The Ice Cream Girls (3 page)

‘Yes, how can I help you?’ I ask him.

‘Where are the knives?’

‘Pardon?’

‘I need to make cheese on toast; where are the knives?’

‘They’re um . . .’ I stop speaking in the hope something else will take over and speak for me, that God will send an angel to put the right words in my mouth.

‘You don’t know, do you?’ he says, as he observes me. I imagine that several patients who have tried to pull a fast one have wilted under the pressure of that look.

I sigh. Tut. Shake my head. All the while praying that something will come to me. Or something will happen to rescue me. ‘They’re . . .’

Creak!
at the top of the stairs interrupts me.

‘Oh, is that the kids?’ I say happily.

Evan’s right eyebrow rises at me. ‘Saved by the creak, huh?’ he says.

Con wanders into the kitchen, rubbing one eye and tugging at the bottom of his red and blue pyjama top. My eight-year-old is usually a bundle of energy, constantly needing reminding to slow down. To look at him now, you’d be forgiven for thinking he spends most of his time asleep or slumped in front of the goggle box.

‘Vee woke me up,’ he complains as he rests his head on my stomach. ‘She’s singing. She’s always singing, Mum. Make her stop.’

‘I’ll try, sweetie,’ I say, running my hand over the smooth bristles of his shaved hair. It’s good to hold him, to be able to anchor myself in the present with him. He is real. He is here. The soft shapes of him – his slender limbs and lean body – tell me this is my life, this is who I am. I am here, everything else is not.

‘Your mother was just about to tell me where the knives are,’ Evan informs our son.

Con lifts his head and rests his chin on my solar plexus so he can gaze up at me with eyes that are almost identical to Evan’s. When he was a baby, people used to comment on the size of his eyes and the length of his lashes wherever we went. They are beautiful and large and open. Honest. ‘Did you lose them again, Mum? Is Dad going to shout at you?’

‘Noooo, Dad’s not going to shout at me because I didn’t lose them,’ I say with a defiant look at my husband.

‘So, where are they?’ Evan counters.

‘They’re . . .’

Another creak sounds at the top of the stairs, this time followed by the skipping sounds of Verity coming to join us.

She has been unusually chipper these days. Skipping, singing, cheerily doing her kitchen chores – even offering to help Con with his. I suspect there’s a boy involved, which does not make me feel good. Or happy. I’m waiting for the right time to broach the matter with her because she is too young for boys. She’s not allowed to wear make-up, to stay out late, to go away with her friends, to have an email address that we don’t have access to, to have a mobile phone number she can give to friends. But still, somehow . . .

The three of us watch her coming through the kitchen doorway, tall and slender, hair pulled back into three connected ponytails that go from her forehead to the nape of her neck, wearing her pink dressing gown tied-up and nothing on her feet.

‘What?’ She stops just over the threshold. ‘What have I done now?’ she asks, aggrieved. ‘Nothing, that’s what. So why are you all staring at me like I’ve done something?’

‘You haven’t done a thing, sweetheart,’ Evan says. ‘We were just marvelling at how your arrival has stopped your mother telling us where the knives are.’

Verity’s large brown eyes swing dramatically to me. ‘Oh, Mum, you
didn’t
!’

‘Didn’t what?’ I ask.

‘Forget where you put the knives,
a–gain
!’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘So, where be they?’ Evan asks.

‘They’re . . . They’re . . .’

‘OH MY GOD!’ Verity suddenly screeches. ‘WHAT IS
THAT
?!’

We are trying to recover from the first screech when she continues, ‘ON YOUR FINGER, MUM! WHAT IS THAT?’

Verity’s screeches are up in the realms of dog whistles, and really quite painful to someone who is tired, hungover and under a serious amount of pressure.

‘Oh, my engagement ring. Do you like it?’ I hold out my hand for her to take a closer look. ‘Your father asked me to marry him again last night and I said yes.’

‘I was thinking we could do it on the twenty-fifth of June,’ Evan says.

‘Ah, so only one anniversary to remember? Yeah, good one,’ I say to him. ‘I’ll still expect two cards and two presents, you cheapskate.’

