I’m also going to put in the other letters I’ve written you and Alice over the years. I never posted any of them, so don’t think that your mother didn’t show them to you. I’ve really deliberated over showing you these. You might get the impression from reading them that I’m unstable, and in some senses you’d be right, but I’m not that person now, I’m the person on this page. In the end I think you need to know as much as I can show you and so I’m going to put them into the envelope.
I wish things were different. Sometimes I can’t believe that time is real. We fix a lot of clocks in Ron’s shop and when all the pieces are lying in front of me waiting to be reassembled I think: We invented that, why do we live by its rules? In the spring and autumn we make it go backwards and forwards and yet it is still our master. And we all know the feeling when it speeds up or slows down. In fact, that first year with Silver was the fastest year of my life and perhaps has some bearing on why I never contacted you (not that I think that’s an adequate excuse). I imagine rearranging time by putting the pieces together differently and going back to the day I left. I would have still made a life with Silver, but I would have been braver. I would have stayed for your birthday party and then told Alice properly and now you’d be coming to stay every other weekend and I’d know things about you. I never planned to walk out like I did. But (and I’ve never told anyone this, not even Silver), I suddenly realised that if I stayed and witnessed you becoming two I would never leave and if that happened I was going to die or become so bitter that I would have been a horrid father and husband. By which I don’t mean that Alice or Clarice are bad people, but they were too different from me, so far removed from anything I understood that I felt completely lost in that life. Even the house terrified me with all its blind turns and false doors. I used to feel like it was laughing at me, like it knew I was no match for it and nothing but an interloper.
I don’t know if she’s ever told you, but Alice never wanted us to live there when she found out she was pregnant. I used to get so annoyed with her when she was carrying you, as she’d go on about how we could live on love and cheese on toast on the Cartertown estate and I used to think: You don’t know what you’re talking about. But maybe she was right and I was the one who didn’t know what I was talking about. Because I was very narrow in my thinking back then and there isn’t ever only one way to travel, you know, Dot.
But maybe we are the people we are only because of the things that have happened to us? Maybe everything has a meaning? I’m not sure; I wonder what the people lying in hospital now after having been blown up on their way to work would say to that. I long to know what sort of person you are. Are you going to university? How did you do in your A Levels? What music do you like? What’s your favourite food? God, and that’s only scratching the surface. I can tell what Jake and Adam are thinking by the turn of their mouths and yet I don’t know the most basic things about you. And yet I love you just as much as I love them. How is that possible? How can I love you when all I have of you is the imprint of that last hug, the smell of the top of your head from that last moment, the sight of your eyes as I walked away?
Dot, I have laid all my cards on the table. I deserve nothing but contempt from you. I know that. But I am asking for your forgiveness. One of the things that I learnt when I took Adam to see my parents when he was first born was that being a parent does not give you some mystical inner knowledge. We have more training when we start a new job than when we have a baby and yet it is the most important, scary and difficult thing we’ll ever do in our lives. As I watched my mother hold my son I realised that she was nothing more than a guessing, fallible human. That she had made mistakes because that is what humans do. I made a huge, grotesque mistake which I have been repeating every day of my life for sixteen years. I’ve paid a large personal price for this and so, no doubt, have you. I am truly sorry and, whatever else comes from this, I hope you will always remember that. My leaving had nothing to do with you. You were, and I am sure are, an amazing, special and beautiful young lady. I have this dream that you will come and visit and we will sit round our kitchen table: you, me, Silver, Adam and Jake. That I will cook us dinner and we will all laugh at something and for a brief second it will feel normal. Although maybe the beauty of it will be in the fact that it isn’t normal, that our family will have been hard won. I am here waiting for you, we are all here waiting for you, and I hang on to this image so hard it sometimes feels like it has been branded onto my brain.
Enough. It is now 4:49 a.m. and I am going to get into my car and drive this letter to your house and post it through your front door. I have just been upstairs and told Silver this and she hugged me and told me she was proud. I peeked in on Adam and Jake, sleeping peacefully, and hope they will know their sister soon.
Dot, I love you. What happens now is up to you.
Dad xxx
21 … Kindness
Dot woke into a suspension. She momentarily forgot where she was and panicked at the sparse surroundings of the B and B, but then she remembered her journey the night before and the reason why she was there. She reached out for her phone but it had turned itself off. She pressed the green button and it sang itself awake like a mechanical bird. It was 10.05 a.m. which meant she’d slept through her alarm – if it had even gone off – and now she’d probably have to queue for hours at Charles House. She dialled Mavis’s number in an attempt to quell her rising anxiety, but even after three attempts she couldn’t make the connection. She got out of bed and showered quickly in the tiny cubicle in the corner of her room and then dressed hurriedly. Something was wrong. Dot stood still for a moment, trying to work out what, but no answers came. There seemed to be a silence, as though time had trapped her in a bubble and she no longer existed.
The front desk was empty when she got downstairs and the front door open. She could see the lady who had checked her in the evening before standing on the steps, slippers on her feet and a gaggle of people around her. They were smoking cigarettes and pointing up the road. Dot hoisted her bag further up her shoulder and stepped into the sunshine.
