by Juno Dawson
M x
Oooh, a kiss! Wonders never cease! Without hesitation, I spring off my bed and grab the nearest pen – an old ballpoint with a pink-haired troll on the end. I brush it on my cheek for a second, thinking about what I want to know.
Thank you, I start, for letting me know about Christopher. I’m so sorry about what your parents did. I think that was an awful thing to do.
I do have some questions if that’s OK.
1. What happened to Bess? Did she find Reg?
2. Is Andrew – the one from the diary – my grandad?
3. What happened after you gave birth? Did you go back to Llanmarion?
4. Did you see Glynis and Ivor again?
I chew the troll’s arm for a second before I think that’s all I want to know for now. I poke my head out of my bedroom and hear the television downstairs. Margot seems to be watching Newsnight, so I creep down the landing to her bedroom and leave the diary on her pillow in the same position I found it on mine. Margot’s room, unsurprisingly, is unfussy but kind of elegant: the walls and quilt are a muted, clean blue-grey. The only flare of colour is a mason jar of cabbage roses on the windowsill.
I then go to say goodnight to Mum and hurry to bed, excited for what Margot will write next. As I drift off, I realise it’s the first time all week I haven’t gone to sleep thinking about what’s happening to Mum.
I figure that if Margot can get on with life after having her baby snatched away, I can probably face Thom after all. Every time I think about the botched kiss, my insides shrivel up and die like a salted slug, but the horror of what happened will only follow me if I flee town, so I trudge to the bus stop.
Over a breakfast of eggs and soldiers, I asked Mum if she wanted me to stay home from school, but she was adamant it should be business as usual. ‘No,’ she said with certainty. ‘You are going to school and that’s the end of it. What you need is routine, Fliss.’
I can’t argue with that. I board the bus and within seconds Dewi comes to sit on the seat behind me. It takes him a couple of tries to start his sentence, but I don’t feel so awkward any more. ‘… H-hello, Fliss. You OK?’
‘Yeah, I’m fine.’
‘Oh, OK. It’s j-j-just everyone was saying you’d r-run away.’
I cringe. ‘Oh, God. Really?’
‘Yeah. Or some people said you’d been … been k-kidnapped.’
‘It’s nothing like that.’ I pause, wondering what to tell him. Dewi’s eyes are as big and kind as chocolate buttons, but I don’t really know him at all. ‘Just some stuff going on at home, that’s all.’
‘Oh? What is it, like?’ he asks expectantly.
‘It’s nothing.’ I shake my head and he seems to get the hint.
‘OK. Well, I hope … I hope it’s not too b-bad.’
‘Thanks, Dewi. It’ll be fine.’ I say the words automatically, without even realising it’s a lie. Things won’t be fine. They won’t be fine at all.
When I arrive at school I’m immediately intercepted by Mr Treadwell, my registration tutor. ‘Good of you to join us, Miss Baker,’ he says. ‘This way, please.’
We go to his classroom, where we’re joined by Thom and Mrs Evans, head of Year 11. She takes us for drama sometimes and I like her. She’s about seventy per cent dangly earring and pashmina. I don’t know how much Thom has told them, and he won’t look me in the eye. If he’s told them the truth – that I’m a teacher molester – I’m as good as expelled. I feel a bit sick. ‘Morning, Felicity,’ Mrs Evans begins. ‘You know why we’re here, don’t you?’
‘Because I ran off?’ I’m not mentioning the non-kiss unless he does.
‘Because you left school without permission.’ She goes on to give me an extended club remix of the in-loco-parentis speech. ‘Mr Deacon told us you’re having some problems at home …?’
‘My mum is ill.’
‘Yes, I know. She came in to see us right at the start of term, but asked us not to tell you.’
Oh. ‘Oh.’ So everyone knew but me. Great.
‘Mr Treadwell has been keeping an eye on you for me.’ Excuse me while I laugh for like twenty minutes. Mr Treadwell has done precisely nothing beyond confiscate my September Vogue. Mrs Evans continues. ‘I am aware that you don’t want special treatment, Felicity, but we are all here to help you. If you need time out, take time out. If you need extra time for homework, you can have it, but you absolutely have to let us know. You can’t just abscond like you did yesterday.’
