The A-Z of Everything

by Debbie Johnson

  I was so proud of you both back then, and I still am today. I know you’ve probably long forgotten these small victories, but I kept them, of course. I loved those little plates inside, with your names and your achievements written on them in fancy letters.

  I fully expected you to go on and be a writer Poppy – you were always so good with words – and for you to carry on with your science, Rose. You’ve both made careers for yourselves, and there is nothing wrong with either of them – but I don’t sense a great air of Victory around the two of you when you talk to me about your jobs.

  I know I’ve asked a lot of you both throughout this whole A–Z, but now I am being cheeky and asking even more. Put on your medals, and be proud of who you are – but also ask who you could be. Are you living the lives you should have led? Are you happy going in to work every day? If not, it’s never too late to change – and being happy in your work is one of the biggest victories of life.

  Personally, I was always devastated never to have won an award. Penny Peabody came close – I was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a British Drama by some cheesy TV magazine – but alas, it wasn’t meant to be. Perhaps there will be a film set in heaven, and I can chalk up an Oscar there!

  Anyway. The card is full, and I am tired, so I will bid you a fond farewell.

  To victory!

  Mum xxx

  Chapter 65

  Rose

  ‘She’s right, isn’t she?’ I say, swooshing my huge hair over the nylon medal necklace. The plastic disc hangs low, perched on my chest. Poppy is wearing hers, too, and I suspect we both look ridiculous.

  ‘Of course she’s right,’ replies Poppy, who is already looking through the illustrations of The Secret Garden, stroking them as though they might come to life beneath her touch. ‘She always is.’

  ‘My job is boring,’ I say, Stephen Hawking nestled on my lap. ‘In fact my whole life is boring. I’m going to do that teacher training.’

  Poppy looks up at me and smiles. So much of the underlying enmity between us has been drained away by that letter of Mum’s, by David Bowie, by the uncontrollable sobbing on each other’s shoulders. It feels so much easier to be around her, like a particularly nasty boil has been lanced and can now start to heal.

  ‘And I’m going to write that bloody book,’ she says. ‘We’ve both done all right, but somewhere along the line, we’ve also both been knocked off track – and we can’t keep blaming other people for that. We can’t keep blaming Gareth, or each other, or stuff that happened a million years ago – if we want things to change, we have to make them change. We have to make Mum proud again.’

  ‘We will,’ I say, forcefully – because I really believe that is true. I believe that I can try and become a Biology teacher, and I definitely believe that Poppy can write ‘that bloody book’. She might not be here with us, but our mother is still an inspiration. She is still making me feel as if I might emerge from life victorious, in exactly the same way I always tell Joe he can be whatever he wants to be as long as he works hard enough.

  We’ve cracked open a new bottle of very nice gin, and I raise my glass.

  ‘A toast!’ I say, holding it towards Poppy.

  ‘To our mother, crazy old lush that she was – and to us! To victory!’

  Poppy chinks her glass against mine, and we both down our drinks in one, barely blinking as a double measure of gin goes down. That, I think, as I pour us the next, is genetics at work.

  Chapter 66

  Poppy

  I’m not entirely sure that Homes & Gardens would recommend redecorating while completely off your head on gin, but we’re pushing the envelope here. We should probably get a double-page spread: Interior Design – the Tanqueray Way!

  W has turned out to be for ‘Wonderwall’, and now neither of us can get that song out of our heads. It also explained why Mum had taken down those family pictures of hers, leaving one wall dotted with spooky bare patches and faded frame outlines.

  She’d managed to somehow get a copy of the Oasis single – possibly from my bedroom, as I’d left a stash of vinyl in there when I moved out – and glued a circular note on the middle section. The note is written in a spiral, in tiny writing that gets smaller as it curls inwards. A strange mix of her usual Alice in Wonderland tendencies, and Britpop classics of days gone by.

