SEVEN
Tiggy pulled the cigarette from her mouth and ground the butt into the kerb with her heel before waving slowly. Nina pulled the van up onto the pavement and cut the engine. It was without any of the imagined nostalgia that she returned to the postcode of her childhood. Instead there was a bitter tinge in her mouth that tasted a lot like failure. She looked across at Connor, who leaned forward, staring up at the dark brick building with an expression of horror.
‘This . . . this is where you grew up?’ he stuttered.
His disbelieving tone made her feel raw, vulnerable. Letting this boy, whose opinion she valued above all others, see where she had lived stripped her of the carefully constructed façade he had known her by his whole life.
‘When we came here from Denmark, yes, after my mum died. We lived just around the corner.’ She was painfully aware of the catch to her voice and the way her face flared. It was an admission, a confession almost, that she was not like the other Kings Norton mums, the majority of whom had hopped from the professions into motherhood; her journey had been different. She had caught Finn’s eye on a building site while her dad touted for work, and he had scooped her up and she had been happy, living her fairy tale, until Finn had rewritten for her the most unexpected ending.
‘This looks like the petrol station at home,’ Declan whispered as he took in the rotted wood cladding of the fascia and the small flashes of graffiti on the front porch of the building.
She looked out, seeing the building through the eyes of her boys who had lived in splendour, in a gracious house, attended a beautiful school and had taken their leisure among the pale stone buildings of Bath, an orderly, prosperous city. And all for what? They had ended up back at the beginning, her beginning, and one she had fought to escape. She felt the strength leave her core and wished, not for the first time, for the escape of sleep.
Her eyes fixated on a misshapen ampersand in blue spray paint with two dots in the loop, a symbol that must have meant something to the person who scrawled it there. At this moment, she too felt it symbolised more. It was a stamp, a mark, proof that she had gone backwards, her life running in an endless loop, returning to a place where people thought it was okay to write graffiti on someone’s home, in the way others might a dustbin or a derelict wall.
‘Do you think it looks like the petrol station at home, Mum?’ Declan asked again, quietly.
Nina gave a single nod. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, wishing her son would do what he did best and only point out the positives, if there were any, as if via a mind trick they could collectively pretend things were not that bad. She had to admit, the two buildings were indeed of a similar design and era. At home . . . She erased the image from her head.
‘So here we are.’ She turned in the seat, trying to maintain eye contact with Declan, who had gone very pale on the back seat. ‘Let’s get inside and get drinks.’
Tiggy opened the driver’s door, leaning in; she wrapped her arms around Nina in a tight, brief squeeze. ‘Hey, family! God, it’s freezing out here. Welcome home! Nice wheels.’ She gave the tyre a playful kick. ‘Hi, kids.’ She ducked her head and smiled at her nephews.
Declan raised his hand in a wave. Connor didn’t answer. Nina and Tiggy exchanged a look.
‘The good news, Con, is that you are only a hop, skip and a jump from your new school!’ Tiggy was clearly trying to make things better, but only served to heap more tension onto the already fraught situation; the last thing the boys needed was a reminder that in just a week or so’s time they would be starting at Cottrell’s School, mid-term.
‘Do you know what their rugby team is like?’
The note of desperation in her son’s voice was almost more than Nina could bear.
‘’Fraid not,’ Tiggy levelled, breathing in through her teeth, ‘but I know that one or two of them are spitting champions. I have on more than one occasion had to wipe that lovely gift from the front window of the pub.’
Nina saw the look of abject horror in Connor’s eyes. At a loss for words, she climbed out and looked down the street that was to be their temporary home. It was not as she remembered it. Not at all. In her mind, Portswood, as a suburb, was a place of genteel poverty and overcrowding, houses and flats for those who earned their living with their hands. It had been filled with the jovial banter of those who found humour in the face of adversity, who often shared the little they had with those who fell on harder times. Today Nina could see nothing charming about the boarded-up windows, the grime, the noise and the feeling of unease that meant she felt she should constantly be looking over her shoulder. The terraced houses further along the street had a clutch of green and black wheelie bins crammed along the outside wall, each daubed with the house number, written in white paint. Discarded refuse and waste had been dumped on the kerb, and an old mattress and redundant fridge sat in what should have been a parking space. On the couple of occasions she had brought Finn here, he always commented that it felt run-down, but not broken. He had seen a certain charm in the Victorian family terraces, lacy net curtains and shiny front steps, but this was not the case any more. Gone was the feeling of safety that she had associated with the place. With childhood memories dashed, and on this grey, miserable day, all she saw was dirt and decay. The blue ampersand somehow personified this.
