Page 13 of Jenny James Is Not a Disaster
It is only a sofa, I tell myself.The shops are full of them.
I take a deep breath and force myself to walk on. Charlie is silent at my side, and I think it is affecting him much more deeply than he expected as well. He’s seemed okay at the hotel, but seeing this in person is completely different.
It is eye-searingly sunny, warm in that way that makes you long for a swimming pool and a cocktail. Insects are buzzing around us, and I can hear the donkeys braying in the distance, the waves gently lapping against the shore. It is the kind of idyllic summer afternoon that I have enjoyed so much over our years here, and it seems unreal that just a few days ago, this same spot looked like something from an apocalypse movie.
My hair is sticky around my face, and I wish I had a bobble to tie it up with. I wish I had so many things, but as we near the was-cottage, I realize that I don’t have many things at all.Hair bands are the least of my worries, I think, as I survey the scene.
The walls that were halfway down last time I saw them, stubs sticking up from the earth, have been demolished completely.The red door is now lying flat on the ground. The roof has been removed and stacked to one side, half covered in a tarp. Part of the area has been cleared, the bit nearest to the edge of the cliffside, but the rest still looks like it’s been hit by a bomb, like the old black-and-white news images of the Blitz.
We walk closer, our feet crunching over broken glass, smashed pottery, snapped shards of plastic. The ground is scattered with debris—fabric so muddy and torn it is beyond identifying, trampled floorboards, plaster, patches of carpet. A lot of the furniture must have gone over the edge, but my bedside cabinet is still there, lying on its side, the door thrown open and hanging on by one hinge.
“Wow,” says Charlie, walking closer to the foundations of the cottage.
You can still see the outline of the floor, the way the rooms that no longer exist were laid out. The bath is still here, filled with roof tiles and bricks, the shower curtain trapped between them. It’s a nice shower curtain—white with pale blue stripes. The whole bathroom was done in those colors, white tiles and blue towels, a mirror edged with seashells we’d collected on the beach, a little cabinet I’d painted blue and white to match. It was jaunty and vaguely nautical once. Now it’s a shipwreck.
Charlie leans down, rooting in a pile of rubble, and comes up looking triumphant. He holds aloft a small metal cup and yells: “Hey, look! My Good Citizen of the Year trophy! All is not lost!”
I know this calls for a certain response, so I force myself to laugh. Maybe this will be the first of a series of small victories—maybe we will rescue more, salvage some precious items from the destruction. Maybe not absolutely everything is gone.
I join him in the space that was the cottage, keeping a careful eye on the jagged glass that once formed windows, and lookaround. Up close, the details are almost comical—a frying pan with no handle sitting next to a fancy hat I once wore to a wedding; one of Charlie’s old football boots on top of the shattered screen of the TV, as though the Invisible Man stamped on it. A spatula wedged in the ground like a plant, sticking upright. The bag full of Christmas decorations I kept in the cupboard under the stairs has burst open, random strands of tinsel and tangled fairy lights strewn over the ground. I pick up the fairy we put on top of the tree—she is battered, and the poor thing only has one wing, but I reckon she will live to fly another day. I put it into one of the bags, and Charlie adds his trophy. We continue to pick through the remains of our home, and it is a surreal experience—the skylarks are singing, the sun is shining, the sea is a gentle shimmer below us, and I have just discovered my Nigella cookbook in pristine condition, hiding beneath a far less lucky one by the Hairy Bikers. Nigella goes in the bag—she’s a keeper.
We do actually manage to salvage quite a few clothes—some are beyond resuscitation, but others just need a good wash. Sadly, the washing machine is in the dumpster, but I know how to use a launderette. Charlie finds a few of his video games, though he has nothing to play them on, as well as a can of Axe Africa—because no party is complete without that. It’s a hot day, and we are working hard, and I laugh as he pulls off the lid and gives himself a quick spritz. Livin’lavidaloca.