  ‘Create your own Wonderwall, my darlings – and tend to it! Keep it alive like it’s a garden of our history. And remember: all the roads we have to walk are winding …’

  Along with the single was a huge brown file, crammed full with photographs. The albums on the bookshelves are still stocked, so she must have had copies made – or, more likely, Lewis had.

  The pictures cover vast amounts of time, and flicking through them is a bittersweet experience – because like most trips down memory lane, there are a few ruts in the road, and a couple of muggers waiting to threaten you at knifepoint and steal your emotional handbag.

  There are a few more of our own mum as a baby, with her serious-faced parents, and one of her father in his Royal Navy uniform. There’s even a much older one, of our great-granddad, also in a Navy outfit, with sleeked-back hair and a face like Errol Flynn. He’s grinning at the camera in a way his son never seemed to manage, and looks quite the character – he’s also holding the very tobacco tin I stole from the Posh Room, although it looks shiny and new in the picture.

  There are a couple of Mum as an impossibly cute toddler, with bundles of blonde corkscrew curls, wearing those frilly knickers that they seemed to like back in the day. One of her as a schoolgirl, early 1960s I’d say, spoiling her studied pose with the fact that one of her socks is pulled up to her knee and the other is sagging around her ankle.

  After that, as Mum pursued her acting career, they all become a bit more glamorous. Mum’s headshots through the ages; pictures of her with the famous and semi-famous, photos taken on sets and in dressing rooms, drinks glasses jostling for place with pansticks and clouds of smoke puffing up from huge glass ashtrays.

  There’s one of her with her own mum, early 1970s from the state of the boot-length Afghan coat my mum is wearing, in what I recognise as Piccadilly Circus – the same, but with bright Cinzano ads and Ford Cortinas and mini-skirts. My grandmother looks a bit awkward, overwhelmed by it all, and I’m so sad I never got to meet her. So sad that our own mum had to deal with her death all alone, much younger than we are now, and without any family to help her. Without a crazy A–Z to get her through it.

  Our father features in a few pictures – one of them together in a bar, again shrouded by smoke and barricaded in with a table full of empty glasses. She looks young and vibrant and completely loved up as she snuggles against him; he is a little more aloof, with a now retro-cool 1970s beard, a cigarette drooping from his mouth. They look impossibly young and stupidly glamorous.

  There is one of her while she was pregnant – with Rose, I suspect – doing the traditional side-on pose to show off her bump, and pictures of her and our father with us as newborns. I’ve never seen these before – only the ones that show her alone with us – and again, it’s a melancholy thing.

  It should have been the happiest time of their lives, but on the one with me especially, Rose’s podgy face beaming away next to my bald head, Mum just looks so tired. Defeated. Like some of the life has been sucked out of her. Dad’s even smoking in that one, and I am amazed at the thought of people being able to puff away on maternity wards.

  The bulk of the photos, though, are of us. Me and Rose as kids, a full range of time-machine snapshots: holidays in Dorset and paddling pools in the garden and walks with Patch and first days at school and Christmas plays and birthdays with number balloons doing their floaty helium dance above our heads.

  I recognise our different stages, and it feels odd, like looking at a picture montage of somebody else’s life. There are blessedly few of me as Spotty Poppy, because I’d learned to avoid cameras like the Artful Dodger by that time, and not so many once we
were older – when we were both off at university.

  She has, wisely, edited Gareth out of existence, and the last one of us all together was taken months before that hellish night at Disco 2000. We’d both come home for Mum’s birthday, and she’d asked a waiter in the restaurant to take a photo of all three of us. The last-century version of me is looking a little sullen, and Rose is smiling and radiant.

  Mum, of course, looks wonderful. Being a professional poser, it was hard to catch her unawares in a bad position, but this one is especially lovely. She’d been asked for her autograph while we were out, which had made her particularly smug, and she just looks so happy, squashed there between the two of us.

  The change after that is sudden, and devastating. There are pictures of Joe as a baby, pictures of her and Rose, pictures of her and me. But never any of us all together. As we root through them all, oohing and aahing and laughing, it is one of my biggest regrets that we never added to her collection. To her stash of memories of us together, healed and whole and strong. She deserved more than we gave her, so much more.

