The Stranger In My Home: I thought she was my daughter. I was wrong.

by Parks, Adele

  We reach the south gate at ten past six, but we are still quite a distance away when I spot Tom. He’s taller than average and better-looking than most; he stands out. After the greetings – a mix of polite cheek-kissing, hand-shaking and shy nods (me, Jeff, Katherine) – I look about for the children. They’re nowhere to be seen. I watch Katherine do the same, then her shoulders droop in disappointment as Tom explains they have all made other plans and won’t be joining us.

  ‘What other plans?’ she demands, no doubt irritated because, after all, she did turn down the invitation to go to her friend’s house.

  ‘Well, Amy was worried about leaving Mozart in on his own, so Callum offered to stay in with her, and Olivia is meeting her friends – here, actually – but she’d already made the arrangement before we suggested meeting up.’ And, unsurprisingly, she wouldn’t cancel for us. ‘We might bump into her.’ He scans the crowd but looks doubtful. There must be a thousand people here; it’s unlikely anyone will find anyone unless they’ve made specific arrangements. I watch Katherine swallow her irritation and deal with the let-down; I’m proud of her and sorry for her, but I realise that I’m not disappointed. I’m a little bit relieved. Olivia has ignored my Facebook friend request. She clearly doesn’t do polite or flexible, she isn’t prepared to engage or converse.

  I glance at Tom. The drizzle has settled on his face and is sparkling, like his eyes. He’s undoubtedly, classically, handsome. Katherine is also iridescent, lean and chiselled. She looks right standing by his side. I feel disloyal for noticing as much and so grab hold of Jeff’s hand as we walk.

  We follow the masses heading towards the glow from the enormous bonfire and find ourselves quite a good spot to watch the towers of flames shoot up into the dark night. The fire is throwing off a fierce heat that keeps the crowd at bay even more effectively than the recently constructed boundary. I watch dads lift their children on to their shoulders and remember the countless occasions Jeff did the same. Now, if he tried, Katherine’s legs would trail to his knees! I see that, as usual, there are grandparents here, looking amazed at the neon antennae and flashing wands that are being touted and gasping in shock at the ridiculous price tags attached. Naturally, there are gangs of teenagers. I automatically sweep my eyes over them to see if I recognise any of the kids. I don’t, yet they are all familiar. Many of the girls are dressed inappropriately, considering the occasion and the month; they are wearing low-cut tops and lightweight jackets rather than sensible rollnecks and duffel coats. I briefly wonder whether anyone even makes duffel coats any more. The boys stand around, self-consciously sharing a can or two. The cockiest among them swear in loud voices; they have an air about them that suggests they know this is the sort of night that is punctuated with small quarrels and mishaps. Our little group is quite silent by comparison. It’s impossible to pretend this situation isn’t awkward. We all throw our attention on Katherine. Jeff asks if she wants a jacket potato.

  ‘No, I’m good, thanks, Dad,’ she murmurs, flashing a quick smile.

  ‘Maybe a hot dog?’ says Tom. She shakes her head. ‘A toffee apple?’

  ‘No, thank you. I find them tricky to eat.’

  He understands her. ‘It’s that first bite that’s the problem. You have to really go for it.’

  ‘Yes.’ She grins again. ‘And my hair gets stuck to the toffee.’

  ‘I don’t have that problem.’ He laughs. She laughs along with him.

  ‘Some candyfloss, then?’ offers Jeff.

  Katherine looks at me with hammed-up exasperation. ‘Dad, you know Mum thinks candyfloss is the worst. White-sugar alert!’ She starts to wave her hands above her head in mock-alarm.

  ‘If you want some, you can,’ I say, although I probably don’t sound too convincing.

  ‘It’s OK. I’m really not hungry.’

  ‘A hot chocolate maybe?’ offers Tom.

  ‘Tea?’ says Jeff.

