Astonishing Splashes of Colour (36 page)

So here we are on the train. We bought some books at the station, although Megan didn’t show much enthusiasm—she was more interested
in
Just Seventeen
and
Mizz.
I bought her one of each reluctantly, but I’m sure they’re too old for her. I’d like to encourage her to read something more challenging, and I’m just about to ask if she would like me to read to her when I notice she has fallen asleep, leaning against my arm. Very gently, I ease her round so that her head rests on my lap and her feet are up on the seat. She moves restlessly, muttering in her sleep, but then she calms down and becomes still.

I listen anxiously to her breathing, worrying about the asthma, but I can’t hear anything unusual. I look at the side of her face on my lap and try to work out her age again. She looks very young in her sleep, almost a baby. I smooth the light wispy hair off her cheek, and notice again the thinness of her face, the sharp definition of her nose and cheekbones. I feel the warmth of her body on mine, the rise and fall of her chest as she breathes and I am filled with love for her.

I’d like to sleep myself, but I’m afraid I won’t wake up at the right moment and we’d miss Exeter. I rummage carefully through my bag, hoping to find some leftover chocolate, a few Rolos, a square of Dairy Milk. But there’s nothing to eat.

I come across the letter that I picked up this morning in my flat—so long ago in another life, when I had no children or responsibilities. I take it out and examine it, trying to guess who wrote it. Someone has given up a sizeable portion of their time to think of me and record their thoughts. I stop guessing and open it. The letter is from my father.

But my father doesn’t write letters. He telephones and shouts, or waits until the person turns up at the house. I’ve never seen him sit down and write a letter. I can’t even imagine it. Hardly anyone writes to him because they know they won’t get a reply. Even Dennis the agent comes up from London to ask him a question or to sign a form. It’s the only way he can get a reaction.

My father has written me a letter. I think of all the letters in the attic from Janet, Louise, Philippa, etc. He never wrote to them, but he’s written to me.

I’m not sure about this. What does he want to tell me? About Dinah, my mother? But I wish he would take time to think. To sort out real memory from pretend memory. I don’t know if he can do this, but I think he ought to try.

Dear Kitty,

Don’t tear this letter up and destroy it before you read it.
(That’s good coming from someone who spent over thirty years tearing up letters from his children’s mother.)
I want to explain, and it seems easier to write it down.
(He wouldn’t even write a letter to school when I was ill. Paul had to forge his signature.)
I have nothing to say about Margaret, and I still believe I did the right thing. She can appear or disappear for all I care.

I imagine you want to know about Dinah. I can’t tell you much, because I didn’t have much to do with her, but I do remember that she was a very difficult child. She cried as a baby, screamed as a toddler and argued as soon as she could talk. There were endless rows as she grew older, especially with Margaret, who insisted on confronting her over every issue—mistakenly in my opinion. In the end, Dinah stopped talking to us altogether.

Then one day, when she was fifteen, she went out and never came back. We thought she would eventually turn up when she was hungry, but she didn’t. We tried to find her. We went to the police, drove round to her friends’ houses, but they had no idea where she was. There had been a group of hippies in the area for a while, who disappeared at the same time, and we finally decided she had gone with them.

That was it. We never found her and in the end we stopped looking.

Margaret will no doubt claim that she was depressed by Dinah’s departure, and that’s why she abandoned us.

What does my father know about depression? Anyway, I don’t want to know about Margaret, I want to know about Dinah. Megan stirs on my lap and I shift slightly, trying to stretch my legs without waking her. She murmurs incoherent words, then quiets again and breathes more deeply. In and out. In and out.

Three years later, a man appeared on our doorstep with you, saying that Dinah was dead. She fell off a mountain in Austria. Messing around as usual, dancing without being careful, and she slipped and fell 800 feet. Once they realized she was dead, they left her there, where someone else would find her. Nobody seemed to have any idea of responsibility. I gather they just drove over the next border into another country.
(So my mother died in an unfamiliar land, buried in an unmarked grave. The end of her past, the end of her future.)

That’s all he said. He didn’t give me any choice about taking you. He might have been your father, but I wouldn’t recognize him again—he had a long beard and hair down his back. He was very vague—probably on drugs—but he kissed you and gave me a Tesco bag containing your possessions. There wasn’t much—a dirty blanket, a dummy and a threadbare pink fluffy duck.

Dinah must have been pregnant when she left here. Fifteen. What a way to mess up her life and yours. But you were all right once you were cleaned up. The boys liked you. They were pleased to have a baby sister.

I know your birth certificate says Margaret and I are your parents. I lied. I paid a lot of money to get that sorted—it took months after you came back, but you don’t want to know the details. I’m afraid your date of birth isn’t accurate. It was a rough guess.

That’s it really. I know it’s not much. I might have the Tesco bag somewhere with all its filthy contents and I’ll look for it if you want me to.

Sorry.

Dad.

I’m crying, the tears rolling down my cheeks and falling on to the letter. I imagine Dinah falling off into a ravine, her long hippy skirt billowing out round her like a failed parachute. I wonder if she thought she was flying at first, free from the natural laws of the universe. Were the last few seconds of her life deliriously happy, free, untamed? Was I in her thoughts in those last moments before landing? I don’t believe she was bad, just different. I remember warmth, a comfortable lap, singing, the pretty tasselled dress.

Perhaps my memories aren’t of Dinah. Perhaps I was handed from person to person, although Dinah must have felt some responsibility for me. Otherwise they wouldn’t have brought me back after she died. I want her to be the mother in my mind.

I look down at Megan, asleep on my lap, and I stroke her arm. Mothers can’t reject their children, however hard they try. I think about the kiss given me by the bearded man. Was he my father? I am grateful for his kiss.

I want James. I want him so much. I need to tell him about this, to explain to him that Dinah wasn’t bad.

But I’m sitting in a train in the dark, going in the opposite direction, away from James, going to the seaside with an unpredictable child whose age changes every time I look at her.

We don’t arrive in Exeter until eleven o’clock, far too late to go to Exmouth. We come out of the station bleary-eyed, and I don’t know what to do. Megan stands miserably next to me, sucking her thumb. She looks even paler than before and very miserable.

“Come on,” I say. “We need to find somewhere to stay.”

We walk up a hill without speaking. Judging by the road signs, we’re near the university, so there must be places to stay nearby. Margaret came here once, I say to myself. My grandmother. We have a connection. We walk past a row of houses, until, with a rush of relief, I see several bed and breakfast signs. I keep walking until I can see a light still on downstairs.