by Penny Parkes
‘It’s fine. Honestly. Even if you do, I’ll still be doing the rounds again later. It’s kind of soothing in a way.’ Anna attempted a smile but it faltered. ‘Plus it makes me the best darn house-sitter.’
‘But—’ Kate started, before Anna held up her hand.
‘Honestly, it’s just something I’ve come to accept. And the more stressed I am, the more loops I do. So today – well, let’s just be grateful I’m staying here rather than one of the yawning stately piles I’ve been to in the past.’ This time the smile was real. ‘But then it certainly keeps me fit.’
‘Oh, Pod. You really don’t need a Fitbit, do you?’ She looked around, the low illumination from the giant fish tank lighting up the sitting room beyond with a ghostly green light, Spook once again draped across the top of the French dresser. ‘Don’t you ever – I mean, isn’t there even a part of you that wants to be somewhere familiar? Somewhere that’s yours? Somewhere your Wi-Fi connects automatically? And your things are all around you, rather than packed away somewhere?’
Anna nodded. ‘There really is. And that feeling just gets stronger. But then – every single time – I get caught up in wondering, what if I make the wrong choice? What if I choose somewhere and I hate it?’
‘But doesn’t that also apply to every choice you make in life? Jobs, husbands, pets even?’
Anna just gave her a look.
And then suddenly the penny dropped for Kate, as she realised that her lovely friend had been unable to make those choices and commitments either. ‘Oh, Pod. Thank God you have me.’
Anna returned the hug, the reassuring scent of vanilla so comforting that she daren’t imagine her life without it. ‘Ah, but you’re forgetting. You didn’t give me a choice. You were just there – every day, no question – you made it so easy for me to be your friend and by the time I realised, I was all in.’
‘Well, stay all in, will you please?’ Kate said, looking at her strangely. ‘I could do the same with the rest, you know. Just make the choices for you.’
‘Isn’t that what you are doing with the house in Oxford?’ Anna smiled.
‘Maybe, just a little bit. But I’m not fixing you up on dates or presenting you with a puppy or setting up job interviews.’
‘Yet.’
Kate shrugged. ‘Just say the word and I can be your fairy godmother. Although you’d better make it soon before my brain turns to mush and all I can think about is snacks. Because I tell you, it’s happening already. The paper I wrote on Wednesday was about Simone de Beauvoir and I wrote Simone de Biscuit. I kid you not.’
Anna laughed, not quite sure whether to buy into the myth. ‘Well, at least you’re writing. I’m stalled beyond reprieve at this point. I think I need to go back to school and relearn everything I’ve forgotten.’
‘Am I allowed to say something? I mean, I wouldn’t normally, but there’s just so much to unpack in your life right now – even if you do insist on living out of a holdall that wouldn’t cover me for a one-night stay. You’re stuck in chrysalis stage, living with ideas in your head, rather than on the page. Honestly, I’ve seen it happen to so many people at work. You have to get them out of your head in whatever format you can, give them space to breathe and evolve on the page.’
Anna nodded. ‘You’re right of course, but when I was in London it kind of dawned on me that there’s a huge difference between wanting to write and actually having the idea for a novel. Not just a notion for any old book, you know, but the Big Idea for my book. And I’m stuck with this conflict between the kind of literary creation I’ve longed for and the themes that have somewhat insinuated themselves into any creative mind space.’ She paused. ‘Do I sound like a literary twat, yet?’
‘Getting there.’ Kate smiled. ‘But you know, maybe you should just listen. Maybe those ideas are trying to tell you something, or,’ she gave Anna’s shoulders a gentle squeeze, staying, leaning against her, ‘maybe they’re helping you to process something. Because fiction is not the only way to write. Maybe you’re not a novelist at all. Maybe you’re a biographer, or a satirist, or a political commentator. You have a way with words, Anna Wilson, that puts me to shame. But novels are not the only way to communicate. So, then you have to decide, what are you trying to do? Are you aiming to entertain and elevate, or educate and illuminate?’
Anna said nothing. The only characters in her outlines and synopses insisted on morphing into versions of herself. Sometimes with more bravery, or resilience, or that mixed and elusive blessing: objectivity. Yet nevertheless, there was no denying the tenacious themes that asserted themselves over and over again.
And, as much as she had been enjoying her foray into Shirley Conran’s oeuvre, she couldn’t ever imagine herself having the guts to write about such intimacies and physical longings without sounding like an awkward spinster.
Non-fiction.
What would that even look like?
But, standing there in the quiet darkness, with Spook’s low insistent purring matching that of the pastel-coloured fridge, Anna felt a shiver of illumination.
For sure, real people didn’t live like characters in novels, their story arcs mapped out in advance for maximum impact or the most rewarding outcome. But still, every now and again, in an astute turn of phrase, Anna would find herself. Would see herself – her own worries, inhibitions and hopes – and she would feel a little less alone. Centuries, even, did not alter the human condition; the intrinsic desire to be accepted, to be successful and, in so many different ways, to be loved.
