From Something Old Read online

  In 2014 Ant surprised me by announcing he’d bought a bigger house – a five-bedroom red-brick monster in nearby Chislet – and as soon as we had a spare bed installed, Marge’s visits resumed. She was still in perfect health – thriving, as I saw it, on negativity – and was more than able to drive out to us for visits. Her character hadn’t improved with age, either, and if anything, she’d become even more obnoxious.

  My relationship with my sister had become so complicated by then that we only ever spoke on the phone. As for Sheena, even phone conversations had become challenging to the point where I’d pretend to miss her calls. The problem in both cases was the same: my own inconsistency. Due to my litany of complaints about Ant’s behaviour, they’d individually come to realise that he wasn’t the nicest person. But as they’d ceased, one after the other, telling me to stop whingeing and begun, instead, to encourage me to leave him, I’d found myself rather perversely defending him. A point had been reached where no matter how Kerry or Sheena reacted to whatever I’d just told them about Ant, good or bad, I’d find myself telling them they were wrong.

  So yes, it was entirely a function of my own neurotic attitude that I’d ended up so alone. All the same, within that context, Marge’s renewed presence in my life felt quite overwhelming.

  The moving process had been horrendous, but worst of all, Dandy had gone missing on only our second day in the new house. I’d spent my evenings for the first two weeks wandering around the gardens and fields calling for him, but to no avail. Though neither Ant nor the girls seemed devastated about his disappearance, coming home to an empty house had really made me feel quite desolate.

  Kerry had moved to Rome and my other friends had drifted away. Actually, by then, I no longer even thought of them as friends. Ant had been working on me for years, relentlessly encouraging me to spot their faults – and Lord knows, we all have plenty of those – while subtly suggesting that I’d overestimated their qualities. So without really noticing that it was an ongoing process, I’d ceased, one by one, to pursue them, and they’d all but vanished from my life.

  Of course, I made acquaintances. There were women I came to know well enough to chat to at the school gates, and there were even some who’d pop round for a cup of tea, though it honestly didn’t happen that often. But the conversation was always superficial and invariably child-centric, and I came to believe that this suited me. Actually, I’d go further and say I came to believe that, what with human nature being so disappointing and all, ‘real’ friendships only led to pain and disillusionment. I thought that I was in control. I really believed that it was I who had decided to keep all that dangerous intimacy at bay.

  What kept me going was the joyful existence of my daughters. Lucy and Sarah were clever, funny, and (most of the time) great fun to be with. In a nutshell, I loved them to bits.

  Anthony wasn’t the world’s worst father to them, either. I suppose, looking back, I’d have to say that he used them to feel good about himself, and that perhaps isn’t the healthiest of ways for a father to behave. But I honestly don’t think that they were harmed by it.

  ‘Who’s the best daddy in the world?’ he would ask them as he swung them around the garden by their arms.

  ‘You are!’ they’d cry, their Pavlovian brainwashing complete.

  ‘And who loves you most in the whole wide world?’

  ‘You do!’ they’d shout, grinning from ear to ear.

  If you’re going to manipulate your kids in order to massage your own ego, I suppose there are worse ways to do it.

  Anthony met all our other needs, too, whether physical or financial. He was a good DIY buff around the house and a patient Lego builder with the girls. His business had done well, and though I never knew how much he earned, I could tell we weren’t short of a bob or two. I had a gold credit card that his bank account paid off every month – encouraged by Ant, I’d closed my own some years earlier – and this I used to buy pretty much anything we needed. As long as the stuff we ordered matched Ant’s tastes – dresses and heels for me (no trousers or flats), and trousers or long dresses for the girls (other than school uniform, no skirts) – he pretty much gave me free rein. The fridge was stacked, the house was warm and comfortable, and Lucy and Sarah were thriving.

  There were frustrations, too; of course there were.

  Being unable to drive, I was isolated living out in Chislet and sometimes I felt lonely. But the only time I ever suggested taking fresh lessons, Ant’s response – a burst of authentic laughter – convinced me more than words ever could what a silly idea that was.

