The House We Grew Up In

by Lisa Jewell

  Megan smiled and brought her fist to her mouth. ‘Yes!’ she said in a loud whisper. ‘Yes!’

  They whisked the laptop away from him, thanked him for his trouble and then drove, quite fast, back to the Bird House.

  16

  Wednesday 16th March 2011

  Jim. I relived it. The whole thing. From beginning to end. I feel weak now. Weak and horribly sick. But I’ll write it down. So it’s there. Maybe for you to understand me better. Or maybe for someone to read, when I’m gone. I don’t mean to sound morbid, Jim, but I’m sixty-five. I’m not well. I’m not going to last for ever, am I?

  So, back to that day, that same day I hoovered his room, that I wondered if anyone apart from me would ever love him, the day before Easter.

  He hadn’t come out of his room all day. That was normal. Normal for him, normal for a lot of teenage boys, I suppose. But it was the day before Easter and Megan was back. We were all having so much fun together, down in the kitchen, we were playing a game. Trivial Pursuit, I think. And there was wine and music and teasing and, oh, all that lovely family stuff. So I went up to try and tempt him down. I took him a bowl of sticky toffee pudding. I sat next to him on the bed. He looked so sad, Jim. I said, ‘What’s the matter, my darling boy? Why do you look so sad?’ He just shrugged. He always just shrugged.

  He was always my favourite, you know. Not in that OH MY GLORIOUS PERFECT CHILD way, just in that he was my baby. He’d been so small. The weight of him in my hands when they passed him to me, like a bag of air. He was my shadow, he followed me about. He was always looking to me, for guidance, for approval, for everything, long after the others had lost interest in me. Always looking at me, watching me with those sad, empty eyes.

  I brought his head against my shoulder. I was a bit tipsy. He said, ‘Get off, you smell of wine.’ But he was only joking, so I tapped him on the arm and said, ‘Hold your breath then, I want to hold my baby boy.’

  He resisted at first. Struggled, in that way that children do when they think they’re too old for cuddles but still have this residual need to be held by Mummy. It was obvious to me he wanted the hug, he wanted the attention. I squeezed him hard and I felt him soften, I felt him allow it. And then, he was suddenly there, his face against my face and I thought it was a joke, that he was trying to smell my breath. I was about to say something like, ‘OK, OK. I’ll get off you.’ But then his mouth was on top of mine and I realised he was trying to kiss me! My God! My own son! My tiny little baby boy. His thin boy’s body pressed sharp up against mine.

  Oh, Jim.

  I pushed him off and he fell back against the wall. He stared ahead. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. I should have said something, Jim. I know I should have. I should have found a way to talk about it. My baby. I shouldn’t have just left him there. But I did. I ran from his room, as though running from a monster. I bumped into Beth coming out. I saw her look at me. Then look into Rhys’s room. She asked me if I was OK. I think I managed to squeak that I was.

  We went downstairs and we finished the game. Nobody asked about Rhys. Nobody wondered why I’d come down without him. Nobody noticed.

  I didn’t see him the next day, it was Easter Day, we had guests. I wanted to talk it through with Colin, what had happened. I wanted to find the right moment. I wanted it to be right. It had to be right. And then there was Vicky, standing in my hallway with a bottle of Beaujolais and I just thought, Not yet. I can’t deal with this JUST YET. So we drank and we laughed and I put it off. I thought, TOMORROW. I’ll deal with this tomorrow. When Megan’s gone. When the house is quiet. And of course by then it was TOO FUCKING LATE.

  So, darling, what do you think? Was it my fault? I’m so confused, Jim. He was my favourite. And I let him down. I let him down so horribly. Drinking wine when I could have been saving his soul. And can you see now, why I might have tried to avoid thinking about this? Talking about this? Because I can. I didn’t just lose a son, you see, I lost a sense of myself as a mother. And a mother was the only thing I’d ever really known how to be.

  Oh, Jim. Write back soon. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I need you to tell me it was OK. PLEASE.

