Present day
Lilly left the table and grabbed the bread knife and seeded sourdough loaf that she bought every other day from the artisan bakery on the Wandsworth Road.
A dark-crusted work of art that was dense, tasty, and so moreish she knew that if she were let loose with a pound of butter, a sharp Cheddar, a jar of spicy pickle and a breadboard, she could quite easily demolish the whole thing!
Her friend, Glenda, spoke of her own waning appetite, picking like a bird at her food and abandoning more than she ate on the plate.
But not Lilly. It had once been a source of shame, her desire to gorge, her love of food, her delight at the prospect of a good dinner, but not now.
She was seventy, healthy, broad of hip, had bags of energy and was doing her very best to entirely banish the feeling of shame over anything!
Not always successfully. But when it came to food, she now rather liked her appreciation of fresh pasta, thick gravies, golden-crusted pastry, plump, iced patisserie, fresh bread, warm cheese and a really, really good glass of red.
I mean, why not? Life was too bloody short! That much she did know.
The toast popped and she slathered it with butter and Clodagh’s preferred chunky peanut butter. Placing the plate on the table, she watched the girl tuck in.
‘Thank you, Lilly. I love it when you make me toast.’
‘Oh, it’s nothing!’ Lilly batted away the compliment, knowing it was actually something. It was showing love. It was building a community. It was family.
‘I’m not used to anyone looking after me.
My mum was bloody useless,’ Clodagh blurted as she chewed her breakfast. ‘I still miss her though.’ It was the first time the girl had made such an admission, and Lilly, unaware of the circumstances of their estrangement and with a bloom of kinship in her chest, trod carefully.
‘That must be hard.’ It was tricky to offer sympathy and support without appearing to pry. ‘Did your mother, erm, did she . . .’ Lilly spoke hesitantly. The last thing she wanted to do was ask a question the answer to which might make Clodagh feel uncomfortable.
‘Die?’ Clodagh suggested, seemingly without nerves.
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, no.’ Lilly felt her shoulders sink with something close to relief. ‘And this is a controversial thing to say, I know’ – her friend swallowed her toast before going in for a second bite – ‘but I often thought it might have been easier for me if she had.’
‘That’s . . .’ Lilly was a little lost for words. Clodagh was right: it was a controversial thing to say.
‘I told you it was controversial!’ Clodagh exhaled.
‘But I think if my mother had died when I was little, that would have garnered sympathy, you know the look: head pulled back on shoulders, eyes narrowed, lips tucked in, gaze downcast and usually accompanied by an “aww, dear” or a “poor lamb”. I mean, yes, I would still have been different, my life not so easy, but different beyond my control, different because of fate or sickness or an unfortunate incident with the number ninety-seven bus.’
Lilly gave a slow smile of understanding and felt her mouthful of tea take form in her throat, making swallowing difficult. Yes, she more than understood that not-so-easy life because your home situation was a little bit different, because your mum was bloody useless.
‘But instead, you were different because . . . ?’
Clodagh put the remainder of her toast on the plate and took her time.
‘Because she wasn’t a great example, hasn’t really been there for me since I was small.
More interested in going out than staying in with me.
I bored her stupid, I could tell, even when I was little.
I don’t think she ever answered a question without putting a sigh at the front of it.
She’d meet a bloke and forget about me, like literally!
’ She shook her head as if such a thing, when relating it to Apollo, was impossible.
‘I’m not even joking; she once went on holiday with a cab driver she met in a nightclub one Saturday night, and I just got on with it!
A whole week of letting myself in and out of the house, eating cereal and heading off to school.
I didn’t know where she was, didn’t tell anyone’ – Clodagh looked up at her now – ‘but I knew I was in trouble if she didn’t come home soon.
I was embarrassed, and even though I was a kid, I knew it was shitty behaviour. ’
‘How old were you?’ Lilly could not imagine being so negligent, so unappreciative of a gift like Clodagh, and there it was: the smell of strong bleach in her nostrils.
‘Twelve.’
‘You must have been scared.’ Lilly kept her voice low, aware that this was uncharted territory and, again, not wanting to pry.