  On sunny days I’d take long walks around the edges of the furrowed fields – always half hoping to spot Dandy – and sometimes I’d even push as far as Herne Bay, where, at the sight of the sea, I could feel almost happy. On rainy ones I’d sit beside the range, losing myself in fictional worlds. Whether it was discovering a sunnier existence than my own, or reminding myself that there were far worse ones, reading invariably made me feel better.

  Occasionally, none of this was enough. I’d set out on my walk and be overcome by a terrible desire to just keep on walking, to never turn back. I’d think of my mother and the dream. Go with the . . . what?! I’d wonder angrily. Maybe it had been your. Go with your desire? How far would I get before I collapsed? I wondered. How far can a person walk? Of course, I could walk to Herne Bay and get a train – silly me. Go with the train? Could her message have been that simple? But how far could I travel before the credit card got stopped? And would that be far enough to escape Anthony for ever?

  And then the sun would dip behind a copse of trees and I’d remember it was time to pick the girls up pretty soon. I’d imagine them asking Ant where Mummy had gone or, if I took them with me, why we were poor now and living in a council flat with a pay-as-you-go meter.

  And would they even choose me? If push came to shove, I seriously suspected they would not, that they’d choose, instead, the ‘best dad in the whole wide world’, the one who ‘loved them the most’, and the one with the six-figure income to pay for their every whim.

  Our home life continued to grow more and more comfortable. A conservatory appeared at the rear of the house, so I’d sit and read in the warm afternoon sun. A new kitchen was fitted one summer, and our refrigerator was swapped for one that dispensed ice cubes. A kitchen robot whizzed and whirred and made unspectacular but lazy soup. Things kept getting more luxurious and I’d be lying if I said that sense of ease wasn’t seductive.

  In fact, the only aspect of our lives that didn’t follow this upwardly mobile trajectory was the type of holiday we booked.

  Anthony simply wouldn’t consider travelling overseas, you see. He had a deeply ingrained distrust of foreigners, based on a selective view of history that included, for instance, the French collaborating with the Germans, but excluded the Resistance; that included the Blitz, but excluded Queen Victoria’s German mother. Foreigners were by nature incomprehensible but, more importantly, they were untrustworthy.

  Our holidays, therefore, took place in Cornwall, Devon or Scotland. If I’m being honest, being full of Scots as it is, even Scotland was seen as something of a challenge.

  That’s not to say that these trips were unpleasant. With the exception of the few occasions when Marge came along, they were actually pretty enjoyable.

  We’d rent a flat somewhere, or, in the later years, a cottage, and by day we’d take the kids to theme parks or the beach, and by night we’d eat in the most expensive (but not too foreign) restaurants we could find.

  Funnily enough, both our best and worst holidays ever were taken in exactly the same place: Blackpool Sands, down in Devon. We even stayed in the same cottage both times.

  The first trip – the good one – took place in August 2016.

  Ant had been working all hours on a huge housing project out in Whitfield. He never wanted to talk much about his job, and I think it pleased him to imagine that what he did was beyond the capabilities of my tiny woman-brain
to understand. But he did work hard, I could see that, and whatever it was that he was up to, it involved a lot of late-night wining and dining of various members of the planning committee, and even taking them away on lush weekend breaks.

  The deal had been signed mid-June, and he’d been paid his commission in July, so, to celebrate, he booked a luxury holiday home for our August holiday – Beach Cottage, in Blackpool Sands.

  The drive from Canterbury to Devon took almost six hours, and we did the entire journey non-stop.

  One of Ant’s many rules was that he didn’t like to stop during a drive. No matter how far we were travelling, any request for food, or to wee, or simply to stretch my legs was met with stony-faced refusal. The only exceptions were if the car needed fuel (this, I’d pray for) or, during one of the rare trips when Marge was with us, if it was she who’d requested the stop. Even then, the break would last less than ten minutes, the strict minimum required to dash in, go to the loo, buy a sandwich, and sprint back out to the car.