  Katherine suddenly starts walking quickly towards a cart selling neon deely boppers and both men stumble after her, racing to retrieve their wallet first. I wonder whether she’ll end up with two pairs. I don’t see any other families falling over themselves to buy the overpriced tat or treats for their kids; most families seem to be exerting energy on avoiding doing so. Throughout my life, I’ve often felt out of step. Never more so than now. Where’s the manual for this? Where’s the guidance?

  On discovering that the firework display won’t start for at least another half-hour, Jeff and Katherine start to hotfoot it towards the funfair, to kill some time. Tom and I follow reluctantly.

  ‘Not a fan of funfairs?’ I ask.

  He shakes his head. ‘Honestly? I can’t stand Bonfire Night. For a start, I think it’s barbarous to celebrate torturing a man, and I think the event has become yet more diabolical now that we’re also expected to thrash about in bumper cars and make ourselves sick on waltzers.’

  I stare at him, amazed. This is exactly what I think of firework festivities and funfairs, but I have long since given up saying so, because Jeff and Katherine call me a killjoy. Somewhat surprisingly, Jeff is a bit of a beast when it comes to arcade games. We often leave with a cuddly toy because of his expertise on the shooting range, and when Katherine was young a wholly good trip to the seaside was routinely ruined by him dragging us into the trashy, thrashing arcade so he could show off his prowess. Those sorts of activities were far too close to my own past. I wanted to give Katherine an altogether different childhood, one with sandcastles and crabbing. ‘I’m not a fan of fireworks. I like a sparkler, but that’s about it.’ Tom grins and the skin at the sides of his eyes crinkles pleasingly.

  ‘I totally agree,’ I say with a beam. ‘You should have said. We could have gone to your house, bought a modest box from the newsagent, let them off in the garden and then watched Amy write her name in the air with sparklers.’

  Tom looks regretful. ‘Would you have gone for that? Oh, I wish I’d known. That would have been lovely. I could have cooked – I make a decent chilli.’ He looks at the unappetising jacket potato he’s bought, slavered with slimy coleslaw made from cheap salad cream; it’s sitting in a polystyrene box and he has to eat it with a plastic fork. It’s a challenge. I also realise that he must feel bad about leaving Amy at home, even if Callum is with her. It strikes me that he’s sacrificed quite a lot to be with Katherine tonight. With us. He should have just said that Mozart was a complication. I’m certain Katherine would have been delighted to hang out at their house, and I wouldn’t have objected. I might have quite enjoyed it too, I suppose. Their house certainly needs an injection of life and warmth. Even though we’ve only visited once, and briefly, I felt it was a place that lacked. A grieving house. I suppose Jeff would have gone along with any plan.

  ‘Shall we do it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Go to yours now.’

  Tom shakes his head quickly. ‘No. We won’t be able to get fireworks now.’

  ‘I bet we could at one of the late-night supermarkets.’

  ‘I haven’t prepared anything to eat.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. You have a potato. Katherine says she’s not hungry.’

  ‘But Jeff and Katherine are really enjoying the funfair.’

  I don’t say anything else. He’s clearly a man who likes to stick to a plan once he’s made it.

  While Katherine and Jeff enjoy the haunted house and the various spinning wheels, Tom and I continue to chat. I tell him a little more about Katherine’s aspirations, both sporting and academic. He can’t help but be impressed, although I’m careful to hold back a little. I tell him she’s interested in doing politics and international studies. She dreams of working for the UN. ‘Olivia?’

  ‘She’s undecided. Maybe she’ll go to art college.’

  ‘Fine artist? Graphic designer? Photographer?’

  ‘She’s very young, there’s plenty of time.’ I don’t state the obvious, which is that she’s exactly the same age as Katherine. ‘Did you have it all p
lanned out at such an early age, too?’

  ‘No,’ I admit, ‘the opposite. I was pretty chaotic.’ I’m uncomfortable that he has perhaps deliberately drawn a comparison between Olivia and me. I move around a bit so my wellington boots don’t sink into the mud.

  ‘Where did you go to uni?’ It’s a standard question, one that always makes me feel a little too warm. I wonder whether I have the energy to fudge, the way I do with so many of the school-gate mothers or Jeff’s publishing colleagues, but then I realise I simply don’t feel the need.

