I never thought I'd feel this, or have to say it, I tell her. Please believe me when I tell you it's the hardest thing for me, having to sit here and say this to you. But his father and I would really prefer that you expelled him. This is no longer just about education. We're seriously worried about the kind of person he's turning into. I care more now that he changes and sees the need to stop taking drugs. I want him to have a happy life. I want him to learn to be a good man, and, you know, A levels have started to seem a small thing next to that. And we don't think he's attending enough to get any anyway.
His tutor sounds a little taken aback. But she seems to listen and, at the end, she thanks me for talking to her so frankly.
When I put the phone down, tears are standing in my eyes.
I think she understood, I tell his father later, I really do. I think she knew I meant it, that I couldn't possibly have said all those things if I didn't.
And we wait for them to tell him the bad news. No more chances.
That night he walks in whistling and tells us he's been given one more chance. He demands we give him a beer.
Not on a school night, says his father, no way.
Stop telling me how to live my life, he says. I'll have a beer if I feel like one.
He's standing near the fridge and we are by the cooker. I feel suddenly like I'm not there at all. As if I'm looking down on the three of us from above.
Carefully, I put down the wooden spoon I am using to stir the soup. Calmly turn off the ring.
On what basis have they given you another chance? I ask him.
He shrugs. He's still looking at the fridge.
As long as I go in, they won't exclude me, he says.
But they want a hundred per cent attendance?
I dunno. I suppose.
And do you intend to give them that?
He grins. I'll see how it goes, won't I? They can't tell me how to live my life any more than you can.
His father and I look at each other.
That's it, I say, we say. We can't do this any more. We're sorry. You're going to have to find somewhere else to live.
He stares at us. It's an old refrain but not one he was expecting tonight.
But I'm at school, he says. This is my education we're talking about.
You hardly ever go to school and you've just implied that nothing's changed. You don't plan to start attending properly now.
He smirks, but I notice he doesn't disagree. His father is silent, his head in his hands.
But - what am I meant to do? How am I supposed to go to school if I can't live at home?
You'll find a way, I tell him, surprised at how calm I sound, how powerful I feel. Honestly, you're a strong and healthy young man, you're extremely bright, creative and clever. You have so many resources available to you. Dad and I love you so very much and I used to be so worried for you, but I'm not any more. I'm actually more worried about Dad and me. Look at us. Look at him. We're exhausted. We can't do this any more. We need some time just to live. And I think you need to go out into the world and find your way. Really, I think you'll do fine.
He stares at me and I try to work out why this moment feels different from all the other moments. And then I know. It's the first time I've managed to ask him to leave without crying.
But a few nights (or is it weeks?) after that, I come across (or do I seek it out?) his little yellow cotton shirt, the one I decided to keep for ever because he'd worn it on that special night of tiramisu, the night that seems to be from some other mother's lifetime but was actually only six short years ago - in a drawer downstairs. And I sob.
I sob until my head hurts and my clothes are wet. I sob until I can hardly breathe. I sob so hard that the dog backs away, alarmed. And then I fold the shirt carefully and put it back in the drawer, wash my face, put on a clean T-shirt and go and make supper for my other children.
When Daddy collects us for the weekend, one of the rules is he won't come into our house. He won't even walk up our drive. In fact he can't even look at the house, so he draws up a little way down the road and so, from about ten minutes before he's due, we have to be standing there, waiting at the window, looking out for him.
What would happen If we didn't see him, or If we forgot to look? Sometimes I think he would just light another cigarette and drive away, thinking, Oh well, that's that then.
One time we're all waiting there on a Friday night with our bags and there's a phone call- he always gets someone else to phone - to say he's not coming, he can't come, he has too much work on this weekend. The relief as I unpack my bag, putting my pyjamas back under my pillow, is massive, joyous, a feeling of holiday.
Another time, we're at his house and it's Saturday night and suddenly he looks angry and says we should pack up our things, he's taking us home.
I blush very hard even though I've done nothing wrong, and I go and pack. My sisters pack. We don't say anything, we just pack. And we have the hamster with us that weekend, so we pack him up too, put him in the hall by our bags, where, because it's quite dark in the hall, he starts going round and round on his wheel, oblivious to our father's mood.
Our father says it was actually the hamster that made him suspicious. He suspects our mother's gone away, gone off on some kind of a holiday, a dirty weekend. He doesn't see why, after all she's put him through, he should provide childcare. So he's going to call her bluff, send us home.
We wait as he picks up the phone and lets our home number ring and ring. He wants to see if she's there. Ring, ring, we can hear it ringing. What if she's out, what if she's gone to the cinema or something? And if she has gone away, what then? Will he make us go back and stay in an empty house?
We wait in the hall, watching his face. My heart bangs in my chest.
In the end, she picks up. I hear her voice. Straight away he puts the phone down, flinching at the sound, and for a moment no one says anything, standing there in that dark hall. Just the creak, creak, creak of our hamster's wheel.