Books had never been simply a pastime for Anna – they were a manual for living, if you only allowed yourself to look.
But what if she allowed herself to truly open her own eyes and look? Not at what was written on a page, but what was real in the world around her?
Writing the truth was still writing. It was just called non-fiction.
‘Do you want me to mix up all the Lego bricks again?’ Kate offered kindly. ‘I’ll stay and help you sort them.’
Chapter 56
Chipping Norton, 2019
It was hard not to be a snob, but two letters in and Anna found herself flinching at the naive and obsequious tone of her mother’s letters.
She’d sorted them by date.
One letter each year, set to arrive on her birthday and one other envelope, penned in a different hand, which Anna had set aside with an inexplicable irritation. Somehow it felt intrusive in this most intimate of moments between mother and daughter.
The first letter had been written with her eight-year-old self in mind, adorned with doodles and a recipe for her favourite shortbread. Almost as though it carried on a conversation and with no reference at all to the abject abandonment that had separated them. Reading between the lines, Anna could only hope that, at that point at least, her mother had seen their separation as temporary. Necessary. While her mother apparently was ‘poorly’.
Poorly.
What did that even mean?
To an eight-year-old. To her now. Thoughts of cancer treatment and debilitating disease flickering through Anna’s mind as she attempted to fill in the gaps in these coy and unrewarding missives. Excuses by the plenty. But no shortage of ‘take care darling, Mummy loves you’.
But with the fourth letter, an abrupt change. Almost accusatory. The guilt fairly seeping from every pore of the cheap, flimsy paper. One single side.
A relapse it seemed. And the definition of ‘poorly’ became clear, because suddenly there was talk of rehab. No censoring of language for eleven-year-old Anna.
Anna sat back, pushing the letter away from herself, hearing only the excuses over and over again.
‘Without your father…’
‘Too much for me to cope with…’
‘I know you’ll understand…’
That last one brought a hot wave of anger through Anna as though she’d been doused in boiling water. While she’d been wedging chairs under door handles to avoid the attentions of Dave, her mother had been tra
velling, ‘to find herself’. Well how very lovely for her.
Was there a more bitter pill to swallow than maternal neglect? That deep-seated disappointment in the person who gave you life, yet was entirely incapable of managing their own?
Simply knowing, deep down, where nobody could hear you cry, that you were not a priority. You were not enough. That, maybe even on some level, your very existence scared or intimidated? Or even that, without that primary bond, it was impossible to ever truly value yourself or to believe in your ability to be loved.
And then there was the shame… Unrelenting and stubborn. Colouring the world.
Anna swallowed hard, unaware even of the tears that were flowing until the taste of salt on her lips brought her back into the present. Brought with it some small understanding of her mother’s pain between each written line.
Vivid memories of loneliness, even as they’d been together, in those last few months. The acid smell of cheap wine. The lingering stench of tobacco. And the turn-on-a-sixpence fury.
Maybe it had been a blessing that Jenny had simply failed to collect her from school that day?
You needed a licence to drive a car, she thought – and not for the first time – but any selfish fool could attempt to raise a human being.
Anna slowly ripped open the next letter, realising even as she did so that each envelope bore only her first name. No address.
She frowned in confusion, but any thoughts as to their delivery were immediately eclipsed by the contents of the letter.
A small photograph. Faded in the vintage hues of Kodak but the resemblance unmistakable. Anna and her mother. That last hot summer, when they’d eaten strawberry Mivvis and dangled their feet in the paddling pool. Sun cream smudges and burned noses. Together. And smiling.
Anna cradled the photo as though it were priceless.
Which of course, it was. The only image she had of the two of them together and with it something still more precious.
A happy memory.
Folding her lips in together, she tried to stem the emotion but her chest ached with the intensity of the feelings.
She unfolded the letter: warm, caring, apologetic.
These were the words of a sober woman. Not yet confident in that sobriety, to be fair. But the honesty rang through and for the first time, Anna could see herself in these words. Could identify and empathise with the struggles of this woman who felt like a familiar stranger.
She read on and on, her eyes smarting with tiredness, but her hunger for understanding only growing more rapacious.
This woman who had found a new life, leaving Dublin behind for a new home in the States. This woman who seemed to be under the misapprehension that Anna would be happier with her foster parents. A bucolic picture that bore so little resemblance to the truth it was almost laughable.
Had she been lying to herself for convenience or did she genuinely believe her own logic?
It was hard to say.
But in her mother’s conviction, in her stubborn affiliation to the situation that she herself had created, Anna saw more and more of herself.
There was pain and there was anger, but Anna could not deny the connection.
Parents were just people.
Fallible.
Human.
Imperfect.
And yet their legacy carried such a weight.
Her mother’s misguided decisions – whether taken lightly or not – had affected so many lives.
And continued to do so.
Returning the card wishing her luck in her GCSEs – a year too late, but the thought was there – Anna turned to the stack and stilled when she realised there was only one envelope remaining.
The interloper.
Her hands trembled as she tore it open, jarring slightly at the pages inside. The handwriting was tight and neat. Controlled and unmistakably masculine.