‘I know. And I’m sorry.’ I look to Thom. I don’t think he’s told them about the kiss, thank Christ. I wonder if he’s worried about getting fired or something. What was I thinking? It was so majorly boneheaded. I try to psychically tell him I’m sorry.
‘If you need anything, we’re always here to listen. I understand you spend a lot of time in the library?’
I look guiltily to Thom. ‘I do.’
‘We’re so lucky to have Mr Deacon, aren’t we?’
‘Fliss –’ Thom finally speaks – ‘I’ve spoken to your teachers and they’ve all agreed that you can bring your work to the library any time you want. I … we … we all want to help.’
He does not love me like I love him. He never loved me. He thinks I am a little girl. It breaks my heart, but if he’s still going to let me in the library after my kamikaze kiss, I have to move the hell on. ‘Thank you. And I’m sorry.’ I look right at him. ‘Yesterday … it just all got too much.’ I look sheepishly at my hands. ‘I didn’t know what I was doing.’
‘Well, of course, dear,’ Mrs Evans cuts in. ‘Now, I hope you don’t mind, but yesterday afternoon I took Danny Chung and Bronwyn Parry out of class to try to establish where you were, and it was necessary for me to tell them what was going on.’
Oh wow. Well, I guess that saves me a pretty gnarly job. Thom goes to the classroom door and I realise my friends are hovering just outside and probably have been the whole time.
Danny and Bronwyn rush in and I stand to greet them. ‘Fliss! Why didn’t you say something?’ Danny hugs me tightly, knocking the breath out of me. ‘Oh, we’re not cross … but we could have helped.’ He lets me go.
‘I don’t see how, unless you can cure cancer,’ I say sadly.
‘Well … well, I don’t know! But we can talk about it. If you want to, obviously.’
‘Dan, chill pill. You don’t have to do anything,’ Bronwyn adds to me. ‘If you want us to pretend everything’s normal, we can do that.’
‘Yes! Whatever you need,’ Danny says earnestly.
The teachers leave us to it. There’s still about ten minutes until the first bell. The three of us stand in a wonky, awkward triangle, arms folded. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t say anything,’ I say.
‘Fliss, there’s nothing to be sorry about,’ says Bronwyn.
‘What did they tell you?’ I shrug, wrapping my arms around myself.
They exchange a look. Danny breaks the ice. ‘Mrs Evans said your mum was really ill, like.’
I am not going to cry. ‘My mum is going to die,’ I say, voice flat, and it makes it all real. They both do the ‘head tilt’ before we mash up into a three-way hug.
I rush home after school, eager to see if Margot’s had time to answer my questions. As I practically skip down the drive, feeling weirdly light for having offloaded a tonne of emotional baggage onto Danny and Bronwyn, I see Margot mucking out the pigsty. ‘Hello,’ she says. ‘How was school?’
We stand a few metres apart. It feels like a truce is in place. ‘It was OK. Everyone knows about Mum now.’ Margot nods but says nothing. ‘How is Mum? Is she all right?’
‘She seems a bit perkier today. We went for a walk, just down to the stream. She seems to like it down there.’
My heart sinks a little. ‘It feels like I’m missing stuff.’
Margot rests her pitchfork against the wall. ‘Your mother wants you in school.’
That’s all she needs to say. ‘Do you need a hand?’
She pauses. ‘Ye
s. That would be useful. Go and change out of your uniform first.’
Mum is having a little nap on the sofa, but I wake her to ask if she had a nice walk (and, to be honest, check she’s not dead). She’s OK. I make her a cup of Gold Blend before hurrying upstairs. Hardly daring to breathe, I open my bedroom door.
The diary is back on my pillow. I quietly clap my hands together. I’m dying to read what she’s written, but first I have to go help clean up pig poop. I figure it’s the least I can do.
1942, London
The first question is answered easily enough. Bess and I corresponded on a regular basis all throughout the war. Alas I did not return to Llanmarion at that time.
Birth is a most gruesome affair and it took me some time, a few stitches and many sitz baths to recover. Mother was worried people would guess what was really behind my strange quarantine if they saw I was still carrying baby weight and was decidedly buxom so I was held hostage for a few weeks more.
