by Diana Finley
I cried for Stacy every day – I was worse than Ryan. And for a time I took to the drink, I was that stressed. Anything to blunt my feelings. Gary didn’t seem to have no feelings; his feelings was dead. He said she was gone and that was that; we had to accept it, get used to it. He’d always drank and took the drugs anyway, he didn’t need no excuse. So when he got arrested for dealing – again – I could’a killed him. Just a few months after our Stacy went missing. Then not long after, he got done for breaking and entering – he got two years. Well, course he needed the money for his habit, didn’t he? It’s not like me and the kids saw none of it.
That was the last straw though. The social said we weren’t responsible parents. They were right an’ all. Me eldest two, Dean and Leanne, had got took off us three years before Stacy went missing. They’d been in care all that time. Then the social took the rest of the bairns into care, all of them. So I was on me own. How much worse could life get? The papers made a right meal of it, ’specially the local paper.
Everybody on the estate knew about us. They hated us. People called me names if I went out. Some spat at me. They put dog shit through the letterbox. One night someone threw a brick through the back window. Smashed it into thousands of pieces. I was scared all the time. I was shaking.
I asked the doctor for some pills, to calm me down, like, help me sleep. He shook his head. He patted me hand. I think he reckoned I’d take the lot, top meself, and probably he wasn’t far wrong. He was all right with me though, was Dr Shah. He listened to me troubles. Said he wouldn’t give me no pills, but he could try to help me get me children back. If I really wanted them. It might take time, he said. I’d have to decide to really work at making a proper home for them. With Gary gone it was my chance, he said. It would be hard. What did I want?
Well, of course I said I wanted them back. He said for a start he’d write to the council – ask them to re-house me in a different part of the town, where people didn’t know us. He told me to go back to the social and cooperate with whatever they asked me to do. He even helped me get a part-time job as a cleaner at the hospital. It didn’t pay much, but it was something, a start.
The social worker suggested a counselling course. Counselling! I didn’t even know what the word meant, but I went on it. Then she suggested a “parenting skills” course – anyone could see I needed it – so I went on that an’ all. I even went on an “everyday cooking” course – I reckon they thought we’d lived on chips long enough.
I applied for getting each of the children back, one by one, starting with Ryan – he was that needy. It was dead hard and it took a long, long time, like Dr Shah said, but I managed it in the end. Even when they were back, it wasn’t all plain sailing. Ryan was playing up at school. They said he had behaviour problems. I sat him down and asked him if he wanted to go back in care. He shook his head and looked at his feet.
I told him I didn’t neither; I told him I couldn’t bear to lose him. I’d lost one precious child and I didn’t want to lose another. If he carried on misbehaving, I told him, they’d put him back in care, and that would kill me. He cried, and hugged me, and promised to be a good boy. He really tried, and after a while he started doing all right at school.
The next ones I got back was Dean and Leanne, the eldest two. That wasn’t easy, I can tell you. They’d been in care for that long they hardly knew us. They didn’t trust no one, ’specially not me. They were that angry and disturbed, they nearly took the house apart. It was tough. Time was, I was nearly ready to put them back with the social. But I told them I’d never let them go again, so they might as well put up with me.
Things settled down after a while. They all began going to school regularly. Any sign of bunking off, they had me to answer to. I told them I wasn’t going to let them follow the same road I had, and certainly not their dad. Once they were properly settled, Dean and Leanne turned out to be me rocks, me right little helpers. Then, one by one, the rest came home. We were quite a crowd. Only Stacy missing. Always Stacy missing.
The council give us a house in Moorside. It was a right mess to start with, even though the area seemed posh to me, what with being semi-detacheds, trees along the streets, and little gardens at the back. God knows who was in the house before us. It was filthy, and we had no carpets, no furniture; nothing to start with. The social worker – Michelle they called her – helped us get some beds and other basics from a charity. Me and Leanne scrubbed the place from top to bottom. After that I made sure to keep the house clean. I was always scared of an unexpected visit from the social.
Leanne was a good support, bless her. She did housework and kept an eye on the younger kids if I was working on a late shift. Dean cleared all the rubbish out of the garden and got busy with a paintbrush inside – he didn’t need no asking.
Ashley always had her face stuck in a book and her head in the clouds, so she wasn’t much help, but at least she was no trouble. Kelly and Sean did everything together – they liked to cook the tea sometimes – simple stuff like jacket potatoes and baked beans, sausages and that. I made them all eat vegetables too, even though I wasn’t that keen on them meself – cabbage, sprouts, cauliflower and that. Eat them, they’re good for you, I told them.
Once the kids were all back with me, we decided that every year, on Stacy’s birthday, I’d make a cake and we’d have a bit of a party. Well, the first few were bought cakes from Safeways – ’til I learned how to make one. The first one I made was a bit hard on the outside and soft in the middle, but the kids didn’t seem to mind at all.
So each year, we light the candles and sing “Happy Birthday dear Stacy”. The idea is it helps to take our minds off all the sadness. ’Course it doesn’t really. But that’s what we’ll be doing tonight, when the kids are all home. Her cake’s chocolate this year: the kids’ favourite. It has seven candles on, and a big number seven in Smarties – Ryan done that. It breaks my heart that she’s not here with us all to see it. Stacy, baby, I long for you every day, every minute. We’ll never, never, ever forget you. Will we ever see you again?