She skimmed the first paragraph and could not contain the small exhalation of pain that escaped, as her heart seemed to rip itself from her chest. She blinked as she attempted to read on, but as her body instinctively folded in on itself, the letter trembled too much for her to focus.
This man. This William Davies. A name she had never heard and yet now with the power to topple the precarious house of cards these few letters had built.
‘I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to read these words,’ her mother’s husband wrote.
Selfish even in death, Anna thought furiously for a moment, glancing at the date on the front page.
Six weeks before her eighteenth birthday.
A childhood in limbo. No adoption a possibility as she waited for Jenny to return.
She breathed out slowly, feeling small and cruel for even allowing the thought. Settling her breath so that she could at least take in the enormity of William’s words. Of the life they had built together. The children they shared. And of this box of letters he had discovered on her passing.
Unposted.
‘It’s hard not to feel as though I hardly knew her,’ he wrote, and for a moment, Anna’s heart went out to him too. His wife, the mother of his children and, apparently, the keeper of secrets.
Anna.
The biggest secret of all in their otherwise All-American life. The photograph of them together lay facing upwards on the table and Anna couldn’t bring herself to touch it. As though by even holding it she would make the betrayal more real.
Instead, she pushed the letters to one side and picked up her pen, eyes streaming and her knees pulled tightly to her chest, as though some security and comfort might be derived from not baring her heart.
So, instead, she bared her soul.
‘Dear Mum,’ she wrote, ‘I know now that we will never have the conversation I need. The chance to ask you the simple question why. But I need you to know how I feel…’
* * *
It was hard to say how many hours had passed. Anna’s hand cramped uncomfortably and the table was littered with page after page after page – her thoughts, her feelings, her anger, her understanding – purged into this one letter.
In so many ways it felt like the most important thing Anna had ever written.
The only important thing Anna had ever written.
A letter that would never be received. Would never be read by the one person, it seemed, who had shaped Anna’s entire life.
Long overdue but somehow the richer for it.
Even imagining how Anna would have felt as a fragile, nascent adult – still raw and unformed – had she read these letters at eighteen, made her keen with pain for what might have been. Relief, at last, for her procrastination and stubborn commitment to evolve her own life in her own way.
So much better that she read these now, with a little idea of how challenging life could be. Pitfalls waiting at every corner. How vulnerable even adults could feel, none of them perfect and each bound to make their own mistakes. And how terrified her mother must have been.
Alone. An addict. A single parent.
Forgiveness would come. Somehow Anna was sure of that.
But before that came resolve: resolve never to be that person. The person who put themselves and their insecurities above all else.
She pushed her chair away from the table and switched off the single light, noticing as she did so that the sun had already risen. She took a deep breath and steadied herself, walking quietly upstairs.
She could hear Kate snoring deeply from behind the closed door of her bedroom and smiled. The sound itself a reminder of happier times. Of security and comfort at 44 Cowley Road.
Peeking into Callie’s room, the door left ajar and the nightlight on, she smiled to see Callie curled up in the dinosaur bed, her arms wrapped tightly around a furry stegosaurus. So worldly wise and yet still so young. Her lashes lay long and fluttering on the smooth curve of her cheek and Anna had to resist the urge to straighten the duvet, to tuck her in more tightly.
If this evening had shown her anything, it was that she owed so much to the
women in her life, whose only connection to her had been one of choice rather than biology.
Marjorie, in her own inimitable and influential way. And Jackie, paid or not, had always been there when it mattered.
Kate too. Even Kate’s mum had played a role in helping Anna through to graduation.
Quite how that momentous landmark had served to throw Anna off track, rather than smooth the path to adult life, still confused and eluded her. But here she was. Still alive. Still with the ability to care and engage.
Not least the ability to hope.
She leaned against the doorway and allowed herself a moment to dream. To dare to dream.
She breathed out slowly.
Could one ask for a better family of choice than the women in this house right now, if she finally allowed herself to face life head on? Without blinkers. Bravely, without anger and regret holding her back. Was there better company anywhere for the emotional apocalypse she might yet have to embrace in order to come out the other side?
She smiled to herself. At the very idea of a life in Oxford, of Kate’s new baby and of sitting in the Bodleian library once more.
Home was not an address on a piece of paper, or dependent on a solid foundation.
She could build a home, the way Marjorie had intended, by filling her life with people she loved, allowing herself to simply be just that – herself. This was no time to shy away from her innate talents and experiences; this was the time to embrace everything she had learned and to finally have the courage to share it.
She tiptoed forward and perched on the edge of Callie’s bed, the urgency to share her decision eclipsing all thoughts of waiting until morning.
‘Callie,’ she whispered. ‘Callie. Wake up. What do you think? Do you still want to take a chance on your mad plan together?’
Callie’s eyes flickered open, her sleepy face infused with hope. ‘Are you serious?’ she managed.
‘How do you feel about a little house in Oxford?’ Anna said. ‘You and me and an indecent amount of books.’