I distinctly remember, just a few days after Christopher was taken away, I was rather formally invited to join Mother for breakfast in the dining room. While I bathed, the housekeeper laid out a starched dress and crinoline slip. For the first time in months, I tidied my hair with a pair of ivory combs and went downstairs with great trepidation.
‘Oh, Margot dear,’ Mother said, standing to greet me with a kiss on each cheek. ‘Don’t you look lovely. That cornflower blue is wonderful for your complexion. Sit! Sit!’
I did as I was told. Mrs Watson poured the tea. ‘Now Margot dear, we need to talk about what you’ll do now. I don’t think it’s wise for you to return to Llanmarion, do you?’
I looked at my hands, folded in my lap. ‘Well, I don’t know.’ I did want to go back. I missed the farm, Bess, Andrew, Glynis and Ivor … and, if I’m honest, Rick most of all. Despite everything. I knew he wasn’t there, but that place was full of memories of him and I longed to submerge myself in them.
‘What you need is a new start. You can finish your studies and I’m sure we can think of something to do to keep you busy. There is still a war on, you know?’
‘I know.’ I couldn’t lift my teacup off the saucer, my hands were trembling so badly. ‘What happened to the baby?’ I asked in a threadbare voice. ‘Is he with a new family?’
Mother reached over the table and took my hands. She smiled a red-lipped smile. ‘What baby, dear?’ She gripped my hands so tightly it hurt. ‘How are we ever to forget that unpleasant chapter if we insist on talking about it? Am I making myself understood?’
‘Yes, Mother.’
It was never mentioned again for the rest of my parents’ lives.
After sufficient time had passed with me on a stringent diet, Father pulled some strings and got me a job as a nanny. The irony, although unspoken, was lost on no one. I was to care for other people’s children, not my own.
However, I like to imagine my sweet little Christopher would have been nothing like my charge, Edmund Crowley-Smythe.
I recall the first day I arrived at their smart Chelsea townhouse. I think it was in late 1942 and the war felt further away than it had before. Edmund had been too young to be evacuated alone at the start of the campaign and Mrs Crowley-Smythe didn’t want to leave London, so they had remained.
The townhouse was pristine, with more plants and flowers than Kew Gardens. Both Mr and Mrs Crowley-Smythe worked for the BBC and were awfully busy with it. Jean Crowley-Smythe was keen to return to work and needed someone to care for and tutor Edmund. On our first meeting, he hid behind her legs. ‘Oh, come now, Edmund,’ she said. ‘Don’t be shy.’
‘I hate her!’ he cried.
I wore a tailored cherry-red jacket with a matching beret. I was keen, I remember, to get my life back in order. As soon as the war ended, I would almost certainly read English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. My post with the Crowley-Smythes was to be temporary.
I crouched to speak to Edmund. ‘Hello, Edmund. I’m Margot. It’s lovely to meet you. I think we’re going to have ever such a lovely time.’ He promptly delivered a kick to my shin and ran off to hide.
‘Margot, I’m terribly sorry. I don’t know what’s got into him.’ I quickly learned, judging from his brattish behaviour, it could well be Satan himself. Every day was a series of battles – to get him to dress or eat or nap. I would have loved nothing more than to resign, but I’d already embarrassed our family enough and Crowley-Smythe was a personal friend of Father’s. I was stuck.
During that testing time, Bess and I wrote to each other back and forth. She did indeed track down Reg and they were briefly reunited, but the distance between them, well, came between them.
To be honest, I rather suspect both she and he had met new people and their affections drifted. We were so young, after all. I know you’ll balk at this, Felicity, but those first loves, although they do in some ways define us, are little more than blueprints for the relationships we’ll build as adults. I know it feels like love, but, from experience, I’d say it’s chiefly hormones. Who can say how Rick and I would have panned out if fate had kept us together?
After the war ended, I left London for Oxford as planned. Lady Margaret Hall was quite gorgeous. I have many happy memories of sunny afternoons on the lawn and lavish formal dinners in the hall. A great sisterhood existed between us and I think we all grew up. We were all, in a way, outcasts and misfits – most of the girls had been deemed unfit to be debutantes or marriage material so had been permitted to further their educations. Many of us had been evacuated during the war, so it wasn’t the first time we’d been away from home, but it was the first time since Rick and the baby that I felt something like myself again.
