No Going Back
Authors: ALEX GUTTERIDGE
For Vika, with love.
When you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or she is, and not as you would like them to be.
Leo Tolstoy
Contents
T
HE
E
ND
I
n a second your life can change. One careless moment and everything that you have ever known and trusted has gone.
I was four years old and sitting at the top of the stairs, hidden just around the dog-leg, my knees pressed up tightly against my chest. It was a hot, airless August night and I was wearing my favourite pink brushed-cotton nightie. It had embroidered rosebuds on the collar, which buttoned right up under my chin, and the material was way too hot for the time of year. Perhaps that's why I couldn't sleep, or perhaps I sensed that something was wrong. I can't exactly remember. It's too long ago.
I remember that Dad had promised to read me a bedtime story and he'd never broken his promises before. We were halfway through
Winnie the Pooh
and I couldn't wait to hear about Pooh building
a house for Eeyore. When Dad was late, Mum put me to bed, but I didn't stay there for long. I could hear her in the hall, pacing, then ringing around, trying to track him down. There was a knot in my stomach which, with each futile phone call, got tighter and tighter and bigger and bigger. I wanted to leave the stairs and go down and sit on Mum's knee, to wrap my arms around her neck, to feel her reassuring kisses. But I didn't dare. She was strict with bedtimes, so instead I crept back up to my bedroom to fetch my favourite teddy, the one Dad had brought back from a business trip to Ireland when I was a baby. In those days Teddy always made everything better.
When the doorbell rang I slid down the top three steps to get a better look through the gaps under the dark oak banisters. The plum-coloured carpet scraped against my bottom. Mum flung open the front door and immediately her hands flew up to her face like a couple of fluttering, startled birds.
“No!”
Such a small word but she gasped it out, as if the effort of saying it had taken all of her breath.
The policeman teetered on the threshold, the tips
of his shiny shoes inside the house, heels still embedded in the golden gravel path.
“Mrs Cooper? Can we come in?”
The questions were innocent enough but I knew from the gravity of his tone and the stiffness of his fingers as they splayed against the side of his leg that he was about to say something I didn't want to hear. I put my hands over my ears and pressed my face down between my knees. The nightdress was soft against my cheeks, like a well-worn comfort blanket, and it smelled of vanilla fabric softener. In my mind I tried to make the policeman go away but when I lifted my head and opened my eyes he was still there, guiding Mum back into our house as if she were the stranger. Even before the WPC followed him in and insisted that Mum sat down on the sofa, even before the policeman said, “I'm afraid there's been an accident,” I knew that my daddy wasn't ever coming back.
R
OOTS
A
fter the funeral Gran wanted Mum to move back to Derbyshire.
“What on earth do you want to stay in London for?” she asked. “It isn't the right place to bring up a child on your own.”
Mum gathered me close, made me feel almost safe again. Just for a moment.
“It's Laura's home,” she'd said, over the top of my head. “I'm not uprooting her, not now. This is where her memories are.”
Of course, that wasn't the end of it. Gran doesn't like taking no for an answer. Every now and then she'd bring it up, try to make Mum feel as if she was being a bad mother by not taking me back to âwhere we belonged'. But my mum doesn't like being told what to do either and for ten whole years she stood her ground. She did waver when Grandad died
though. I was twelve by then and more than old enough to know that it was wrong to wish that Gran had gone first.
“Perhaps we ought to move back, Laura,” Mum had said, as we drove home down the M1 after a strange weekend at the farm when I kept expecting Grandad to walk through the door in his brown overalls and envelop me in one of his big, strong, earthy-smelling hugs. “Gran's not getting any younger.”
I studied the spray from the lorry in front and gripped the sides of the seat. Since Dad's accident motorways always made me edgy. “She's got Aunt Jane,” I replied. “She's only at the other end of the village and we're not that far away. We visit loads as well.”
Mum indicated and pulled into the middle lane to overtake. My tongue fixed itself to the roof of my mouth.
“It's not the same though,” she said. “If something happened and we were closer⦔
“Grandad had a massive heart attack,” I interrupted. Forcing myself to say those words
made my own heart miss a beat. Losing Grandad so suddenly had felt like being dropped out of a plane into some frozen wilderness. For days I felt as if I were in this bizarre bubble. I was totally alone in a strange, unfriendly place with no one to guide me. I should have known how to cope because I'd been through something similar before. But that didn't make it any better. If anything it probably made it worse. Mum was in pieces too and I tried to comfort her. It was Grandad who understood us both the best. He was the one who showed us and told us how much he loved us every single time we saw or spoke to him and I realised, once he'd gone, that maybe we hadn't said those same words back. Not often enough anyway. I swallowed, put my hand to my chest where there seemed to be this void.
