The House We Grew Up In

by Lisa Jewell

  From downstairs she could hear the sound of her mother wailing about a broken plant pot. She lay down upon her bed – she had not changed her sheets, she now realised, for nearly two months – and she stared up at the ceiling. She sighed at the strings of cobwebs hanging from the cornices and she thought of the cupboard full of unused dusters and brooms and sweepers and mops downstairs that exploded open every time you touched the door, and she thought about Bill and Meg in their Mediterranean idyll and this time she took not an iota of pleasure from the image of Meg oozing out of her sensible, size-sixteen swimsuit.

  She saw herself, possibly for the first time in her life, objectively. She was a prisoner. But not, as she’d always told herself, because her mother needed her. Her mother didn’t need her. Her mother had Vicky, her mother had her house and her stuff. No, Beth was a prisoner entirely of her own making. And it was time to go. The only thing keeping her here, apart from her own guilt, was Bill. Her sister’s partner. Who barely even looked at her when he picked her up from the station these days. Who didn’t call for weeks on end. Who hadn’t taken her bra off during sex for over a year. That had to end too. It all had to end. Right now.

  And at the very same moment that she felt her lungs about to fill up with self-hatred and drown her, she heard her phone buzzing from within her backpack. She pulled the bag towards her and located her phone and there it was: a life raft.

  Hi there, hope you’re OK today. Feeling really guilty about pressurising you into drinking so much last night. Totally my fault. How do you feel about a re-run tonight, strictly orange juice and lemonade. I’d really like another chance to get to know you. Take care, Jase.

  Six months later, on a particularly dark and long-shadowed October afternoon, Vicky, Maddy and Sophie hired a white van and moved all their things into a little flat around the corner.

  When they shut their new front door behind themselves a few hours later, Maddy came to Vicky and encircled her mother inside her arms.

  ‘Thank you, Mummy,’ she breathed into Vicky’s soft sweater, ‘thank you.’

  Vicky kissed the top of her daughter’s head and wiped away a warm tear from the side of her nose. ‘Darling,’ she said, holding Maddy’s face in her hands, ‘I did everything I could, I really did, but silly Lorrie did not want to be helped. No. So. Here we are, the three of us.’

  ‘Will you go back, if she tidies the house?’

  Vicky sighed and pulled Maddy back towards her. ‘She’s not going to tidy her house, Mads. I know that now.’ Another tear spilled from her other eye. It was not in Vicky’s nature to give up on anything, least of all love. ‘Poor old Lorrie,’ she said. ‘Poor beautiful soul.’ The timing had been dreadful. Here they were, moving away and in two months Beth would be gone too, to Australia to try and make it work with that nice boy, Jason. Lorrie would then be completely alone for the first time in her life. The worry was overwhelming. But there you go. It had to be done.

  Maddy pulled away from her then and smiled. ‘Can I invite Jade? To come over?’

  Vicky blinked. There it was, the thing she hadn’t noticed for all those months and years. That most mundane of childhood requests which had been absent. She smiled and then she said, ‘Yes, gosh, absolutely, definitely. Tell her to come over now.’

  8

  Monday 3rd January 2011

  Hello, lovely Jim!

  I missed your emails these last couple of days. Sorry to hear you’ve been under the weather, and delighted to hear you’re all better now. Maybe it was something you had to eat on New Year’s Eve? One thing after another, isn’t it?!

  I’m glad you liked the pics. Thank you for your sweet comments. I was quite a looker in my day, but not vain with it, if you see my meaning. Rather a tomboy, always running around barefoot, forgetting to comb my hair.

  Anyway, you asked what I meant by Meg thinking I should see a therapist. Clearly I have alarmed you horribly! (I jest, Jim. From what little I know about you from our emails these past few weeks, I have very much taken the impression that you are an open-minded man, unshakable, to an extent – am I right?!) Well, here it is, the truth about me, or should that be: THE TRUTH ABOUT ME …?! You have been very honest with me about your problems with drink and marijuana, you have used the language of a man who accepts what he is and can put a name to it. So I suppose it is only fair for me to do the same.

