Present day #4
‘The only time it was worse than that was on your birthday.’ Derek paused and reached into his trouser pocket, from where he produced a white cotton handkerchief before wiping his eyes with it.
‘She’d make a cake and put a candle in it, and we’d light it, and she’d make a wish.
Same wish every year – that you might come and see her, let her in a little bit, not talk to her like she was the enemy.
And not snap at me or disagree with everything I suggested. It was wearing.’
The sound of Lilly’s sobbing filled the room, the messy, noisy, crying of regret, over which she had very little control.
‘Do you remember that time you called her, to tell her you’d met a boy?’
‘I do, I do.’ She remembered everything about it, every tiny detail, the smell inside the phone box, the feeling of joy rising in her chest like she might explode with happiness! Wilkie . . .
‘You should have seen her.’ He shook his head.
‘Cor blimey, she danced around the flat – she looked sixteen! So happy! She thought that might have been the start of something, of you being in touch with her, and just the thought was enough for her to . . .’ He shook his head.
‘She didn’t want much, your mum. What she did want, she never got; time with you, forgiveness, a chance to explain. ’
‘Ex— explain what?’ she stuttered.
‘What it had been like for her.’ Derek took his time.
‘Your dad wasn’t a bad man, not at all, but as I say, he was a troubled one.
The war changed lots of men; they came back scared, broken.
Your mum tried very hard to make it work, but he didn’t want to talk about his problems, didn’t want to face it, as was his right.
And it was her right to go, to have a life, to rest, to be heard and loved. ’
‘I loved her.’ Her words were a whisper, words she had rarely spoken in her mum’s direction.
‘I did, I loved her! I loved my mum, and I missed her every day! I still miss her every day!’ The words poured from her on a wave of relief and love, love for her mum, who had made her bed, cooked her tea, sung along to Jimmy Ruffin, and danced with her dad when the mood was right.
Her mum, who knew where to find things in jumbled drawers and the dark confines of cupboards, who knitted her jumpers by the electric fire on a winter’s night, who brushed her hair when it was ratty, who ran her bath and warmed a towel for her by the fire.
Her mum, who told her that she looked pretty when she put on a frock, who showed her how to put on two coats of lipstick and gave her a leaflet about menstruation on her eleventh birthday, ‘just in case’.
Her mum, who made her a birthday cake and covered the top with sprinkles and tiny pink, twisty candles bought from Woolworths that melted in drips quicker than everyone could sing or she could blow them out.
Her mum, who’d made sure she had her mittens in the cold and her sun hat in the warm.
Her mum, who made her soup when she was poorly, dabbed calamine lotion when she got chicken pox, read to her from The Wind in the Willows and let Lilly rest her head on her shoulder and fall asleep on the bus.
Her mum, a good mum, a loving mum, whose leaving had left a giant hole in her life that Lilly had been trying to fill ever since.
‘Well, I told her you did in your own way. Whether I believed it or not is another thing.’
‘I did.’ She pictured her mum in the kitchen, making tea in her pinny, hair set, Max Factor Ruby Red lipstick on her pretty mouth. ‘I did.’
‘I think the saddest thing is that it’s all a matter of time, Lilly.
The time we lived in. Women get divorced all the time nowadays; they don’t feel the pressure to get married in the first place, they have choices.
So many choices! They make decisions for themselves, and no one bats an eyelid, but Jeannie was demonised!
She paid a heavy price for saving herself, for putting herself first. It shamed her, always.
All she wanted was to stop being a passenger in her own life.
She wanted to grab the wheel and steer herself in the direction of happiness! ’
It was as hard to hear as it was to imagine, and yet she was strangely grateful for his candour.
‘I’m sorry, Derek. Sorry for not . . .’ She didn’t know quite what she was apologising for, certainly the latent hostility with which she had always greeted him, the cool, indifferent way she had treated her mother, who had made her a cake on her birthday, every year.
A thought that now shredded her heart and an image that she knew would stay with her for ever. ‘Can I come and see you again, Derek?’
‘If you like.’ His words might have been verging on positive, but his expression was still impassive.
‘I would like.’
‘Well, there we go, then.’ He gave a small, fleeting smile. So fleeting she might have imagined it.
There was a beat of awkward silence while they both stared at the walls.
‘You heard about Lineker leaving Match of the Day?’
‘Erm, yes, yes, I read about it.’ Football wasn’t and had never been her thing.
‘Bloody fools. How can they have Match of the Day without Lineker?’
‘I don’t know, Derek. I guess life goes on, right?’
He took a deep breath and gave her a nod, and this time she saw it, for sure. It felt a lot like he was accepting her apology, and she was entirely grateful for it. ‘I guess it does, Lilly-Bob. I guess it does.’