I have to find Paul. I need to know that he is safe. I hear him then, walking around downstairs, he must have come in from the garden. The relief that he is OK permits me to abandon the chaos up here for now and run down the stairs, I just want to see his face. He isn’t in the kitchen, where I was expecting him to be. I double back along the hallway towards the front room and paint a smile on my face as I open the door I don’t remember closing.
The Christmas tree lights have been switched back on again, but that isn’t the first thing to catch my eye when I enter the room. The thing I spot first is Edward, sitting on the sofa. He looks up at me as though he has been waiting, as though we had arranged to meet, as though it is perfectly normal that this man from my past is sitting in my lounge. I want to shout, but, more than that, I want to run. He smiles up at me.
‘Hello, Amber. You look tired, why don’t you sit down.’
Before
Monday, 21st December 1992
Dear Diary,
Dad put up our Christmas tree today. It’s not a real tree, it’s made of plastic and it isn’t really ours, it was Nana and Grandad’s but I don’t suppose they would have minded. It’s a funny colour green, like it faded and would like to be grey instead. I was allowed to decorate it. The lights don’t work and there are no presents underneath, but I like it anyway. Jo said it looked good when I was finished. I quite like having her around for company.
Dad has got a new job, which should have been good news, but wasn’t. His new job is in Wales, which is nowhere near here. Wales is so far away that it’s a completely different country. They even have their own language which sounds like people talking backwards, Dad played me a cassette. Taylor told me that she’s been on holiday to Wales before and they speak English as well as Welsh, but I still don’t want to go and live there.
There are three big reasons why we shouldn’t move to Wales:
1. I’ll have to change school, again.
2. I’ll miss Taylor too much.
3. Nana won’t be there.
Nana isn’t here either, but because all her things are, it’s quite easy to pretend she still is.
Dad has been packing our lives away into boxes. Little bits of our history are stacked up all around the house, a maze of forgotten old things we won’t need carefully wrapped and packed as though they are precious. We still had the old boxes up in the loft from when we moved last time, that’s when Dad found the tree. He asked Mum to help with all the packing but she’s not very well, so he’s been doing it on his own. Mum doesn’t even get dressed any more, just wanders round in her pyjamas. The doctor gave her some sleeping pills, which seems a little odd to me because she spends all day in bed already.
Dad says that I’m old enough to pack my own things this time. He put thick brown tape on the bottom of two boxes and put them up in my room, then he told me to fill them up before dinner. He found a ten pound note in one of the kitchen drawers and said we could have fish and chips as a treat, just me and him. I’m glad he found some money, I think we’ve almost run out. A man came to the door asking for Dad yesterday and I heard him say we hadn’t paid our water bill. I checked the taps in the kitchen and bathroom and they still work. Dad said that if anyone else comes to the door we have to pretend not to be home and hide under the windows so they can’t see us if they look in.
I have tried to fill up the boxes in my room, but it’s harder than it sounds. I put some of my books in one of them, but it just felt wrong, so I took them out again and put them back on the shelf. I don’t think my books want to leave this house, it’s their home and they should be allowed to stay here as long as they want. I put my clothes in the boxes instead. I don’t need many clothes anyway, I’ve been wearing the same thing for two days now and it’s fine. I’ve also stopped showering to save the water we haven’t paid for but nobody seems to have noticed. I sealed one of the boxes with the brown tape, then left the roll dangling from the box, I’m not allowed scissors in my room.
The fish and chips were the best ever! I had salt and vinegar and ketchup on mine and I felt so full but I finished them anyway. I think Dad liked his too. We were having a nice time just the two of us, but then he started drinking red wine out of a box and got all moody. I asked him why the wine was in a box, not a bottle, and he told me I asked too many questions and said to be quiet. I don’t think Dad should drink so much, it makes him into a not very nice person. He pretends to be nice with Christmas trees and fish and chips, but he doesn’t like me really. I watched him for a while after dinner while he watched the big TV. His beard had bits of food in it and his lips had pieces of dry skin on them which were stained purple from the wine. I don’t think I look like him at all, I’m not even sure I believe that he’s my Dad. I hate him when he drinks too much. HATE HIM.
I spotted the scissors when I went to get a glass of water from the kitchen. I know I’m not supposed to touch them, but I am eleven now. I decided to close the boxes in my room properly with the tape. But then a funny thing happened when I got to the top of the stairs. My feet came up with a different plan without telling me and walked into the bathroom. I turned on the light and Jo was standing in the bath, she gave me a proper fright. She told me to close the bathroom door, so I did. Then I looked in the mirror so I could see what I was doing.
There was lots of my hair on the bathroom floor when I was finished. Cutting it into a bob was Jo’s idea. When I squinted my eyes in the mirror, I could pretend it was Taylor looking back at me and that made me feel happy. I smiled and she smiled too. I asked Jo what she thought and she said I’d done something very clever because it means that so long as they have mirrors in Wales, I can take Taylor with me.
Now
New Year’s Eve, 2016
I wake up to the sound of a cork popping in the distance. Someone somewhere is celebrating. A flash of something comes back, Champagne at Christmas, the clinking of glasses, the twins crying upstairs. I struggle to retrieve more, but the rest of the file is blank. I don’t think I was drunk but I honestly can’t remember and the mere possibility feeds the shame that has been growing inside me. Our parents used to drink and the alcohol changed who they were. I never wanted to be like them, but history has a way of repeating itself whether you like it or not. I hear laughter down the corridor and wonder what there can be to laugh about in a place like this.
Paul takes my hand in his. He’s here, he hasn’t given up on me yet.
‘Happy New Year,’ he says and kisses me ever so gently on the forehead.
New Year.
So I’ve been here a week. Time here seems to stretch like an accordion: sometimes it’s all squashed together, sometimes it feels as though my folded-up existence is infinite, tucked away between the creases of life-shaped cloth and cardboard. I’m a little confused and a lot lost.
I think back through the New Year celebrations of my past. I can’t think of a single good one, not really, although I suppose they must all have been better than this.
‘Just move your finger, if you can hear me,’ says Paul. ‘Please.’