Escape From Evil - Cathy Wilson [54]
I’m amazed we ever got through it, but we did. You can only stay angry for so long. I just needed to let off steam, shed the tears I’d bottled up for too long. It wasn’t Granny and Grandpa’s fault, I knew that. Nothing was. They were victims, just like me. No, I realized with great sourness, there is only one person who deserves the blame for this. Mum.
TEN
I Was a Handful
It wasn’t just losing their daughter that tested Reg and Daphne Beavis. As far as Granny and Grandpa were concerned, they’d raised their family, watched them grow up and moved on to plot their retirements together. Now here they were, saddled with an eight-year-old at their time of life. On top of that, Grandpa had been forced to take early retirement to get the money to try to save his daughter. He’d bought the flat, done as much as he could. And now Jenny was gone – and so was his job. In the end, he took a part-time job in advertising. Anything to get out of the house.
In hindsight, it can’t have been easy for either of them. Being grandparents is one thing – and I’d always loved staying with them at weekends or random week nights, either with Mum or alone – but taking on a parental role is something else entirely. That’s when rules come in. And I was not a child used to rules.
Time had little meaning when I was living with Mum. In this new, scary world, I discovered that everything ran by the clock. There was a time for breakfast, a time for lunch, a time for evening meals. There was a time for school, a time for playing, a time for church, for Brownies, for cleaning my teeth. There was even a time for bed. That was the hardest one of all. After a lifetime of falling asleep, eating and playing when I felt like it, fitting into this regimented structure was difficult.
I wasn’t the only one who lived by the clock. My grandparents did too. After Grandpa’s military background, it was probably the only way he knew.
For example, Saturdays began with homework, if I had any, before I was allowed out to play with friends in the woodland or park at the back of the house. There was a pitch and putt course, which was always fun, especially if you could get on without paying, and there were tennis courts where I would later practise when I was part of the school doubles team. Sundays were even more rigid: after church it was my job to clean all the brass in the house, while Grandpa chopped the vegetables and Granny prepared the weekly roast. Afterwards Grandpa always washed up, while Granny and I retired to the lounge to play cards, with some classic Sunday afternoon Bing Crosby or Omar Sharif film playing in the background. Grandpa never played, but he would come in and do the Telegraph crossword until he fell asleep. Then, at 4.30 on the dot, it was time for high tea – and scones! Then the radio would come on for the evening or we’d listen to the Carpenters on Granny’s old eight-track player. It was a lovely, calm atmosphere and I really appreciated all the effort my grandparents were making.
If only things weren’t quite so regimented . . .
I wasn’t a wild child, exactly, but I was used to my independence. I’d always come and gone as I pleased, just as Mum had done. I could wire a plug, peel vegetables, light fires. I could lay kitchen floors, for Christ’s sake. In effect, I’d been living as an adult for as long as I could remember. All that came to a screeching halt at Tremola Avenue and, I admit, it was hard to go from a lifetime of semi self-governance to a world where Granny insisted on brushing my hair, I wasn’t allowed out in the dark and touching sharp knives was forbidden because they were too dangerous for someone my age.
My grandparents were only trying to give me back some semblance of a childhood, but I couldn’t see that. All I could see was that they were imposing rule after rule after rule and taking away the one thing I’d always had: my freedom.
Initially it was a rough ride. I was a handful and I thought their curfews