun,’ declared Mum. ‘I’ll get you some water.’

I wanted to ask for orange juice but she was gone.

Time took a leap. In a matter of seconds she was back with a jug of iced water. And a sandwich.

‘I won’t be well enough for school tomorrow,’ I declared.

‘Yes, you will. Then we’ll go to the doctor, just for a checkup. A three-thousand-mile service,’ she said with a laugh.

Mum put her hand on my hot forehead. For a moment she looked at me so kindly, like she was an angel or something. She poured out a glass of water and placed it in my hand. Then she turned briskly and walked out of the door to the sound of Eliza’s call. Like a matron going off duty. End of shift.

I looked at the sandwich. I would weigh myself first, I thought. And afterwards, perhaps.

Green paint, sandwiches, school, doctors, a new dress for a wedding, an appointment on the calendar, Dad’s girlfriend, spaghetti Bolognese, shopping. I had got myself another list. But it wasn’t complete.

I remember knowing the French word for town hall but in my exam I couldn’t reach it. Knowing something and not knowing something. It happens more than you think. Some people call it denial.

Mum came back in. She sat down on the side of my bed. She looked down at me serenely, rearranged my pillow gently. Like a proper mother.

‘We’ll sort it out,’ she said.

But I felt like I had stepped onto the bottom of a long escalator. I was being carried along whether I liked it or not. It was almost impossible to turn round and run back down again. Almost.

FIVE

SOMEWHERE inside I knew the truth about what was wrong with Jo but I also knew it was impossible because it was what happened to other families. Families where the mother eats suppers consisting of a slimming drink and chips, families where the mother tries to push her acne-ridden, lanky daughter into modelling, families where the mother makes comments about the neighbour: ‘She’d look better in something loose’; ‘Oh, no, not the leggings’; ‘At least she’s got nice hair’.

I wasn’t as bad as that, surely. But had I made my daughter lick the platter clean? Had she seen me reminisce about how I looked when I could fit into my size ten wedding dress? Was I, in fact, only one Ryvita away from the Hollywood-diet, celebrity-worshipping mother? Perhaps, in fact, it was all my fault…

The guilt that was sucking the sense out of me was magnified by the commercials on television. Cleaning fluids, gravy, the right medicine administered with loving care all shine the light on what it is to be the perfect mother. I didn’t look like the advert mother and my house didn’t look like the advert house. I was struggling to get Jo to the doctor, let alone tuck her up in bed and caringly spoon some wonder medicine into her, as seen on TV.

It was about that time, just before I eventually persuaded Jo to see the doctor, that I picked up the newspaper and read about the teenager who had literally cleaned herself to death. The girl was called Lisa and it seemed such a pretty, happy name, yet she scrubbed her hands with every cleaning fluid she could find in her mother’s over-stocked cupboard. Still not satisfied, she would apparently bathe in bleach and wash her hair in a thick gluey substance normally used for unblocking sinks. She frequently ended up in Casualty on account of all the toxic fumes she was inhaling and the burnt areas on her skin. Her mother knew about it, but apparently did nothing.

Eventually Lisa swallowed some of the cleaning fluids, large quantities of the stuff, in fact, in an attempt to clean out her insides. Her mother, it transpired, was a stickler for cleanliness in the home and ‘a friend’ informed the paper that she would slap Lisa for coming home from school with the merest speck of school gravy on her blouse. ‘What sort of mother…?’ I found myself saying, but quickly suppressed the question in case I discovered that the answer was, ‘A mother like you.’

For some reason, I cut out the article so I could read it again and again. Perhaps it comforted me in some strange way to find a mother worse than I could ever be, one who would have guilt stamped on her soul for the rest of her life. But it unsettled me, too, for I knew deep down that Jo had a problem and I knew that if I ignored it I would be like Lisa’s mother, the one I was judging and condemning so easily. The story brought tears to my eyes and one day I sobbed over it as if I were reading an obituary of a loved one. I felt I knew Lisa and wished I could have done something to prevent her tragic story, and all the time Jo’s tragic story seemed to be unfolding before my eyes. I knew my daughter needed help, more help than I could give her, and yet I had a responsibility. I was the one who needed to take control but was failing to do so.

In the end, I managed to get Jo to the doctor. I didn’t know if it was the right thing to do but there seemed to be no other options. I had not yet taken Eliza’s advice and used my imagination. That would come later. That would come with Lily Finnegan’s strange approach.

‘I don’t need to go to the doctor’s, I’m not ill,’ Jo said when I suggested it.

‘But your stomach…’

‘I’m better. I’m OK.’

‘You haven’t been going to school, you’ve been—’

‘I know, I know. Please, Mum, don’t pressurise me. I’ll be all right, I promise.’

Her eyes pleaded with me, she looked so sad, even desperate, and I couldn’t reach her. I wanted to hug her, to tell her I loved her, that I missed the old Jo, that everything would be all right. But it was as if she had put a barbed-wire fence around herself to keep people out. To keep me out. Still, I tried to get through. I was not going to give up on my own daughter as, it seemed, Lisa’s mother had.

‘You are under pressure, I know,’ I said as gently as I could manage. Yet my voice was shaking, unsteady, as if I were at an important interview. A test to see if I was a fit mother. ‘School is full of pressure these days, I do understand. And the divorce, I realise you took it—’

‘I’m over it, OK?’

‘I know, but these things…Anyway, maybe a counsellor or a therapist or something…’

So Jo came to the doctor as the easier option, the more acceptable one, to both of us.

In my best hat and coat and clutching Jo’s medical card and inoculation record, I helped my poorly daughter out of the car and into the doctor’s surgery where I queued patiently to speak to the bright young receptionist who…

‘You’re late,’ said the not so bright young receptionist.

‘Sorry, couldn’t start the car and then I’ve been queuing here so I wasn’t as late as…Sorry, it’s for my daughter, Joanna Trounce. Jo…? Jo?’

I went back to the car to get Jo.

‘You didn’t say it was for an actual appointment.’

‘What did you think we were doing here? Having a pint and a game of darts?’

We sat among the coughs and heavy breathing of the waiting room, flicking through old magazines repetitively, rhythmically, as if searching for information.

‘There are a lot of bugs around at the moment,’ I told Jo and myself. ‘The problem is when you feel unwell, you worry about it and that worry makes you worry even more. It’s so easy to let these things get out of hand. I’m sure Dr Robinson will sort it all out.’

After my good-mother speech, I was carried along by a strong sense that everything would be all right in the morning, that a muddle would be unmuddled, that we would look back and laugh at it all. But the words ‘eating disorder’, ‘anorexia’, ‘bulimia’ repeated themselves over and over in my mind like a mantra wanting to push all other thoughts away.

It was with some relief that we were called into the surgery. I felt we had begun what we had come for and it would all be over soon, like taking your driving test. As we sat down, I decided not to take over but to allow Jo to describe her symptoms.

‘Joanna is having difficulty eating, not difficulty as such, I mean her mouth works well enough! Yes, well, I mean she eats and then feels sick. She has some intermittent diarrhoea and her stomach hurts again, usually after eating. Of course, it’s put her off eating, as you’d expect. She hasn’t eaten any-thing the rest of the family haven’t had so we don’t think it’s…Sorry, I’ll let Jo tell you all about it.’

‘I think that’s a good idea, Mrs. Trounce. Perhaps you would like to wait outside. Is that all right with you, Joanna?’

I looked at Jo as if she were at school, choosing who she wanted to be her partner.

‘That’s fine,’ she said eventually.

‘I don’t usually wait outside,’ I objected. ‘I mean, she is my daughter.’

‘Mum…’

So I left the room like someone who has just failed a job interview and been eliminated for saying the wrong thing, only to sit in the waiting room and wonder what was being said about me. At least, I thought, the day couldn’t get any worse. It could.

‘Hello, Lizzie, I’m glad I ran into you.’

There stood the wonderful Alice, not looking the slightest bit ill. Still, it’s hard to look sick in an Armani suit. I wondered what to say about Jo and thought about hinting at head lice, but Alice had other things on her mind.

‘Have you been painting Jo’s room?’ she asked.

‘Yes, it was a surprise.’

‘Only I think we’ve ended up with your paint. Of course Mother’s got very muddled about it. I think you must have our tins of pink.’

‘No, I’ve got the right paint, thanks. Maybe your mother wanted a black and purple bathroom.’

‘How did you know she had black and purple paint?’

‘Just a guess.’

‘Are you here with Jo?’ Alice asked—rather nosily, I thought.

For one second, I wanted to tell her the truth, to take the forced smile off my face and explain how bad everything was.

‘It’s that time of year,’ I said instead, the smile remaining rigidly in place.

Just then the door to Dr Robinson’s surgery opened and out came Jo.

‘Hi, Alice,’ Jo muttered.

‘Hello, Jo, it’s good to see you.’

I bundled Jo out of the surgery as quickly as I could before Alice asked any of her awkward questions. I thought I was protecting my daughter but perhaps I was trying to protect myself. I didn’t stop to think seriously as to why Alice was visiting the doctor, my mind was too full of Jo.

‘All right?’ I asked as we got into the car. But what exactly was I asking?

‘Yeah.’

‘Do you need to make another appointment?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Let’s do it now, then.’

‘No. I meant not another appointment.’

‘What do you mean? Do you or do you not need another appointment?’

Maybe it’s all right to use a sharp, brittle, bad-mother’s voice if you say sorry afterwards. Sorry is the magic word your own mother told you about. It turns you into Saint Mary.

‘Sorry,’ I muttered. ‘It’s just…’

‘I know.’

We looked at each other. For just a moment there seemed to be some joint understanding, some mutual emotion be-tween us as if we were in it together, like musicians playing the same tune. But anxiety separates us from others. Laughter is a joint, shared display of emotion. You do anxiety on your own, even if it is in parallel.

We were silent on the way home and then I insisted on conversation, a sharing of information, my right to know. I stood firm. Jo tried to push me away, exclude me, fly solo, but I persuaded her I was there for her. This was not intrusion, this was loving care, wasn’t it? They should extend those nanny-knows-best programmes to include stuff like this.

When in doubt, put the kettle on. Jo drank her coffee black. I sloshed some milk into mine and dunked a digestive into the hot liquid. We needed our drinks to focus on, to keep our hands busy, avert our eyes, give us something to do, a reason for sitting across from one another at the kitchen table. This was a chat over coffee, not an interrogation. Pauses were necessary to sip our drinks, not as a withholding of information or feelings.

‘I’ve been referred to the eating disorders clinic.’

I felt the hot coffee drip down the back of my throat and warm my oesophagus. I could almost sense it arriving in my stomach. Its warmth was in welcome contrast to the cold, stark message from Jo. Yet still my fingernails clung onto a cliff edge that was not really there.

That’s good. At least we know what’s wrong now. I feel so much happier and calmer now I know. I could walk on air, skip through daisies, holding your hand as I guide you though this difficult time…

But those words were erased by fear and anger before they reached my lips.

‘How does that bloody doctor know anything? Is he going to carry out any tests? Is he an expert on eating disorders or does he spend all day looking at gout, verrucas and snot? I think we should try another doctor.’

‘I knew this would happen,’ Jo snapped.

‘Knew what would happen?’

‘You’d go all hysterical.’

‘I’m not hysterical.’

‘I’ve seen the bloody doctor, I’m going to the bloody clinic. What more do you want? Sorry I’m not the perfect daughter.’

That sounded ridiculous to me. Why would I want a perfect daughter? I just wanted Jo, Jo as she was, with all her ups and downs, faults and blemishes, the whole package. But the eating disorder was wrong, it just didn’t fit, it wasn’t part of Jo. It was like one of those modern conservatories tacked onto the front of a beautiful, old, beamed Tudor house. Like a down-and-out with a bottle of meths and a Gucci handbag. I tried to change my anger into gentle understanding.

‘All I’m doing is giving you some support. Perhaps I should have just let you walk to the doctor’s.’

Oops, I had played my joker—the guilt card.

Guilt goes with motherhood. Guilt because we dare to go out to work, guilt because we failed to buy Barbie’s health spa, jacuzzi and leg-waxing centre three Christmases ago, guilt be-cause we sometimes buy pre-packed, e-numbered, shove-in-the-microwave suppers. And every now and then we try to disperse all that guilt in another direction.

Jo raged upstairs, stamping her feet on every step and leaving me sitting there like a damp firework. I knew I wasn’t handling this very well but I felt out of control. Something was happening that I couldn’t keep tabs on, it was running away with me, spinning out of my hands. I felt frustrated, inadequate, out of my depth. I just sat there, staring into my coffee-mug, weighed down by thoughts and emotions. I don’t know how long I remained in that position, but when Jo appeared in the kitchen doorway I realised that my hands were numb from holding the weight of my head in them for so long.

‘Mum, there really isn’t anything to worry about,’ began Jo. ‘They’re going to run some tests but the doctor was right and so were you—I’d just become frightened to eat, that’s all. I suppose it’s a sort of eating disorder and I have lost weight but not that much. The thing is, I’ve been to the doctor as a precaution but I can sort this out myself. I probably don’t need the clinic at all. I might go just for a bit of one-off advice. I won’t be like the others there.’

Suddenly the sun shone through the yellow curtains in our kitchen and we all danced together in the sunbeams, like fairies on a midsummer’s evening.

When Jo was little, I used to read her stories about magical places. I also used to sit her in front of the television while I topped up on caffeine and magazine gossip. I used to take her to the park and push her on the swings for as long as she wanted, but then I would wheel her pushchair around the clothes shops until she was stiff with boredom. I was, in many ways, a near-perfect mother but on a part-time basis. Now I simply tried too hard to be that story-reading, swing-pushing mother.

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