  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

  Thursday 17th March 2011

  Thank you, darling. Thank you. You are so insightful, Jim, so, what is it they say? – emotionally intelligent. I can’t believe I had never thought before of the parallels running through everything, the threads that connected it all together. Of course that is why I reacted so strongly to Beth’s affair with Bill, to Colin getting together with Kayleigh. And yes, even the man who raped my mother touching me the way he did. It’s all vaguely incestuous, isn’t it? It’s all just a shade away from natural. And you know something, Jim, you know something terribly, terribly sad? I never hugged my children properly again after that day. I’d give them a squeeze, you know, or an arm around a shoulder, but I never ever held them properly again. I was always ready to back off. Poor Beth, I think she suffered the most.

  Well, my love, I’m too tired to type much more now. (This blasted, blasted chest infection. The antibiotics are making no difference at all and I honestly cannot face another trip to that awful place, surrounded by all those ghastly ill people and that woman’s beefy hands all over the place.)

  I’ll type more later, darling, but for now, you have no idea how much better your thoughtful, loving and intelligent words have made me feel. About everything.

  God, I love you.

  Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

  Friday 25th March 2011

  Oh, God, Jim, don’t do this to me now, darling, please. I need you now, so much. I feel so raw, like someone’s peeled off all my skin and left me out on the beach. It’s been over a week since I heard from you. I can’t bear it. You’ve never gone this long before without writing. Oh, Christ, are you OK? You’re not hurt, are you, you’re not in trouble? I just can’t be on my own right now. I opened Pandora’s box, darling, I opened it for you, and I’m glad I did, it had to happen. But I’m not dealing with it very well. And I’m not well. I’m really not well. I can’t even think about making it to the docs. I can barely move.

  Please, Jim, write to me. Anything. Even if it’s bad. PLEASE.

  Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

  Thursday 31st March 2011

  So, is that it, then, Jim? Are we done? Did you finally tire of me? Oh, GOD, I don’t blame you. How could I? I mean, look at me! I’ve been wearing the same clothes for over a week. I smell, Jim. I know I do. Of illness and old hair and dehydration. I’m losing the plot, Jim. Where are you???????

  Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

  Wednesday 6th April 2011

  I can’t be here any more, I hate this house now I’ve let Rhys back into it. I’m tired and I’m cold and I’m dirty and I’m coming to see you. I’ll find my way to Gateshead, somehow. Please be there for me. I’ve lost my way. I’m half-gone. I’ll see you in a few hours. Don’t try and stop me.

  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

  17

  April 2011

  The heatwave finally broke on Good Friday and as the bank holiday weekend began, more people arrived at the house. Pandora, from Corfu, freshly divorced and terribly brown. Sophie and Maddy, Lorna and her new husband, even Ben. The house was filled with people, the pavement outside parked up with cars; shift systems were devised, to take things to the landfill, to take other things to charity shops. Lorna’s husband, an antiques dealer, usefully ferreted out things of worth. Pandora and Megan led the cleaning team of Molly, Maddy, Sophie and Rory. Bethan sat sedately and sorted through the boxes of smaller objects, sifting through for things worth keeping. Ben collapsed boxes and took them to be recycled. They all sat each evening in grubby clothes, eating at the huge kitchen table, uncorking cheap wine, eating bread and fancy cheeses from the fancy cheese shop in the village. Ben played guitar, Molly moved the focus of her attentions from Rory to Ben. They talked, they gossiped, they laughed, they cried. It was one of the best Easter weekends Megan cou
ld remember.

  And then it was over. Ben, Maddy, Lorna and her husband headed back to work, Sophie went back to college, Pandora had things to do in London. By Monday evening it was just the five of them again.

  And by Monday evening, the hallway had been cleared, the staircase had been cleared, the living room had been cleared and the rooms that had once made up Colin’s half of the house had been cleared. Carpets had been ripped up, rolled up and taken away, revealing untouched marquetry parquet underneath. All the old lampshades had gone, and been replaced with white paper balloons from the Asda megastore. The curtains had been taken away and burned, windows scrubbed and vinegared, paintwork bleached back to white. The two tatty sofas in the living room were disguised under white throws, two nice pieces of walnut cabinetry polished back to life and everything else taken to the tip.

