Chapter 24

24

SEAGLASS

1983

My mother always dressed up to go shopping; for her it was like putting on a show. I remember that she was in a good mood that day—it was a rare and therefore memorable thing. Nancy sang along to the car radio as we drove along the coastal road into town—completely out of tune—to a song called “Stayin’ Alive.” She had a VHS of a film that had the same song in it, something about a man called John Travolta who had a fever on a Saturday night. Nancy liked the name John. Her favorite shop in the whole wide world was called John Lewis, and that was where we were headed.

We were at Seaglass for the Easter holidays, but Nana didn’t come with us. She hated all forms of shopping. “Material things only matter to material people,” she would say. But Nancy loved to shop. The only problem with her spending habits and expensive taste was that we rarely had any money in those days. The divorce settlement was generous, but after paying the mortgage on our tiny house in London and my sisters’ school fees, there was very little left over. Which was why the start of the sales was very important to Nancy. We had to get there on day one as soon as the shop doors opened, even if that meant queuing. The only thing my mother loved more than shopping was believing that she had paid less for something than it was worth.

I loathed being dragged around department stores. They were too big and I was too small, and I was always afraid of getting lost. I preferred the smaller shops we used to visit on our old high street. I always loved Woolworth’s because of the pick ’n’ mix; the memory of all those cola bottles, cherry lips, and flying saucers still makes me smile. Lily’s favorite shops were Our Price, where she went to buy the latest cassettes and music posters, and Tammy Girl and C&A, where she and Rose shopped for clothes. I always enjoyed our trips to Blockbuster Video—even if I was rarely allowed to choose which film we would rent—and visits to the little independent bookshop with Nana were my favorite outings. Buying books was the only form of shopping she ever enjoyed. It makes me sad to realize that none of those shops exist now. So many high streets are more like ghost towns these days.

Nancy pushed through the crowds and headed straight up the escalator to the children’s department in John Lewis, where she quickly chose two new dresses for Rose and Lily. I had to run to keep up with her walk, but I remember the navy blue velvet dresses with white collars, and how much I wanted one of my own. My mother always liked to dress my sisters in matching clothes—as though they were twins—but I rarely had anything new to wear.

We went up another floor to women’s fashion so that Nancy could buy a little something for herself. My mother always walked up the escalator in her hurry to find a bargain. The moving steps were very big, and seven-year-old me found it difficult to keep up. I’ve been scared of escalators ever since. I always felt as though I was going to slip, or trip, or fall through the cracks. I had to jump when we reached the end, to avoid the gap and certain death.

On arrival in women’s fashion, Nancy started to browse the reduced-price clothes like it was a sport. I remember the ugly sound of hangers screeching across the metal rails. If other shoppers dared to get in her way, Nancy would tut until they moved. My feet started to ache in my secondhand shoes, which were pretty but too small. So, while I waited for Nancy to find the things she thought would make her happy, I sat down and collected the coat-hanger-size cubes that had fallen to the floor. There were different colors for each size in those days: orange for 10, green for 12, blue for 14. Nancy has almost always been a size 10, and I wonder if that’s why I hate the color orange.

Everything was fine until we got to the changing room. My mother had taken in the maximum number of dresses to try on, but started to get upset as soon as she did because the first dress didn’t seem to fit.

“Just pull the zip up,” she said, glaring at me in the mirror as I tried, and failed, to help.

“It won’t budge,” I replied, tugging on the zipper, and she tutted and shook her head at me as though it was my fault.

“There must be something wrong with the sizing of this dress,” Nancy said, pulling it off over her head and dumping it on the floor. But the next dress, another size 10, didn’t fit either. Nor did the next one. That’s when Nancy started to cry.

“Having children ruined my body. Ruined it. The sacrifices I have made for you…”

“I think you look beautiful,” I said, shoving my hands into my pockets, not really knowing what to say or do. “I could just go and get you a bigger size?”

I was so scared by the look my mother gave me then, I ran out of the changing room without waiting for a reply. Some of the size cubes I had picked up earlier were still in my pockets. Feeling them gave me an idea. I found the dress my mother liked the most out on the shop floor, went on tiptoe to select it in a size 12, then changed the green size cube on the hanger for an orange size 10. I ran back to the changing room.

“I already tried that one,” Nancy snapped, staring at the dress as though it had offended her.

“But maybe this one will fit?” I said, holding it out in both hands like a fabric peace offering. “It did look very pretty on you.”