Connor clutched his bag to his chest and looked around wide-eyed, mistrusting and afraid. Nina hated that she was going to have to be the translator, felt ashamed that the language of these streets was familiar to her.
‘Student housing now most of it, and a couple of hostels,’ Tiggy offered, having seen the expression of alarm on her sister’s face. She tried to explain the dire state of the properties, where weeds sprouted from cracks in the uneven paving slabs and boxes full of discarded beer cans and empty bottles sat in the narrow doorways. Nina shivered, picturing the kinds of people who might end up in hostel accommodation and who were now her neighbours. A stab of fear followed – knowing that if she didn’t get a job, the hostels might well be their next port of call. Her heart skipped a beat at the prospect.
Opposite the flats was a convenience store with ‘special offer’ stickers and posters advertising junk food, the Lotto and fizzy drinks cluttering up the windows. The kerbs were full of dark soot, accumulated from the constant stream of diesel fumes from the cars that passed by in a slow procession, spewing fumes. She thought of the tarmac lane that ran along the front of their property in Bath, pictured the occasional tractor or Land Rover that trundled along, usually with a Labrador in tow and most of the drivers offering a wave. Even the vehicles here were bashed and rusting, the drivers unfriendly and scowling. Nina still felt a flash of envy towards each and every one of them, the taxi drivers, deliverymen and passengers in the many, many cars, and the fact that they all had a car, and a final destination that wasn’t here.
A young woman with pink hair pushing a pram, and with a phone wedged under her chin, looked a little irritated as she was forced to navigate the crowded pavement. A drunken man, in a greatcoat and a furry hat, swayed on the other side of the road as he raised a beer can in his palm and shouted out, ‘Good morning!’
Nina avoided eye contact with Connor, knowing it would be that much harder to keep up her calm façade if she noted his expression of abject disappointment. And fearing that she might just lose it if she did. Her stomach felt leaden with the rocks of self-loathing and guilt. I hate it here, I have always hated it here and yet I have brought my boys here. What was I thinking?
The odd troupe hovered like a paused conga procession on the icy pavement as Tiggy handed her sister the small bunch of keys with a flimsy yellow plastic fob and stood back. Nina climbed the steps to the communal entrance, opened the spring-loaded front door to the shared front hallway, and swallowed. She tried not to react to the acrid smell of communal cooking, laced with bleach and stale cigarette smoke. She kept her head high and her eyes straight ahead as she turned to the first door on the left, what had been Aunty Mary’s warm welcoming home, a pleasant refuge from her gran’s cold hearth and sharp tongue. It was only as an adult that Nina recognised the warm cupping of her face inside her aunt’s elderly calloused palms, and the issuing of sweets and hugs was her way of saying, ‘I know what you go through with that sister of mine, and this is one small way that I can make you feel better.’
And she did.
Nina opened the front door. Tiggy wandered in while she and the boys hovered just inside the door.
The flat had either been remodelled or else she had a false memory of the size and layout. They stood in a dark, long hallway. Directly opposite was the bare bathroom. Peering inside they saw a small frosted glass window let in some light; there was a toilet and an old sink, with a small square of mirror with a chunk missing hanging just above. A white plastic bathtub was well worn; in some spots, the colour was now grey. The rings and loops, the result of a harsh scouring pad on the plastic, reminded her of the ice on the rink at Rockefeller Center in New York, where she and Finn had looped around one Christmas, arm in arm, and it had felt like the most romantic thing in the world. She pushed the memory away; there was no time right now to think about that other life.
Despite her efforts to remain focused and strong, tears gathered, as if the momentum of the day finally caught up with her and the sight of the dismal bathroom was just too much. She was finding that grief was disorganised, random; it struck at the most inopportune moment, could make her legs buckle under her, suck the air from her lungs and leave her deflated, winded and disoriented. She coughed and wiped her eyes on her sleeve, burying the howl of distress that threatened to leave her body, for the sake of her boys.