  Megan walked through the house now, Molly following behind. It bore no relationship to the house she’d grown up in. It was so subdued and empty. So calm and elegant. The rooms felt enormous without the ever-present sacks of crap and boxes of clutter, the shelves loaded with ornaments and paperwork, broken clocks and obsolete party invitations, the patterned rugs and bits of ethnic tat. The walls looked so blank and broad without the higgledy-piggledy arrangements of junk-shop art and framed photos and posters torn from magazines, all randomly adhered to the wall with Blu-tack. The staircase was so wide, the light through the windows so bright. As she walked Megan realised that even before the awful events of Easter 1991, this house had been a depository for all of Lorelei’s deepest buried issues and emotional unrest. She had wanted, as she said to Jim in Gateshead, to give her children the childhood she hadn’t had. A childhood without secrets. Without resentment. But even before Rhys had subverted the mother/child relationship and turned her world on its head, she had been building up to this. Piece by piece. Minute by minute. If it hadn’t been Rhys, it would have been something else. Because the damage had been done long before that day. Long before any of them were even born.

  And so, in the end, it had been no one’s fault. No one’s fault at all. It wasn’t Lorelei’s parents’ fault, or the fault of the man who’d raped her mother, or of God above for taking away their baby daughter before she’d drawn her first breath. It wasn’t Rory’s fault, it wasn’t Bethan’s fault, it wasn’t Colin’s fault. It certainly wasn’t Lorelei’s fault. (‘Poor poor Mum, all those years, carrying that burden alone.’) It was life. One of those things. Somewhere along the line a seed had been sown in Rhys’s little heart, maybe even in the womb, and that seed had grown into something completely unconnected to any of them.

  For years they’d all let the guilt eat away at them, and their family. But now it was gone. Cut out and disposed of, like a tumour in an operating theatre. Now they were free to go on, to be healthy, to love. Now they could be a family again.

  At this thought Rory appeared at the top of the stairs, his dirty blond hair on end, his skinny-ribbed, tattooed chest bare and hairless.

  ‘Here!’ he said, raising his arms out from his sides. ‘Here am I! Standing at the top of the stairs! And there are you! Standing at the bottom! And look at all this space that lies between us. All this clean, sane, beautiful space. Isn’t it amazing?’

  Megan blinked at her brother. He looked happy. Happy the way he used to be. As though he was the most popular boy in the school again.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It really, really is.’

  From: JimLipton@yahoo.co.uk

  To: MeganRoseLiddingtonBird@yahoo.co.uk; RoryBird2@hotmail.com; Bethanbird@hotmail.co.uk

  Saturday 30th April 2011

  Dear Megan (and all the many, many, many of you!),

  I just wanted to write and say how much I loved meeting you all yesterday. I was terrified coming down, as you can imagine, especially so soon after getting out of prison. It was all a bit of a whirlwind, from release, to home, to getting your email, to taking on board what had happened to Lorrie, to the funeral, and I feel as though my feet have barely touched the ground.

  The service was beautiful, truly. Your mother would have loved it. I never met Lorelei, but I felt I knew her so well from our almost daily emails. She was always so honest with me, she never hid a thing from me. It makes me feel so terribly guilty that I should have hidden from her the fact that I had that court appointment. I don’t know what stopped me from mentioning it. I suppose I was scared of losing her. Which is crazy, as she was always so accepting of me and my many flaws. Anyway, I think I’d been in denial myself about the court hearing. Lorelei wasn’t in my life when I got the date through and it seemed such a long time away. And my solicitor had told me I had a very strong case. We were expecting a fine, possibly some community service. I thought I’d be home an hour later. I mean, drunk and disorderly! How bad could it be?! No criminal damage. No assault. No drink-driving. Just being a lairy, awful tosspot in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Such a harsh sentence. And because of that, I wasn’t here for your blessed mother when she needed me. I will never forgive either myself or the magistrate. But mainly myself.

