The Memory Book (19 page)

I shrugged. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Someone has got to protect you, and there is only me.’

‘I don’t want you to protect me,’ she said. She sat back a little bit and looked at me, and she looked surprised, which hurt me. ‘You are old enough to know that I don’t want protecting from feeling this excited or giddy about the way he looks at me, or when he touches me. I want to feel those things, and be happy, even if it’s just for a little while, and even if it all goes wrong. That’s what life is about, Caitlin – taking chances to try and be happy.’

‘Why do I have to meet him, though?’ I said. ‘I’ve never met any of your other men.’

Of course, I said it at the exact moment Greg came back into the room, and I made it sound like he was only the latest in a very long line of conquests. Of course I did. But Greg didn’t go red or flinch away from it, like he had the prawns.

‘I asked your mum to let me meet you,’ he said, ‘because I want to be part of her life, and that means being part of your life, too. And even if you don’t like me, your mum does. So how about you go back to being just this really funny, clever girl that your mum tells me you are, and we can decide from that point on if we can stand to be in the same room as each other? I’d like us to get on, but just so you know … if we don’t, there is no way I am giving Claire up.’

I stopped playing the brat after that, because it did seem like such a terrible cliché, and I could see he and Mum were serious about each other. But I did still think he was a dickhead. Right up until the day Esther was born. That day, he became my hero.

We get back from shopping and I think Mum is happy. She is singing as she goes into the house, taking up to her room the bags full of clothes that were meant for me, and begins trying them on. She’s talking about going out later with someone called Rosie, down the pub, to see who’s about, maybe get a snog. I thought I’d get used to the way she fades in and out of our lives, but I don’t. Each fade-in is a little shorter; each fade-out is a little longer. I stand at the bottom of the stairs for a moment, wondering what I should do to try to bring her back, but she is singing and she seems so happy.

Gran is in the living room with Esther, making her watch a programme about elephants that is narrated by David Attenborough.

‘Look, sweetheart, look, aren’t the elephants lovely,’ I hear her say.

‘I want
Dora the Explorer
or
Octonauts
or
Peppa Pig
,’ Esther
insists. Gran isn’t like Mum, though, who has always given Esther her way with everything, cheerfully stating that she has her in training for a career as a despotic dictator. Gran tries really hard to make things
better
: she likes to improve things. And now she’s trying to improve Esther by making her watch something educational, which is funny. I love Gran, and I love Esther, and I’ll love my baby, the same way Mum and Gran have loved us. Perhaps not exactly the same way: similar, but better.

I feel better, having spent a morning with Mum, and after what she said to me. Before she decided she wanted to go out on the pull with Rosie, it was all making sense. It sort of feels like she’s given me back my future.

I go and sit down on the sofa, and Esther brings me the remote control.

‘I want
Dora
or
Peppa Pig
,’ she whispers, as if Gran will not notice.

Gran despairs, and rolls her eyes, and I switch channels. I know all of Esther’s favourite channels by heart.

‘Was it OK?’ Gran asks me, and I nod, because it was OK.

‘I’m taking you to the hospital tomorrow. The appointment’s at ten,’ Gran informs me. ‘They’ll check you over, give you a scan.’

I nod, and shift in my seat. Esther has climbed on to my lap, and weighs heavily on my abdomen. I can feel the resistance there now, the pocket of life expanding into my body. I move Esther to one side and wrap my arms about myself, realising
it’s an unconscious gesture to protect that unknown universe that’s spiralling inside of me. Does that mean I’m becoming a mother already?

‘I cut this out for you,’ Gran says, and offers me a flimsy bit of newsprint. ‘It was in the
Daily Mail
about getting back into further education after having kids.’

‘Thanks,’ I say, taking it and folding it up before tucking it into my pocket.

For as long as I can remember, Gran has always sent us pieces of paper she has cut out from newspapers. Articles about diets or parenting, or about books on how to be a teacher … Everything that Mum already did, Gran would persist in sending her clippings from papers with advice about how to do those things better – which I took to mean that she thought Mum didn’t do them very well in the first place. Once, I asked Mum why Gran did it, and Mum said she was trying to be helpful, even if she was coming across as batty and controlling. And then Gran sent her a clipping about diets to control yeast infections, and Mum sent it back with words written in red marker pen across it saying: ‘I DO NOT HAVE A THRUSH PROBLEM.’

