‘Don’t cry, pet,’ she sobbed over the jumpers she’d knitted for me. ‘You’ll always be my special little lamb.’
‘But why do I have to go?’ I asked. ‘Why can’t I stay here with you?’
‘You know how poorly Nanny’s legs are,’ she explained, clicking the case shut. ‘I just can’t look after you properly any more, pet. It breaks my heart, but I’ll see you all the time. And don’t forget you’ll have your mummy. You like her, don’t you, pet?’
I popped my dummy in for comfort, as fresh tears ran down my cheeks.
‘And then there’s Diane and Cheryl. It’s about time you got to know your sisters,’ Nanny went on. ‘And Davie, too.’
No matter what she said to make it better, I felt only confusion and fear. One day I was safe in the warmth and comfort of her arms, and the next I was rattling around in a strange flat with a family I hardly knew. Mummy didn’t seem to want me there at all. I could tell by the way she pushed me off whenever I tried to cuddle her, and shouted whenever I wet the bed, which I started to do every night.
‘What you pissing the bed for, you stupid girl?’ she yelled. ‘Now you’re gonna have to sleep in it tonight, ’cos I ain’t got any clean sheets.’
Mummy’s flat was just off Peckham High Street, only fifteen minutes from Nanny’s place, on the first floor of a huge red council block. I found the flat quite scary at first because it was dominated by a long dark hallway we called The Passage. There were three bedrooms. Diane and Cheryl, both teenagers now, shared one. I was put in with Davie, who was ten and long used to having a bedroom all of his own, where his little collections were arranged just so. It must have been quite a shock to find himself sharing with a whirlwind of a four-year-old sister he’d had little contact with before. This led to endless fights and squabbles. The more he warned me not to touch his ship in a bottle, the more I wanted to look at it from every angle as I wondered how it had got in there through such a small opening. His plastic English and German soldiers were carefully arranged, ready for battle, but I couldn’t help mixing them up–and the impulse to chew the ends of the rifles was impossible to resist. Davie didn’t mind me looking at his Beano comics as long as I didn’t tear, crumple or scribble on any of them. I tried my best not to but didn’t always succeed. But it was the time he caught me playing dress-up with his prized Millwall hat and scarf that finally broke the camel’s back. After that, Mummy squeezed my bed into the corner of the girls’ room. I was pleased with this arrangement for a number of reasons. One, it meant that I didn’t have to put up with a big brother who would pin me down and dribble spit into my face any more; two, I was away from the scary cupboard in his room with its resident monster; and three, Diane and Cheryl’s room had much more interesting things for me to play with, such as high-heeled platform boots, spangly tops and make-up.
Our front room was L-shaped with an open fire where we burned coal, and it had a small balcony that overlooked a grassy square outside. Unfortunately we couldn’t use the balcony because it was full of old junk, such as broken sinks and bits of wood. The kitchen was small with a narrow little window so high above the sink that nobody could see out of it. There was a separate toilet with a long metal chain that was so stiff I had to hang on to it to flush it. It was my least favourite place in the whole flat because every time I went in, the spider’s web in the corner seemed to have grown. I even saw a dead fly in it once. The bathroom smelled of mould, and was always cold and damp. It had another of the tiny windows so characteristic of the flat, high up near the ceiling, but this one was filled with rippled frosted glass. Mummy’s bedroom was closest to the front door, and smelled of a mixture of Youth Dew perfume and cigarette smoke. The flat was often untidy and furnished with an odd assortment of furniture that had seen better days, but it was homely and clean enough. I quickly settled in, and pretty soon I felt as though I’d lived there forever.
Just after I’d moved in with Mummy, the council offered Nanny and my aunts a transfer to a lovely new maisonette over the road from our place. Their block sat atop a row of shops, and their flat was right on the end above the newsagent’s. Nanny, Jenny and Freda moved in, and Uncle Jimmy stayed a while before moving in with Uncle Roy and Auntie Brenda in Essex. So although I didn’t actually live with Nanny any more, I didn’t have a chance to miss her much because her flat was like a second home. I would visit every day, often having meals there, and whenever I came in and out of our block, I could look over and see her windows. On sunny days, winter and summer, Nanny and Freda would sit out on their balcony watching the world go by so we were always waving and blowing kisses. Mummy was a barmaid at Uncle Bob’s pub, often working double shifts at lunchtime and in the evening, so having Nanny so close by was ideal for her. She never had to worry about childcare arrangements because Nanny, Jenny and Freda were always on hand, dependable as ever.
Mummy wasn’t the cuddly type like Nanny, and at first I was quite shy around her. She always seemed to be out working and if she was at home she would be too busy to stop and play or read me stories. One morning, I crept into her room to watch as she got ready for work. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, cigarette balanced in the ashtray beside her, brushing her thick and unruly black hair with hard, noisy strokes.
‘What’s that at the front of your hair?’ I asked, pointing to a triangle shape that became visible when she pulled her hair back.
‘It’s called a widow’s peak.’
I didn’t know what that was but thought it was very pretty. ‘What’s that mark on the end of your nose?’ I asked next.
‘It’s a beauty spot,’ she told me, adding that it had flown up there all on it’s own. ‘It used to be on my cheek, like Liz Taylor’s, but one night while I was asleep it flew onto my nose.’
I believed her totally, and from then on I’d always think of it as Mummy’s magic beauty spot. She laughed when she saw my wide-eyed expression and helped me check up and down my arms and legs to see if we could find any on me.
‘Is this one?’ I asked, pointing at a freckle, and she agreed that it probably was.
‘Now bugger off, I’m busy,’ she said, pushing me away as if she’d suddenly had enough of me. ‘I ain’t got time for niceynicey chit-chat.’
Mummy had the same chocolate-brown eyes and dark complexion as Diane and Davie. Cheryl and I were the opposite with our rosy complexions, blue eyes and chestnut-brown hair. I’d often wish I was dark like Mummy. I liked to watch her lining her eyes in black so they looked double the size, and then slicking on a coat of rosy brown lipstick and rubbing her lips together before turning her face this way and that as she peered at herself in the hand mirror. Every few minutes she’d reach for her cigarette, hold it to her lips and squint her eyes as she took a long deep drag. Seconds later a massive stream of smoke emerged from her mouth and nostrils. Sometimes the ash would drop on her clothes and she’d quickly rub at it until it disappeared. The brown tips left in the ashtray would be coated with rosy brown lip marks. I didn’t like the smell of the smoke, and on the rare occasion when she hugged me, I’d hold my breath until she let me go.
Before leaving for work, she’d reach into her bag and pull out a bottle of perfume to squirt behind her ears. Sometimes she even squirted it up her skirt. Once I copied her with a pretend bottle and everybody laughed, except Davie who went bright red. I’d ask if I could have some of Mummy’s real perfume but most of the time she’d say, ‘No, keep your sticky mitts off it.’ One time she sprayed a bit under my chin but it made me feel sick and gave me a headache, and she said ‘There you are, I told you it wasn’t for you.’
At the weekends I’d often sleep over at Nanny’s, but during the week it was Diane or Cheryl’s job to put me to bed while Mummy was at work. They weren’t as patient as Nanny had been when it came to the dummy hunt, and on the nights they couldn’t find one, they just let me stay up and fall asleep on the sofa in front of whatever programme they were watching.
Mummy didn’t usually get home from work until around midnight after the pub had shut, and was often tired in the mornings,