The first sketchbook, the smallest, is done for your sister Harriet - a batch of pictures signed by Sophy and Sarah. A man called Harris stands stiffiy, holding a pitchfork and wearing grey breeches, cobalt stockings and a tall hat. The date is 9 July 1839 - you were no longer alive by then. Harris. Could he have been employed by your father? I know I've come across that name already in the past few months.
Another sketch shows old Mrs Smith in her dark bonnet with a pink ribbon, pink shawl, blue shoes, holding a basket. Another servant? And then the Kingswood vegetable woman in her brightly patterned clothes and Miss Atkins, who makes more than one appearance.
An interior of a lace maker's room shows a small girl gazing intently up at an elderly woman. The careful detail in this picture - the criss-cross leaded windowpanes, the pair of candlesticks on the mantelpiece, the warming pan on the wall - take me straight back to a scene in your album - the same people, the same room. The same potted geranium on the sill.
Two figures on a little filigree card are inscribed to Harriet Jan 18th 1845 from her affectionate mother. Another, For Sam, shows the back view of a young woman in a red cape and blue dress with a dark bonnet.
Finally, there's a picture of a pretty, blown-about young woman in a big green check coat and dark bonnet with white ruffles around the face. The scarf at her neck is daffodil yellow and her brown dress seems to be covered with a white apron or pinafore. Behind her, the sea is a watery pale blue. The picture's labelled Harriet at Hastings - by her mother. Harriet has dark hair and rosy cheeks, a sharp, thoughtful face. Your sister.
The last sketchbook is the most interesting. A bigger brown book with dull red comers, quite different in style and tone to any of your family's work I've seen so far. This is Jane's book. Your sister Jane Davison Yelloly who died of smallpox at the age of thirty. One day before you. Buried with you.
These paintings are far more abstract and careless and wild than anything you or your other sisters or mother ever did. They seem to indicate what I've somehow sensed all along: that Jane was different from the rest of you. Less placid, less pretty, more difficult to deal with, cleverer, perhaps.
Many pictures are copied from an artist called J.J. Burns Esq. And there are some competently executed waterfalls after Turner. But the best are recognisably straight from real Yelloly life.
The curious effect of snow seen at Carrow Abbey Nov I6th 1831 - is a startling scene of white ground against cold and heavy grey skies. In the foreground a large tree with a few coppery leaves still clinging to its dark branches. Could it be the weeping beech that Jeremy Howard showed me?
Effect at sunset March 15th 1833 as seen from the window at Woodton Hall, drawn March 16th 1833 from: recollection shows a hot pink-jelly sun sliding behind the barest black trunks of winter trees. And next to it, someone - your mother? - has written Excellent! in pencil.
Yes, I think, it is.
Finally, Twilight with Venus the evening star seen from Woodton Hall March 1833 shows that small moment between dusk and darkness when only the upper part of the sky is still washed with light. You're out walking through fields towards home and it's still just about light. But as soon as you get indoors and light the lamps, the windowpanes are black with night.
And Bedingham and Woodton Halfway Oak after its fall July 10th 1837. An enormous tree lies on the ground by the hedge, a small wooden gate inviting us forward on the right. What happened? Was there a storm and did the tree fall and did you girls all rush out to sketch it? Did you go too? Standing there gazing solemnly on a dark yellow morning, the light sour and calm after the storm of the night before.
And then July 1837. A date it's impossible to ignore. Jane the painter - alert and energetic, physically robust, generous and intense with her brush - didn't know she had less than a year to live.
I look up. The young man has left his desk.
Outside, the Connecticut sun is baking the drunks in the park, but here in the library I suddenly feel myself right back where I started: driving into Woodton on that bleak, cold February day as the light died.
Our boy remains homeless, sleeping on people's sofas and floors, sometimes arriving at his granny's in the middle of the night and causing her to ring us the next morning in tears.
It's not that I don't want him here, it's just that, when I wake him in the morning, he doesn't even try to get up.
The weeks roll by. We have sporadic contact with him. Or at least, I call him and sometimes he answers and sometimes he doesn't. Then he calls round and asks to speak to us. He tells us he wants to get a flat. He's looked into it and he's eligible for Educational Maintenance Allowance because he's still at school, and Housing Benefit as well If he can just get someone to let him rent a flat. But he can't rent a flat without a deposit and a guarantor. Would we be prepared to lend him a deposit and guarantee him?
Would we?
His father actually seems to be thinking about it. I'm surprised.
How will he ever face up to his problems, I say, if we go and underwrite him in a nice cushy flat?
It's difficult, his father says, frowning as he attempts to sort out his thoughts. But if, as he says, he doesn't in fact have a problem with drugs - if there's even the tiniest chance that this is true - then we should probably try this.
But he does have a problem with drugs, I say. We know he does.
His father sighs. I understand the sigh: we both continually move back and forwards between the absolute sinking certainty that our son is addicted and a faint, glimmering hope that he may be is not.
I know, I know. But all the same, I just wonder - should we at least give him one chance to show us he can live normally?
So we can at least say we did?