  ‘I didn’t go to university. I left school at sixteen.’ I don’t imagine he’ll stare, aghast (although I have received this response in the past), nor do I pause for him to deliver one of the obvious platitudes – ‘Well, it’s not for everyone’ or ‘How enterprising!’ – instead, I quickly ask, ‘You?’

  ‘Bristol.’ It fits. Jeff went to Durham. Both places are frighteningly impressive.

  I don’t want to ask, but I can’t stop myself; it’s like picking a scab. ‘Annabel?’

  ‘Bella? Cambridge.’ Of course. I think of Katherine’s grade As and A stars, which have always been such a great source of pride to me, and a little bewildering. I see now. It’s Annabel’s win.

  ‘What did you study?’ I ask this to help him over the difficult fact that I’m obviously the thickie out of the four of us.

  ‘History. Don’t ask what I came out with, though.’ Since he doesn’t pause but immediately tells me – ‘I graduated with a wholly underwhelming Desmond Tutu’ – I gather he isn’t in the slightest bit concerned by this. He has an effervescence about him, a confidence in his past that can’t be clouded by something as mundane as an average degree. That must be lovely. My past clouds everything. ‘I found my degree very interesting, just not as interesting as the pub or the rugby field.’ He smiles. His warm breath swirls in the cold night air, like a dragon’s. ‘I left qualified to do absolutely nothing at all. Most people suggested that I studied for a PGCE next because teaching is not only useful but respectable and everyone knows the holidays are long, but I’ve always thought that the vast majority of children are annoying – my own excepted.’ He pauses and looks a bit concerned as to how I might take this comment. Nothing can be throw-away between us. I nod, encouraging him to go on and not to dwell on exactly how many children he can claim as his own right now. ‘The marking is endless and the pay insulting, so instead I wangled my way into a job in design and brand management.’

  I don’t ask how he made that fantastical jump. I can imagine. He’ll have looked the part. It’s always easier if you look the part. He might have known someone. A family friend who could put in a word. I know how these things work now. ‘It wasn’t as glamorous as it sounds,’ he declares. I cast my mind back to his living room, furnished with an Eames lounge chair and a Bang & Olufsen stereo. Admittedly, the former was draped with discarded hoodies and lost under piles of old newspapers and schoolbooks, but both were signs that he was once deeply concerned about material possessions and what they said about him.

  ‘I suspect your job was very glamorous,’ I comment.

  ‘It really wasn’t,’ he insists. ‘At least, not when I was working as a lowly account manager. It didn’t prove to be useful or respectable. The holidays were non-existent, the children could be naughty or nasty – but they were called creative directors. Still, no one ever gave me nits.’

  I laugh, as I know I am expected to. I realise that he’s served up this abridged, witty version of his early career before. Illogically, unreasonably, I feel a bit put out. I want him to give me more. I’ve confided so much in him. Surely he knows he can trust me enough to be able to reciprocate. I wonder if he’s given me this sanitised and edited account of his career because he thinks it’s beyond my comprehension: the long, boozy lunches, the tight, stressy deadlines – what could I know of it? By way of showing that I understand some of his world, I say, ‘That’s so interesting. We were more or less in the same trade.’ I can’t resist; I need him to know. It’s not that I believe there’s not more to me than being a mum, because what’s more than that to me? But there is other.

  ‘You were a designer?’ He’s polite enough to hide any outright incredulity.

  ‘No, I worked in advertising. Way back when. In the days when it was split above the line, below the line. I was above the line.’

  He smiles, nodding at the archaic terminology. ‘When there were contact sheets and laminates.’

  ‘Faxes, not texts.’

  ‘Instant coffee, not lattes.’ I don’t know why we’re making a cosy club out of our out-datedness once again; I suppose there’s some comfort in it. We’ve grown up. We’ve lived through it all.