She scanned the white tiles and the green-and-white linoleum that sat in the strip of space between the side of the bath and the wall. A threadbare green-and-orange-patterned hand towel had been carefully folded in half and hung over the single chrome bar of the towel stand. The thoughtfulness of it made her want to weep all over again.
‘It’s very cold in here.’ Declan shivered.
She nodded. ‘I’ll put the fire on.’
‘It’s very small,’ Declan noted in a nervous whisper.
‘It’s big enough.’ She gave a tight-lipped smile. ‘What more do you need? Other than space to stand in the shower and room to sit on the loo?’
‘There isn’t a shower.’ Declan looked up at her.
‘Then a lovely warm bubble bath will do just fine. It’ll warm you up too,’ she responded as quick as a flash.
They all looked towards the window as the glass rattled in the frame. A train hurtled by, filling the room with a rhythmic, deafening thrum, followed by knocks that echoed down the line.
Connor stared at her.
‘Let’s look at the bedrooms!’ she trilled with false brightness, trying to move everyone’s attention from the terrible noise of the train.
Declan ran ahead. With his arms stretched out he could reach both walls of the hallway, showing just how very narrow the space was. It was claustrophobic, tight, tiny. Horrible. She walked behind him, closing her eyes briefly and gathering strength as she approached the two doors. The white gloss paint was chipped and scratched, and splashed with the droplets of tea that an elderly or hurried hand had been unable to contain. She knew this moment would stay etched in her mind, the desperate feeling at being back in the place from which she thought she had escaped forever. Dragging her two sons along with her was almost more than she could bear. Finn had promised her a life free of worry, a good life for her and their children.
Finn had lied.
Declan walked into the room to the left. A set of bunk beds sat in front of the window. ‘I’m sharing with you, Connor!’ he said. Even in this dire situation, he found it hard to keep the flicker of delight from his voice.
‘You are kidding me? I have to share with Declan? In bunk beds?’ Connor said, as if this was the worst discovery so far.
‘It won’t be forever. Just a short while,’ Nina whispered, wondering just how long a ‘short while’ might be. ‘I’ll get a job and we will move. This is just temporary, and we need to make the best of it until that point.’
He stared at her mistrustfully. It tore at her heart.
Tiggy followed them into the room. ‘How we all doing?’
‘Just awesome!’ Connor offered sarcastically, giving her a double thumbs-up.
‘Great!’ Tiggy responded in a matching tone. ‘In that case, Connor, I nominate you to start unloading the van and find the kettle.’ She gave him double thumbs-up right back.
‘We can all do it, that will be quickest.’ Nina squeezed past her sons and sister, keen to get back outside and shake off the feeling of claustrophobia. She looked back at her family squished together forlornly in the dark, narrow space, all staring at her expectantly. Finn’s words came to her: ‘I feel like I am living in a world made of glass & with every day comes a new pressure that is pushing down down down . . .’
And did you think this was best, Finn? To put me in your world made of glass? Because you have! That’s what you have done! A bubble of laughter burst from her mouth. ‘Sorry,’ she managed, stifling her laughter into her hand.
It was that or scream.
After she and Tiggy had returned the rental van, Nina dipped into her meagre funds for a fish-and-chip supper, carefully peeling off notes and rubbing them between her thumb and forefinger to make sure none were stuck together. The idea of giving money away or losing it was terrifying. They now walked along the pavement, back towards the boys waiting at the flat, with the hot supper sweating in a plastic bag.
‘How are you for money?’ Tiggy asked. Nina flinched, remembering Finn’s mantra that it was one of three things they weren’t to discuss.
‘I’ve got a little bit of cash, enough for a couple of months’ rent, and I have some things to sell. Could you help me with that?’ She didn’t know where to start.
‘Sure. And then what?’ her sister pushed.
‘Things are tight. I need to get a job.’ She nodded, trying to sound more confident than she felt. ‘And fast.’
‘What do you fancy doing?’ Tiggy asked, as though Nina were at liberty to choose.