‘Wait, you’re actually going to get married? With a ceremony and everything?’ Verity asks.

‘Of course,’ Evan and I say at the same time.

‘It’s going to be huge,’ Evan continues. ‘Wedding dress, coordinated bridesmaids outfits, big cars . . . the lot.’

Verity rolls her eyes. ‘Why can’t you just be like other people’s parents? They don’t do this sort of thing.’

‘Other people’s parents clearly don’t love each other as much as we do,’ I explain, hoping she leaves it there, that she doesn’t go over to the dark side of teenage stroppiness because she will be opening up a whole world of trouble for herself.

‘You’ll just show me up in front of everyone,’ she says. ‘Why can’t this family just be normal for once?’

I feel Evan bristle a second or two after me.

‘And that’s the end of Verity Gillmare’s performance of “Sulky Teen”,’ I say. ‘We’re going to get nice, polite Verity back now. And she’s going to apologise for all the things she’s just said.’ I smile at my daughter. She knows that I’ve just stopped her from having her iPod taken away for a week, or having limited access to the computer. Evan has a zero-tolerance policy on backchat and rudeness, and I do not want the day to start with a battle between them. I just want this day to go back to being the lovely day after I was proposed to.

Verity stares down at her bare feet and starts to wriggle her toes as the atmosphere in the kitchen grows ever-thicker and more tense. Conrad has stopped breathing while his little heart is racing against my body. He’s scared that if Verity is banned from television, has her computer taken away or is sent to bed as soon as she comes home from school, it’ll mean the same for him; he’ll be a victim of the fallout she caused.

‘Sorry,’ she mumbles.

‘What was that? Did the little mouse speak? I can’t hear her if she did,’ I joke. ‘Come on little mouse, squeak up.’

Despite herself, she smiles a little as she looks up and says, ‘Sorry Mum, sorry Dad.’

‘Good girl,’ I say. ‘Now come on all of you, sit down. We need breakfast and then to get this show on the road.’

‘Knives?’ Evan asks.

‘Living room magazine rack,’ I say without thinking. That was the problem all along, of course – thinking too much.

Almost imperceptibly, Evan’s mouth and left eyebrow twitch.

He is thinking that Con could have found them, played with them, hurt himself.

‘Before you say anything, the magazine rack is on top of the cupboard in the spare bedroom.’

‘Of course,’ he says and shakes his head in despair. ‘Where else would they be? I’ll go get them, shall I?’

‘Right, so what do you want for breakfast?’ I ask. ‘Your dad will probably drop you off today on his way in.’ I cannot leave the house to do my normal things for fear of someone seeing me and remembering. Those sorts of incidental news items in the paper are the things that jog people’s minds; make them realise that you don’t just ‘have one of those faces’, they really do remember you from somewhere. And that somewhere is somewhere you’d rather they forgot. ‘And you can buy your lunches today, but no sugary or sweet stuff.’

‘Mum, it’s Saturday,’ Conrad says.

Saturday? That’s news to me.
‘Oh,’ I say.

‘You did know that, didn’t you?’ Verity asks, her voice and attitude no longer surly, more incredulous and concerned.

‘Course I did, just trying to keep you on your toes.’ I give Con a quick squeeze. ‘Come on, sweetheart, sit down at the table while I start breakfast. Dad’s doing Saturday morning surgery.’

I turn back to the sink and try to calm myself. Forgetting the day of the week is normal after the heavy session of last night. Everyone knows I can’t drink very much. So this . . . this memory lapse means nothing. It’s not like before. That was then, this is now and this is nothing like then. All of us forget things every now and again.

All of us do it.

Daily News Chronicle
, October 1989

poppy

The sky isn’t a square of patchwork quilt. Sometimes with two or three black bars running down it, sometimes with wire mesh upon it. The sky is vast and deep and capable of smothering me.

For a very long time I thought the sky was that square of patchwork quilt because it was all I could see from most of the prison cells I’ve lived in.

