Chapter 6
SIX
I decide to unpack first and wheel my case along the hallway. As I pass the open door to his bedroom, my dad calls out: ‘Ellie! I have something for you!’
‘Is it a naked woman?’ I ask hesitantly.
‘No, dear, I only have the stamina for one of those per day. It’s this. I meant to send it to you through the post, but events rather overtook me. A little light reading for you.’
He passes me a big brown envelope, kisses me on the forehead, and says he will see me later.
I glance at the package and shake my head.
It’s addressed to Professor Doctor Prima Ballerina Eleanor Ponsonby-Smythe.
The only one of those titles that’s true is the Eleanor, although everybody calls me Ellie.
I am not a professor or a doctor, have never danced professionally, and my surname is Dexter. What can I say? He gets carried away.
I carry it with me along to my bedroom, wondering what changes there will have been in the last couple of decades.
The answer is: not many, but there is the exciting addition of a basketball hoop machine, one of those you see at amusement arcades where you throw for points, and then you have a gazillion little paper tickets and have spent so much cash you could have bought a car.
Instead you trade them in for a set of pencils or a small stuffed dinosaur at the arcade shop.
I have no idea why it is here or if it works, and decide that is a question for another time.
Other than that, the room is eerily like a time capsule.
There is still lilac paint on one wall, black on the other.
My transition from little girl to angsty teen was not a graceful one, and if I’d stayed here longer, I suspect the whole room including ceiling and floors would have been black as well.
At the time of course I thought I was a wild rebel, going crazy – in reality, I now realise that a lot of teenagers go through their ‘paint it black’ phase.
At least there wasn’t a pentagram on the floorboards.
There wasn’t when I left but, as I’ve learned in the last hour, my dad has a life I know nothing about.
My bed is still the same single I had as a child, but the duvet is folded up with no covers.
Time capsules are one thing, but mouldy bedding is another, so I’m quite happy to root around in the airing cupboard and find some clean sheets.
My old ones are still there, soft to the touch from washing, tucked away beneath my extra blankets and the crocheted shawl Liam’s mum made for me one year.
I can’t believe I left that here – I always loved it so much.
Bernadette didn’t have a lot of spare cash or time, but she always made me something, every Christmas.
I tug out the shawl, sniff the soft multi-coloured wool in shades of red and orange, everything always made from whatever she had left over.
She’d carve out an hour each day away from kids and chores, and sit in her chair while she listened to Frank Sinatra records.
She’d crochet and knit and sew, her fingers moving like the wind as she sang along to the tunes.
I smile, and decide I will give the shawl a wash to get rid of the vaguely musty smell, and I will wear it while I’m here.
No matter what happened between me and Liam, it wasn’t his family’s fault.
I change the bedding, and sit down, looking at the room.
Posters of the White Stripes and the Strokes jostle for space with movie promos, and tucked away in one corner is my Josh Hartnett shrine.
I laugh as I pick up the framed photo of him in Pearl Harbor.
I was convinced I was going to marry Josh Hartnett, and even his terrible haircut in The Faculty didn’t put me off.
My desk is still here, now piled up with giant packs of toilet paper.
My old cork notice board is propped up against the wall, pins plunged and holding up the ghosts of photos past. I took most of them with me, angry-crying as I slipped them inside my bag, convinced I’d never make friends again.
I left behind the ones of me and Liam, and I stare at them now, thinking how petty it seems. How long ago it was.
But at the time, I was hurting. I was a wounded animal.
I tug the pictures down, three of them, curled with age, the colours faded. It seems like a different world, one where you actually printed out photos instead of having them on your phone. I’m glad it was, or I’d have deleted them and they’d have been gone forever.
One shot is of Liam down at the beach, in his baggy jeans and his Cypress Hill T-shirt, his floppy fringe grown over his forehead to try and hide his acne.
He was so self-conscious about it, not least because his siblings tormented him mercilessly.
There’s also one of him jumping off the cliffs, blurry and in motion as he plummets to the sea.
He was always smaller than his brothers, and tried to make up for it by being a daredevil.
He’d always be the first to jump off a cliff, or skateboard off the back of a cement mixer, or try to do parkour around St Tilda’s rooftops.
There was – possibly still is – an abandoned manor house about a mile outside the village.
I’m sure it was amazing in its heyday, but it was long uninhabited by our teenage years, and full of enticing prospects – crumbling walls, overgrown gardens, rotting floorboards, little turret rooms. Teen heaven.
I was always a tiny bit worried it might be haunted, but Liam loved it – he had no fear at all, even when he fell through a hole in the ground and ended up on his arse in the cellar, covered in plasterboard.
He just laughed and shook himself down. Really, it’s amazing that the human race has survived, given how stupid teenagers are.
I remember the day this photo was taken.
A gang of us was down at the bay, cheering him on as he leapt, but inside I was terrified.
My heart was pounding and I was so scared that he would hurt himself.
He was my best friend, and I knew – just knew – that I couldn’t live without him.
It turned out that I could, but life was definitely a lot less fun without him in it.
The last photo is of me and him, lying flat out on the grass of the village green.
We’re both grinning, and both wearing tops that say ‘My Parents Went to Tenerife and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt’.
Our parents hadn’t been to Tenerife – his never had enough money for holidays, and mine never had enough time.
We’d bought them in a charity shop on a trip to Penzance, and thought we were super-cool rebels.
He’s holding two fingers up at the camera, but I’m not – my mum would have killed me.
I smile, and put them back on the corkboard, leaning it back against the wall.
I remember these walls in earlier years, when my tastes were more innocent – My Little Pony being a particular favourite.
I mooch along my bookshelf, see the likes of Harry Potter and Eragon, along with a battered copy of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History.
I read that when I was fifteen, and it made me feel super grown-up and sophisticated.
The drawers are mainly empty, but a few of my old clothes are still hanging in the wardrobe.
Most of my belongings were packed up and shipped to the States, along with me and my mum.
I hated it so much. I hated being dragged away from here, and I sobbed with every single thing I placed into a packing crate.
It must have been so tough for my dad, too – he certainly doesn’t seem to have been in a rush to change anything.
The room is still basically the same. It stirs up a lot of feelings, and I’m not sure where to put them all. I guess I need another packing crate.
I pull back the curtains, and see that it has gone dark, the moonlight reflecting off the bay.
This room always had the most luscious view, and I spent hours curled up in that cushioned window seat, wearing that shawl, watching the seasons change.
I toy with the idea of doing exactly that right now, but my sleep patterns still aren’t back to normal, and I know I’ll be better off staying active – for all kinds of reasons.
I have such mixed feelings about this room.
Many of them happy and silly, but not all of them.
That summer, when the world imploded and my parents went to war, I’d huddle beneath the covers with my earbuds in, listening to music to drown them out.
I still can’t hear certain songs from that era without getting lost in a time loop – in particular, Coldplay’s ‘A Rush of Blood to the Head’ album or Beautiful by Christina Aguilera.
The minute they reach my brain, I’m right back there, crying beneath my bed covers, feeling like my world has been torn apart.
And now I’m back here, hoping my adult self doesn’t get ambushed by my teenaged angst.
It’s not just my room that makes me feel like that, if I’m honest. It’s everywhere.
The living room is where they screamed at each other.
The kitchen is where she threw the plates.
The little breakfast area downstairs is where my mum first met Ethan, where I first noticed how kind he was, how interested in her.
The way he made her smile when all my dad did was make her cry.