The Memory Book (22 page)

‘Shall we try this box out? It looks like a Tardis, doesn’t it?’

‘A bit!’ she says. I open the door and we squeeze inside. ‘Sames,’ she says, looking around, and I realise she is disappointed that it is not bigger on the inside. I lift her on to my hip and push the money into the hole, remembering exactly what I used to do when I was a girl. I lift the receiver and I can hear the comforting familiarity of a dial tone. Funny how the little thing that I used to carry around with me all day every day is now a mystery to me, but this … this all makes perfect sense, apart from the numbers.

‘Now, Esther,’ I say, carefully laying out the scrap of paper across the top of the fixture. ‘Can you press the number buttons here, just like they are on the paper, in the same order? Yes? It’s very important that you press them all in a row, just like they are on the paper, yes?’

Esther nods, and carefully presses the keys. I have no idea if she is doing it right, or how long my money will last, or even whether anyone will answer, but as I stand there with Esther on my hip, I feel excited and full of possibility, just like I did all those years ago when boys I liked whispered sweet nothings down the line into my ear.

There is a ringing tone, but only twice, and then I hear his voice.

‘Hello?’ That’s all he says, but I know it is him.

‘It’s me,’ I say. ‘From the café, and the road.’

I know they are foolish things to say, but I say them anyway.

‘Claire, you rang,’ he says, and he sounds glad. ‘I’d given up hoping that you would. It’s been a while.’

‘Has it?’ I say. ‘I don’t know when my money will run out.’

‘Who is it, Mummy, can I say hello?’ Esther asks me. ‘Is it The Doctor?’

He laughs. ‘You’re not alone.’

‘No, that’s my little girl. Esther. We are going to the park.’

‘The park? Bit late, isn’t it?’

‘No, we like having adventures, Esther and me,’ I say. ‘Will you meet me tomorrow and we can have another talk?’ I say it all at once, before I lose courage.

He hesitates. I wait, agonised.

‘Yes,’ he says eventually. ‘Where? When?’

The only location and time that I can think are the ones that I say. ‘I’ll meet you in the town library, at midday.’

‘I’ll be there and …’ The line goes dead.

‘I wanted to say hello!’ Esther says. ‘Was that The Doctor?’

‘How about we go on a really fast roundabout instead,’ I say, feeling elated by the prospect of my meeting. How I am going to get there, of course, is another matter entirely.

Esther starts trotting as she leads me off the main road and into the dark of the park, behind the railings that edge the large expanse of grass. The children’s play park is ensconced deep in the shadows. We follow a barely lit path into dense nothing, and I can hear voices, kids shouting at one another, their voices echoing in the cold air. And yet I don’t feel afraid, and neither does Esther when the swings and slide come into view.

‘Oh, there are big kids on the swings,’ she announces
loudly, as she pushes open the heavy gate that breaks the thick steel fence surrounding the park. ‘Mummy! I want the swings!’

I approach the girls, who glance our way and then ignore us, going back to their conversation, smoking in earnest. ‘Excuse me,’ I say. They look cold and bored, like they’d be far better off at home with their parents than out here, probably waiting for five minutes of attention from the boys we can still hear shouting in the dark. ‘Can my little girl have a go on the swings?’

‘Bit late,’ one girl says, her face full of resentment, even though she promptly gets off the swing.

‘It is – you should go home,’ I say. ‘And stop smoking, it will make you old and dead before you know it. We’re OK to play out late. We’re ghosts.’

The girls look at us like we are mad, which obviously helps our cause because they make their way quickly out of the park, muttering to one another under their breath about the crazy bitch.

‘It’s all yours,’ I say to Esther.

Esther is thrilled by the park in the dark. She whizzes and spins around and around on the roundabout, her little face glistening in the dark, illuminated with joy. Her teeth catch the street lights as she laughs; round and round, she sparkles. I push her faster, as fast as I can, and then I jump on and hold on tight, flinging my head back so that the dark world of the park wraps around us – brake lights in the distance, the street
lights, the white shining circle in the sky … each stretching out and turning to bright ribbons whipping around us, surrounding us as we laugh and laugh. I feel like the world is turning faster, just for us.

