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By Root 1361 0

a sort of dry place. What it gave me most strongly was a determination that my home, when I had one, would be the exact opposite. My dad used to look at me like I was a stranger, over the top of his newspaper. He clearly could not understand how a child with spirit and an easy laugh and that perpetual smile—the one that made people think I was simple—could have resulted from a union between him and my mother. They were both lean and spare, too, and I was curvy from the start. I was pink where they were grayish. My curly auburn hair apparently sprang from nowhere, too, although my dad was largely bald by the time I was born. They were both older than all my friends’ parents. In years, and in outlook.

They’d both lost their intendeds in the war. Mum’s childhood sweetheart was an auxiliary watch keeper in the Royal Navy and had been killed when the Germans sank the HMS Hood in the Denmark Strait in 1941. Dad’s fiancée was dead already by then—killed in September 1940, in the early days of the Blitz. Her family had evacuated to relatives in Hove when war broke out the previous September, but, like many others, had come back when the threatened bombings hadn’t materialized. Twenty people died, including her entire family, during a nighttime raid. I only found out about them—Arthur and Margaret, they were called—by snooping and questioning. Dad didn’t have a picture of Margaret, but there was one of my mum and Arthur taken just before he left, proud and formal in his uniform. I found it once, in the back of a book; it had a tear in it, and bent corners. But she’d kept it.

If it sounds romantic, the two of them finding each other after all that heartache, I’m not sure it was. Maybe Arthur and Margaret had really been the loves of their lives, and anything else that they fell into afterward was destined to disappoint. I don’t even really believe that. I’m not sure either of them had a great capacity for love, that was all. It’s funny—mine feels bottomless.

I never saw them kiss, and I never saw either of them naked. We had a lot of closed doors in our house. It sometimes felt like the three of us were living separate lives in the same space. We didn’t talk about things. Not really. I remember my mum trying to talk to me about sex, the night before I married Donald. It was obvious she found it excruciating. It was also, by the way, completely unnecessary. I may not have “done it” but I bet I knew more about it than she did! She said it was messy. She said I would need towels.

(Do you remember when I told you, Lisa and Jennifer? I had all my props. A book, a box of Tampax, a pack of condoms. A carefully rehearsed speech. It was all going very well until Lisa asked me if I had to stand on my head for daddy to get his willy in, and Jennifer ran screaming from the room. Probably not a much better job than Mum did, but I think I caught you both before you knew enough to think I was an idiot! At least I better have done….)

Anyway, I think Mum must have been the original lie-back-and-think-of-England girl. With towels. Maybe I’ve been doing it all wrong all these years, but I still haven’t done anything that needed towels to clear it up….

I like to think that maybe she made me a better mother. By showing me how I didn’t want to do it. It’s a cliché, I know. I never closed a door in our house. (Okay, except the bedroom…but that’s a bit different.) I never wanted you to stop talking to me. I wanted us to laugh and play and have fun. And we did, didn’t we, girls? We did. I hope you remember it like I do. The sun is putting me to sleep. It’s lovely here. Simple pleasures have become so much more significant. Having this illness makes everything in the world look and feel different. I don’t think Mark will be back for another hour or so…so I’m going to act like an old lady, and take a nap…sad, hey?!

Love you, girls.

Mum

Lisa

Lisa tried to avoid coming face-to-face with Karen, but this week it couldn’t be helped. Andy was working late on something that needed finishing, and she was home, so it was she who opened the door to Cee Cee