Weekend reading

Now that Lucy knows her errant sister is alive it's Deb's turn to begin her story in the next episode from Family Lines

IV

DEBORAH

3 May 1995

Dear Lucy-Lu

Okay. Here I am coming out with my hands up, white flag raised and my heart the colour of shame. Whatever that is. Fifteen years is a long time. Seems like a lifetime. When I look back at our home at you and Mam and the man I called Dad I’m seeing you through the wrong end of a telescope. Small and far away. Or maybe I’m the one who’s small and far away. That was what I thought I wanted. To be far away. To be me – cliché I know. What I hadn’t worked out was who me was. Still haven’t by the way. There’s no such thing as finding yourself is there? That’s all hippy-dippy crapology. Actually there’s no such thing as getting away from yourself. I thought that getting away from all of you and our narrow little world would make me different. Truth is it only made me a little crazy. Now I understand Grey Coat. Do you remember her? I used to have nightmares about becoming like her, roaming around in smell dirty clothes, shaking my head and muttering to ghosts, the poor old dog trailing at my heels. They might have been premonitions or warnings. Don’t worry I never got quite that bad but near enough. For the longest time I felt like my head had been prised from my shoulders and kicked around like a football. (Isn’t that how football or polo or one of those ball games started? Didn’t we see that on one of those BBC documentaries? Old fossils talking about even older fossils.)

Sorry. I’m getting distracted here. Kicking the ball around. Never my thing anyway. But I can hear you say Get one over the bar girl.

Trouble is the bar is so high and so far away and I don’t know if I can go through all of that story all over again from the beginning and see it through all the way to this moment when my leaky biro is skating over the page. Sorry about the blots.

That’s two sorries so far and neither of them the one you want to hear or read. But how many sorries will it take for you to – I won’t say forgive me because I don’t expect that – but to be willing to meet me again. Even once. Although I don’t know what good that would do except to maybe make me feel a little less bad about it all. About the fifteen years of grief pain rage fear dread I put you through. Look, the first thing to say is it wasn’t that I didn’t love you. I did. I do. Or at least I love the imprint you left on my life. And even if you never do want to see me again I will go on remembering you and how funny and sassy you were and how you never gave a hoot what anyone thought about you. I’d like to know that life is turning out well for you now. That you can be happy. And if we don’t meet I suppose that might be because you want to forget about me. Which I understand and can’t blame you for. I’ve no right to blame you anyway. The blame is on me.  

   

Later

I had to take a break there. The baby is kicking like crazy. Must have picked up on what I was writing about kicking balls around. That or this or he or she is the reason I didn’t get to the exhibition. I hope Rose didn’t get your expectations up. She told me how crazy raging you were afterwards, that she had to walk you around the square twice before you calmed down. It was a stupid move I see that now to invite you. Well stupid to invite you without giving you any information or explanation first. I don’t know what I was thinking. I suppose I wasn’t really thinking. Yes the explanation. I know it’s not an excuse. And an apology isn’t going to absolve me or make you like me any better. Or at all. But here goes.

The start is the problem. Do I start with that morning when we were walking to school and I abandoned you outside Early’s shop? (Is it still there? I suppose not. She must have retired by now. Didn’t she have a son, that we called A Little Early?) I knew what I was doing that morning. It was all part of my plan to make it look like I vanished into thin air. Well, to be truthful and I suppose that’s the purpose of this – what? Confession? Statement? Apology? –Rose and me set it up. I had left a bag of stuff at her place. I went straight there. Dumped my school uniform and before I could have any regrets or second thoughts I took the mailboat to Holyhead. Rose had got me the ticket. I already had a passport because of our trip to London with old Johnson’s Wax. Mam had put it away in a ‘safe place’ but I knew where that was.

 I took a train to Manchester and hung around there for a few days, staying in a hostel. I was sick with nerves and doubts, expecting Mam or you or a copper to turn up looking for me. I almost ran out of it and came back. I talked to some of the other people in the hostel. They were from all over. Some of them had landed there looking for jobs, others of them were just wandering around trying to live on next to nothing, saying they were free because they hadn’t joined the rat race. I suppose that sounded cool to me then and they said I should keep on going now that I had escaped.

Haga Sofia, Istanbul (Photo by Hongbin on Unsplash)

 One of them wanted me to join up with him and get a train to Istanbul. For a moment, well one night, I seriously considered it. Now that I had ‘cut loose’, as he said, I might as well stay free and go wherever the wind blew me. He was a nice enough guy. I spent the night with him but the next morning as we were walking to the train station I stopped in the middle of the street and told him I couldn’t do it.

  Of course you can, he said. You took the first step. That’s the hardest one. It’ll be good. Really it will. He took my hand and squeezed it. Come on, he said. Let’s dodge into the alley here and I’ll give you something to calm your nerves. He turned and began to draw me after him.

 But I couldn’t move. Literally. My feet were stuck in the ground, cemented there. A wave of terror poured through me. Sweat blazed through my skin. I shuddered as if I had a fever.

 He had gone on into the alleyway and was taking out his gear. He glanced around and called me. His voice sounded very far away. I shook my head.

 Okay, he said stashing his gear again. Be like that.

 As he came out of the alley I spun around and bolted back the way we had come.

 Nice knowing you, he called after me.

 I ran until my legs gave out and I slumped in a doorway. I don’t know how long I sat there but it was dark when a man and a woman approached me and asked had I nowhere to sleep. I shook my head and they offered to help me. He picked up my backpack and I followed them to another hostel. I made sure not to let my pack out of my sight. They put me into a room with another girl and locked the door.

  What is this place? I asked my cell-mate who looked a bit kooky and smelt a bit like Grey Coat.

  Religious freaks, she said. Don’t mind anything they say to you. Eat the breakfast and leave.

  But will they let us leave? I glanced at the locked door.

  Follow me in the morning, she said. At least we’re off the street for the night and the food’s not bad.

  I stuck my backpack under the bed and tried to sleep.

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I’m always grateful for your thoughts and ideas about the story so far - or where you think it might be heading: