Chapter 14 Flynn
Twenty Years Ago
I’m not sure whether it was the thing that screeched that woke me up or the wet or knowing it is happening today. My stomach swirls and tears prick my eyes in the dark. Sneaking out of bed, I see the outline of the awful ‘trunk’ we’re taking on the other side of the room.
I peel off my sticky pyjama bottoms and ball them up. I don’t want to take off the sheet again because last time Mum was so angry. Maybe it will dry before she notices? I stuff my bottoms in the back of my wardrobe and I lie on top of my duvet with a rug over me, trying to forget what’s about to happen.
My skin feels all sticky and the smell makes me feel sick, or is it still the thought of Mum finding out? Will she be angry? Will she say anything at all? I stay there until the edges of my curtain get bright. I hear her footsteps go past. Mum used to come in. She doesn’t any more. I put my pants on and then the scratchy grey uniform, but I can’t do up the tie which makes me want to cry again. I don’t want to wear a tie. I don’t want to leave my old school.
I don’t say anything at breakfast and it’s just the scrape of my cutlery and the turning of the newspaper which means I shouldn’t say anything because I am seven and nothing I say is important. Behind it, Patrick snorts and says something about Blair’s Babes but I don’t know what that is and why it’s bad. Sometimes I wonder what he would do if I reached across and scrunched up all the papers like I want to, but instead I just watch Mum, who is staring at her coffee cup. I want her to look at me but then, when she does, her face screws up.
‘What is that?’
You’re not meant to knot a tie. For a second I am pleased because it means she’ll touch me and she does, placing a hand on my shoulder as she does up the tie, but so quickly I know I won’t remember how to do it on my own. In my normal school, we wore Aertex with two buttons. Dad never wore a tie when he was alive. He was always wearing checked shirts that smelt of BBQs. My stomach starts swirling again when I think about that. I don’t want to go and I can’t help it, it just comes out.
‘I don’t want to go.’
Her hands freeze on the tie and her eyes look just over my shoulder. I know he’s paying, I overheard them a few days ago. I don’t want him to pay, I like my school where you don’t pay.
Patrick scoffs from behind his newspaper, ‘You don’t know you’re born.’ Mum doesn’t reply and now the tears do come and she says ‘Stop that’ and I do.
I sit on the back seat and stare at the back of their heads as they talk. I was sad because I couldn’t find Muffin to say goodbye and who will leave her raisins and bury their face in her soft fur? I’ll miss her warmth and the quick thud of her heart when I hold her close. The cassette is playing something boring with violins and I can’t hear what they’re saying over it, but I know it’s about the island they’re going to that has an infinity pool, which I think is a really long pool.
I wish now Mummy had found my balled-up sheet. Maybe she wouldn’t have been cross, maybe she would have swept me up into her arms like she used to when I was really small and Dad was still alive, and stroked my hair and put a kiss on my head and told me it was OK. I used to crawl into bed by her and she’d throw an arm around and over me without saying anything and I’d stay there all night in their bed. I’m not allowed to do that anymore. She told me I’m too big to do that, but I’m not big, I’m seven and I know it’s my ‘new dad’s’ idea. Like all the stupid ideas are.
I have a memory of another car journey where Mum looked back at me over her shoulder and gave me a smile that showed the gap between her two front teeth, Dad playing the song ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’ and singing badly. I stare at her blonde bob so hard my eyes start watering but she never turns around, despite my praying inside she will.
They don’t stay. Patrick shakes my hand in the hallway by the housemaster with the bald patch. His hand is limp and he wipes it on his trousers. He doesn’t leave when Mum is meant to say goodbye and I want to cling to her and beg her to take me home, I hate it here already and I’m scared.
The housemaster has put a hand on my shoulder and I shake it off and I can’t help it but I start to cry, big sobs and Mum says ‘ssh’ and looks around and the other parents are watching and then she leaves quickly when Patrick tells her to come along because she’s making it worse. She isn’t making it worse, I need her to hold me, to hug me, to cuddle me. I miss my mum. Dad would never have let her leave. Dad would have hugged me too. But then Old Mum would never have made me come here.
She doesn’t look back at the door.
I swipe at my face as other boys arrive and my chest hurts more when I see them being held close by their mummies who are crying and telling them they love them. One boy, fair hair and ice-blue eyes, wriggles out of a grasp, rushes past me. His mummy with the softest cloud of hair is still wanting to say goodbye and for a second, I want to run into her open arms and stay there.
The dorm is a big dusty room with wooden floorboards and smeared glass windows. A row of four beds down one side and a row of four more on the other. At the far end a big circular window looks out over pitches and trees. This school is in the middle of nowhere.
The fair-haired boy is here already.
‘I’m Eddie. You’re new. Why didn’t you arrive in the first term?’
I can’t tell him the real reason, that it was my ‘new dad’s’ idea so that he can take Mum to the Caribbean for a six-week honeymoon. He isn’t my dad at all, and I’ll never call him Dad even if it means she’ll never talk to me again.
‘I asked to move me here coz I thought it looked cool.’ The lie slips out easily.
Eddie seems to accept it and I’m relieved he doesn’t ask me more. He starts to ask me whether I play cricket and I say yes, only a little, even though I don’t.
‘I’m Captain,’ he tilts his chin up.
‘That’s cool.’
Eddie smiles at me and for a second the weight in my chest lifts. I try to think back to the last time Mum smiled at me. The weight gets heavier.
Another boy appears, wire-rimmed glasses and sticky up hair, and he takes the bed on the other side of Eddie. I think his name is Jay. Eddie throws a textbook at him and tells Jay to duck. The boy gets hit on the nose.
‘Don’t cry to Matron.’
I think Eddie might be in charge of us.
That first term is a blur of new things: faces, teachers, subjects, pitches, hobbies, sports. Words like cloisters and prep. I learn how to fit in, how to focus on the day ahead and not think about the things that make my heart hurt. And I can make the boys laugh. I tell jokes, play the fool, make up games. I’m good at sport and that matters here. It’s the most important thing and I practise and practise.
If I have to talk about something real, I pretend. My mum bakes brownies and takes me swimming, my stepdad’s nice, he plays table tennis with me, I don’t remember my real dad. That last one makes my breath catch.
My lies are boring and normal, and the boys lose interest in their questions quickly. We talk about sport instead; when we get older we talk about sport and girls. I find I can do it, that boys don’t probe too much. Sometimes I catch myself wondering which memories are true, convincing myself some might be.
I only cry in secret, in the dark, late. No one knows. The lies still come easily. Happy family times abroad, in-jokes we have; scribbled letters from Mum appear – never too long – always quite vague – that I pretend are from her when the others get their post. None of the boys suspect anything, no one is looking. No one asks where the envelopes are, why the paper is the same as the paper I have on my desk.
And over the years the tears don’t come any more, I’ve stopped them, and I don’t feel the hole in my chest so much. I’m used to Mum never looking back, I’m used to telling boys about this imaginary mum with her soft hands and warm hugs. I lose the remaining memories I have of Dad. Those precious few I had held close to my chest, I try to hold onto them but his face fades, and when I try really hard I simply see nothing. I feel nothing.