‘I wasn’t scared of being by myself, I was used to that, but as I say, I was worried about what might happen if she didn’t come back. I’d seen friends in and out of care, and I dreaded it.’
‘That’s rotten.’ Lilly’s heart flexed for the twelve-year-old Clodagh.
‘I was starting to panic, thinking about who to tell and what to say. There was a teacher at school I thought I might be able to confide in. I was working out how to approach her, practising what to say in my head, but that night, Mum came home. All tanned and giggly, with her new bloke, who moved in for a while. Can’t even remember his name.
They didn’t mention the fact they’d been gone for a week, and so I didn’t.
They bought me a little plastic doll, a woman in a flamenco dress with a fan in her hand and a veil on the back of her head.
I’ve still got it somewhere.’ Clodagh coughed.
‘So yeah, even though she was rubbish and I hardly ever see her now, I still miss her, or more accurately, I miss what a mum should be in my head. A mum who reads you bedtime stories and makes you toast.’ She lifted the slice and grinned. ‘Does that make sense?’
‘It really does.’ Lilly smiled at the girl, enlivened by the compliment more than she could say, feeling such an affinity with her young neighbour.
‘I guess all of us have an image in our head of what the perfect family looks like, yet I doubt it really exists. And I expect that what we think of as a perfect family probably isn’t once you scratch away the gilt.
’ In her mind’s eye she saw her parents dancing, laughing, loving . . .
‘Maybe. I just want things to be nicer for Apollo. I want him to feel safe.’ Clodagh shuddered a little as she double-blinked, suggesting she, too, didn’t always feel safe.
‘I guess there are only two choices when you become a parent, aren’t there, you can either do as your parents did or do differently?’
‘Yep. And I definitely do differently!’ Clodagh gave a short, wry laugh as she stated the obvious.
‘I also think that the perfect family is the one that’s right for you. They come in all shapes and sizes, right?’ Lilly didn’t want her friend, who tried so hard, to feel less than.
‘Right.’ Clodagh smiled back. ‘It was a rotten childhood, but at the time, like everything really, it was just how it was! It wasn’t easy being different, but it never occurred to me that I could change anything, so I just plodded on.’
‘I remember feeling the same, just plodding on, until I started at art college and realised that I could change everything! And so I did!’ Lilly clapped.
‘You made good friends?’
‘My first friends, actually! Or friend, more specifically: Glenda.’
‘Glenda? Your Glenda?’ Clodagh had of course met her right here in the kitchen.
‘Yes, my Glenda.’ Lilly smiled too. She supposed it was some kind of achievement that the two were still buddies, having faced more than their fair share of ups and downs, disagreements, and the moment that had threatened to split them for ever.
Lilly remembered the day, so long ago, yet still with the power to floor her, when her friend’s actions had nearly shattered their friendship. She was grateful they’d got through it.
The incident was not something she spoke about to anyone, not wanting to cloud their view of Glenda or to relive it. She gathered herself and continued.
‘Up until then, it was like I spent my childhood with my nose pressed up against the wide glass window of life watching all the goings-on; children playing happily with each other in the playground, teenagers laughing as if they were all in this fabulous club, boys at school quoting to each other lines from The Navy Lark, “Ooh, nasty . . .”, “Oh lumme!”’
‘What’s The Navy Lark?’
‘Oh.’ It was a reminder of the gulf in their ages. ‘A radio play, a sitcom, really. Everyone had a radio, everyone listened to it. And I would watch them all interacting, chattering to myself but not knowing how to be more normal, more invitable, more like them.’
‘Were you lonely?’ Clodagh asked with a notch of concern at the top of her nose, and Lilly suspected that this was one of her biggest fears for Apollo, who even at the tender age of four seemed a little non-conformist too. And Lilly more than understood, as loneliness was one of her biggest fears.
‘I was. But not at home, never lonely at home, and that was by far my preference: to have a haven, a safe space, somewhere I could laugh and be myself, somewhere I was so loved. That is always the preference, Clodagh, for every child, to have peace at home. I am sure some of those kids who appeared to find life easy didn’t have what I did when they put their key in the door. It’s what saves you, ultimately.’