  And to that end I wanted to say how grateful I was to you and all your family for the warm welcome you all extended to me yesterday. I do not feel I deserved it, not in the least. I know you’ve read the emails between myself and your mother, so you know how she felt about you all, how much she loved you all, how proud she was of all of you and how hard she found it to come to terms with all the damage that had been inflicted over the years. She blamed herself for most of it, but hopefully, I went some way to helping her see that it wasn’t her fault.

  Thank you, also, for taking me to see your mother’s house. I always had such a burning curiosity about it. I used to watch all these shows about hoarding, you know, trying to get a better insight into Lorrie’s syndrome. I even read a couple of books. I so wanted to help her. I thought we had all the time in the world. I was taking it slowly. Baby steps, as your mother would have said! But we didn’t have all the time in the world. We had five months in the end. And of course, by the time I saw her house, you’d cleared it, but thank you for showing me the photos. Such a fascinating record of such an extraordinary process.

  Anyway, I’ve blathered on for much longer than I intended. I hope you don’t mind if I stay in touch. I won’t bombard you with stuff. Just, Lorelei was such a huge part of my life and now she’s gone there’s this big hole and I know she’d want me to keep a benevolent eye on you all. Well, I think she would. She was halfway to doing it herself, you know, when she got ill. That’s the real tragedy. She was halfway to remembering how to be a mummy again.

  Take care, all of you. I hope you’ll write and let me know when Beth’s baby arrives. Actually, I just hope you’ll write.

  All the best, and, if I may, all affection,

  Jim Lipton

  Epilogue

  June 2011

  The people carrier was full. Megan and Bill in the front. Molly and the three boys in the back. It was one of those sad June days that bore no relation to the fantasy of June brought to mind during the winter months. They were listening to Radio One, ‘Moves Like Jagger’ by Maroon 5. And like some advertisers’ dream of a modern, relaxed family they were all singing along together, especially to the moo-oo-oo-oo-oo parts. They tumbled out of the car a few minutes later and on to the pavement outside the Bird House, halfway laughing, full of pent-up energy and gladness in the moment. The boys immediately started punching each other and chasing each other up and down the narrow pavement. Megan called at them to be careful. That the cars drove through the village way too fast. From the back of the car she and Bill pulled out three matching bags and numerous gifts wrapped in pink. They were, as ever, the travelling circus, creating havoc and noise wherever they went.

  ‘Why is my family so loud?’ Megan complained, bringing down the back door, checking there were no heads or fingers in the way first.

  Stanley shrugged. ‘Because you made us,’ he said.

  ‘Right, well, listen, when we
get inside there is going to be a very, very tiny little baby and a very nervous first-time mother who will think that loud noises can kill babies, so I want you all, and that includes you, Stanley, to behave in a reasonable and sensible manner. OK?’

  ‘OK!’ they replied in union, less out of obedience than from the knowledge that feigning obedience got their mother off their backs for a minute.

  Megan appraised the house. It still took her aback, even on this, her third visit since Easter. Such a pretty house. Bethan had bought planters in beautiful Cotswolds shades of duck egg and sage and there was now a display of lavender and thyme on the sills. (They’d be nicked in under an hour on her London street, she mused.) Rory had fixed the garden gate and painted it white. (It should have been sage, Megan thought to herself, or soft dove grey. But she left the thought firmly where it belonged, inside her head.)

  She took Bill’s hand in hers and together she and her travelling circus headed up the garden path. Rory answered the door. He’d grown his shaved hair out, and it suited him.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ he said. ‘Welcome to the house of shitty nappies. Excuse my language,’ he apologised to the boys who all shrugged, unfazed.

  Rory was living in Colin’s side of the house. He’d replaced the stud wall himself. Megan had no idea how or when her brother had picked up so many manly skills; she assumed it was during his time on the commune in Spain. And Bethan was living on Lorelei’s side, with four bedrooms to herself. And her baby.

  ‘Where is she? Where is she?’ she asked, aching at some very deep, fundamental level to meet this new person.

  ‘She’s in bed,’ said Rory. ‘They’re in bed. She’s having a babymoon.’