  I am a hoarder, Jim. I only use this word as using any other word might be misleading. I could say that I am a COLLECTOR, maybe. Or a MAGPIE. I could, perhaps, describe myself as a person who does not like to throw things away. But none of these would be at all sufficient. Because I can only assume that once a social worker has been to your home to assess it in terms of health-and-safety considerations (not for me, you understand, but for my next-door neighbours, the shame, the shame!!) and referred to you over and over again as being a person having a Hoarding Disorder, then really, you just have to hold up your hands, sigh, and say, well, OK. You got me. So. Yes. I am. But remember, Jim, that just as alcoholism carries myriad implications, so the Hoarding Disorder covers a trillion different variations on a theme. I am not dirty. And nor is my house. I just have too many things. Almost to the extent that there is no room for dirt. Ha, ha!

  I have heard about people who hoard rubbish. Their own actual litter and filth. That disgusts me. And people who hoard animals. Now that is particularly awful as obviously there is suffering involved. Those poor animals. Me, I just buy too many things. I also like to keep what I call souvenirs, of moments from my life, objects that I can pick up and look at and remember something that may have been forgotten to me otherwise. The human memory is such a cruel, frustrating thing, the way it just discards things without asking permission, precious things. At least here, in my house, I have control over my memories.

  Of course, nobody understands. When I say that Meg and I argue, this is what we nearly always argue about. She thinks it is a matter of TIDYING UP. Of having a CLEAR-OUT. She has absolutely no idea … and she, I fear, has gone too far the other way. I would call her a neat freak. She is mad about cleanliness and order and minimalism. And she has four children! It confounds me! So I have asked her not to come to my house any more. In fact, since we’re being so frank, you may as well know that no one has been to my house. Not since the funeral. Something happened at that funeral. It was the most appalling day. I’ll tell you about it another time. Let’s keep this bite-sized for now!! But I made a decision that day that I needed to batten down the hatches and be on my own. Don’t misinterpret that though, Jim. I am still quite social. In the shops I visit I am a loyal, beloved customer. I wave and say hello to friends and neighbours. I take phone calls and send emails and accept invitations (within reason!!). But here, in my home, I am best left alone. I am happy.

  Well, this has been a long one. But I suppose it was quite a BIG one.

  Much love to you, lovely Jim, please write soon. I am finding your emails to be absolutely the brightest stars in my day.

  L xxxxx

  April 2011

  Molly and Meg sat in silence in the fridge-like cool of the people carrier, absorbing the facts that had just been gently ladled over them by a lady called Stella Richards with a sweet-toned voice in a wood-panelled office in the County Offices in St Georges Road.

  Lorelei had died of undiagnosed and untreated tuberculosis, brought about by severe malnutrition. She had weighed six stone eight pounds at the time of her death, had lost all but five of her teeth and had been brought in mainly bald. The contents of her stomach had been hard to identify as they had been more than a week old. But it appeared that her last ‘meal’ had been a rice cake and a mouthful or two of orange juice. They had also found a small cancerous tumour inside her lung cavity, but this was not being recorded as related to her cause of death.

  There was more, but Meg had stopped listening at the realisation that her mother had starved herself and then died a terrible, painful, protracted death, in her car, on the lay-by of an A-road twe
nty minutes from the village, all alone. While Meg sat in her comfortable home, surrounded by her hearty (and in one particular case, worryingly overweight) children, watching The Great British Bake Off and drinking nice wine.

  ‘Shit,’ said Molly.

  ‘Mmm,’ said Meg. She wanted a shower now. A really long one, with scalding water, one that left her pink and raw.

  ‘That was totally the saddest, worst thing I’ve ever heard.’

  Meg glanced at her daughter, covered her hand with hers. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she said. ‘Really sorry. Christ, if that doesn’t constitute “inappropriate for a teenage girl” then it doesn’t bear thinking about what else they’re dealing with in that place.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Molly. ‘I’m glad …’ She paused, then squeezed Meg’s hand. ‘I’m glad you didn’t have to listen to all that by yourself.’

