Page 7 of Secrets of Starshine
“Yeah, but it’s me who has to make sure you’re not choking on your own vomit and puts you in the recovery position.”
“You don’t have to do that, Mum. I’m not a disaster zone, and I’m not some fragile little baby you need to protect. I’m a grown man.”
This, of course, is something that every mother struggles to accept. It seems to happen overnight; in the blink of a tired eye they go from running around the park playing on the swings to sitting in the park drinking cider.
“All right,” I answer, knowing this isn’t an argument that will do either of us any good. “Just be careful, okay? Town will be busy tonight. Have you got your attack alarm?”
He grimaces and nods. I know he hates the fact that I made him add the tiny gadget to his key ring, but it was a condition of him being allowed to go out in the city centre. Undoubtedly I’m worrying too much, over-thinking, but that’s part of my job description as his parent. His dad lives in Cardiff, so I over-think for two.
“Be careful,” I add, “and stay with your friends. And make sure you have money for a taxi home, not like that time when I had to get up and pay a cabbie at four in the morning…”
“That was once, Mum!” he snaps, obviously losing patience with me. “And I said I was sorry! Just view it as part of developing my immune system, all right? I’m fine! God, is this what it’s going to be like now Gran’s left? Are you always going to be hanging around the house with your pathological need to beneeded? Don’t you think maybe you should get your own life instead of going for best supporting actress in everyone else’s?”
That hits home a lot harder than I would ever like to admit. It is the verbal equivalent of a punch to the gut, and I find myself blinking away tears. I know he is only eighteen. I know he doesn’t mean to be as cruel as he sounds. But I also know that it hurts, because part of me is starting to wonder if he might be right. Teenagers are selfish and egotistical and view the entire world through their own eyes – but they are also brutally honest.
I nod and turn away, pretending to take a deep interest in a fold-out paper reindeer. He picks up the strand of pink tinsel and lobs it over one of the tree branches.
“There,” he proclaims, “I’ve helped you decorate the stupid tree. Don’t wait up.”
I hear the door bang shut behind him, and look at the battered fairy.
“You look about as good as I feel,” I say.
I nod, as though she has replied. “Yes. I think you’re right. It’s definitely time for a drink...”
The music changes, and I pause, listening, then add: “What’s that, Mariah? You think it’s time to crack open the Christmas Baileys? Why, I think you might just be right!”
SIX
I end up relocating to the kitchen, where I set up a work station of snacks and drinks. If I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it right. I have the Baileys on the go, one of the posh glasses to sup it from, and I have put bags of crisps into bowls – it always feels like a party when you put things in bowls, doesn’t it? I crack open a box of Ferrero Rocher as well, for unheard of levels of decadence.
I browse my phone as I drink, responding to messages from my mum and my colleagues, and looking for one from Sam that never comes. We are veterans of the storming-out row, and at some point he will extend an olive branch, and I will accept it, and all will be well. This is one of the many joys of being a single mum – no buffer zone between you and your kid. Nothing to soften the blows that these rapidly escalating conflicts can inflict.
At one stage, my mum asks me to see if she’s left her phone charger at mine, and I do a slightly wobbly check around the house. I don’t find it anywhere, and instead go to look in the few boxes she has stashed in our conservatory. These were the things she couldn’t bear to throw in the skip, but didn’t think it was right to take away with her.
I pull open the cardboard lid, and see some wads of old paperwork, a pair of matching silver candlesticks, a small box of jewellery, and a few photo albums. I wonder if the candlesticks were wedding gifts, or if my dad bought them for her, and what their story is. I wonder what the paperwork is all about. I wonder if this is what life ends up as – a few random items stored in a box, meaningless to anyone else.
That is too melancholy a thought for a woman who is attempting to have a Christmas party on her own, so I tug out the photo albums, and take them back into the kitchen with me. By the time I get there, she’s messaged to say she’s found her charger after all. Phew.
I also notice, after my obligatory check, that a small Christmas miracle has occurred – Sam has unblocked me on Instagram. This is the olive branch I have been waiting for, and I grasp at it. I flick through his posts, liking every single one of them and commenting on none – that seems like the safest of bets. I see that tonight, he is indeed with a large gang of friends, in a bar that seems to be candy-floss themed. I spot Ollie lurking in the back, and stick my tongue out at him. We have to be mature in front of our kids, but in private I can be as petty as I like.
I feel much better after all of this, and decide that I can now finish the Baileys safe in the knowledge that I am happy-drinking and not sad-drinking. There is a subtle difference, isn’t there?
I flick through the photo album – one of those old-fashioned ones with the sticky pages and cellophane covers. It must be from a long time ago, because the sticky stuff has dried up, and the photos have all collapsed in over each other. I peel back the brittle, yellowing film, and pull them out.
I lay them across the table and stare at them. These are tiny treasures, pictures from another land. They are of me and my mum and my dad, on a holiday that I only just remember. Actually, “remember” is perhaps too strong a word – it’s more a collection of impressions, of hazy images and just-about recalled feelings. But even though they are hazy, these memories are cherished – because they are of him, and us, before everything changed.
It was somewhere a long way away, because it took us an age to drive there. Maybe Cornwall or Devon, somewhere like that. We stayed in a cottage, I think, and it was Christmas. My own version of that week revolves around snowmen and hot chocolate and being wrapped up cosy and snug in mittens and scarves and a bobble hat, and a strange image that has always stuck with me of staring up at stars, spinning above me – stars that I could reach out and touch.
I look at one of the pictures, and see little me in exactly that outfit. I am six or maybe just seven, and I am holding my dad’s hand, standing on the edge of what looks like a snow-covered village green. There are other people in the background, but all I can focus on is him. I don’t have many real memories of this man, but I know that when I think of him, I feel safe and warm. He was tall, with wild dark hair and a big smile, and a seventies moustache that he refused to shed. If I close my eyes, I can sometimes almost still hear his voice, reading me stories. The way he smelled of paint and turps from his job as a decorator – even now, that smell puts me in a sensory time machine.
This, I think, flicking through the shots, would have been our last time away as a family. He died not long after, and my last memories of him are dimmer. He had a heart attack, made a partial recovery, but then had another that finished the job. I suspect I’ve blocked all of this out, because I don’t feel as though I was there for any of it. It’s like a little blank hole in my memory bank, filled in only with the facts my mum has given me. She doesn’t like talking about him, or about that time, so I only have the bare bones of what happened.
Maybe, I think, tracing his face with my fingertips, that is for the best. Maybe it’s better to just remember him like this – looking solid and real and healthy and happy.
My whole life changed after he died, in so many ways. I can’t imagine what it would have been like with him still in it, with my mum still the way she used to be. Trying to picture that would be a pointless exercise – a crazy rabbit hole it will do me no good to jump down.
I spend a few minutes looking at the rest of the photos: a frost-covered beach, a row of spectacular snowmen, a collection of people who I don’t recognise but who all look like they’re having fun. One of me proudly holding up what appears to be a small fossil. I wonder where that is, and whether it has survived the intervening decades as well as it survived the preceding millennia. I notice that there are no pictures of my mum and dad together, which is probably because one of them was always using the camera. This was, after all, in that most ancient of eras – The Time Before Selfies.