“If we'd been living next door to the farm it wouldn't have been near enough to make a difference,” I said softly.
I sensed Mum wince. “No, you're right,” she said, reaching for a bottle of water.
“Mum! Please keep both hands on the wheel.”
Momentarily, she turned her head and looked at me. “Sorry.” She bypassed the water bottle and rested the tips of her fingers on my black leggings.
“Mum!” I screeched, lifting her hand and slapping it back where it belonged. “Besides,” I continued, making a deliberate effort to lower my tone, to sound less of a nutcase. “I like where we live, and it suits us, doesn't it? You've got your job. I've got my friends⦔ I paused, felt that familiar tightness in my chest, “⦠and then there's Dad.”
She didn't reply but, in the half-light, I saw her French-manicured nails wrap right around the steering wheel until they dug into her palms.
“Who would put flowers on his grave every week?” I said. “If we moved away it would feel as if we were leaving Dad behind.” My voice dropped to a whisper. “I couldn't do that, not ever. You wouldn't want to do that either, would you, Mum? Not really?”
She sighed, gave me a brief sideways glance.
“One day, Laura, you might have to move away, for your job or if you get married. One day you're going to have toâ”
“Don't say âmove on',” I snapped, “or I'll think Gran has hypnotised you. She won't forget Grandad, will she, so why does she want me to forget all about my dad?”
“Laura, that's very unkind and not fair,” Mum shot out. “No one's suggesting that you forget your father.”
“Really?”
My sarcasm sliced through the air as efficiently as the wiper blade despatched the rain from the windscreen.
“Are you telling me that Gran doesn't want
you
to âmove on', Mum, to find someone else? That's all she seems to talk about since Dad died â that and us moving out of London.”
Mum brushed a strand of hair away from her face. “Gran just wants us both to be happy,” she said softly. “That's all.”
“Yeah right,” I murmured. “But Gran's happiness manual seems to include the rule âpretend that Dad didn't exist'.”
The car swerved slightly as someone came past us very fast and I heard Mum suck in her breath.
I sank down in my seat and made a deliberate show of putting in my earphones. This was one of those conversations that wasn't going anywhere and the last thing my nerves needed was a good old row to take Mum's mind off the road. One fatal crash in the family was more than enough to cope with.
C
HANGE
T
hings settled down for a while. I suppose âthe calm before the storm' is how Grandad would have described it. It was two years later when things really changed. I had just turned fourteen. Grandad always used to say that things happen in threes. So when the boiler packed up on the coldest day of winter I suspected that there was worse to come. Too true. Two weeks later Mum lost her job and three days after that Gran fell off the ladder.
The phone rang at teatime. It was a Wednesday and I'd just served up my signature dish â pasta with an aubergine and tomato sauce. There's a really cool greengrocers near our school with all of the produce artfully arranged in wicker baskets and inside they even have a blackboard with recipes chalked up. As soon as I was allowed to walk to and from school on my own, Mum often asked me to pick things up
for supper. So that day I'd stopped off and bought two glossy purple aubergines, some red onions and a garlic. Back at home, I chopped up the vegetables and roasted them in olive oil so that they were ready for when Mum got back from her appointment at the job centre. All we had to do was add some sundried tomatoes and a few basil leaves, and heat it through while the linguine was cooking. This was one of Mum's favourite meals and I'd wanted to surprise her, to try to wipe that worried look off her face. Mum's an underwear designer and she wasn't hopeful about finding another job that paid as well as the last one, so I knew that aubergines and mega-expensive sundried tomatoes might have to be scratched off the shopping list in the future.
“This is lovely, Laura,” Mum said, taking her first mouthful. “Thank you. It's just what I needed.”
The ring of the phone interrupted my smile.
Mum groaned. Her fork, loaded with pasta, hovered in front of her lips.
“It'll just be someone trying to sell you something,” I said.
She nodded and carried on eating but perhaps
the ring sounded more urgent than usual. As she twirled her second forkful of linguine, she sighed, put down her fork and reached out.
“Hi, Jane, is everything all right?”
I stopped chewing and glanced at the clock: 5.45 p.m. Aunt Jane never rang at this time. She should be cooking supper, sorting out homework, stopping the boys from fighting, trying to get Liberty to help her tidy up. Fat chance there, I thought with a wry smile.