  ‘Bloody woman!’ said Meg, suddenly filled with the old sense of exasperation and impotent fury she’d been filled with for most of her life. She bashed the steering wheel with the heel of her hand. ‘Bloody ridiculous, stupid, awful woman! A rice cake. A fucking rice cake! Like an anorexic teenager, for Christ’s sake. Aagh!’ She took her hand from Molly’s and slammed them both down hard against the steering wheel. She shouted out again and then exhaled, calmed herself. ‘Sorry, darling,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just so cross about all this. So cross. She never had a clue, never had any idea how to care for people. Including herself. She knew how to love them, but never to care for them. And if she’d had a shred of normal, decent – God, I don’t know – humanity, she would not have left me with all this. All her disgusting filth and shit and mess! It’s all just so, so, lurid. My whole revolting family. Just one disgusting lurid thing after another.’ She brought herself to a sudden halt. Too much. Way too much.

  Molly looked at her. ‘You OK, Mum?’ she said.

  Meg exhaled again, forced a smile. ‘Yes,’ she said, running her hand down the side of Molly’s cheek. ‘Yes. I’m just …’ She sighed. ‘I’m just dealing with a toxic family. I’ve managed to keep them away for all these years, and now they’re all drifting back and I know it has to happen but, still, it’s a lot to take on board.’

  And as she said these words her phone rang. Once again, the number was unknown. She took the call on her hands-free.

  ‘Yes?’ she replied cautiously.

  ‘Meggy?’

  She sighed. ‘Dad?’

  ‘Hello, my darling. I’m just calling to say that I’m on my way. From the airport. I’ll be there in an hour. Shall I meet you at the house?’

  Meg breathed in deeply. ‘Are you alone?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’

  ‘Good,’ said Meg, her mouth set hard. ‘Come to our hotel. I’ll meet you in reception.’

  ‘Good. Excellent. And darling, how are—?’

  But Meg hung up, before her father could finish his question.

  April 2004

  He had not been to the airport for months. He had not left his neighbourhood for months. It was strange to be back amongst the hubbub of normal people. Odd to see children and families and teenage groups, people who had not set foot inside a brothel or a girlie bar, people who were not in Thailand to get high or to have sex with anyone. They looked so fresh, these other people, bizarrely, unnaturally so. Rory glanced down at his own self: sweaty polo shirt, baggy shorts, sun-bleached flip-flops, gold link bracelet, skin tanned to the colour of roast beef, more tattoos now – new ones on his shins and his calves, around his wrists and his throat. He ran his fingers through his hair: collar-length, burned blond, not related in any recognisable way to fashion. There was no fashion where Rory lived. He just wore what Owen wore. He’d subconsciously started to dress the same as Owen over the years: polo shirt with the collar up, gold jewellery, shades on top of his head, beads around his neck, trainers, flip-flops, combat shorts. He could be anyone from anywhere; he could be American, Australian, South African. It was just easier.

  He scanned the crowds filing through the arrivals gate. After a five-minute procession of dairy-skinned Scandinavians, the next influx looked English: pasty and pale-faced after a long winter. He pulled himself up straighter, pushed his hair down over his ears. And then there he was and it took Rory totally by surprise, the flood of emotion, the tears.

  His dad.

  Colin’s face broke apart at the sight of him and they hurtled towards each other like victorious teammates, bundled up against each other, lost their faces into each other’s shoulders and squeezed hard. Then they pulled apart and regarded each other. It had been four years, almost to the day.

  His dad had a rucksack slung over one shoulder, and was wearing classic middle-aged-man gear: sensible jeans, a T-shirt with a logo on it, a North Face jacket, cheap trainers. He looked so old. Or actually, no, not old, he looked like a young person with an ageing disease.

  ‘Oh, my goodness,’ said Colin, his eyes twinkling with pleasure, ‘look at you. Just look at you! So brown! So …’ He searched for a word. ‘So laid back. Wow!’

  It was the first time that Rory and his dad had been alone together since that afternoon in the pub, when Colin had given him his birth certificate and set him free. Rory had missed him the most, more than his mum, more than his sisters, more than his niece and nephews (he’d only actually met one of Meg’s boys and he couldn’t even remember his name).