‘I don’t know, anything that fits in with school hours. I know that sounds pathetic. I’m in my mid-thirties, I should have more of an idea, shouldn’t I?’ She bit her lip to stop it from trembling. ‘I’ve been so cosseted. It never occurred to me that I would need a career plan. I’m scared,’ she whispered, wondering how she would juggle all that she needed to. How could she help the boys settle into a new school, and be the sole provider at the same time? The prospect of not going out to work and earning money was even more scary.
‘You always wanted to be a nurse,’ Tiggy reminded her.
‘I did, but I think most little girls do, don’t they, at some point?’
Tiggy shook her head. ‘Not me. I wanted to be an astronaut.’
‘How’s that working out for ya?’
They both laughed. Tiggy held her sister’s gaze. ‘I decided to give it a miss. I prefer the pub. Better working hours and a much sexier uniform.’
‘Oh, Tig, I can laugh, but I am really in the shit.’
‘Yep, but the good news is, you are only in your mid-thirties, you have decades of good work left in you. That’s valuable to an employer.’ Tiggy lit up a cigarette.
‘I guess so.’ She tried to take comfort from this positive, but these mind tricks were harder to pull off than she thought. However, she loved her sister for trying.
‘You’ll get back in the saddle and you’ll be fine. You’ll see. You used to love going to work!’
Nina nodded. ‘I did.’ She remembered her first Saturday job in the florist’s, and then later working in the restaurant at the cruise ship terminal down by the docks. ‘It’s not that I don’t want to work. I’ll do whatever it takes. I’m just worried about how much I can realistically earn and that no one will want me.’
‘They will. You have a lot to offer.’ She paused. ‘I have hated to see your confidence so eroded over the years.’
The comment jarred her.
‘I can’t help it. I feel so anxious. I don’t want to be.’
‘I know,’ Tiggy said, her intonation suggesting that the fault lay with something or someone else. ‘And I know everything must be hard right now. It must make every step feel as if you are jumping into quicksand.’
‘It does.’ Nina’s voice was small. She chose not to pick up her sister’s thread. She didn’t have an ounce of spare energy for analysis of her situation. ‘I’ve had a good life, a life I wouldn’t change. But right now I can’t see my future. Can’t see the kids’ future, and that’s the scariest thing. I love them so much.’
‘I know you do, and you should. They are great boys, of course. You were not much more than Connor’s age when you left here,’ Tiggy reminded her.
Nina pictured herself at seventeen, naive, trusting, malleable. ‘God, I was so young.’
She thought again about the last time she had worked, running around for twelve-hour shifts at her waitressing job, with aching limbs and throbbing feet, sustained by the camaraderie of her colleagues as they dealt with the drunk, the absurd and the ridiculous: people who drank and ate with a gluttonous holiday mentality even though they were yet to leave port. She did love the interaction with the different people from all walks of life, imagining the many places they would visit on the vast shiny ships that left her behind on the grey shores of Southampton. And she recalled the sense of pride when she got her pay cheque at the end of the working week.
One night after passing out with exhaustion, she awoke when her dad had crept into her room, pulled the duvet up over her back and smoothed the curls from her cheek, like she was still a small child. Bending low, he kissed her gently on the face and whispered, ‘There is no sleep as sweet as the sleep taken after a hard day’s work, Nina . . .’ She had never forgotten it.
Her plan had been to find a job in Bath, once her dad had secured a role, and then on that fateful day, Big Joe chatted to the man in charge, the young, flashy Finn McCarrick, construction company owner, he had noticed her, and her life changed instantly. She’d sat in the front of the van shyly eyeing the young man in his sharp suit, who happened to be looking over her dad’s shoulder and straight into her eyes, nodding distractedly as if, while giving Big Joe’s request only the smallest of considerations, he had his mind on a bigger prize. She smiled at him, and just like that, all her plans went out of the window and she began to walk a different path.
It was hard to believe that was so long ago. Her dad had thought it wonderful that a man in Finn McCarrick’s position was interested in his daughter. Gran, however, had offered stark words of warning that were still imprinted in her mind: ‘You’ll be better off sticking to your own kind.’
‘I want to find a career,’ she’d enthused to Finn after only a few weeks of dating. ‘I think I might try to get into nursing, I’ve always fancied that.’