Even when I went outside for exercise periods, to go from one part of the prison to another, to go to court for appeals, I would stop just to look up, and I would see how big it was. But at the same time, I would know it was just an illusion, a trick my mind was playing on me because I was allowed outside and everything
had
to look bigger because it seemed so small in the confines of my room.

Now, now the sky is a canopy that stops the planet falling against the sun and the moon. Now, today, I know the sky is immense and colossal, and I could drown in it. I’d forgotten how big the world is. And how blue the sky is. And how bright the daytime is.

I take my first steps outside Portslade station, on the outskirts of Brighton, and marvel at how crowded the world is. Titanic sky, gigantic world, dazzling daylight, swarming streets.

No one else notices these things of course, it is all absolutely normal to them.

‘You’re going to find it strange out there,’ my parole officer had said. ‘You haven’t been to an open prison and had the chance to get out for a little while, like most people in your situation, so it’s . . . it’s going to be tough.’ He was a surprisingly pleasant man – in his early fifties with a kindly nature. What he was saying without uttering the exact words was, ‘Everyone is surprised that you, Poppy Carlisle, are getting out.’ I would not admit my crime because I did not do it, I would not show remorse because I did not do it, and I would not beg any longer for someone to believe me. But, for whatever reason, they agreed my parole at the last minute, so the prison did not have time to put me through the usual procedures. I would be released into the big wide world as I was – unprepared and unaware. ‘Here’s my card, call me – any time – if you need help with finding work, or need a reference, or even if you’re struggling. Any time,’ he said. ‘Any time.’ He believed I was innocent, I was sure of it, but he couldn’t say so officially, so he was trying to help in any way he could. Nice, but ultimately pointless.

Where have all these people come from?
I ask myself as I wander past the level crossing beside the station and head for the sea. I’d love to head down to the beach, dip my toes in the water, feel the pebbles under my feet, but I need to do this other thing now. Any longer, any delays, and I might bottle it.

People think that prisons are overcrowded, but
this
is overcrowded. This is like being trapped inside a swarm of insects. Everyone so close and big and moving, moving, moving. When you’re banged up, you expect to feel as if there are too many people encroaching on your space and you accept that you have no choice in the matter. Out here, people have chosen this. They’ve chosen this life.

‘Sorry,’ a woman says as she bumps into me. Immediately my hackles rise and I curl a fist, just in case . . . ‘Really sorry,’ she adds absently then rushes on without a second glance.

The house I’m looking for is quite near the station and even though I haven’t been there for nearly two decades, I could find it with my eyes closed. Well, I thought I could. This street, Boundary Road, was here, but most of the shops weren’t back then. There certainly wasn’t a computer games shop, nor an organic bakery-slash-café. Nor
all these people
. At the bottom of the high street, I turn towards Brighton, towards Hove. It seems weird, being surrounded by all these buildings and cars and pavements. I’ve seen them all on the telly, of course, but they’re different in the flesh. Bigger, smaller, more solid, less real – all of those things, all at once.

A woman my age, or thereabouts, walks towards me. She has the same mud-black hair as me, and hers is a crop like mine; she is my height and about my weight. She even has similar soft features to me. She is the real-life version of the reflection I saw in the train window every time we went through a tunnel. I watch her come towards me, and then pass me without even noticing me. I, on the other hand, stop on the pavement to turn to watch her.

I bet she chose her crop because she liked it, not because her life didn’t allow her to shampoo, condition and look after long, shoulder-length locks. I bet her make-up came from a shop where the assistant helped her choose the right shade for her colouring – it probably didn’t arrive in a clear plastic bag that was embossed with HMP Trembry Hall and also contained cigarettes, stamps and phonecards. I bet she’s that thin because she’s chosen it, not because years of prison food have drastically cut her weight. I bet that flimsy pink jacket she’s wearing was chosen because it’s pretty and suits her, not because it has to last several years and it’s one of the limited number of outfits she’s allowed. I bet those black shiny shoes with heels like spikes pinch her feet and make her miserable, but she wears them because they’re gorgeous and she can – she isn’t forbidden them because they’re impractical and could be turned into a weapon.