Mum would cook big meals when she had the time. Most Sundays she would do a family roast, although Dad still wouldn’t want to come down to eat with us. He didn’t even eat with us on Christmas Day. It didn’t bother Isobel or me because we couldn’t remember anything different, and it was always nicer when he wasn’t around to create a bad atmosphere anyway, but it must have been hard for Mum. She must have wished she had a normal husband who was part of the family. She pretended not to notice that anything was wrong, keeping herself and us so busy that we didn’t have too much time for introspection, but it must have been wearing her away inside.
On weeknights Isobel and I made sure we’d done our homework by the time Mum got home, and sorted out something to eat. We got through a lot of pasta in those years because there was never any time to cook anything more elaborate. There was certainly no space in our lives for just sitting down and relaxing over a meal. Mum drank endless cups of strong coffee throughout the day – sometimes as many as twenty a day – just to keep herself awake. Dad never ate the meals we prepared, of course. From what I could make out, he seemed to survive on takeaway kebabs or chips.
Mum was a great believer in the importance of exams and achieving things academically. During the daily car rides back and forth between after-school activities she would constantly bombard us with questions about school, getting us to go through every lesson and tell her what we had been learning and then she would fire questions at us, testing us on our times tables or our French vocabulary. She was always enthusiastic in the early days before tiredness started to overpower her, wanting to exercise our brains to the full at every opportunity. During half terms and holidays she would give us her own work projects and tests on top of anything our teachers might have set us. We never complained because we were so used to it and we knew she would always let us go out to play as soon as we had finished our work. We enjoyed most of the tasks anyway.
We certainly never had any time to chill out in front of the television as many of our friends did after school. None of this bothered us because we had never had a chance to get into the habit of watching television and whenever we did tune in the programmes seemed boring compared to the pace and variety of our own lives. The only time we might watch anything would be on a Sunday morning, but even then Mum wasn’t that keen if there was something else she thought we should be doing, and we weren’t interested enough to go against her wishes. About once a week we would catch an episode of The Simpsons, which was the only show we really liked.
From as early as I can remember, Mum would enrol us for every after-school activity imaginable. It didn’t matter how much it cost (and they were virtually all private lessons), or how many hours of her evening she had to give up to ferry us from one place to another. She was determined that we should be given every possible opportunity to try everything, even if we decided not to follow it up later, and that we would never be unable to do something just because we couldn’t afford it. Almost the moment she arrived home each afternoon, having driven for at least an hour back from work, she would be piling us into the little Metro she’d had for years and driving me to one place and Isobel to another.
The activities she enrolled us for covered virtually every skill she could think of. It wasn’t just the musical instruments – piano, violin – and singing in the choir; there were also the physical activities like swimming and gymnastics, ballet and karate. If we tried something and didn’t like it she would be happy to let us stop, but would immediately suggest something else instead. We must have belonged to every single club within a ten-mile radius of the house. At one stage I tried learning the trumpet but the teacher said I would do better changing to the French horn, which was a big instrument for a small boy to have to lug around with him all day. I joined the scouts but somehow Isobel escaped brownies and girl guides; I think maybe she didn’t have enough hours left in her day to fit them in, although she did do woodcraft.
Isobel’s favourite activity was running and she was brilliant at long distance and cross-country. She actually enjoyed going through the thickest mud and deepest puddles. She was so good she went all the way up to compete at county level. She was always a real tomboy, preferring football to ballet. Mum was willing to indulge her in anything that she showed an interest in, even though she was the only girl on the football team, until things got too rough and Isobel broke her finger at one match. After that, Mum decided enough was enough.
When we got a little older and started to have minds of our own, one or other of us might announce that we wanted to give up one of our activities. Sometimes Mum would react badly to this. Maybe she didn’t like the idea that we were growing up and not totally within her control any more. When Isobel said one evening that she wanted to give up swimming in order to have more time for her running Mum went completely ballistic.
‘All the money I’ve spent on swimming lessons,’ she shouted, ‘and you want to give it up just like that?’
She seemed to hate the idea of us limiting our options in any way, even though there obviously weren’t enough hours in the week for us to do everything properly. I think Isobel’s swimming costume got hurled out of the window during that row, which seemed a bit out of proportion. It may just have been Mum’s exhaustion and pent-up frustrations about other things that made her explode like that rather than the actual announcement itself. Isobel was determined not to change her mind, although she felt very guilty about letting Mum down and upsetting her.
When I announced I had quit the church choir she went even more over the top. I was around eleven years old and going through a bit of a rebellious phase at the time. I had actually sworn at the choirmaster during the practice that evening, which had resulted in me being ordered out of the room. I stormed off and disappeared for a few hours. The choirmaster phoned home and so Mum knew exactly what had happened and started ranting on to Isobel about me.
‘I’m going to call social services,’ she raved. ‘I’ve got to get something done about that boy!’
By the time I finally walked in through the front door she had lathered herself up into a real state of fury, but I stuck to my guns about leaving the choir and refused to go back. I think I might have provoked the whole confrontation deliberately in order to give myself an excuse to leave, so Mum was right to be angry with me, but I was still shocked by the sheer force of her disappointment.
Part of Mum’s motivation could have been to get us all out of the house and out of Dad’s way as much as possible, which was fine by us. There were certain times of the day, usually in the later part of the afternoon, when he might wake up and emerge unexpectedly from his room, coming down to the kitchen to make himself some food. At those times he didn’t want us anywhere around. He believed it was ‘his time’ and ‘his space’ and we would have to make ourselves scarce. The mere sight of Isobel or Mum would remind him how much he hated them and didn’t want them around.
It was best for all of us if we weren’t in the house at that time if we didn’t want to risk inciting his anger. If we had a day off sick from school we had to be very careful not to be in the kitchen during periods that he considered to be ‘his’. He spent as much of his life behind the bedroom door as possible. Isobel and I never ventured through it – we had barely even glimpsed through the crack when it was opened for him to go in or out – so we had no idea exactly what he did in there to entertain himself all day. We just dreaded the times when he was forced to come out into the real world in order to eat or go to the bathroom.
There were so many things for us to do outside the house that it wasn’t a problem most days. As we got better at our various sports and activities Isobel and I were