‘You won’t have time for a career!’ Finn had chuckled dismissively. ‘You’ll have the wedding to plan and the renovations of the house to oversee and then who knows’ – he had run his fingers over her stomach – ‘maybe a baby to look after?’
Her face had blushed at the prospect. And she’d felt a mixture of guilt and sheer joy knowing the kind of life she could have with a man like Finn.
‘You are more valuable to me at home.’ He had kissed her firmly on the cheek.
What about what was more valuable to me, Finn? Again she shook her head, thinking of how quickly, with the implicit trust of youth and in the first throes of love, she had capitulated, believing that a man like Finn McCarrick, an older man, a successful man, must know best.
The four of them ate fish and chips out of the paper with their fingers. Nina tried to enjoy her food, but she was painfully aware that she’d spent twenty precious pounds on it. Connor left half of his fish and she found herself calculating in her mind just how much that waste had cost her. She made a resolution to shop first thing and buy smartly, avoiding spur-of-the-moment takeaways in the future that had cost so dear. An image of the jam-packed freezer in The Tynings floated into her mind.
I need to get a job, tomorrow. I need a job . . .
After dinner, Nina paced between the cold rooms that carried the scents and echoes of the previous tenants. She pulled their bed linen from the suitcases and made the beds. She put the laundry hamper under the sink in the bathroom, and the two bar stools against the narrow counter-top in the kitchen. She arranged her toiletries on the pale wood bookshelves in the corner of the main bedroom and put the boys’ suitcases and boxes in their room, awaiting their attention.
‘I know this is not what you planned, but it’s nice to have you back,’ Tiggy offered as she prepared to leave. Nina bit her lip to stop herself from ruining the moment with the fact that she wasn’t staying; that this was temporary.
Nina closed the door behind her sister and walked down to the bedroom. Her eyes roamed over the saggy double bed that had been her great-aunt’s. She plugged in her bedside lamp and put her clothes in the walnut-veneered wardrobe, placing two more boxes of her possessions in the corner of the room. She would sort them another time. Nina couldn’t remember coming into this bedroom as a child, but clearly recalled her aunt leaving the cold sitting room to come and delve into a cupboard in here, returning with a vivid patchwork quilt to throw over Nina’s chilly legs, snuggling her to bring warmth. It had felt lovely. Aunty Mary told her that the different fabrics had belonged to members of her dad’s family, an aunt’s favourite apron and a cousin’s bridesmaid dress, amongst other things. It was the first time she remembered being aware that half of her blood was from her dad’s family here in Southampton. Prior to this, she could only see herself as Danish, where her mamma had come from. Funny, that.
Fatigue now pawed at her senses; she was sorely tempted to submit to it, but wanted to check on the boys before climbing into the lopsided bed.
Hovering on the landing outside the boys’ room, she spied through the small opening and listened to Declan’s chatter. ‘I think I saw a sign for a zoo on the way here. We could go and visit it, couldn’t we?’
Nina saw Connor on the top bunk, facing towards the window and ignoring his brother. Declan persevered with another topic. ‘I liked the fish and chips. It reminded me of going to the seaside with Daddy and eating them in the car and that time he threw chips out of the window and the seagulls swooped down and caught them before they hit the ground, do you remember? I thought they were going to come in the car. I was really scared.’
Nina pushed open the door and smiled at her son, ‘I remember that, Dec, and Daddy said their squawks were gull-speak for “Too much salt! Too much salt!”’ She did her best gull-speak.
She heard Connor’s sigh of irritation.
The bedroom was long and narrow with no furniture other than the bunk beds that, sadly, were too long to fit widthways in the room, which would have given the whole place a more spacious feel.
Declan pulled out his jeans, hoodies and sports kit from his bag and looked around at the bare walls. ‘Where can I hang my clothes?’
‘You can’t. There’s no wardrobe.’ Connor growled his irritation from the top bunk, keen to point out yet another shortcoming.
