1970 – aged 14
It was a warm day. Lilly’s body, as if moulded out of shape by the heat, felt too soft to galvanise into action.
In her denim cut-offs and halterneck vest, she lay flopped, covered in a blanket of lethargy that pinned her to the velour-covered sofa.
The air, thick with heat, meant her desire to do anything other than read was absolutely zero.
Even raising a hand to move her long fringe, stuck to her forehead with sweat, felt like too much effort.
Despite having all the windows of the flat open wide there was barely a breeze.
The river was usually a wonderful regulatory source of wind, as any waft seemed to gather on its surface and whistle through the rooms, but not today.
The ancient clattering electric fan that they’d perched on the coffee table offered little by way of relief.
In fact it only served to irritate with its clunking whir and frustrating lack of oomph.
It was the summer holidays, and Lilly had so far devoured three books in ten days.
A House for Mr Biswas, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Are You There God?
It’s Me, Margaret. Each one was ‘the best book ever!’ .
. . until she finished the next and declared the same.
She was now looking for a new distraction as she loped into the kitchen.
Not for the first time, she wondered how different her life might be if her mum was still here, thinking of summer holidays past when they had baked together, crocheted together, taken trips to the Parliament Hill lido and ridden the Tube back, her damp swimming costume rolled inside an equally damp towel.
Her hair wet, skin clammy, stomach full of the hot Bovril they had consumed as a treat after swimming, and a feeling in her core as if her body were singing with delight, limbs just the right amount of tired after her swim.
In truth, she simply missed the way it felt having her mum around, with her soft voice, delicate pastel-coloured blouses, floaty skirts and petticoats.
A lovely feminine element of fragrant warmth.
A bright thing. She had liked it very much, and missed her mum’s humming habit, and her ability to whip up biscuits and scones in a jiffy that filled the flat with the most glorious of scents.
Yes, Lilly missed her still with an ache in her bones that she didn’t mention, not ever.
As pining for her mother was marginally outweighed by the anger she felt towards her, that and the fact that Jeannie Cooper had hurt her dad.
Her wonderful, wonderful dad. That was quite possibly the most unforgiveable aspect of all, and the hardest for her to comprehend.
Her mother leaving marked Lilly as unusual, another reason for her to be considered persona non grata when it came to popularity in the playground.
It was quite a rarity; certainly everyone she knew had a mum and a dad, and at least one brother or sister.
Jeannie leaving reduced them to a family of two. Odd.
The moment she had realised her mum wasn’t coming home was still there for perfect recall, and with it the same bloom of sadness in her throat.
What made the whole dire situation even worse was that she had left them for a man called Derek Manners.
Derek Manners! Even at her tender age, Lilly was convinced that if Jeannie had done a moonlight flit with someone smart, successful, someone that could, to the untrained eye, be considered an upgrade, she might have been able to understand it a little more.
Not that she would ever have been approving, not that, but Derek Manners! Nothing about him was an upgrade.
Her mother’s new man was so very average, so boringly beige, and her dad was vibrant!
Clever! Funny! It was undoubtedly her mother’s choice of man that was as hard, if not harder, to fathom than her actions.
Her dad was a poet, a musician, a cultured man.
Derek repaired and sold televisions from his shop on the Tottenham Court Road.
Her dad wore a neat pair of slacks and braces; Derek wore a cardigan!
Her dad drank whisky from a cut-glass tumbler and studied maps; Derek liked football.
Her dad made pasta, having been taught by the nonna of his flatmate while living in Sardinia after the war.
He would bring home delicacies prepared by other musicians in his orchestra: baklava, preserved lemons, fat, milky olives, fattoush, tapenade, spiced paneer, all kinds of wondrous world foods that made her tastebuds dance, and which they ate greedily with their fingers at the kitchen table.
Her mum had told her in a half-conspiratorial, half-amused way that Derek Manners ate the same things every day of the week.
A roast on Sunday, leftover roast on Monday, sausage and mash on Tuesday, mince and rice on Wednesday, cold meat, chips and beans on Thursday, fish and chips on Friday, bacon sandwiches on Saturday, and then back to the roast . . .
The same things.
Every day.
Of every week.
The same!