  ‘Here –’ He took his dad’s rucksack from his shoulder and slung it over his own. He was glad in a way that he’d never grown taller than his dad. It was nice to be able to look up at him, even if it was only a couple of inches. He’d warned his dad about his circumstances, about the bare-wood room behind a shop on the strip, about the people coming and going, the pounding music and shrieks of delight late into the night. He’d told him about the ineffectual ceiling fan and the cockroaches and the mattress on the floor. But he hadn’t told him everything. Not yet.

  Rory drove them back in his new car. Well, new to him. It was an old Fiat Panda that he’d bought off someone for a few hundred baht. It smelled of spliff and dog shit but it had air con and Colin smiled into the chilled blast as they cruised down the freeway.

  ‘Aah,’ he said, ‘that’s nice.’ He still had his North Face jacket on and his grey hair was stuck to his head like wet strips of papier mâché. ‘This heat,’ he said, ‘it’s like a furnace. How do you cope?’

  ‘I have acclimatised.’ He turned and smiled at his dad. He had not seen a human being he was related to since the day he’d left his baby daughter in Spain four years ago. It was a good feeling. ‘You must be really tired?’ he said.

  ‘No. Not at all. Doing nothing makes me tired. All this –’ Colin gestured through the windows at the passing scenery – ‘this makes me feel alive.’

  His father’s life over the last few years was as much of a mystery to Rory as he imagined his own life was to his father. He had no idea how Colin spent his days, who he saw, where he went, what he did. He knew there’d been a memoir of some description undertaken, but he didn’t imagine that that had ever come to much. He knew that there’d been a girlfriend for a while, someone much younger than him called April or May or something. But as far as he was aware that had not come to much either. And now his dad was fifty-nine, retired from the college he’d taught at for all those years, living alone and travelling for the first time in his life to another continent.

  Rory parked the Panda behind his building and pulled Colin’s rucksack from the back seat. ‘Welcome to my very very humble abode.’

  His room was behind a curtain made of shredded multicoloured plastic. One of the girls from the bar was sitting on his back step, breastfeeding her baby.

  ‘Dad, this is Rochana. Rochana, this is my dad, Colin.’

  Rochana’s face lit up and she pulled the baby’s mouth off her breast and got to her feet, barely five foot in cut-off shorts and a halter-neck top. ‘Aah, your father! So nice! So nice!’ She shook his hand and Colin beamed a
t her and stroked her baby’s hair and said, ‘What a lovely baby. How old is she?’

  ‘She is nine months. She is my angel!’

  Colin smiled again and Rory remembered how much his father had always liked babies.

  ‘She’s beautiful. What’s her name?’

  ‘I call her Star. Because when she is big she will be a superstar!’

  Rory realised that he had never asked Rochana what her baby’s name was. Because he was not interested in her baby, just in when she’d be able to go back to work full-time.

  He held the plastic curtain back for his father and ushered him through. ‘This is it,’ he said apologetically.

  ‘Oh,’ said his father, smiling stoically. ‘It’s fine. It’s perfectly nice.’

  ‘No,’ Rory laughed, ‘it’s a shithole. But it’s just temporary, while I’m saving.’

  You could hear the lunchtime show through the back wall, the bang-bang of Evanescence, the tinny drone of the MC announcing the names of the girls.

  ‘Wow,’ said his dad, ‘I see what you mean about the noise. What a racket.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Rory, ‘all day, half the night. You get used to it, I promise.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Colin. ‘I didn’t come here to sleep.’

  Rory smiled and didn’t ask the question that threatened to spill from his lips: Why did you come here?

  He pulled a beer from his fridge and handed it to Colin. Then he opened one for himself and raised a toast. ‘To you, being here. I really appreciate it.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Colin, slurping back the cold beer. ‘Thank you. For letting me come. And I promise you I won’t cramp your style. Whatever you need to do, just let me know and I’ll make myself scarce. I’ve wanted to come to Thailand since I was a student. There’s plenty I can be getting on with.’