‘Yes.’ The girl blinked her understanding. Lilly hoped it helped.
‘At school it was as if my peers spoke another language, one I didn’t understand.
And even if I’d wanted to learn it, at the Dame Margaret Nichols Academy we could only study French; there was no mention of this other mysterious language of popularity.
That might, had I been able to master it, have given me access to groups of friends.
’ She finished her tea and instantly rose to re-boil the kettle.
‘My dad used to tell me not to take it to heart, the fact that I wasn’t invited anywhere, ever.
“Take no notice, Lilly-Bob,” he’d say. “Take no notice! They’re idiots, the lot of them.
They’d give anything for your brain.” And I’d stare at him.
Knowing they probably would not give anything for my brain. ’
It was true, the younger Lilly-Bob was quite convinced the popular girls in her school were very happy with their brains, which let them know all the lyrics to every Beatles song.
Their brains that knew what clothes went with what shoes, how to put on eyeliner, style their hair, the right thing to say .
. . Their brains that meant boys would like them.
Their brains that meant they didn’t travel alone on the bus wishing they were invisible, and wishing, most of the time, that they could hide – only wanting to read or paint.
As these were the only two things that brought her joy.
And when she was immersed in either, it didn’t feel like a consolation, far from it – they made her happy!
So happy! Still did. Her art bag was stuffed with notebooks, canvasses, brushes and paints; the piles of books teetering in corners and on surfaces, some read, some tantalisingly awaiting her attention, testament to this.
The kettle rattled to a boil. Lilly sluiced the mugs under the tap before adding new teabags for a refill.
‘It wasn’t until I got to art school that my oddness became currency.
I was cool because I didn’t know the words to pop songs, because I didn’t look or sound like everyone else!
It was a revelation, like being able to take a full breath for the first time, like removing a too-tight corset, like walking into a warm, welcoming space when before I had been left out in the cold. ’
‘You found your tribe, Lilly.’
‘I did, Clodagh, I found my tribe.’ She smiled to think of her old friend Bertie. ‘Anyway, back to the topic. What are we going to do about Apollo hating school?’
‘I honestly don’t know.’ Her neighbour looked a little crestfallen. ‘I’m not sure he hates it. I think he’s okay once he gets inside, at least that’s what his teacher said. It’s having to leave me that’s the problem.’
‘Having never been a mother, I can only offer subjective advice.’ The picture filled Lilly’s mind as clearly as if it had happened yesterday, and there it was again, the smell of strong disinfectant.
That’s a good girl, count backwards from ten for me . . .
Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .
Then nothing.
Nothing.
‘I understand, and please do!’ Clodagh looked up, giving Lilly her full attention.
‘What if someone else were to take him to school, someone who isn’t giving off an air of anxiety that might make him anxious?’
‘You think I give off an air of anxiety?’ the young mum asked, giving off an air of anxiety.
‘I think it’s possible,’ Lilly responded, tactfully.
‘Who can take him in?’ Clodagh reached for the fresh mug of tea that Lilly was offering.
‘Me.’
‘You’d do that?’ she asked, eyes misting, which was all the thanks Lilly needed.
‘I’d give it a go. Because sometimes I find a different person, offering a different perspective, can help you see the world differently. Now, finish your toast.’ She nodded at the plate.
‘Thank you, Lilly.’ Clodagh sniffed. ‘Have you had any letters about a regeneration order on the flats?’ she asked as she took a bite.
‘I have, darling, only opened one, but didn’t read it all. Sent to me in error. I own the flat, so, sadly, for me, whatever plans they have for fancy new windows or painting the front doors, I will be very obviously excluded!’
‘I’ve been too scared to open them. I’d hate to have to move. Apollo loves it here. We both do; we’re settled.’ Clodagh swallowed the toast as if it were a big lump, clearly frightened by the prospect. ‘His haven, his safe space . . .’ she echoed.
‘You don’t have to worry about that.’ Lilly sipped her hot tea.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Quite sure.’ She winked at the girl, who was yet to understand that the council were slow, inept and broke. There would be no regeneration, no matter how many letters they sent out.