Exactly. Though of course if, as we still suspect, he's smoking all the time, well then, it's absolutely the wrong thing to do.
It'll just delay his recovery.
Meanwhile the boy - who assumes he'll talk us into it in the end - gets on with hunting for a flat. He puts a lot of energy into this - so much energy that he barely goes to school for two weeks. When I confront him about this, he tells me it's OK. The teachers are sympathetic to his problem.
How the fuck am I meant to concentrate on schoolwork when I have nowhere to live?
And if you got this flat, you'd start working?
He looks at me as if I'm quite mad.
Of course I would! You think I don't want to get some fucking A levels?
We're still hesitating about helping him, still weighing up the pros and cons - still trying to balance our love and concern and the strong impulse to put a roof over his head against the tougher course of action which we suspect is the more responsible one - when the mother of one of his friends, one of the boys he's known since primary school, rings me.
We used to be sort of friends too, this mother and I. We often chatted while we waited to pick the boys up from one activity or other. Our boys both struggled, briefly, with learning to read (and we supported each other) and then, to our relief, they both took off, excelling at English. They did drama classes after school together, cricket practice on a Sunday. We shared lifts.
As they got older, the boys drifted apart and so did we. But I continued to run into her at parents' evenings and she was always friendly. Now our sons seem to be seeing each other again - her own boy is working hard at school, possibly planning a gap year in the US before university.
It's been years since she's had reason to ring me. I can hear the nerves in her voice as she apologises for cold-calling like this but, well, it's been keeping her awake at night. She has to ask: why are we allowing our boy to be homeless like this?
You're going to think I'm such an interfering old cow, she says.
I tell her nonsense, of course I don't. Then I take a breath and try to explain that we're struggling with the concept of tough love - so neat in theory, so hard to carry out in practice - but we have a feeling that for him, now, it's the only way. I hesitate for a moment as I consider te
lling her more about the ways in which our lives have unravelled over the past year. But I don't really know her any more and it doesn't feel right, so I decide not.
I hear her draw breath.
But he can't carry on living like this! she says, her voice a little tighter now as she senses that I'm not going to give way. You're his mother, Julie, for goodness' sake - I mean, we used to be friends and I know you care about him, but don't you want him to have a roof over his head?
Of course I do, I say.
He's told Luke he wants to get a flat share but that you're refusing to support him. Wouldn't you rather he was living in a flat than sleeping on people's floors?
I try to breathe, even though my heart is thumping in my chest. Why is it so stressful to have another mother, even a mother you used to like, tell you how to care for your child?
I want him to have a roof over his head, I say again. And I don't want him to live like this. In fact, I can hardly bear it. I love him so much -
Well, I have to say you have a strange way of showing it!
But no, since you ask, I don't think he should be living in a flat. He's still at school- in theory anyway, though he's barely attending. His father and I think he should be living at home.
I hear her thinking about this.
All right, but he doesn't get on with you, does he? Luke says you're always fighting. That's not exactly his fault. OK, I'm not saying it's easy. I'm sure he's not easy. But some teenagers go through rough patches. And I don't want to get into the rights and wrongs as it's none of my business, but don't you think, however he's behaved, he deserves at least one chance to live properly?
I take a breath.
I would give anything to have him live properly, I tell her, wishing my voice would stop trembling, but he's addicted to cannabis. I don't suppose he's told Luke that. We seriously believe he has a problem with the drug. He can't stop smoking. He can barely go a day without a joint. And he's chaotic. He's not in control of what he does. We don't believe he'd keep up the rent on a flat, because any money he gets just goes on drugs.
Drugs! the woman scoffs. Oh come on. It's perfectly normal at their age to smoke a bit of dope. Luke had some friends round just the other night -
It's not a bit of dope, I say again, feeling my anger rising. It's skunk. For two or three years, he's been smoking skunk. Do you know about skunk? It's nothing like the stuff we all smoked at university.
Now she wavers.
Of course I know about skunk. But I'm sure that's not what they're smoking. Luke says they'd never buy it.
How does he know what he's buying? I mutter.
She ignores me.
Anyway, even if he smokes a bit too often, what on earth makes you think he's addicted?
Because his personality has changed completely. You remember what he was like at seven or eight? That bright, happy boy-
But all teenagers -
Because every aspect of his daily life has ground to a halt. Because he hardly goes to school -
But what do you expect when he hasn't got anywhere to live?
He wasn't going to school when he was living here. Day after day he refused to go, or went back to bed even after we begged him to get in the car, I tell her quietly and for a moment this stops her.
Look, please, I say. Forget whether he's an addict or not. May be addict is a difficult word. All I know is he needs to stop smoking cannabis and we just can't help him till he does.
I'm finding this really upsetting, she says. I lay awake last night wondering what I could do and I only rang to offer support but it sounds like you just don't want things to improve for him. I just can't understand where you're coming from. Whatever you think he mayor may not have done, he's still your son.
I'm sorry I can't tell you the things you want to hear, I say, but she's not there any more. She's hung up on me.
I discover I am shaking. He's still your son.