It's amazing how different two cousins could be and still be best friends. Liberty's three months older than me but I'm the neat freak, a âplace for everything, everything in its place' sort of girl, whereas Liberty's far more diva than domesticated. She's an expert at lying on the sofa watching her favourite reality TV show or reading a magazine while jobs demand to be done and chaos reigns around her.
She's also the next best thing I've got to a sister. My dad didn't want any more children. Mum said that he didn't think it would be fair to have another baby as he couldn't possibly love another child as much as he loved me. When she
told me that I felt really special but deep down I'd still have liked a sibling. At least I had Liberty. Even though we lived one hundred and fifty miles apart we Facebooked and texted each other all the time. So despite the fact that we didn't see each other every day, or even every week, I felt really close to her. I also felt lucky because we seemed to be closer than some sisters. I never thought that we'd ever fall out with one another, not big time. “Whenâ¦? Whereâ¦? What on earthâ¦?”
Only the beginnings of questions left Mum's lips. At the other end of the line I could hear the quick, high-pitched, panic-stricken tone of Aunt Jane's voice. Bad news was spilling out of the phone into our kitchen and the pasta began to set like cardboard ribbons in our bowls. Mum pushed back her fringe, never a good sign, and looked at her watch.
“I'll come â we can be there by ten.”
Dismay gave the sauce a bitter taste in my mouth. I pushed my bowl away. On Friday there was a school trip to the fashion exhibition at the V&A. I'd been looking forward to it for ages. If we went up to Derbyshire that night I knew we'd
end up staying for the weekend.
“Well, if you're absolutely sure?”
Mum's doubtful tone dragged me back from the glamour of French couture and I tore a basil leaf into shreds, willing Aunt Jane to pile on more of the older sister pressure and tell her not to worry, that she was in control of whatever crisis was taking place. Mum walked to the window and looked out into the darkness. I felt really selfish for thinking of myself first but sometimes you just can't help yourself, can you?
“Okay,” Mum said, after what seemed like a pause worthy of the
Guinness Book of World Records
. “We'll see you on Friday evening then. But if there's any change, you will tell me straight away?”
Mum's hand shook as she placed the phone back in its cradle. “Oh my goodness. I knew this would happen sooner or later.”
She sank back onto the chair, all colour drained from her face. She looked as if she'd seen a ghost.
“Gran's had an accident.”
I tried to look as concerned as I should have felt but guilt prevented me from making eye contact.
“Is she all right?”
Mum's eyes were bright with tears. Her fringe stood out from her forehead like one of those ancient, frayed sweeping brushes that Uncle Pete uses on the farm.
“Yes and no. She's broken her hip and is in hospital in Derby. They're hoping to operate tomorrow.”
I tore off a piece of cold garlic bread and lifted it to my lips. I was still hungry. That wasn't normal, was it? Surely the shock, the upset, should have robbed me of my appetite?
“How did that happen?”
Mum closed her eyes, as if imagining the moment.
“She was up a ladder, decorating.”
Her lids flipped open and she stared straight at me.
“How many times have I told her not to do that, to get someone in? It's not as if she can't afford it.”
I chewed, shrugged, leaned forwards, touched Mum's arm. Tears spilled down her face.
I leaned over and pulled a tissue from the box
on the work surface, handed it to her.
“You know Gran, she's never been one to take advice. I'm sure she'll be okay.”
Mum dabbed at her cheek, making little holes in her foundation.
“Your Auntie Jane says there's no point going at the moment. We might as well wait until the weekend.”
She managed a weak smile.
“At least you won't have to miss your trip to the V&A.”
The garlic bread stuck in my throat. I thought she'd forgotten.
“Why don't you go up anyway?” I offered. “I could always spend a couple of nights with Chloe and get the train on Saturday.”
She shook her head. “No, Friday will be fine. We can go straight to the hospital and then we can spend a couple of days deciding what's going to happen next.”
I coughed, drank some water.
“Next?” I croaked.
A crumb of bread stuck persistently to the side of my throat.
“Well, someone's going to have to look after Gran when she comes out of hospital. She won't be able to manage on her own for a while,” Mum said.
So that was the start of it. We went up to Derbyshire on that Friday night and I wonder if Mum had already decided our future then â or maybe it was the row with Aunt Jane that settled it. That and the fact that Gran didn't recover nearly as well as everyone expected.