Chapter 7
SEVEN
Tiggy pulled the cigarette from her mouth and ground the butt into the kerb with her heel before waving slowly.
Nina pulled the van up onto the pavement and cut the engine.
It was without any of the imagined nostalgia that she returned to the postcode of her childhood.
Instead there was a bitter tinge in her mouth that tasted a lot like failure.
She looked across at Connor, who leaned forward, staring up at the dark brick building with an expression of horror.
‘This . . . this is where you grew up?’ he stuttered.
His disbelieving tone made her feel raw, vulnerable. Letting this boy, whose opinion she valued above all others, see where she had lived stripped her of the carefully constructed facade he had known her by his whole life.
‘When we came here from Denmark, yes, after my mum died. We lived just around the corner.’ She was painfully aware of the catch to her voice and the way her face flared.
It was an admission, a confession almost, that she was not like the other Kings Norton mums, the majority of whom had hopped from the professions into motherhood; her journey had been different.
She had caught Finn’s eye on a building site while her dad touted for work, and he had scooped her up and she had been happy, living her fairy tale, until Finn had rewritten for her the most unexpected ending.
‘This looks like the petrol station at home,’ Declan whispered as he took in the rotted wood cladding of the fascia and the small flashes of graffiti on the front porch of the building.
She looked out, seeing the building through the eyes of her boys who had lived in splendour, in a gracious house, attended a beautiful school and had taken their leisure among the pale stone buildings of Bath, an orderly, prosperous city.
And all for what? They had ended up back at the beginning, her beginning, and one she had fought to escape.
She felt the strength leave her core and wished, not for the first time, for the escape of sleep.
Her eyes fixated on a misshapen ampersand in blue spray paint with two dots in the loop, a symbol that must have meant something to the person who scrawled it there.
At this moment, she too felt it symbolised more.
It was a stamp, a mark, proof that she had gone backwards, her life running in an endless loop, returning to a place where people thought it was okay to write graffiti on someone’s home, in the way others might a dustbin or a derelict wall.
‘Do you think it looks like the petrol station at home, Mum?’ Declan asked again, quietly.
Nina gave a single nod. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, wishing her son would do what he did best and only point out the positives, if there were any, as if via a mind trick they could collectively pretend things were not that bad.
She had to admit, the two buildings were indeed of a similar design and era.
At home . . . She erased the image from her head.
‘So here we are.’ She turned in the seat, trying to maintain eye contact with Declan, who had gone very pale on the back seat. ‘Let’s get inside and get drinks.’
Tiggy opened the driver’s door, leaning in; she wrapped her arms around Nina in a tight, brief squeeze. ‘Hey, family! God, it’s freezing out here. Welcome home! Nice wheels.’ She gave the tyre a playful kick. ‘Hi, kids.’ She ducked her head and smiled at her nephews.
Declan raised his hand in a wave. Connor didn’t answer. Nina and Tiggy exchanged a look.
‘The good news, Con, is that you are only a hop, skip and a jump from your new school!’ Tiggy was clearly trying to make things better, but only served to heap more tension onto the already fraught situation; the last thing the boys needed was a reminder that in just a week or so’s time they would be starting at Cottrell’s School, mid-term.
‘Do you know what their rugby team is like?’
The note of desperation in her son’s voice was almost more than Nina could bear.
‘’Fraid not,’ Tiggy levelled, breathing in through her teeth, ‘but I know that one or two of them are spitting champions. I have on more than one occasion had to wipe that lovely gift from the front window of the pub.’
Nina saw the look of abject horror in Connor’s eyes.
At a loss for words, she climbed out and looked down the street that was to be their temporary home.
It was not as she remembered it. Not at all.
In her mind, Portswood, as a suburb, was a place of genteel poverty and overcrowding, houses and flats for those who earned their living with their hands.
It had been filled with the jovial banter of those who found humour in the face of adversity, who often shared the little they had with those who fell on harder times.
Today Nina could see nothing charming about the boarded-up windows, the grime, the noise and the feeling of unease that meant she felt she should constantly be looking over her shoulder.
The terraced houses further along the street had a clutch of green and black wheelie bins crammed along the outside wall, each daubed with the house number, written in white paint.
Discarded refuse and waste had been dumped on the kerb, and an old mattress and redundant fridge sat in what should have been a parking space.
On the couple of occasions she had brought Finn here, he always commented that it felt run-down, but not broken.
He had seen a certain charm in the Victorian family terraces, lacy net curtains and shiny front steps, but this was not the case any more.
Gone was the feeling of safety that she had associated with the place.
With childhood memories dashed, and on this grey, miserable day, all she saw was dirt and decay.
The blue ampersand somehow personified this.
Connor clutched his bag to his chest and looked around wide-eyed, mistrusting and afraid. Nina hated that she was going to have to be the translator, felt ashamed that the language of these streets was familiar to her.
‘Student housing now most of it, and a couple of hostels,’ Tiggy offered, having seen the expression of alarm on her sister’s face.
She tried to explain the dire state of the properties, where weeds sprouted from cracks in the uneven paving slabs and boxes full of discarded beer cans and empty bottles sat in the narrow doorways.
Nina shivered, picturing the kinds of people who might end up in hostel accommodation and who were now her neighbours.
A stab of fear followed – knowing that if she didn’t get a job, the hostels might well be their next port of call.
Her heart skipped a beat at the prospect.
Opposite the flats was a convenience store with ‘special offer’ stickers and posters advertising junk food, the Lotto and fizzy drinks cluttering up the windows.
The kerbs were full of dark soot, accumulated from the constant stream of diesel fumes from the cars that passed by in a slow procession, spewing fumes.
She thought of the tarmac lane that ran along the front of their property in Bath, pictured the occasional tractor or Land Rover that trundled along, usually with a Labrador in tow and most of the drivers offering a wave.
Even the vehicles here were bashed and rusting, the drivers unfriendly and scowling.
Nina still felt a flash of envy towards each and every one of them, the taxi drivers, deliverymen and passengers in the many, many cars, and the fact that they all had a car, and a final destination that wasn’t here.
A young woman with pink hair pushing a pram, and with a phone wedged under her chin, looked a little irritated as she was forced to navigate the crowded pavement.
A drunken man, in a greatcoat and a furry hat, swayed on the other side of the road as he raised a beer can in his palm and shouted out, ‘Good morning!’
Nina avoided eye contact with Connor, knowing it would be that much harder to keep up her calm facade if she noted his expression of abject disappointment.
And fearing that she might just lose it if she did.
Her stomach felt leaden with the rocks of self-loathing and guilt.
I hate it here, I have always hated it here and yet I have brought my boys here. What was I thinking?
The odd troupe hovered like a paused conga procession on the icy pavement as Tiggy handed her sister the small bunch of keys with a flimsy yellow plastic fob and stood back.
Nina climbed the steps to the communal entrance, opened the spring-loaded front door to the shared front hallway, and swallowed.
She tried not to react to the acrid smell of communal cooking, laced with bleach and stale cigarette smoke.
She kept her head high and her eyes straight ahead as she turned to the first door on the left, what had been Aunty Mary’s warm welcoming home, a pleasant refuge from her gran’s cold hearth and sharp tongue.
It was only as an adult that Nina recognised the warm cupping of her face inside her aunt’s elderly calloused palms, and the issuing of sweets and hugs was her way of saying, ‘I know what you go through with that sister of mine, and this is one small way that I can make you feel better.’
And she did.
Nina opened the front door. Tiggy wandered in while she and the boys hovered just inside the door.