  He doesn’t ask me how I managed to kick-start my career and I don’t volunteer the information. When you work in an industry like advertising you swiftly learn that there are lots of unwritten rules; rules about what to wear, eat and drive, how to speak, smile, shag. I rapidly came to understand that it was of vital importance to be bright and ballsy, to be resilient, resourceful and have an ever-present rictus grin. Beam at all times. Broad, dazzling smiles. It was a hideously misogynistic environment. In the company I worked in there were no male personal assistants and only two women on a board of eighteen. I watched the women in more senior positions than mine and noticed that they tried harder, achieved more and yet were paid less than any of their male colleagues. I noticed that if a couple of colleagues slept together, then he was seen as a hero, she was a slut. And people wonder why women might prefer to stay at home and bring up their babies.

  However, it seems Tom doesn’t have any enthusiasm for quizzing me about my career days. I’m almost regretful; I have a few stories that would raise spirits, raise eyebrows. It might do us both good to think of something other than our complex family problems. I’ve noticed that Tom is eternally intense. He always seems wary, a little watchful. It’s totally understandable, considering what he’s been through and is going through, but I do like to see him laugh. I wish he did it more.

  ‘Do you enjoy your job?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes, I do. Not that I’m exactly shining at work at the moment. It’s a good day if I remember the client’s name, which is, after all, considered the basic in any industry but is certainly essential for a branding agency.’ He grimaces charmingly, and I gently laugh.

  The rain falls like a mist between us.

  Jeff and Katherine are heading back towards us. They are carrying a pink soft toy, it could be a cat or a rabbit; it’s of that quality. Jeff looks jubilant. Katherine is keen for us all to visit the hall of mirrors. ‘Even you won’t be scared, Mum,’ she laughs. I agree, and we pay over six quid between us for two minutes laughing at our fat legs; I can do that for free every night before I go to bed. Then, somewhat disastrously, we have a go at knocking the coconuts off their perches. I say ‘disastrously’, because Tom succeeds and Jeff doesn’t. Tom can’t hide his excitement at his skill. He hands the coconut to Katherine as though it were a gold medal. I maintain that the cat/rabbit cuddly toy is a bigger prize, but I can tell that Jeff thinks otherwise.

  ‘Oh, you should keep it for Amy,’ she says, flashing a look at her dad, who is struggling not to look sulky.

  ‘She’s not that keen on coconut,’ Tom assures her. ‘Anyway, I won it for you.’

  I keep a constant eye out for Olivia but, as I suspected, it’s hopeless, the crowds are too enormous; besides, it’s wet and dark. We amble back towards the cordoned-off area as the firework display is about to start, and the amble becomes more of a stride as we get closer and people start to jostle for the best views. I can’t understand this: we all have to look up; there’s enough sky for everyone; it’s not like we’re trying to get to see a school play. Then I see the sense in the elbows-out tactic. Endearingly, there’s a small brass band playing old-fashioned but rousing tunes; unsurprisingly, they are pretty amateurish, but most of the onlookers applaud good-naturedly nonetheless.

  Then there’s an e
xpectant lull as the blaring fairground music silences, tired tots stop grumbling and giddy teens become keen and attentive.

  Swoosh! Young children fidget and flutter and then come to their senses, some people clap, others confine themselves to quiet ‘oh’s and ‘ah’s, as the sky is fleetingly brightened by bouquets that bloom then vanish and rockets that whizz and bang. I glance at Katherine. She’s animated, raw and young. Her eyes, hair and nose are gleaming, with excitement, youth and the cold. I adore her, and I pray she’s going to have many, many more Bonfire Nights ahead of her. That she’ll bring her own children here, get cross with them over the sugar content of the treats and spend her night making sure they are close by her side, safe; that she’ll have time to see them turn into teens, alternately bored and animated in the blink of an eye. I want it so much that it hurts. The fireworks blur as tears well. I will them not to fall so no one will see me rub them away. I don’t want to spoil the evening. I feel the heat of Tom’s body as he leans a fraction closer into me. It could be because the crowd is thickening and we’re short on space, or it could be because he’s spotted the tears hovering on my lashes and he’s offering me discreet support. We watch the fireworks at one another’s side, and it’s comforting.