As Eliza ran out urgently to phone one of her friends, I looked around the kitchen. Roger had planned to decorate the whole house the previous year and had scheduled it into his diary as he scheduled everything in—meetings, DIY projects, liaison time with the girls, sex probably. Yet it had never happened, presumably because of his well-scheduled plans to leave me, so the house was beginning to look a little frayed: nothing extreme, just the odd scuff mark here and there, the occasional patch of peeling paint or faded curtain. But there was something more, something that had changed the feel of the entire kitchen, and I realised that it was my piles of, well, stuff. With Roger, there had been a place for everything. Anything that could be filed was filed, anything that could be put on a shelf was put on one and extra shelves had been continuously added to accommodate any item inadvertently left lying about.
Now I indulged myself in allowing things to be left lying about, and I specialised in piling up books and photos, magazines and CDs, letters and odd pieces of clothing. Every room in the house was littered with piles of miscellaneous objects so that the lounge carpet looked like a lake with stepping stones across the middle and my bedroom an entry for the Turner prize. Yet it was not chaotic, I knew where everything was and the piles were somehow neatly piled. And I had every intention of sorting them into something else—well-ordered piles maybe.
The truth was I missed Roger, not as a partner but as someone who had sorted out the bills, put things away and knew where the stopcock was. Now I had to do everything and there never seemed to be the time. I wasted so many hours just sitting in the cluttered kitchen wondering where it had all gone wrong, how I had ended up in this characterless house doing an unchallenging job, a divorce statistic with a stroppy teenager who could tear my self-worth apart just by walking into the kitchen and looking around at what it had become.
Still, I loved Jo more than anything and went upstairs to talk to her about the wedding the next day.
‘Hi, Jo, are you looking forward to tomorrow?’
‘Suppose.’
‘Looks like the weather’s going to be good.’
‘Yeah.’
‘It’s a bit of a long trek so we’ll have to set off about eight. Is that OK?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Sorry about the takeaway. We’ll have a roast on Sunday, shall we? Like old times.’
‘Except it won’t be like old times, will it?’
‘No, of course. Still, you like a roast. What about now? Shall I make you an omelette?’
‘I’m all right.’
‘Right, well, I’d better go and iron my dress for tomorrow. I don’t want to look like a wrung-out dishcloth.’
I laughed, I winked, I smiled, I patted Jo maternally.
I decided to go out into the garden and talk to the plants, reassure them that I cared and would soon be pulling out all those intrusive weeds which were strangling them and blocking the light. But perhaps I should have been saying the same things to Jo.
I listened at the lounge door but heard Eliza still chatting excitedly on the phone, underlining key words as she spoke.
‘It’s going to be wicked. You should see what I’m wearing. I’m on the stage practically all the time. And right at the front.’
Back in the kitchen, I thought about Jo again, although, looking back, I never stopped thinking about Jo. It was continuous. She had her own place in the worry zone of my brain, and I knew with intuitive certainty that there was something wrong, very wrong, with her. Of course she didn’t tell me everything, she was a teenager and was still adjusting to her parents’ separation, that was normal. But it was more than that. There was something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Out in the world she was often so different, speaking out eloquently, standing tall and proud and looking at her life ahead with some optimism. Was it this house that was stifling her, gagging her so that only a few words could be spluttered out of her mouth at one time? Or was it me?
I stared out of the window at the overgrown garden. It had begun to rain heavily so I put off my idea of going out and chatting to my neglected plants. I wondered if it would be all right to just shout out a few words of encouragement through the window, and immediately wondered what Roger would think. What he would think of my piles of stuff scattered across the floor like lilies; what he would make of me shouting out of the window at the plants…Would he despair of me phoning up the emergency gas line because I couldn’t work the timer on the central-heating system? I could taste his disapproval as if he were there in the room with me, and yet I knew that if only I let it, that very thought could set me free because I no longer needed anyone’s approval, except my own. But that was the most difficult approval to get.
I opened the window.
‘Hi, plants, how are you doing?’ I almost whispered—I wasn’t quite ready for this.
‘Hello, plants and trees.’A loud voice from behind me shouted over my shoulder. It was Eliza. We fell about like drunk chimpanzees and then I realised that the rain was slanting in and I shut the window. There was never any need to explain with Eliza.
‘Just getting a yoghurt,’ she said, and skipped out of the kitchen again.
My mind turned back to Jo as I tried to remember her preadolescent years. It had all been so different then. She had spent so many hours with Roger, talking about exams and how to invest her pocket money and planning her future. Now she was changed, and by more than adolescence. I knew then that I had to talk to someone about her, about me even, before we drowned in the sea of silence we found ourselves in. I picked up the phone and pressed out a number.
‘Hi, Trish. Just called to say thanks for doing my shift tomorrow. Gina should be there about nine.’
‘That’s great. You have a wonderful day, Lizzie. Enjoy the wedding.’
‘We certainly will. It’ll seem funny without…on my own.’
‘You won’t be on your own. You’ll have the girls with you.’
‘Of course I will. They’re really looking forward to it.’ ‘I bet they are.’
‘Trish?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’ll bring you back a piece of cake.’
So, I’d got it all off my chest, then. For someone who found it so easy to talk, the words crashing out of my mouth like coins from a slot machine, I found it very difficult to actually say anything. Later I learnt that there are other powerful ways to communicate, but back then, on the eve of my niece’s wedding, I did at least manage to laugh at myself. You have to laugh, otherwise you end up crying, I thought. It was only after Lily came into our lives that I realised you sometimes have to cry as well. It took an enigmatic, mysterious stranger to teach me that, a stranger called Lily Finnegan.
BEFORE I started to write it all down, I wrote ‘Lily Finnegan’ at the top of the page. Then I found out Mum had done the same thing. Like this is all about Lily or something. Well, maybe it is. I’m not writing my life story—nothing like that. How can I? I’m still a teenager and everything stretches out before me. But I had to write about this slice of my life be-cause Lily told me to. And because it changed things. For ever.
Did I have a happy childhood? Kind of. My parents divorced. Shit time but a lot of kids go through it. It was easier for my sister, Eliza. She thinks she’s in a play or a film. That’s why she’s happier than me.
I was happy being me once. It was when I stopped being me that it went wrong. I couldn’t put a date on it—‘I got screwed up on 20th April 2001’—nothing like that. I just remember that