I go to the Principal Families Division at Holborn and, starting with your grandfather Samuel Tyssen's will, I look up Tyssen after Tyssen - a century and a half of Tyssens - until finally, an hour later, I find a Michael John Tyssen of East Sussex who died in April 1990. Michael John. A direct descendant of yours.
His will tells me he left everything to his wife Frances Joan. And she died ten years after him, with probate granted to Mary Elizabeth Sanders-Hewett, nee Tyssen. Their daughter. A female Tyssen. An address is given.
Back at home, I ring Directory Enquiries and am immediately given a phone number. I dial it and, getting an answer phone, leave a brief message explaining about my book, and asking if this Mary Sanders-Hewett might possibly be related to the Tyssens who married into the Yelloly family.
Only an hour or so later, I find a message on my answerphone from a friend of Mrs Sanders-Hewett, who says she's house-sitting for her while they're away in New Zealand.
They're back in a couple of weeks, she says, and she'll be absolutely delighted to talk to you, I think. She'll find this very interesting indeed. What I mean is (a little laugh), that's right, you've got the right family.
This time - almost a year to the day since the first time we asked him to leave - we don't change the locks. This time we want to do it nicely. We tell him he has two weeks to find other accommodation, to make arrangements. We will lend him the deposit, the first month's rent. And we add that we'll even extend the time If he needs us to - we don't want to put him on the streets. But in return, he must not steal from us, threaten us, or intimidate us. We insist that he behaves sociably in the house.
He tells us we are insane. That we always have been. He threatens to carry out some damage to our property or to us. When we ask him not to threaten us, he tells us he means it.
I'll take a knife and stab you through the heart, he mutters at me during one conversation and for a moment I'm confused. I know he doesn't mean it. But if! heard someone say that to someone else, I al
so know I'd take it very seriously.
His father does take it seriously.
In that case, he says, forget it. Forget everything we've offered. Just leave. I mean it. Just go right now.
So he goes.
But not straight away. First he goes downstairs to the basement and plugs in his amp and plays the guitar loud enough to make our teeth hurt. And when his father turns off the electricity at the mains, and silence throbs through the house, he swears and kicks at a couple of doors, before he goes.
But he does. He goes. We are both surprised to get off so lightly. We ask him to please leave his key and he does. Just like that. I can't decide if this is less or more painful than the day we sat on the stairs and watched the locksmith slide a new slab of metal into the front door.
His father puts an arm around me, pulls me to him, gives me a hug. I'm too empty to cry.
I can't bear his threats. But as soon as he's defeated, I can't bear that either.
I go over and watch through the window as he disappears down the street. His brown jacket. One canvas bag. That slightly lopsided walk I know so well. But I don't make myself watch him turn the final corner. Before he goes out of sight, I move away.
I'm tired of punishing myself I'm really bored of it.
So is his cat. Straight away, like a wife who has got used to being dumped, then taken back then dumped again, she goes back to sleeping on our bed.
Mary Sanders-Hewett is back from New Zealand and apologises for having taken so long to ring me. She explains that her daughter just ran in the London Marathon and the Docklands Light Railway broke down and it was a nightmare because it was so humid and when they got back they were all just so shattered and, anyway -
But this is all very exciting! I don't know if you realise that I'm the very last Tyssen?
Seriously?
Mary Tyssen was my maiden name. It's a bit sad, isn't it? None of us were male, so that was that. But we called our eldest son Sam, and one of our boys has Tyssen as a middle name, poor thing!
I tell her I'm in touch with the Yellolys, and julia is actually the last Yelloly too.
How incredible, she says. All these different branches of the same family who know nothing about each other.
She tells me she has a portrait of Samuel Tyssen.
A huge oil painting. It's on the upstairs landing - outside my daughter's room. She's always hated it. She says the eyes follow her! Oh, and there's something else. I've got a wonderful two-volume book about the Tyssens and Yellolys called A Forgotten Past.
For a moment I'm thrown.
Two volumes? But - you mean by Florence Suckling?
That's the one.
But - well, that's very funny because I've got a copy of that too, but it's only the one volume.
Oh well, mine is definitely two volumes. They've been in my family for ever. They're bound in red leather and, well, fascinating, but kind of slightly cobbled together.
How do you mean, cobbled together? I ask her, allowing myself the faintest flicker of excitement.
Oh well, you see there are lots of different typefaces and even some handwritten bits. Photos stuck in too.
Photos?
Oh yes. Black-and-white, of course. Quite a few of them.
Of people?
A few of people, yes, but also, as far as I can remember, of various family treasures, bits and pieces, jewellery and so on.
Relics.
But, I say, as my heart speeds up, so you mean yours isn't printed? You're saying it's not like mine, which is a published book?
Um - no, not really. It's more like a scrapbook kind of thing.
I tell her it sounds like the original manuscript of Florence Suckling's book.
It might be. It's hard to describe - you'll just have to come here and have a look at it, won't you?