She snatched the dress and started to pull it on. When I helped zip it all the way up at the back, she smiled at herself in the mirror. Then she smiled at me.

I don’t know whether Nancy ever looked at the size label sewn into the inside of the dress she bought for herself that day. All my mother ever really cared about was what was on the outside, what other people saw and how they viewed her. I still think it’s a very sad way to live. But we stopped off in the children’s department again before we left John Lewis that afternoon, and my mother bought me the same dress she had bought for my sisters. It was the first and only time she dressed me the same way as them. Sometimes the things that make one person sad are the same things that can make another person happy.

Nancy sang along to the radio again as we drove home. There were big bags full of half-price dresses in the boot of her little red Mini. All of them with the wrong size on the hangers. I never told her what I did because sometimes keeping secrets is the kindest thing to do. I still remember how happy she was, until we saw a boy walking alone along the coastal path near Seaglass. I guess Conor would have been thirteen at the time. That awkward stage where he still looked like a boy but was starting to think and behave like a man. He was limping. My mother pulled up beside him and gasped when she saw his face. He had a black eye and a bloody lip.

“Stay here,” she ordered, yanking the hand brake as though it were to blame.

She got out of the car and rushed over to Conor.

“Did your dad do this to you?” Nancy asked.

Our whole family knew about Conor’s dad, and my parents did not approve of Nana getting involved. They viewed spending what they saw as their inheritance on Conor’s father’s rehab as a waste of time and money. My mother had been waiting for the moment when she would be proved right. Conor looked away and stared at Blacksand Bay down below the cliffs. Nancy tried again, softening the edges of her words.

“You don’t need to say it out loud if you don’t want to, but I do need to know what happened, Conor. Did your father do this to you? Nod or shake your head.”

Conor stared at her, but he didn’t move his head or even blink.

“Jump in the back seat,” she said, and he did as he was told, sliding in beside me. He stank of blood and sweat.

Nancy drove so fast I was glad she made Conor and I wear seat belts. She was wearing her cross face, and I was glad it wasn’t me she was mad at for a change. My mother was more than capable of hurting her own children behind closed doors—albeit only with words—but she could not tolerate the thought of any other child coming to harm. The car’s brakes squealed as we pulled up outside Conor’s dad’s cottage, the one Nana had lovingly renovated a couple of years earlier. Sadly, people can be harder to restore than places.

“Stay there, both of you,” Nancy ordered.

She got out of the spotlessly clean Mini and tutted at the state of Conor’s dad’s blue Volvo. It was so dirty, I couldn’t read the number plate, even though we were parked right behind it.

“He’s going to kill someone driving drunk along that cliff road one day,” she muttered, and I watched, with my face pressed against our car window, as Nancy marched up to Conor’s house. I started whispering under my breath, waiting for my mother to strike like lightning.

One Mississippi … Two Mississippi … Three Mississippi …

I didn’t have long to wait.

“Open this door,” Nancy yelled, banging her fist on it. “My mother-in-law might have been taken in by you, but I know people like you never change. You are a disgrace of a man. Your son is sitting in my car looking broken, and I thought you might want to say goodbye before I take him back to Seaglass and make sure you never see him or hurt him again.”

Nancy had fallen for Conor by then, just like the rest of the women in the Darker family. We all wanted to protect him. It was instinct. Not something any of us thought to question or knew how to explain. Like if you found an abandoned puppy: you couldn’t help wanting to protect him and give him a home.

I looked at Conor, but he just stared at the floor of the car, his hands forming two little fists in his lap. The cottage door opened, and I could feel my heart beating so fast I thought it might burst right out of my chest. Then a man I didn’t recognize appeared in the doorway.

He looked like Conor’s dad, but at the same time, he didn’t. The man I had seen before was all too often a skinny, smelly, dirty man with torn clothes, a beard, and long hair. This man stood tall with his head held high. His hair was neatly cut; his face was cleanly shaved. He’d put on weight, looked as though he’d been working out, and was dressed in clean clothes. I remember that his trousers and shirt seemed to have a ridiculous number of pockets and I wondered what he kept in them all. He folded his tanned arms and smiled. The world seemed topsy-turvy as my mother—who thought she was the hero of this particular story—appeared to be in the wrong, while the baddie had become a calm, well-mannered, good-looking man.

“Hello, Mrs. Darker,” he said, before inviting us all inside.

