I shook my head. ‘I wanted to see it one last time.’ I felt Milly’s tiny hand in mine. ‘I wanted Milly to see it one last time too.’
I’d been down several times to help Dad pack up, but this was the final goodbye. The following day Surrey Removals would arrive and our long association with the house would cease. As I stood there, memories spooled across my mind like the frames in an old cine film. I saw myself in pink shorts, on the swing; my parents, posing arm in arm under the cherry tree for their silver wedding photo; I saw Mark throwing tennis balls for Bob, our border collie; I saw Cassie doing cartwheels across the lawn.
‘I’ll just go round it once more,’ I said. ‘Just to check … you know … that I haven’t left anything.’ Dad nodded understandingly. ‘Come on, Milly.’
We went inside, picking our way through the expectant crates, our footsteps echoing slightly over the bare floors. I said a silent goodbye to the old-fashioned kitchen with its red and black quarry tiles, then to the big, bay-windowed sitting room, the walls stamped with the ghostly outlines of pictures that had hung there for thirty-eight years. Then we went upstairs to the bathroom.
‘Starbish!’ Milly announced, pointing at the curtains.
‘Starfish,’ I said. ‘That’s right. And shells, look, and seahorses … I used to love these curtains, but they’re too frayed to keep.’
‘Teese!’ Milly exclaimed. She’d grabbed Dad’s toothbrush. ‘Teese, Mum!’ She was on tiptoe, one chubby hand reaching for the tap.
‘Not now, poppet,’ I said. ‘Anyway, that’s Grandpa’s toothbrush and we don’t use other people’s toothbrushes, do we?’
‘My do.’
I opened the medicine cabinet. All that remained were Dad’s shaving things, his toothpaste and his sleeping tablets. He said he still needed to take one every night. On the shelf below were a few of Mum’s toiletries – her powder compact, her dark-pink nail varnish, streaked with white now through lack of use, and the tub of body crème I’d given her for her last birthday, hardly touched. I stroked a little on to the back of my hand, then closed my eyes.
How lovely, darling. You know I adore Shalimar. And what a huge jar – this will keep me going for ages!
‘Mum! Come!’ I opened my eyes. ‘Come!’ Milly commanded. She’d grabbed my hand and was now leading me up the stairs to the top floor, her pink Startrites clumping against the steps.
‘You want to go to the playroom?’
‘Yes, Mum,’ she panted. ‘Paywoom!’
I pushed on the varnished door, inhaling the familiar musty smell of old dust. I’d already cleared most of the toys, keeping a few that weren’t too wrecked for Milly. But there was still a stack of old board games on the table, a jumble of dressing-up clothes in a basket and, scattered across the green lino, a selection of old comics. The debris of a happy childhood I reflected as I picked up an ancient Dandy.
Milly reached inside a little pink pram. ‘Look!’ She was holding up one of my old Sindys with the triumphant surprise of an actress with an Oscar.
‘Oh… I remember her …’ I took the doll from Milly’s outstretched hand and it gave me a vacant stare. ‘I had lots of Sindys. Five or six of them. I used to like changing their clothes.’ This Sindy was wearing a frayed gingham shirt and a pair of filthy jodhpurs. Her once luxuriant nylon tresses were savagely cropped, thanks, I now remembered, to Cassie. As I ran my thumb over the bristled scalp I felt a stab of retrospective indignation.
I know Cassie annoys you, darling, Mum would say. But try to remember that she’s six years younger than you and she doesn’t mean to be a nuisance.
‘She’s still being a nuisance,’ I breathed. I held the doll out to Milly. ‘Would you like her, sweetie?’
‘No.’ Milly shook her dark curls. ‘No, no, no,’ she muttered. The severe coiffure was clearly a turn-off. She thrust it back into the pram.
I quickly gathered a few things into a bin liner. As I did so a stray Monopoly note fluttered to the floor.
‘Five hundred pounds …’ I turned it over in my hands. ‘Shame it’s not real – we could do with some more cash right now – and this’ – I held up a battered Land Rover – ‘was Mark’s.’ Its paint was chipped and it was missing a wheel. ‘You know Uncle Mark? The one who sent you Baby Annabelle?’ Milly nodded. ‘He lives a long way away – in America.’
‘Meika,’ Milly echoed.
‘You’ve only met him … once,’ I realised disconsolately. ‘At your christening.’ I looked around the room. ‘Mark and I used to play here a lot.’ I remembered changing the signals on his Hornby train set and arranging the little fir trees by the side of the tracks. ‘He and I were great friends, but we hardly see each other now. It’s sad.’
Especially for Milly, I thought. She doesn’t have many men in her life. Not much of a dad; no brothers, just one grandfather, and Mark, her only uncle, had been living in San Francisco for the past four years.
‘OK, darling – let’s go. Bye-bye, playroom,’ I added as I closed the door behind us.
‘’Bye, paywoom.’
Then we crossed the landing into my old room. As we sat on the bed I looked up at the frosted-glass bowl light fitting in which I now noticed the hunched corpse of a large spider. It must have been there for months. Then I glanced at the window-panes, the lower left one visibly scored with large, loopy scribbles. ‘I did that,’ I said. ‘When I was six. Granny was a bit cross with me. It was naughty.’
‘Naughty,’ Milly repeated happily.
‘You’d have loved Granny,’ I said. I lifted Milly on to my lap and felt her arms go round my neck. ‘And she’d have adored you.’ I felt the familiar pang at what my mother had been deprived of.
‘’dored …’ I heard Milly say.
We stood up. I said a silent goodbye and closed my bedroom door for the very last time. Then I glanced into Mark’s room, next to mine. It was almost empty, the dusty white walls pebbled with Blu-Tack. He’d cleared it before he left for the States. He’d stripped it bare, as though he was never coming back. I remember how hurt my parents had been.
Now we went downstairs and I stood in the doorway of their room.
‘I was born in here, Milly …’
You arrived three weeks early, Anna. But there’d been heavy snow and I couldn’t get to the hospital so I had to have you at home. Daddy delivered you – imagine! He kept joking that he was an engineer, not a midwife, but he told me afterwards that he’d been terrified. It was quite a drama really …
Their mahogany wardrobe – along with other unwanted furniture – was being sold with the house. I opened Mum’s side – there was a light clattering as the hangers collided with each other. I visualised the dresses that had hung on them until only a few months ago – it had been two years before Dad had gone through her clothes. He said the hardest part was looking at her shoes, imagining her stepping into them.
Now Milly and I went downstairs to say goodbye to the garden – the garden my mother had nurtured and loved. It was only just emerging from winter mode, still leafless and dormant and dank. But as we stepped outside I remembered the flowerbeds filled with phlox and peonies in high summer; the lavender billowing over the path; the lilac with its pale underskirt of lilies of the valley in May; the lovely pink Albertine that smothered the arch. Every tree, shrub and plant was as familiar to me as an old friend. The Ceanothus, a foamy mass of blue in late April; the Japanese quince with its scarlet cups. I remembered, every autumn, the speckly green fruit with which my mother made jelly – the muslins