  These non-stop journeys had become more difficult since the girls had graduated from nappies, and in the early days I’d tried protesting that Ant was being unreasonable. As this made him so furious that he drove even faster, it turned out to be entirely counterproductive. Instead, I developed a technique of clambering over into the back to stick a potty beneath one or other of our children as Ant continued to thunder down the motorway. I always hoped that he’d be pulled over and told off for putting our lives in danger – hoped that a policeman could make him change his ways – but though we got some strange looks from the occupants of nearby vehicles, it sadly never happened.

  By 2016 I’d perfected a far safer technique of denying the girls anything to drink for five hours before the journey, thus dehydrating them to the point where they wouldn’t even ask to use the toilet.

  It was dark by the time we reached Devon and, as the moon wasn’t up yet either, you couldn’t see much. The only clue as to the presence of the sea nearby was a gorgeous iodine smell hanging in the air.

  I woke up extra early the next morning and crept from the bed to check on the girls. Ant was still snoring, and I hoped that he’d sleep in until lunchtime.

  I’d never much enjoyed Ant’s morning moods, but lately I suppose you could say that I’d shifted to a strategy of minimising contact at pretty much any time of the day. So holidays were, in that aspect at least, more challenging than the rest of the year.

  The girls, too, were fast asleep, stretched blissfully over the covers, so I slipped out on to the patio. The air was fresh and the sun was just rising. Through the trees I could make out a swathe of blue horizon.

  I padded barefoot across the lush lawn – it felt as soft underfoot as a carpet – to a gap in the bushes, where I gasped at my first glimpse of the beach down below, a vast, golden crescent sandwiched between the grey-blue of the sea and vibrant green fields. I sighed and smiled to myself. I just knew that this holiday was going to be a good one.

  And it was! The sun shone every day for two whole weeks and we basically lived on the beach, eating burgers and chips from the beach café at lunchtime and straying no further than nearby Stoke Fleming in the evening.

  Ant would spend the day wandering back and forth between the beach and the cottage, as if he couldn’t quite decide where he wanted to be. He never could sit still for more than half an hour. But other than his habitual irritation if any of ‘my’ responsibilities – the four Cs of childcare, cooking, clothing and cleaning – were perceived as unfulfilled, he was as relaxed as I’d ever seen him. In fact, the only time he shouted during the entire two-week holiday was when I inadvertently got sand in the bed, and even I could see how annoying that was.

  The girls, for their part, were in beach heaven, spending the days digging dams and rivers, and burying each other; splashing in and out of the waves, and slurping dribbling ice creams from soggy cones. My rapport with my daughters was magical, and there was even a moment when Ant slipped into the mood.

  He and I had gone swimming with the girls on our backs and we’d swum all the way out to a buoy. Ant joked that he’d felt an octopus touch his leg, and this set the girls squealing and squirming deliciously.

  ‘You’re strangling me!’ I gasped back at Sarah, whose tiny arms were clasped around my neck.

  ‘This one’s deafening me,’ Ant replied, smiling broadly at me.

  And for a moment, I understood how a ‘normal’ relationship might feel: the comfortable friendship, the confidence that this moment might continue; the knowledge that it wouldn’t inevitably morph into something dark and disagreeable. How nice that must feel, I remember thinking.

  Surrounded by fluorescent buoys and sparkly waves, we swam, side by side, in the sunshine, and then headed back to the shore, where we followed the girls to our towels.

  ‘Your hair looks like shite now,’ Ant said unexpectedly. And boom! Our magic moment was over.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I replied with fake joviality, ‘it’s washable. I’ll sort it when we get back.’

  ‘Women!’ Ant said dismissively.

  As I tried to work out whether I was being berated for being too careless or too vain, or perhaps both simultaneously, Ant threw himself on his towel, reached for his phone, and started jabbing quite aggressively at the screen.

  As Beach Cottage was a rare and much-in-demand property, Ant rebooked almost as soon as we got home. It had been the most successful holiday we’d ever had, after all.