It turned out that Conor’s dad hadn’t started drinking again. Or hitting his son. I watched while he very slowly made some tea. He looked like a man who had never been in a hurry to do anything or get anywhere his whole life. Despite the slow motion, Mr. Kennedy had very much got his life back on track, and was working as head gardener at a National Trust property a few miles away. That sounded good to me, but Conor said his dad was always careless with jobs and often lost them. Even before his mother died.

It turned out that Conor had been a little bit careless himself. He was getting into trouble at school, and was in a fight with a boy three years older than him that day. I found out later that the boy had been spreading rumors about Lily and Rose, and Conor was defending them. Lily—who loved Easter because of all the chocolate—had promised to give some of the local boys a peek inside her panties in exchange for an egg. The bigger the egg, the longer they got to look. She was eleven years old. That was just the start of my sister getting a name for herself for all the wrong reasons in Blacksand Bay. My mother, thankfully, never found out the truth.

Conor’s dad opened a first aid kit, cleaned up his son’s face, then served us all tea and biscuits in the kitchen. The house was just as clean and tidy as the man who owned it, and it was a surreal experience to see my mother lost for words. Even stranger to hear her apologize.

“I’m so sorry, I just thought that—”

“It’s okay, I would have thought the same thing,” Mr. Kennedy said with a polite smile. “I was broken after my wife passed away, and I’m sorry for all the things your family had to see. That wasn’t me, at least not the real me. I’m still grieving, but I feel more like myself again now. I’m so grateful for everything that your mother-in-law did for me—and my son—when times were tough. I’ve even started writing about it.”

“A book?”

“Maybe. I haven’t decided and I don’t know if it’s good enough yet, but writing about it—the overwhelming grief, the drink, all of it—helps me to process what I became. And if sharing that experience—as awful as it was—might help others to not take the same path, or find a way back if they already have, then maybe…” He turned to Conor. “I hope you thanked Mrs. Darker for bringing you home?”

“It’s fine, and I’ve told him to call me Nancy, so you should do the same.”

“I’ve always liked the name Nancy. Perhaps we could start over? I’m Bradley, it’s good to meet you.” He held out his hand, and my mother blushed when she shook it.

“I didn’t know you were a gardener,” she said, taking a sip of tea, anything to keep her hands busy and out of reach. “Maybe you could give me some advice for the little patch of land at the back of Seaglass?”

“I’d be happy to.”

She blushed again. “My mother-in-law was going to invite Conor to visit us on Easter Sunday. My older girls are home from school, and it’s nice for them to spend time with someone their own age. Maybe you could join us too … if you’re free?”

“I’ll check my diary,” Mr. Kennedy said with a straight face.

When he smiled and my mother realized he was joking, she laughed. I noticed again what a rare sound it was to hear. It was strangely beautiful, just like her.

I might never have gone to school, but I felt like I learned a lot of valuable lessons that day, including that people aren’t always what they appear to be. A middle-aged man with a drinking problem might just be a person poisoned by an all-consuming grief. While a middle-class woman with nice manners and nice things might just be a failed actress who can’t handle being a dress size bigger than she wants to be. Life is a performance, and we don’t all like the scripts we’re given; sometimes it’s best to write your own.

Conor and his dad did visit us at Seaglass that Easter. They wore suits and ties, and brought chocolate eggs for the whole family. Mr. Kennedy spent a lot of time out in the garden with Nancy, and we listened to the sound of her laughing all afternoon. Bradley Kennedy never gave up drinking for good, but at that moment in time he seemed to know when to stop, and he never laid a finger on Conor again.

When I look at that picture of the Darker family women on Nana’s mantelpiece now, I remember that Conor took it that Easter, using the Polaroid camera my father had given him. In the photo, Nana is wearing a pink dress and a purple Easter bonnet. Lily, Rose, and I are all wearing matching dresses for the first and only time. They are the blue velvet ones from John Lewis. Nancy is dressed in one of her Audrey Hepburn ensembles, and she looks very pleased with herself indeed. She is gazing just off camera. I think she was looking at Conor’s dad.

I smile too when I look at the image of her back then, because I was so proud of her for what she did that day, ready to stick up for Conor, no matter what. She was protective of those she cared about. And if she loved something, or someone, she loved them with all her heart.

I just wish she had loved me that way.

My mother might never have fulfilled her ambition of becoming an actress, but at least some of her dreams came true. She had a good life, a nice home, and a beautiful family. What happened a few years later was not her fault. Neither is anything that is happening now. Sometimes we have to let go of what we had in order to hold on to what we’ve got.