Our boy has nowhere to go, so he moves m with his grandmother for a bit. His grandmother who lives alone in a modem block on the river at Vauxhall, and who has always loved him, ever since the day she first held him on her shoulder and walked him up and down her cream-carpeted corridor while he screamed and screamed.
Her first grandchild. She was widowed for a few years, and had nursed her husband through a long final illness. When our boy was born, she suddenly got younger. I had always liked my shy, elegant Australian mother-in-law. But the practical, loving, unconditional help she offered me with all my babies sealed our friendship and made me love her.
And even though there are six grandchildren now, our boy is still the first. She seems to let him walk all over her in a way she lets no one else. And he in return seems to tolerate her endless fussing with a patience he shows no one else except (sometimes) his cat.
At three years old, he satin his navy-striped dungarees at the little red plastic table she bought specially from the Early Learning Centre and crayoned pictures which she stuck to her fridge. At ten or eleven, he weeded her flowerbeds. At fourteen he showed her (again and again, with extreme patience) how to use a computer. At fifteen he programmed her video recorder.
But now he's aimless and angry and she's tired. Too used to living alone, more and more inflexible by the day, she frets about doors opening and closing, mess, the sound of the TV, anything in fact. And he does nothing but open and close doors, turn on the TV and make noise and mess. They love each other, but they're hardly well suited. She warns us that it can only be a temporary arrangement. She doesn't think she can have him and all his stuff there for all that long.
Her son tells her she shouldn't be having him there at all.
You're padding his comers - making it so he doesn't have to face up to the reality of who he is, what he's done - don't you see that? He has to be forced to face up to reality.
Oh well, it's all very well for you to say that. But what do you expect me to do? Send him away? Please don't ask me to put him out on the streets.
It's his own choice. He has a perfectly good home with us but he chooses not to live in it like a decent human being.
Oh well, all that's between you and him. All I said was I'd have him here for a short while, until he finds somewhere to stay.
All right, but make sure you hide your purse. You're not still keeping your pension in that absurd place in the kitchen, are you?
Don't worry, I won't do that.
And don't leave valuable jewellery lying around.
Oh, he wouldn't take my jewellery.
Mummy, he's a drug addict. He wants cash. He'll take anything and justify it later. I don't know how to make you wake up to this.
Oh goodness, there's nothing wrong with that boy. You're so intolerant. You're always shouting at him, that's the real problem. He's told me so.
A pause. A deep breath.
All right, forget that. Just tell me this: is he going to school?
Ooh, yes. He went yesterday. He hasn't gone in today though because he's got quite a sore throat. But I phoned the school and told them, so that's all right.
But you mean to say he's been in every day except today?
Not quite every day.
How many days has he been in?
I'm losing track a bit but I do know he's been in at least once this week.
But, Mummy, it's Friday!
I know that our boy needs to bottom out now. I know he needs to be thrown out of school, to run out of money, to be cold and hungry, to be forced perhaps to live rough and may be be in some kind of physical danger, in order to make him understand for once and for all that he has a serious problem with cannabis and we can only help him if he acknowledges this and agrees to accept that help.
But I am just so relieved that, for the moment at least, he's sleeping on Granny's sofa bed.
His father and I lie in bed, him reading a novel, me flicking through an old Sunday magazine, looking at clothes I don't want to buy and food I will never find the energy to eat, let alone prepare.
I wasn't going to tell you this, he says, but I bumped into Janice the other day. She told me
that Charlie has just got a place at Oxford.
To do what?
English, I think she said.
I lower my paper. Charlie's a year older than our boy, but, back when they were babies, they were friends for a while, pushed together by the parents but well matched all the same.
Both obsessed with Thunderbirds, both naughty, bright, sweet, advanced for their age.
And she told me about some of the others, too. Remember Danny? Sarah's boy? He's doing VSO and going to Manchester next year. And his sister's already in her first year reading Russian somewhere.
I think about this. All of these kids, all of our babies, our toddlers. One summer we all went away together, rented a house. And back then all our problems were exactly the same: how to get them off to sleep, how to relax about the pond at the bottom of the garden, how many cartoons to let them watch on a Saturday morning.
That's great, I tell him, and then after a pause: What do you mean you weren't going to tell me?
He stares ahead and sighs.
I don't know. Just - I suppose I thought it might be hard to hear.
I think about this.
It is hard to hear, but that doesn't mean I don't want to hear it.
He sighs again.
OK. Good.
He takes up his book.
The church clock strikes eleven. I put the paper down, sort out my pillows, turn off my light. His father continues to read. As the last strike of the clock sounds, the room slides back into silence.
I miss him so much, I say after a moment or two, even though I know this is absolutely the wrong time of night to start something like this.
His father says nothing.
I wish I could talk to him right now.
I shut my eyes, open them again. Still his father says nothing. But what exactly do I want him to say? OK, ring him then. Or, I wish I could too?
I'm just so - oh I'm missing him, I say again, feeling a tear sting my nose.
His father puts his finger in the book, turns to me.
The Lost Child Page 18