I’ve got to believe we will. One day.
Chapter Nineteen
1993
Lucy
When I try to remember my childhood, a lot of it seems very hazy, as though I was viewing myself through a thick mist, or as though I existed within a dream, a vague, half-remembered dream. Perhaps that’s how it is for everyone. There were one or two difficult times, there was some confusion and some upsets, of course, but nothing out of the ordinary; on the whole I think I was fairly happy until I was about eleven years old.
Mummy was definitely not a funny, jolly sort of person, who played silly games and shrieked with laughter, like some of my friends’ mothers, but I didn’t mind that especially. She was quiet and a bit serious, but I suppose I was too, so maybe we got on well together because we were alike. She was OK with people one to one (some of them at least), but she didn’t much like people in groups, such as at parties or gatherings, and nor did I.
One good thing at least was she hardly ever shouted at me – so when she was cross, which wasn’t often, she just went sort of cold and distant and silent for a while. Actually, I hated her being like that, so it might have been better if she had shouted, and been done with it. When she was in her cool and distant mode, it felt like she was across a wide lake, and I couldn’t reach her. I would have to think of something good and kind I could do or say, to try to please her. Then maybe she’d stop being cross, and the great, frightening, silent expanse between us would evaporate. Sometimes that took a long time.
I guess every child thinks its own experience is normal, just takes its own situation for granted. I know I did, at least until I got older. Of course, I realised it was unusual not to have a father at all, but then quite a lot of my friends had parents who lived apart, so they didn’t all live with a father as an ever-present part of their lives. But when I thought about it, which was only occasionally, I was vaguely aware that there was somethin
g different about my family, perhaps because my daddy was so rarely mentioned. Mummy never mentioned him, and even as quite a small child I sensed that questions about him made her nervous.
At the time I just interpreted this as sadness – that she was upset thinking about him. From my earliest memories, she had told me he was dead. She said he was killed in a car crash. She didn’t elaborate. I didn’t feel questions were encouraged. So there was this huge father-shaped gap in my life.
Gradually, I came to realise that most other children had not only a father, but also at least one or two grandparents – many of my friends had a complete set of four. I didn’t have any. There was just me and Mummy. Her own mother had died when I was so little that I had no memories of her at all, though Mummy did often show me photos of her. There was a photo of her in a frame on the mantelpiece in the sitting room, and Mummy kept another one on her bedside table. My grandmother didn’t have a husband, and she’d adopted Mummy when she was a baby. So they were just a mother–daughter unit, like us. I know Mummy loved her very much. She sometimes talked about how much she missed her. She always called her “Mother”.
From what I saw of my friends’ families, grandparents seemed like a really good thing. They adored their grandchildren and indulged them. They often took care of them if they lived near and were always happy to take them on trips, read stories to them and play games with them. They were generally very proud of their grandchildren’s every little achievement, and often seemed to be generous with presents, treats and even money too. I thought how wonderful it would be to have grandparents – not for the money or presents, but just because sometimes I longed to have another grown-up in my life to talk to, someone who really loved me and was proud of me.
I knew my father’s parents were living in New Zealand – Mummy had explained about that – so they were hardly at “popping-in” distance from us. I did receive birthday and Christmas cards – and sometimes presents – from them, though. But they barely seemed real to me; more like fairy-tale grandparents. Well, I’d never even seen photographs of them, let alone met them. Sometimes I tried to think about what they might be like. I suppose I imagined them almost like fairies, or a prince and princess, rather than being able to picture real, ordinary people.
There was one time when we were doing a history project at school about how people lived in our country fifty or sixty years ago. We were supposed to ask our grandparents questions about what life was like when they were children of around the same age as us. We were expected to record their answers and then write about their experiences, and to use photographs and draw pictures if we wanted. It was the sort of task I normally really enjoyed, but of course I was at a total disadvantage.
‘What am I going to do?’ I wailed. ‘Everyone in the class has got at least one grandparent they can talk to – and some have four! How am I possibly going to write anything?’
Mummy looked a bit worried and thoughtful. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘Auntie Molly and Uncle Frank are like … kind of … special grandparents to you, and I know they’d be delighted if you asked them to talk to you about when they were young.’
Mummy was right, of course. Auntie Molly and Uncle Frank, who lived next door, were very happy to take on the role of granny and grandpa for me. Actually, it turned out they made quite interesting subjects because they had lived in a mining village when they were children. Frank’s dad had been a miner and worked underground from the age of fourteen. But his mum and dad had wanted Frank to “better himself”, so he had had to work very hard at school, so that he’d get a scholarship to the grammar school. He was the first in his family to stay at school past sixteen – and get a job in a bank after. His parents were really proud of his achievements.
Molly was the eldest of nine children, so she’d had to leave school and help her mum a lot with looking after the younger children, and with the cooking and housework. You wouldn’t believe how crowded it was in her house! The five youngest children slept in one bed, and the older four shared another.