Nina closed her eyes briefly; every disgruntled, negative observation caused the knot of stress in her gut to tighten. She thought back to when she had shared a room with Tiggy in circumstances not dissimilar to this. ‘I can show you a neat trick.’ She went into the sitting room to fetch a bunch of clothes hangers. She came back and popped Declan’s hoodie on a hanger and then hung it from the base of Connor’s bed so it hung down over the end of Declan’s. ‘Look, if we put all your clothes along here like this, when you climb in, it’s like having a cosy curtain that hides you and keeps you snug.’
Declan smiled and proceeded to hang up his clothes. ‘This is a bit like when you built me a wigwam out of clothes in the garden in the south of France, isn’t it, Mum? And Connor found a toad in his wash bag.’
‘Yes, my darling, it’s a bit like that.’ Nina took a crumb of hope from the fact that no matter what happened, her boys had had a short lifetime of wonderful experiences, enough to stave off the darker moments of want, something that she knew would have made her own childhood easier to bear, had she been able to dip into a pocketful of glorious memories. She wished she had more memories like this of her own mum, wished that she hadn’t been so young when she’d lost her; at three, she was too young to properly know how to store a lot of memories and was far too busy learning about the world. Curiously, she recalled the feel of her mother holding her, wrapping her in love, but couldn’t remember the exact colour of her hair. She could remember the deep earthy scent of the wood smoke that filled their little home in Frederiksberg, but wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint it easily on a map. In her mind, it made her mum a shadowy figure, a presence rather than a real person.
‘Are you going to be okay tonight?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ Declan responded.
Her heart flexed with love for her baby, who was showing maturity beyond his years. ‘Well, I’m next door if you need me. Just the other side of the wall.’ She looked up towards the top bunk. ‘Night-night, Connor.’ She reached up and patted his back.
He ignored her. She could feel the tension coming off him in waves.
Nina stood at the sitting-room door, taking a second to reacquaint herself with the shape and layout of the room. It was rectangular with a defunct brown-glazed tiled fireplace in the centre of the main wall, and alcoves either side of it. Tall metal-framed doors opened out onto a Juliet balcony that she vaguely remembered being open in the summers of her youth. They were now covered with old-fashioned lacy net curtains that were very worn, stained in places and frayed in others. The carpet was yellow, red and brown, a hideous pattern of swirls and loops that reminded her of the ketchup and mustard mess that was left on plates after a crowded hot-dog supper. It felt sticky underfoot and was so full of nylon that her hair stood up with static. The wallpaper was smooth and could best be described as oatmeal in colour with a slight sheen to it. Two bare light bulbs hung at either end of the room, casting noose-like shadows on the walls.
Sadly, the kitchen was just as she had remembered: a chunk of the sitting room that had been commandeered decades ago for the purpose, with a stud wall separating a six-foot square space that housed a cooker, fridge, a sink and a couple of loose-doored cupboards, all of which had seen better days, but were nonetheless functional. The red linoleum floor was also the original, and she pictured her little feet standing on it, waiting for the treat of a boiled sweet to be placed in her hand, a little gift of sugar that meant so much in a world of deprivation. Closing the door, she made her way along the dark hallway and into the bedroom, where she stood at the window, squashed between the wall and the bed. Her sobs came in great gulping bursts. She felt like she was drowning. ‘What’s happened to us? I’m here with the kids in this cold, miserable place and it’s happened so fast I can’t think straight.’ She sniffed and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. ‘I have been so bloody stupid. In the early days I let you bulldoze me, never questioned anything because I wanted to believe you, wanted the life you promised. But that set a pattern, didn’t it? And that suggests I wasn’t smart enough to see it happening. And I don’t want to be that person,’ she whispered, taking a breath and lifting her head to look out at the street beyond the window. ‘I don’t.’
Her eyes took in the neon sign outside the window that flashed the word ‘OPEN’ as cars and delivery motorbikes whizzed by. The pink-haired woman, now baby-less, hurried along the pavement with a holdall under her arm. The thrum and squeak of engines and brakes drifted in, along with music from stereos and shouts from further down the street. After the silence and peace of The Tynings, she found the noise deafening and knew the boys must too. The thought fuelled her next bout of tears.
Nina let the thin, dusty lace curtain fall over the glass and stared ahead, exhausted at the end of the long and trying day. She shivered in the cold, but knew that with her brain whirring and filled with distress, sleep was not going to come easy.