Lilly could not imagine the absolute hell of a life that was so ordered, so predictable, so dull! She wasn’t sure what she wanted to be when she grew up but knew that she’d rather be anything other than dull.
Her gran on her dad’s side refused to allow Jeannie’s name to be mentioned, and as she used to pop in after her mother had gone, arriving in her polyester tabard to clean the house and dollop grey food and overboiled tinned carrots on to plates, they almost stopped talking about her mum altogether.
Her gran had died quite suddenly a couple of years ago, but still they didn’t mention Jeannie, not really.
It had become a rule that nobody set, and one Lilly was personally too afraid to break, not wanting to upset her dad further.
Her gran had been a tough old bird who had survived two world wars, the loss of her brothers and parents, and had not a tooth in her head.
Lilly could still recall the way she had spoken in the immediate aftermath of her mum’s departure, her hair in curlers nestling under a pink net, cigarette held aloft between her fingers, one arm clamped under her ample bosom, mouth thin.
She’s no good! None of them are, them women who have no regard for the vows of marriage, who mess up the lives of kids without so much as a by-your-leave! She’s selfish, brazen and morally slack, that’s her! A terrible, terrible person!
A harsh assessment, yet her dad had kept his head down, choosing not to offer comment or rebuttal; neither did he wink at Lilly to show it was all in jest. Lilly took his lead, unwilling to admit that she still, at night-time, liked to retrieve her copy of The Wind in the Willows from the drawer of her bedside cabinet, watching as the pages fell open to reveal the now-smudged lipstick mark on the tissue that was as precious to her as any jewel.
Running her fingers over it, she’d whisper ‘Night night’ out across the river, secretly hoping it would travel over the London rooftops and land in her mother’s ear, where her head lay on a brushed-cotton pillowcase in a flat on the Tottenham Court Road.
Lilly saw her on the odd occasion; the first time had been the hardest. She was invited for tea a couple of weeks after her mum’s departure, and her dad had ironed Lilly’s blouse and handed it to her with a small smile.
It was approval of sorts. She had visited out of curiosity, desperate to see her mother’s new set-up, to understand what was so great about her new life that had made it so easy to throw away her old one.
‘Do you like plants?’ Derek Manners had asked, as she sat on their squeaky leather sofa in the narrow sitting room that Lilly found to be quite claustrophobic.
There was a wide shelf around the top of the room from which tumbled long, trailing leaves and which went some way to explaining the smell of soil that lingered in the air.
‘No, I hate them.’ Her quick and steady reply, letting him know that whatever he liked, she hated. Hoping that he decoded her words and understood that what she really hated was him.
‘Which would you prefer, darling, orange or lemon?’ Her mother had held aloft two bottles of squash as she stood in the doorway.
‘Neither,’ was her immediate reply.
‘Oh, milk, then?’ Her mum’s next suggestion.
‘Nope.’ Lilly had then folded her arms across her pressed blouse.
‘Well, I’ve . . . I’ve made sandwiches, ham and tomato, and I’ve cut the crusts off, just as you like them.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘What would you like, love?’ her mum had asked softly.
‘Err . . . to go back to my dad?’ She fired verbal spikes.
And so it went on. As eleven-year-old Lilly-Bob protested in the only way she knew how.
The whole encounter had felt forced, awkward and embarrassing, leaving her skin covered in a sticky film of unease, as with one eye on the clock she’d longed for the hands to move faster, and her mum had cried while beaming behind her tears.
It was as if Jeannie believed that if she smiled widely enough, Lilly might not notice the cascade of sadness that streaked her face and trickled over her two coats of red, red lipstick.
But Lilly did notice, and her heart lifted a little to see such sadness.
Serves you right! was her mean and conflicting thought, knowing she, too, would cry later, picturing her mum’s distress, and angry all over again because it was her own fault!
Jeannie had chosen to leave the flat, her husband, her child, chosen to leave it all and swap it for this beige life with Derek Manners in a grotty, noisy top-floor flat without a view.
‘I’m so boooored.’ Lilly walked into the kitchen now with the lumbering gait of exhaustion, arms hanging down, hair over her face, head to one side as if even her neck had not the will to support its load. Not that she was even tired, but it was a reflection of her current mood.