  I looked forward to the repeat trip for the whole year. As I raked autumn leaves or lit fires to get through the dark January days, as the first buds sprouted on the trees, I thought almost daily about Blackpool Sands. Whenever Ant was particularly antsy, which was often, or when Marge came to stay and started haranguing me, I’d slip into a reverie and daydream about that beach and our upcoming trip back to paradise. I even imagined we might move there one day.

  It wasn’t until the third week of July – just a week before our departure – that Ant revealed that there was to be one significant change this year: he’d invited his mother to join us. That was the first thing to go wrong.

  The second was the weather. It started to rain mere seconds after Marge climbed aboard, stealing my comfortable seat up front. ‘Oh, don’t say it’s bloody rainin’!’ she said, as Ant programmed the GPS with the address in Devon. ‘I tell you, I’ve got my own personal rain cloud following me around.’

  ‘Is that true, Mummy?’ Lucy asked me.

  ‘If Marge says it is, then it must be,’ I told her as I hunted for the middle seat belt, which seemed to have got lost somewhere beneath Sarah’s child seat. Contradicting Marge was rarely worth the trouble, I’d discovered, even when she was being facetious.

  ‘It’s Gran to the girls,’ Marge corrected me. ‘And of course it ain’t true. Fillin’ ’er ’ead with nonsense like that! Honestly!’

  Reflected in the rear-view mirror, I caught Ant’s eye, and realised that he’d seen me pulling a face. He shook his head in a way that implied we were both equally responsible for the tone of the conversation, and I wondered, as ever, how he could be so blind to his mother’s rudeness.

  As we pulled away, he asked her how she’d been, and so began a fresh litany of complaint. As she started banging on about her headaches, I closed my eyes and prayed for sleep.

  It rained all the way down to Devon, and due to an accident on the A303 the journey took seven hours, not six, meaning that despite having set off earlier, it was dark again by the time we arrived. As we’d eaten sandwiches during the drive, we carried the girls in and tucked them straight into their beds. What with the excitement of being back in the holiday house, they weren’t going to get to sleep for a while, but as Ant had declared it was past their bedtime – and he was not in a mood to be argued with – I just warned them not to make too much noise and closed the door to avoid complaints.

  ‘It’s damp in ’ere,’ Marge said, when I got back to the lounge.

  ‘It’s only becaus
e of the rain,’ I offered, feeling as if I’d be lacking loyalty if I failed to defend Beach Cottage.

  ‘No! You don’t say!’ Marge said acidly.

  ‘So what do you think, Mum?’ Ant asked, zipping around the room switching on lights, the better to show off our comfortable lounge.

  ‘’s all right,’ Marge replied, looking around, her nose almost, but not quite, scrunched up. ‘I expected it to be bigger if I’m honest, especially the way that one’s been banging on about it all year. But it’s fine. For a holiday let, yes, it’s fine.’

  ‘It’s the beach that’s amazing,’ I said, doing my best to cling to the positives.

  ‘Yeah, the beach is really nice,’ Ant agreed. ‘You’ll see in the morning, Mum.’

  ‘If it ever stops raining, I will,’ Marge said. ‘If we can even get down there to see it.’

  But it hadn’t stopped raining by morning. Even before I got up, I could hear it pitter-pattering in the pauses between Ant’s thundering snores.

  Hoping to make the most of some quiet time in the empty house, and perhaps even walk down to the beach despite the rain, I slipped from beneath the covers and pulled a dressing gown on before creeping through to the kitchen.

  Marge was already up, peering disconsolately into the empty refrigerator. ‘There’s nothing for breakfast,’ she said. ‘There’s not even enough milk for tea.’

  ‘Oh, we’ve got stuff in the car, don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’ll get it.’

  ‘Fat lot of good it is out there,’ Marge replied as I turned to head off in search of Ant’s keys.

  Her comment caused me to pause in the doorway, but I took a deep breath, and succeeded in controlling my anger. I’d managed to keep my calm around Marge for years, but I sensed that something was changing. A fury was rising within me and I was seriously concerned that this holiday might be the thing to send me over the edge.