Other random survivors include a packet of wholemeal pasta I bought when I was trying to be healthy and never ate because I don’t actually like it; several DVDs of the classic rom-coms of Hugh Grant; a half-full tub of multivitamins; and, bizarrely, a pile of travel brochures. I used to keep them in the bathroom to read while I was having a soak, taking comfort from pictures ofexotic places and planning luxurious fantasy holidays I couldn’t afford but enjoyed imagining. I throw those away—there seems even less point to them now. There is one big win as we excavate our home, though, that gives me even more comfort than fantasy holidays. For years I’ve kept a wooden crate in the bottom of my wardrobe, which I creatively called my Special Things Box. Despite its name, it doesn’t look very special—at least not on the outside. I always meant to paint it, but was too busy doing other things and it remained plain. The inside, though, is a different matter. I spot it on its side near the new cliff edge, which is now fenced off and draped in neon-colored warning tape. The lid is still on, and my heart skips a beat as I make my way carefully toward it. I lean down, pick it up, feel a surge of joy as I judge its weight—this is not some cruel trick; it seems like the contents are still in there.
I carry it over to the side of the field and sit down on the grass, where I feel safer. The cliff edge has obviously stabilized or they wouldn’t have let us come out here, but it still gives me a touch of vertigo, emotional and physical, to get too close. The image of me chasing those photos in the storm is still a bit too real for comfort.
Charlie ambles over and collapses by my side. He wipes his forehead and takes a glug from his water bottle. “What have you got there?” he asks, nodding at the box in front of us.
“An Aladdin’s cave of delights,” I reply, opening it up. There is some mud on the lid, but the interior is clear. I root around inside and pull out a tiny baby’s sleepsuit decorated in dinosaur print. I hold it up and Charlie laughs.
“I don’t think it’ll fit me now...,” he says, smiling.
I lay it down on the grass, stroking the soft fabric, remembering so vividly the first time I put him in it—his dad was still around,but neither of us knew what we were doing. We were still children ourselves, and I was terrified every time I put one of his little arms into a sleeve that I would somehow snap it like a twig.
Tucked away in one corner is the plastic wristband he wore in the hospital as a newborn, worthless to anyone but me. I take out Charlie’s record book from when he was a baby, its red plastic cover containing all the scrawled numbers that immortalized his weight, his length, his development. There is a school report from kindergarten where the teacher praises his bright smile and kindness and eagerness to learn. A poem he wrote for me on Mother’s Day when he was ten, when he rhymed “heart” with “fart” in a typical little boy move. A cutting from the local paper when his primary was School of the Week and he was one of the kids in the photo. His first shoes, and his first tooth, and a lock from his first haircut.
“This is getting kind of creepy,” he says, inspecting the collection. “It’s like a museum of me.”
“It’s not creepy!” I say, feigning outrage. “All mums do this... I think.”
“Do they? Do you think your mum has a collection like this, then?”
I grab the water bottle from him, trying to buy myself a few extra seconds before I speak. The honest answer is that I don’t know. I haven’t seen my mum for such a long time, and we did not part under the most ideal of circumstances, and it hurts to even think about it. There are times in your life when you desperately want a hug from your mum—like when you give birth as a teenager, or when your partner leaves you with a toddler, or when your house falls down. Times when only the solace of maternal arms will do—that childlike sensation of knowing that everything will be all right. Mother Magic.
I try to be a good mum to Charlie, to make him feel safe, to sprinkle his life with my own version of Mother Magic—but I haven’t had it myself for years. I still remember it, though, that simple feeling of love and comfort. The certainty that whatever is wrong, Mum will be able to fix it, or at least make you feel better about it if she can’t. Things got complicated between us, things were said and done, and I did what I thought was right. I still miss that feeling, that solace—but I now recognize it as a fairy tale. Mums can’t fix everything—they just fool you into believing it. It’s not magic; it’s a placebo.
Charlie doesn’t understand why I’m estranged from my family, for a pretty good reason—I’ve never explained it to him. It felt justified when he was younger, when there was no way his forming brain could understand the complexities of the situation, the wounds dealt and the wounds received, the tangled web of pain that is cobwebbed all over my family dynamic. Now, of course, he is an adult—and clearly looking for answers. One day I will try to give them to him—but not today. “I don’t know, love. Maybe,” I say simply. “It’s not just a museum of you, though—there is some stuff in here of mine if you want to see it?”
“As long as it’s nothing that’ll make me sick in my mouth.”
“I can’t promise that...”
I pull out a small wad of pictures, ones that predate Charlie, and pass them over. He flicks through them, and I watch as he looks by turns amused and thoughtful. “It’s weird, Mum, thinking about you as a teenager—how old were you in these?”
“About fifteen, I suppose, sixteen maybe. That’s me and my then best friend, Lucy, and her cousin, who I think was called Sian.”
“Why are you posing like that? Why are you all pouting?”