‘Are you OK, miss?’ A voice anchors our orbit, and I feel something, slow and steady, weighing me down, pulling us back to earth. The roundabout slows, and for a moment the world spins on without me. Esther falls on to her back on the ground and groans.

‘I feel dizzy in the head,’ she says. ‘Ugh, I feel poorly in the tummy.’

‘Claire?’

I blink. The voice is heavy and unfamiliar. It belongs to a man, a youngish man, in a suit. How does he know my name? I don’t have a son, do I?

‘Are you Claire and Esther?’ the man asks us in a friendly tone, and I realise it’s not a suit he’s wearing: it’s a uniform. He’s a policeman. For a second, I wonder what I have done, and then I realise. I committed the cardinal sin: I escaped.

‘I’m Esther.’ Esther clambers unsteadily to her feet. ‘That’s Mummy, not Claire!’

‘Your mum and husband were worried about you,’ the policeman says. ‘They called us. We’ve been looking for you.’

‘Why?’ I ask him. ‘Why are you looking for us? I took my daughter to the park, that’s all!’ I’m defensive, angry. We are fine. Completely fine. This is a step too far.

‘It’s quite late for a little girl to be out, and they were worried about you, Claire.’

I do not look at him. I do not want to go. I want to be lost again with Esther in the ribbons of colour, the whole world standing still because we are the ones who are turning.

‘Esther,’ he says. ‘Would you like a ride in a police car?’

‘Will there be a nee-naw?’ Esther asks him, very seriously.

‘No, sorry,’ he tells her.

‘No thanks, then,’ Esther says.

‘Well, maybe one or two nee-naws,’ he says. ‘Just very quickly. Come on, Esther. Let’s get your mum and take you home. It’s time for bed.’

‘It can’t be,’ Esther tells him confidently. ‘I haven’t even had tea yet.’

This is a button from my mother’s favourite dress when I was a very little girl – almost five years old, to be precise, which is when she lost this button. I remember the date because it is her birthday, and that year we spent it alone, just the two of us.

That was the day it got caught on something and pinged off, never to be seen again – or so my mother thought. But I saw where it landed, and I secretly picked it up when she wasn’t looking, and hoarded it away like it was treasure. Mum thought the button had just done that thing that things sometimes do when they just vanish into the fabric of the universe, and there is no chance of retrieving them – but that wasn’t the case. I saw where it went, and I quickly picked it up and held it secretly in my fist. It was mine.

See how it is coral coloured and sort of carved, with a pattern, which I used to think was a face, but now I think it is just a pattern. I loved those buttons; I loved the dress they came off, blue as a cold
sky. I think the glow of those buttons against the cool of the blue might be the first thing I remember about my mum. That and her toes.

Before Dad died, Mum did not wear shoes – never in the summer or inside the house, and quite a lot of the time not outside of it, either. I became very familiar with her feet, the shape of them, the particular bend on her right foot that was not mirrored on the left, the blonde hairs on her toes and the blush of rough skin on the soles of her feet. We spent a lot of time together, when I was very little, me and Mum. Dad went to work, but Mum and I were always together. Mum wrote plays, back then, before Dad died and she had to get a job that would pay us money. Now, I know that, but I didn’t know it then. I remember her sitting at the kitchen table, her feet bare, her golden hair flowing over her shoulders, writing out a script by hand, and sometimes she read lines out to me and asked me what I thought, and sometimes I’d have an opinion. Mum had two plays put on in fringe theatre in London; she still has the programmes in a box. When she wasn’t writing, we would play, and those were the times I lived for, because Mum was an expert at playing.

On the morning of her birthday, she’d filled the house with music and we’d danced, all over the house, up and down the stairs, in and out of the bathroom; we turned on the taps and the shower, opened all the windows and danced in the garden, round and round, hollering and singing. Mum was wearing her blue dress, and whatever she did I followed her, never taking my eyes off her, not for a second. She was like the flame and I was the moth, constantly
fluttering around her, desperate to always be bathed in her warmth. I don’t know where Dad was. I suppose he was away working, or something, but it didn’t matter because afterwards, after we had danced, she cut me a huge slice of birthday cake and I sang to her. Then we fell asleep, lying on the living-room carpet in a patch of sunlight, my head on Mum’s tummy while she told me tales that came out of her head. It was when she got up that the button came off; it was then that I claimed it as my own. My piece of her to keep.