  We can’t change that now, but we can at the very least create our own Wonderwall – she’s even left us two pairs of scissors and a giant packet of Blu-Tack to make it easy on us.

  After a brief debate on how to organise it – chronological, in order of size, in a square or in a spiral – the gin makes the final decision, and we simply both start cutting and sticking pictures on the wall at random.

  One of Joe ends up next to one of Lewis dressed as Hamlet; one of Rose as a teenager ends up next to Mum on the beach in a bikini; one of Patch ends up juxtaposed with one of our grandmother staring silently into the lens; one of Rose’s graduation is flush with my Mum and Elvis.

  By the time we are finished, much of the wall is covered. It will probably look bloody awful in the morning, but to two drunk ladies, it is an awesome creation of stylish design.

  We stand back and admire our handiwork, making complimentary comments about each other’s choices, and it strikes me how far we’ve come. How far Mum has brought us. When we started this whole thing – this A–Z madness – we could barely stand to be in the same room as each other. Even at our own mother’s funeral.

  And now? All these letters later; after all the road trips and arguments and bad karaoke and treasure hunts and brutal, tear-jerking honesty, we can stand side by side, and I can say to Rose ‘you were the fattest baby in the world’ without it starting another round of hostilities. Our Wonderwall is truly wonderful.

  We take a few more snapshots on our phones, vowing to get them printed out along with our Eiffel Tower shots so we can add to the collection, and then stand back and look at it all some more. We even take photos of the photos, we’re so pleased with it.

  Rose is staring at one particular picture with a frown on her face. I follow her line of vision, and see that it is of Mum and Lewis, on Stapeley Hill. It’s obviously been taken by Lewis holding his long arms out, a senior-citizen version of a selfie, and they are both grinning like very naughty children.

  ‘We should invite him over,’ says Rose, biting her lip. ‘I mean – look at them. He was such a good friend to her. He was with her when she died, and he helped her arrange all of this, and now he’s alone. He doesn’t seem to have family, definitely not any kids, and now he doesn’t even have our mum. She’d want us to look after him, don’t you think?’

  I nod, and look at all the photos of Lewis that are scattered over our Wonderwall. There are more of him and his dog than our grandparents and our father combined.

  ‘You’re right. We should. Maybe we could try and cook him something. Or at the very least get a Chinese in and some plonk. On the A–Z list, X is for Movie Night. I know that could mean anything in Mum’s universe, but maybe we could ask him round for that.’

  ‘As long as it’s not X for X-rated movie night, and Mum doesn’t have a whole sideline in adult films she never mentioned to us …’

  I shudder, physically, at the very thought, and hope that’s not true. Seeing our mother’s bare bum on a carousel horse was quite enough, thank you, without discovering she was also known as Peaches McMuff or Trixie-Belle Nipples as well. Although they do sound like they’d make interesting characters in my new book.

  ‘I’ll text him now,’ I say, ‘while we’re too drunk to change our minds.’

  Chapter 67

  Rose

  Lewis enters the cottage with his dog, the famous springer spaniel Betty. Or at least I feel as if she’s famous now, after sticking so many pictures of her up on the Wonderwall.

  She’s a beautiful old lady, with huge, round brown eyes and rust-red colouring on her soft white fur. As soon as she is through the door, she scampers around, ears back, sniffing the air, as though she is furiously searching for something.

  Or, I think sadly, someone. Poor Betty is on the list of creatures who are desperately missing Andrea Barnard, purveyor of fine A–Zs and even finer sausages. Eventually, she seems to give up, and jumps on to the sofa, where she circles three times before settling into a ball with her muzzle tucked beneath her tail.

  ‘Ah,’ says Lewis, presenting me with a bottle of wine that looks far too good to accompany the roast dinner that we’ve managed to produce in his honour, ‘she’s looking for her, isn’t she? I must admit that I find myself doing the exact same thing with alarming frequency.’