Molly told me how every morning her mum made a big pot of porridge and put it on the kitchen table, with nine hungry children sitting around it. She’d put a little pool of melted butter and sugar in the middle of the porridge pot. Each child had a long spoon and would take turns scooping out porridge together with a tiny bit of butter and sugar. If any of them tried to take too much butter or sugar, they got a clout from their mum’s big wooden spoon. I loved that story. My teacher said my account of their childhood was one of the best in the class. She asked me to read it out.
I was very proud, but still, it made me more aware that I did have grandparents – my dad’s parents – yet I had never met them and didn’t really know anything about them. Surely they must have been sad about that too? After all, when my dad died, they had lost their only son – so you’d think they would be all the more eager to get to know their only granddaughter.
I badgered my mother a lot about this, telling her I really wanted to go and visit my granny and grandpa. I said it over and over again. At first she wouldn’t hear of the idea, but I guess I sort of wore her down in the end. Eventually she relented, and told me that she was planning for us to travel out to New Zealand to stay with them over the Christmas holiday of the following year. Imagine that – New Zealand! It would be summer over there at that time.
It was a really, really long journey to get there, but I didn’t mind that one bit. Going in an aeroplane across the whole world! I was so excited I thought I’d hardly be able to wait. But you can’t stay excited for more than a year, so in the meantime I just had to get on with life as before.
Slowly time passed. Then, as the trip got nearer, things started to go wrong. First, Mummy told me that Grandpa had become ill, and Granny couldn’t manage to have visitors because she was looking after him. Mummy said she was keeping in touch with Granny by letter and we’d hear about Grandpa’s progress that way. Over the following month, Grandpa got worse and worse. Mummy said we’d have to delay our trip for a while.
One day, after another month or two, when I got home from school, Mummy made me come into the sitting room and sit down. I knew she had something awful to tell me. She said she was very sorry, but that Grandpa had died. I could hardly believe it. I was very, very upset. Mummy tried to comfort me, but it seemed so terrible to lose my grandpa when I hadn’t even had the chance to meet him. I couldn’t stop crying. Mummy stared at me and didn’t say anything, but I think she must have been quite worried about me.
For days I felt miserable. Now I’d never get to meet Grandpa, and I thought poor Granny must have been so sad and lonely without him. I couldn’t think about anything else. Mummy kept watching me. In the end she said maybe we could arrange for Granny to come and live with us in England, so she wouldn’t be living alone.
This was around the time home computers were starting to become popular. Mummy liked things like computers. She had bought one and was teaching herself how to use it. She used it as a typewriter for writing letters to Granny. She called it a “word processor”. She said that she was writing to Granny at least twice a week, and that Granny loved getting these letters.
About once a month, we received a reply from her. Mummy said old people like Granny didn’t really know about computers, but she did have an old typewriter, and she wrote letters back to Mummy and me using that. Mummy explained that Granny didn’t see so well, so the computer was a good thing because she could make the print large enough for Granny to read. When Granny wrote back to Mummy, she always enclosed a short letter for me in the envelope.
The post arrived after I had left for school in the mornings, so it was really exciting to come back home in the afternoon, and find a lovely message that Granny had written to me! They said things like:
I kept them all in a special folder with “Granny” written on it in red and gold lettering. I really enjoyed writing to Granny myself too. From time to time I would write and tell her something about my life, and give the l
etter to Mummy to add to her own letter to Granny. Sometimes I would draw a picture for Granny too, or write her a little poem.
Mummy told me she liked to give her letters some thought, so she would write them on the computer later in the evening, after I’d gone to bed. In the morning, there would be our letters in their envelope on the hall table, waiting to be posted. I liked seeing the neat envelope with its coloured stamps and “Airmail” sticker, ready to be sent off to New Zealand. I liked to imagine Granny opening the envelope far away, and how she would enjoy reading Mummy’s news, and especially mine.
Then, a few weeks later, hey presto! Mummy would hand me a lovely typed reply that Granny had written back to me! Sometimes Mummy showed me the envelope stamped “Christchurch, NZ”, with its colourful stamps of exotic-looking birds. It was just brilliant. It made me so happy to think about Granny. I couldn’t wait to meet her.
Maybe good things never last. A few weeks later a most awful, terrible thing happened. Mummy told me Granny had died too. It hardly seemed possible – it was more like a nightmare to me. How could she die – just when I was starting to get to know her through letters? I had been longing to get to know my granny properly, and for her to be close to me.
Mummy said we had to try to be positive. She said that of course it was sad for us, but we had to be thankful that Granny didn’t suffer a long illness. She said that would have been worse for her. I tried to be grateful for that, like Mummy said, but it was hard, because Granny had always appeared such a fit and active person. Even though she was quite old, she wasn’t that old. She used to go for walks in the country and ride her bike to the shops. I couldn’t remember ever hearing about her being ill before.
Mummy was very strong about it – much braver than me. She didn’t cry at all. But I guess as Granny was my dad’s mother and not hers, Mummy didn’t really love her as much as she did her own mother. It all seemed so sudden and shocking and cruel to me, though.