After Dad died, five years later, Mum changed, and I suppose that is not very surprising to anyone. Except it was to me. I grieved for him, but also for Mum and me. I missed that mother, the one who walked barefoot to the park, and made up stories in the long grass that, in my imagination, always grew right over our heads. There can’t have been anything like life insurance, or an inheritance, to help financially. There was a widow’s pension, left over from the army, but it wasn’t enough, I don’t think, and so Mum had to put on shoes and get a job, which meant tying up and eventually cutting short her mane of yellow hair. There was no time for stories, or dancing, any more, and although Mum still wore the dress with the buttons sometimes, because we were too poor for her to get anything new, she didn’t glow any more. She stopped being special. After school, I went back to this other girl’s house, and I hated her. I hated her stupid pink cheeks, and her mother who made me drink squash.

I missed my dad, although I don’t think I really knew him, but I missed my mum more. My mum, who was tired, sad and lonely, and couldn’t seem to get better, not even for me. Which was why I
held on to the button. It was a sort of talisman: I had an idea that if I kept it, then things might go back to the way they were once. That never happens, of course. Things never go back to the way they were once. I think I’ve been cross with my mum for a long time – not for being an imperfect mother, but for being a perfect one, for those happy years that I lived through and then were suddenly gone.

I’m not a perfect mother: I am the opposite. I had Caitlin because I wanted her. I never thought about what life with a single mum would be like for her, without a father to protect her, even from a distance. I never thought about the day that is coming soon, the day when she has to explain who she is to a man she has never met. I took Esther out in the dark, to a place full of danger, when I knew that I didn’t know the way home. I can’t read her stories from her favourite books any more, and soon, too soon, I may even forget who she is. I want Esther to have this button, and the shoes in the cupboard that are covered in crystals – the ones I wore with the very hot-coloured dress on the very happy day. I want her to have those shoes, and I hope she will think of me and remember that I tried hard to be a perfect mother for her, and that I’m sorry I failed.

Whenever I think about what I am doing in a hotel room in Manchester, I freak out. So I write myself a list on the hotel notepaper. It makes me feel like I should be in a film: writing myself notes on hotel notepaper … it feels awfully dramatic. It feels like some kind of dream. I’ve never checked into a hotel room by myself before, and this is a nice hotel. Mal Maison, right in the heart of the city. Greg booked it for me with his credit card. He said he wanted me to be safe and comfortable. Well, I am safe, but I wouldn’t say I am comfortable. When I don’t think about the reason I am here, I feel excited and grown up. And then I freak out again.

Before I got chucked off my course, I had a creative writing lecturer whose catchphrase was: push yourself out of your comfort zone and see what you are really capable of. For the first time, I feel like I am doing that. I feel like I am completely
out of my comfort zone, and it is sort of exhilarating as well as awful.

My list is sort of like a to-do list, and sort of like an aide-memoire, because it’s not like I can change my mind about anything on it, even if I want to, not now. It’s a short list. It reads:

I tucked the list into my pocket and came here, and now I’m holding it, the tiny little square of folded hotel paper, in the palm of my hand, imagining that I can feel the words with the tips of my fingers. The words are all that is stopping me from running away.

I wait outside the lecture theatre, catching my breath, and just try to focus on this one thing: on going in there and seeing him. I try to forget everything else – Mum, her illness, the baby, everything – and just be here now, doing this. It’s hard, I’m scared. It doesn’t feel real, me here, about to go in there, walking towards the moment when I will be in the same room as my father. I can’t picture it, even though it is now only seconds away.

I join the back of a group of girls, and slip into the lecture hall along with them. No one gives me a second glance. I still look like a student in my black, low-rise jeans and long black
shirt. I brushed my hair into a storm before I came, and put on as much eyeliner as I could, cramming layer after layer of black around my eyes. The only colour I’m wearing is the red lipstick that I put on for Mum: when I’m wearing it, I feel a little like she is with me.