I studied hard, eagerly trying, in a misplaced effort, to earn back my parents’ respect. When that didn’t happen, I decided the only person I ever had to please from that day forth was myself. I would be the best so I knew I was the best.
Inevitably, Bess and I lost touch while I studied and made new friends. That said, in the years and decades that followed I kept a close eye on her. She became a rather remarkable woman. She married none other than Bill Jones and had children young.
Had she asked my opinion, I’d have advised against the union, and you can imagine, knowing what you know, that it didn’t last especially long. What happened next was more impressive. She became a primary-school teacher in Llanmarion, worked her way up to headmistress in the sixties – an achievement in itself – before leaving the profession to focus on local politics! The last I saw, she was on the evening news, campaigning for Welsh devolution – and look how that turned out. Always the proud Welshwoman through and through. I wish her well. I believe she remarried in the seventies, not that it matters.
As for your grandfather, well, that’s a longer, rather more complicated story, one I don’t have time to tell now. Leave the diary in the same spot and I shall update at the first opportunity.
Chapter 32
I want to spend the whole weekend with Mum. Even though she’s clearly struggling on her crutch, she wants a walk in the woods. She looks so frail, swamped by a coat that used to fit properly. ‘It’s nice just to get some fresh air,’ she says. Her arm is hooked through mine and we take our time, going nowhere in particular.
‘Are you in pain?’ I ask, scared of the answer.
‘To be honest, Fliss, I’m off my face on those pain pills. I’m high as a kite.’
I smile. ‘Well, I suppose that’s better.’
‘If only I could do a poo. I haven’t been to the loo in about four days.’
‘Oh, that’s lovely!’ I laugh.
‘No one ever said cancer was pretty, did they?’ I bristle at the C-word. ‘It’s cold enough to snow, don’t you think?’
It’s actually not that cold. ‘Do you want to go back?’
‘Not just yet. I’m getting cabin fever.’
‘OK. When we do, I could make hot chocolate and maybe bake some brownies or something?’
We reach the waterfall and the
air immediately feels cleaner. I wonder stupidly if it can cleanse Mum of the disease in her bones.
‘Fliss, you don’t have to babysit me all weekend.’
‘I want to!’
‘I don’t need a babysitter. It’s so important you keep your friends around – you’re going to need them,’ she says matter-of-factly. ‘Listen. The one good thing that we have is foresight. Nothing is going to creep up on us. Now that everything’s out in the open, we can actually make plans. For you, for me, for the future. The absolute last thing I want is my last weeks, months, days – whatever we’ve got – to be a snotty tissue-fest.’
‘I know,’ I agree, ‘but Danny and Bronwyn aren’t going anywhere …’ but you are, is the last part of that sentence that goes unsaid.
‘Do you know what I’d really like?’ Mum suddenly stops walking.
‘I can think of one pretty big thing, yeah.’
She grins. ‘Well, aside from the obvious.’
‘Go on.’
‘I would really, really love it if you danced again.’
Oh man, that’s a cheap shot! She knows I can’t say no. What kind of monster would refuse a dying wish? ‘Oh, Mum, really?’
She takes my gloved hands in hers. ‘Oh, come on, Fliss! It used to make you so happy!’
I wince but try to turn it into a smile. ‘Yeah, until it didn’t any more.’
She shakes her head. ‘You had one bad night, just one.’
‘Oh, hi, Understatement! It was a total disaster.’
‘Life usually is! We all fall down, Fliss. All of us. I’ve told you I got fired from my first two jobs in TV. I was a runner on Morecambe and Wise and kept spilling coffee everywhere. It’s not about the falling – it’s how we pick ourselves up again.’ I’m about to argue I’m now two years out of shape and practice, but she carries on. ‘And it’d mean the world to me if I could see you dance again.’
I sigh, my head flopping back. ‘You know I can’t say no, right?’
‘Well, you could … but you’d be the worst daughter in the world.’ She winks theatrically.