  ‘I’d like to see you curl up in a ball with your nose touching your tail, Lewis,’ replies Poppy, standing on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek to take any potential sting out of her words.

  ‘Alas yes, I think those days are behind me … anyway. I was delighted to receive your invitation to movie night, ladies, although knowing a bit more about it than you, also slightly concerned.’

  ‘Yeah. I think we all are,’ I reply, looking at the contents of our A–Z package for the letter X. It is in two parts – a bundle of DVDs, and a huge dice, the type people would use for games in the garden.

  Mum has covered each numbered side with glued-on paper, and each face of the dice shows a different film beginning with the letter X. The whole thing is covered in multi-coloured rainbow glitter, bits of it falling off constantly, leaving the table and everyone who comes into contact with it sparkling like a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing.

  Lewis nods, and reaches out to stroke the dice, almost without seeming to notice his own actions. It’s a familiar gesture, and one I’ve seen in Poppy and myself as well – the urge to touch objects that she touched, as though she may have left some magic in them, a trace of all she meant to us.

  ‘She was struggling a little, by this stage,’ he says, taking off his tweed jacket to reveal a tweed waistcoat and a tweed tie. Even on a night off, he looks every inch the respectable lawyer. I wonder, idly, if he has to get all his clothes tailor-made, just to accommodate the sheer size of his bear-like body. He wipes his hands down his sides, and his waistcoat immediately starts to shimmer.

  ‘She had considered making X for exes – as in former partners,’ he says. ‘But eventually she decided against it. I think I remember her exact words: “we’ve already given over too much of our lives to romantic disasters – it’s time to put those behind us.” And then she started to get creative with the craft materials – nothing seemed to make her happier than a glue stick and some glitter … horrible stuff, that. I spent several days looking as if I’d been to a Disney Princess party. Anyway. Something smells good?’

  ‘Well, it’ll probably taste terrible, so make the most of it,’ says Poppy, who, I notice, is also looking a little bit Disney Princess with her sparkle-smeared cheeks. ‘We’ve set up in the Posh Room – we thought perhaps we could eat, and then see what the Dice of Fate hands out for us to watch?’

  ‘Wonderful,’ replies Lewis, following us through. ‘I so hope we get X-Men. I’m quite an admirer of that Wolverine chap. I did try and talk her into that Magic Mike XXL film about the male strippers, and suggested we watch it purely for research, but she said
it was too much for my old ticker …’

  I bite back a giggle as we settle around the table, Betty taking up an alert position beneath it, obviously hoping for some scraps. Poppy serves up the meal – slightly over-cooked roast lamb, slightly under-cooked carrots, and perfect roast spuds, which we bought frozen and just warmed up. Even we couldn’t ruin those.

  I pour the wine, and Lewis, the perfectly polite guest, proclaims himself delighted with every single morsel of what is, in all truthfulness, a decidedly under-par meal. We chat about the A–Z, and tiptoe tenderly around each other, all scared of breaking the magical spell of civility and provoking tears – because it happens so easily, and often so unexpectedly.

  I find I can sit and think about my mum, remembering our last conversation and doing that thing she warned us against, picking at wounds, deliberately trying to make myself suffer, and still I remain dry-eyed and in control.

  Yet the smallest of things – like being in the queue at the Post Office and seeing a postcard of the village that she once sent to me; or going into the Hideous Extension and seeing that ridiculous ab-crunching device she bought and never used, or remembering her rehearsing her Penny Peabody lines down the phone to me – can set me off into spasms of incoherent sobbing.

  When it happens, it’s not pretty – I need to find a private place, and wail like a wounded animal, and am completely unable to move or speak or function, the pain is so raw.

  I don’t want to do that tonight, and I’m pretty sure nobody else does either. So we are polite, and Poppy is sharp and sarcastic but in a funny way, not a mean-girl way, and Lewis tells us stories about village life, and asks questions about Joe, and together – with some effort – we all get through the dinner without stabbing ourselves with a butter knife.