‘Excuse me,’ she said to the lady, who turned to reveal a tear-stained face. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I just wanted to pay my bill.’ The others turned round as well at this and Dot saw they were all crying, their faces grey, so that Dot wondered what reality she’d landed in.
The woman waved her away. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘But I stayed here last night.’
‘It’s all over anyway. Doubt I’ll have a business this time next week. Doubt any of us will.’
Dot tried to make sense of what she was hearing, but the group of people closed around her landlady again, leaving Dot to wonder if she actually existed. She looked down the road and saw five police cars parked across it at right angles and a crowd of people jostling to see over them. There were more women weeping on the pavements and children seemed to have vanished from the world. A shoe and a briefcase were pathetically discarded in the middle of the road. Then the noise exploded into her ears: the sirens peeling through the air, cutting and shattering normality. And the smell: acrid smoke and a choking sickness.
Dot left the crying group and walked towards the cars. Halfway there she saw a girl and boy of about her age.
‘Don’t go no further,’ shouted the girl, so Dot crossed the road to speak to them, pleased at least that someone had noticed her.
‘What’s happened?’
‘Are you tripping?’
‘No, I just woke up.’
‘Man.’ She whistled through her teeth.
‘What’s happened?’
‘Al-Qaida, innit,’ said the boy. ‘Has to be. It’s all over, man.’
‘What d’you mean?’ Dot could hear her own desperation.
‘Like, bombs everywhere. The police say there’s more. They could be anywhere.’
‘Are the tubes shut?’ she asked, now wanting only to be at home.
The boy laughed at this. ‘Of course they’re shut.
’
‘D’you have a phone I could borrow?’ Dot tried. ‘I need to call home and mine’s not working.’
‘No one’s is working,’ he answered and as he spoke Dot saw the gold in his teeth. ‘Like I said, it’s all over. Civilisation as we know it and all that shit.’
‘Anyway, don’t call,’ said the girl. ‘It’d be bad luck. I walk there every day.’ She held her hand up to her face. ‘I was only late this morning cos my mum was freaking cos I forgot to get her script last night.’
Nothing was making any sense to Dot. All she knew for certain was that somewhere out there was a coach which could take her home. ‘Can I walk to Victoria from here?’
‘Are you mad, sister?’ asked the boy.
‘But I need to get to the coach station. I need to get home.’
The girl sighed at this. ‘You got a pen and paper?’
Dot rooted through her bag until she found one and the girl rewarded her with a basic map. Her boyfriend nudged her. ‘Something’s happening,’ he said. ‘My cousin told me something big was gonna go down. He’s psychic, you know.’ Excitement rippled through his voice, jangling the words he was saying, which Dot could see he barely understood.
Dot took the girl’s rudimentary map. ‘Anyway, thanks for that.’
‘You take care,’ said the girl, her eyes already back up the street.
Dot walked away from them and it felt lonely. The walk looked doable. She noticed that halfway along the girl had drawn an arch and on it a lady in a chariot. Next to it she’d written: ‘Some warrior woman, can’t remember her name, but you’ll know it when you see it.’ It was oddly well drawn and Dot was touched by the attention to detail. She wondered what the girl did, where she went every morning, why her mum needed a prescription.
There were policemen everywhere, but still fear marched along the streets next to them all. Dot recognised the fear as she walked. She realised that she had been frightened all her life: of sitting in the wrong chair, of upsetting her mother, of not doing well enough at school, of being laughed at by her peers, of never meeting her father. But this fear was different. This fear was visceral, it swept through her blood, confusing her mind, blocking her ears, drying her throat, heating her body.
Dot’s country had been at war for over half her life in places that seemed as far away as they were on the map. Language that she didn’t understand was shouted out of screens, politics she didn’t listen to spouted by men in suits. She had marched against wars; she had spoken the right words. But in the end she was a child of conflict and that conflict had finally tracked her down, just as it did, on a daily basis, to the people of those hot, desert lands.
The streets were thronged and most people were on their own, but still everyone kept their eyes down because who could you trust if people were prepared to stand next to you and blow themselves and you to nothing? Often roads were closed and the police wearily directed them down another street, into which they filed like proverbial sheep. She heard people talking as she passed them: hundreds were dead, no, thousands, more bombs were imminent, the skies had been closed, the government had already been evacuated. It was impossible to tell what was real and what wasn’t, but Dot believed everything she heard because in the end it seemed better than not believing anything.
Dot stopped after a while and tried to buy some water and chocolate but the man behind the counter waved her money away, as her landlady had done, his eyes glued to the TV above the counter.
‘Thanks,’ said Dot, but he didn’t hear.
She ate as she walked and the sugar filled her blood with enough energy to stop her from crying. More than anything she wanted to call home. There was no doubt that Mavis would have let her mum and gran know where she was by now. It occurred to her that she could have used the phone at the B and B, but she never thought of landlines any more. Her mobile was still dead.
Everyone was going home. That’s where they were all heading. Lots of men and women in suits, some with backpacks, a few briefcases, designer handbags, plastic bags. Dot thought this must be what the end of the world would be like: everyone reduced to the same moment, walking the same streets, desperately looking for home.
