Mum visibly bristled, glaring at Dad, as we were ushered to our seats with Dad trying to laugh it off.
I’d heard of Karen a few times by now, but I still had no clue who she was.
Chapter 3
Terrie
It was in early April 1981, when Dad was away working in Portsmouth, that Mum made an announcement over breakfast.
‘We’re going to emigrate to South Africa.’ She paused, looking at our faces. ‘What do you think? It’s all happening in September, so Terrie, you won’t be starting upper school.’
‘Oh, wow!’ I was stunned. I glanced over at Paul, trying to read his expression. He was smiling and then began manically leaping around the kitchen. I raised my eyebrow, pretending to look disapproving, and after a few moments joined in.
I was very excited. I’d loved our holiday to South Africa. Anywhere had to be better than grey old Northampton. I wondered if Mum and Dad might be happier in the sunshine too. It also meant a fresh start, maybe a place I could make friends and fit in.
At school, I told all my classmates about it. ‘What? The Ducketts are going to live abroad?’ laughed one. ‘Not that we’ll notice you’ll be gone.’ They just poked fun at me and I could see they didn’t really believe that we were moving.
My friend Lisa, who was more of an enemy I kept closer, looked a bit sad when I told her. ‘But I thought you were really poor,’ she said, looking confused. ‘How comes you can afford it?’ I shrugged. I didn’t actually know the answer to that.
That evening I had a chat with Paul about our fresh start. ‘I don’t care whether we move or not,’ said Paul. ‘I don’t have many friends anyway and I doubt anyone will miss me.’
‘Aww, Paul. What about Mark Millar? I thought he was a friend.’ I gave him a hug. But I understood how he felt. I wasn’t going to be missed much either. Paul struggled as much as me to fit in; relentlessly bullied about our surname, haircuts and never having the fashionable clothes or the latest toys meant we couldn’t join in many games. Thankfully, we had each other, and we enjoyed playing out with bikes and exploring.
That summer, before our emigration, was one of the hottest for years. Dad had flown out to South Africa to try to get a home and job sorted ready for when we flew out, and meanwhile Mum worked all hours to pay the rent and bills. She’d started packing up the house into tea chests, sending what we thought would be important over to South Africa. Other items she sold to friends: the cooker, the sofa, our beds, my lovely bike. Gradually each room in our house became more and more bare as furniture and bits and pieces were shipped off or sold.
‘I don’t see how I can carry on like this.’ Mum was stressed and was sitting chatting to Dad on the phone. He rang once a week, giving her updates on our new life, telling her what needed doing back home in England.
She’d left the shoe company and had got herself a job as a saleswoman for a carpet company called Rainbow Carpets and worked nine to five every day. She couldn’t afford childcare so we were left to our own devices all day during the holidays.
Paul and I were getting good at entertaining ourselves. One afternoon Paul, my friend Lisa and myself got hold of a couple of pairs of old tights, cut them at the knee and then pulled them over our heads.
We roared with laughter as we saw each other’s squashed noses and hooded eyes. ‘Let’s pretend to be bank robbers and scare some neighbours,’ said Paul, sniggering from behind his tight mask. His nose was puckered upwards like a pig’s snout.
At the same time we looked at each other. ‘Doris!’ we said in unison.
Doris was a little old lady who lived three doors up. She was a proper busybody, always peering out the corner of her window, or twitching her net curtains whenever anyone went past. We crept along to her half-open kitchen window and saw her standing doing some ironing, her head down focusing on the crease she was pressing into a shirt. Arranging our tight masks over our faces we nodded at each other and then leaped up as high as we could. ‘Boo!’ we yelled.
She screamed and dropped her iron onto the floor in fright, while we ran off around the corner and rolled around on the floor, clutching our stomachs as we laughed hysterically.
Later on in the week rain set in, so we stayed inside to play board games and watch TV. Paul thought it might be fun to make a few prank calls and get a carpet delivered to Mary next door. We’d get a good view from the kitchen window and we could have a laugh at her reaction.
Later, when Mum came home from work, she was not best pleased with us.
‘Today my boss stuck the speaker phone on,’ she said crossly. ‘And I heard two giggling voices ordering a fuzzy blue carpet for Mary next door.’
I tried not to look at Paul. I knew if I just took one look at his face and saw a twitch of his lip or an eye movement I’d laugh.
‘My boss asked me if those voices belonged to my kids and I said I was sure it wasn’t you as you were with your grandparents all day. But I would know your voices anywhere,’ she scolded, a twinkle in her eye.
We all started laughing and we couldn’t stop.
‘Right,’ said Mum, getting her breath back. ‘A lock is going on this phone so you won’t be able to use it at all.’
‘Awwww,’ said Paul, realising how much it’d spoiled our fun.
Mum was true to her word. The following day a silver lock was secured into the number one on the dial of the phone. Annoyed at not being able to play wind-ups on the phone any more, Paul started fiddling around with it in the afternoon, pressing the receiver up and down, up and down. Suddenly he froze, the receiver mid-air. I could hear a faint mechanical voice coming from the phone; by this point Paul was staring at it with a wicked grin, which later on I came to recognise as his ‘light-bulb’ moment.
‘Terrie!’ he yelled excitedly. ‘We can still make calls! Watch this!’ He tapped the black plugs in the receiver cradle in a sequence, almost like Morse code, and then I saw it too – the taps corresponded to numbers.
‘This is the speaking clock,’ I heard the mechanical voice again.
‘Paul, guess what?’
‘What?’ he asked, looking up at me.
‘Mary is hungry. I think we need to get her a pizza.’
Giggling our heads off, we called for a pizza for our neighbour Mary and a cab for the lady across the road who seemed to walk everywhere.
When the next phone bill came through, the look on Mum’s face was a picture. I felt guilty as I realised our fun had cost her. She was puzzled and had no idea at all how it was so high.
The holidays passed by quickly. We spent hours scrumping fruit from around the estate for lunch; we would antagonise local children and spend hours evading capture, or bike for miles and wander around the estate collecting seeds from weeds like poppies and dandelions to drop into nearby immaculate gardens, just out of boredom. Then we’d walk along to the bus stop just in time to meet Mum getting off, and stop off at the chippy on the way home, where Mum would buy two-pence worth of batter bits for us to nibble on.
The date for our emigration drew closer. The worst part of all for me and Paul came about: we had to say goodbye to Nan and Pap. They both held me close, as I breathed in their lovely smell for the last time. I had no idea when I’d see them again.
‘Of course we’ll come back as often as we can,’ said Mum to Nan, cuddling her tightly.
‘I wish you could come too, Nan,’ I said, tears welling in my eyes.
They