I look at the boy's father, who is staring out of the window with a bleak face, one hand on the radiator, the other on his cheek.
Why does it feel so traumatic to have someone accuse you of not loving your child enough? I ask him.
He says nothing.
I do actually think she means well, I tell him as brightly as I can. I mean, I wanted to kill her, but I do actually think she genuinely believes she's acting for the best, doing the right thing.
She doesn't mean well at all. She's an enabler, he says, real fury in his voice. She may not know that's what she is, but she is. At best she's ignorant and utterly misguided, utterly wrong. If she's letting her own kids smoke skunk, then she's just giving up on them.
Not everyone who smokes gets addicted, I remind him, wondering at the same time why I'm bothering to defend someone who has just accused me of not caring about my child.
I sit down on the bedroom floor, my arms on my knees. We are both silent for a while. Kitty comes in, her tail held tall. She pushes against me but I don't stroke her. Then I relent and I do.
But - so - what do you think? Should we try and do this? I ask him.
I don't know. What do you think?
What do you think?
He sighs a very long sigh.
We do. We do it. We do it because we can't bear the alternative, which is not to have done it. But that doesn't mean we have any faith it will work.
But we don't do it without some conditions. Conditions which, quite surprisingly, the boy agrees to.
We'll lend him the deposit and act as guarantors on a flat. But in exchange he has to attend a Narcotics Anonymous meeting every Friday - the same young people's one that I told him about months ago, the details of which (though I don't know it then) are still scrunched in his jacket pocket.
On top of this, he has to do a weekly drugs test for us. If he fails to be clean, then it's all over (though actually, of course, it's not, because we're stuck with the flat for six months either way and he knows it). But If he stays clean, then great - we'll happily renew on the flat after six months.
The boy seems very happy. In some ways almost his old self - reliable and chirpy and calm. He seems to think what we hoped he'd think - that staying clean is a small price to pay in exchange for having somewhere to live.
I've been wanting to cut down anyway, he tells me brightly. It won't be hard. I often don't smoke for two or three days at a time, you know.
Two or three days isn't very long, I point out - with a faint sense of deja vu because haven't we debated this exact point before? But even so I allow myself to feel a quick, sweet rush of hope.
May be he isn't addicted after all, his father says. may be he can just stop once he has a reason to.
We both agree: we'd give absolutely anything to have his friend's mother proved right.
A few days later, the boy tells us he's found the perfect flat, and someone to share it with - a nineteen-year-old boy with a mop of ginger hair who we've met a couple of times when they've turned up on our doorstep together.
Isn't he the one who always looks a bit stoned? his father asks, attempting to sound more humorous than anxious.
The boy looks shocked and says this is nonsense. Ginger has never touched drugs in his life.
Sitting in a cafe and working out the finer details of the rental deal with us, Ginger confirms this.
Yeah, I'm allergic. I've tried smoking weed but I can't really do any of that stuff It really so totally freaks me out.
He blinks and offers to pay for his tea.
Oh no, don't worry, I say. This is on us.
For a while, everything feels good. We see quite a bit of the boy as we help him move stuff into his flat and some days we almost begin to feel like his parents again. I offer him sheets, pillows, towels.
Don't give him any of the good stuff, his father begins to say, then checks himself .
And that's it - that's as close as he gets to saying he doesn't have faith. Because we both feel it, even though we don't dare mention or discuss it: an incredible, swoopi
ng sense of hope.
The first urine test is clean and the boy goes to the meeting. He tells us later that it's ridiculous, that he has nothing whatsoever in common with the fucked-up junkies in there. But, I remind his father, at least he went, and at least he stayed.
The second urine test he's very late for, but at least it's clean, although by the time he's done it there's no time left to go into the meeting. His father, who has driven through a Friday-night rush hour to meet him there, comes home feeling cheated.
OK, but he's always been a bit unreliable, I point out. A terrible time-keeper, even in the old days. It doesn't necessarily mean anything.
Yes, but he has a deal with us. It's part of the deal.
OK, but isn't it just so great that the tests are clean?
The third urine test he doesn't show up for at all. When he doesn't call us and his mobile is switched off, I start to worry.
Oh dear, this is bad, I do hope he's OK, I tell his father, who just smiles a grim little smile.
An hour later he rings to say he's at a police station because he was picked up for trying to help himselfto some bed sheets in a shop.
You mean shoplifting?
He laughs.
Well, if you insist on putting it like that. But it's OK, the guy doesn't want to press charges.
But - I gave you sheets !
One lousy sheet?
Don't give him the good stuff.
Oh come on, Mum, you know I do these things. I've never tried to hide it from you. You know what my life is like.
By now our boy has been in his flat three weeks. By the fourth week, there have been so many complaints from neighbours about noise, disruptive behaviour and fighting in the street outside - Fighting in the street?! Oh, just a little disagreement that broke out between me and Ginger - that both Lambeth Council and the police are involved. The primary school whose playground the house happens to back on to also alleges that Ginger appeared naked at the kitchen window one lunchtime and fired a water pistol at the kids. We're speechless.
The Lost Child Page 20