She didn’t need to shut her eyes to see her home as if it was on a screen in front of her. The heavy brown velvet curtains in the sitting room which were fraying at the ends because they had been closed on generations of nights. The polished dark floorboards and the oriental rug with its reds and browns and patterns she might never understand. The huge mirror covered in age spots which hung just inside the front door and blurred your own image. The black marble fireplace, heavy with photographs, and the clock which always lost time. Her grandmother’s blue velvet chair by the fire; the sofa with the indentations of lives on its seat. China which mattered to her grandmother on all the surfaces; the outdated kitchen in which her mother cooked bad food. The huge staircase which led to bedrooms; the tower which fooled anyone who came calling. The cupboard in the study which opened on to a flight of stairs leading into a huge stone cellar.
Of course none of these were the real reasons why she wanted to go home so much. The real reasons were the two women who lived with her in the house. She heard her grandmother admonishing her in her mind, saw them laughing at a film together on a dark night. ‘Choke up, chicken,’ her grandmother would say whenever she coughed. She felt her mother’s hand on her hot forehead as she lay in bed, watched Alice’s face as she recounted her days at school, listened as she read her a bedtime story. Towels had always been wrapped around her body after warm baths, Christmas trees stood bedecked every year, school concerts were never missed, kisses often given, laughter sometimes heard, dreams recounted, radiators turned on or windows opened, fresh flowers in vases, mown lawns, hot tea.
As Dot walked the bleak streets the colour of thunderclouds, strewn with rubbish and disaster, she realised the absurdity of where she found herself. What was she doing looking for the name of a man who had barely existed, who had left without looking back? She had two people in her life who loved her more than most people deserved. She had a good friend and a hopeful future. And yet she’d risked it all on a man who didn’t care.
She lost her way many times and everyone she asked for directions told her not to bother going to Victoria. But where else was there to go? Her purse held a scrap of paper which was quite literally her ticket home. A long ride on a warm coach to the place she wanted to be. It was four-thirty by the time she reached the coach station and her feet felt swollen and her limbs ached. The place was seething with people. All the departure boards were blank and loudspeaker announcements told everyone to please be patient, they would try to resume some kind of service as soon as possible. Dot sat on a bench and let herself cry. Of course it had been stupid to imagine that the men who drove the coaches wouldn’t want to rush back to their own families. Maybe London had been cut off. She didn’t know anything any more.
The woman next to her was somewhere between her mother and grandmother’s age and Dot could feel her gazing at her.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked in the end.
Dot looked at her and saw that she was round and bright, with a mass of blond curls shining incongruously on top of her head. ‘Not really. I want to go home.’
‘Where’s home?’
‘Well, I need to get to Cardiff, then it’s a couple of hours from there.’
‘I need to get to Oxford.’ The blonde woman held out a tissue, which Dot took. ‘They’ll get us on to coaches as soon as they can, you know. There’s nothing we can do but be patient.’
‘I know. It’s just I walked so far.’
‘And you’re so looking forward to getting home?’ Dot nodded. ‘We’re all looking forward to getting home today.’
‘I know.’
‘Who’s at home?’
‘My mum and gran. They’ll be worried sick.’
‘I just got hold of my daughter,’ said the woman. ‘Apparently they’ve turned the signals back on.�
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‘Really?’ Dot took her phone from the front of her bag and dialled her number. It rang and in seconds it was answered. ‘Mum.’
The words which gushed out of her mother were simply an expression of relief. ‘Dot! Dot, oh my God, Dot. Are you OK?’
Dot could only cry down the phone. ‘I’m fine.’
Her mother was shouting off-stage, ‘Mum, Dot’s OK,’ and it took Dot a minute to compute that her mother’s mum was her grandmother. ‘Where are you?’
‘Victoria coach station. There’re no coaches but I’m going to wait here until there is one.’
‘Oh God, we thought … What happened?’
‘I don’t know, I think I slept through it. Then it’s taken me all this time to get here and the phones weren’t working.’
‘I’m so sorry that you’re there.’
‘It’s OK, Mum. Listen, I’ll call you as soon as I know when I’ll be in.’
‘And we’ll come and get you.’
‘OK.’
‘I love you, Dot.’
‘Love you too. And Gran.’
‘Dot, I want to explain. I want to tell you about him.’
‘I know, Mum. They’ll be time.’
‘But I should have … I’m sorry … I …’
‘Mum,’ Dot could only think of one thing to say. ‘I found a photo of him under your bed, years ago. But then I thought it wasn’t him because of the hair.’
‘The hair?’
‘This man had dark hair and so do you.’
‘Your dad had brown hair.’
‘But, how come, I mean why is my hair red?’
Her mother sighed. ‘That’s from Grandad. There are so many photos of him, I mean, I didn’t know you didn’t know that.’
Dot saw their mantelpiece, she searched the photos. There they were, the young man bouncing her mother as a baby, marrying her grandmother, smiling on a boat. ‘They’re black and white,’ she said finally. ‘They’re black and white.’
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