After that, the clippings escalated into some kind of crazy war of attrition, with Gran sending Mum ever more bizarre articles about sex addiction, weight loss, body dysmorphia, all kinds of cancer – and Mum sending them all back again, sometimes with a red-penned message, sometimes torn into little bits. It was like a constant joke they each played on
the other, but a joke that annoyed them all the same. Gran still cuts things out of the paper, but she keeps them in a drawer in her spare room now. I know this because I saw her secretly filing one away the other day. The headline read: ‘T
HE
A
LZHEIMER’S
E
PIDEMIC.’

Now that Esther is engrossed in the TV, I get up and go find Greg in the kitchen. He’s bent over the memory book, writing. Greg has taken to writing in the book almost as much as Mum. I wonder if he’s read my bit yet. I wrote it for him, really, more than for Mum. I know it’s supposed to be her book, but I want him to remember that he is part of this family too, and that we all love him. Even me. I love him too, now.

I sit down next to him, and he looks up at me. There are tears in his eyes. Greg was always a bit soppy, a bit poetic. Mum used to tease him about it, this big burly man with a poet’s heart. He said she brought it out in him.

‘It’s hard for you, isn’t it?’ I say. ‘You’re losing her first.’

‘I keep thinking, if I can just remind her, somehow, then it will all come back. She’ll remember me again, like she used to. Then we’ll have each other again.’

‘What are you writing?’ I ask him, but he closes the book. It’s thick now, bursting with memories, and mementos – objects and photographs peep out from the pages. Mum’s tried to stick literally everything in there over the last few weeks. On one page there is a half-sucked boiled sweet that she swears blind was partially eaten by Nik Kershaw at her
first ever gig. The book has become part of Mum, and part of the family: it’s always around, always being added to or read. But the pages will run out soon, and that frightens me. As Mum puts more and more of her head into the book, I’m scared that when she runs out of space, her head will be empty and she will be gone. Before I went to London, I was trying to think of ways to add more pages to it – maybe tape some in the back, or staple them. But as I pick up the closed book, I can see that it isn’t just its contents that have bulked it out – there are several new pages in the back, too. The quality of the paper is the same, and I can only see they are new because the alignment isn’t exactly perfect. Opening the book, I examine them closer and see that someone has painstakingly glued a strip of material to the inside spine, and then stitched on the pages by hand. I look at Greg, and he shrugs.

‘I don’t want it to end.’ He goes to the fridge and gets out a beer. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Everyone keeps asking me that,’ I say. ‘I don’t know. I’m stuck in a sort of limbo. I think we all are, don’t you?’

‘Maybe,’ Greg says. ‘I’d like to be. I’d like to be stuck in one perfect day where everything is just the way you have always wanted it to be. I’ve had a lot of days like that with Claire and Esther and you. I always thought there’d be so many more. It turns out there weren’t nearly enough. Nothing can ever stay the same, not even if you want it to,
so
much.’ He stops, waiting for the emotion to fade out of his voice. ‘Life is
moving on around you, Caitlin, and in you. You need to make sure you keep up with it.’

‘What do you mean?’ I ask him, although I think I know what he is going to say next.

‘Go and see your dad,’ Greg says. ‘Go and see this Paul Sumner bloke. I know it’s scary and you’ve got a lot on your plate already. But something like that, reaching out to a person who is so much part of you … it’s not something you should put off, not for anything.’

‘I’ve never had a dad before,’ I say. ‘Well, not before you.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ he says, looking at his feet. ‘You think I’m a dork.’

‘Oh, God, dork is such a dorky word!’ I laugh, and he smiles. ‘But seriously, though, you are my sort of dad – a kind of one and, well, you know. Thanks for that.’

Greg laughs again. ‘That’s the most underwhelming endorsement of fatherhood I have ever heard!’

‘You know what I mean,’ I say, and the thought of him not being around inspires a surge of panic. ‘Please, Greg, don’t disappear, will you, please … afterwards. Don’t take Esther and go, please. Because … it’s not just Esther, it’s you, too. You are my family now. I mean, you won’t just go and leave me, will you?’

It’s not until I’ve stopped talking that I realise there are tears on my cheeks and I’m holding on tight to my own wrists, clenching them hard.

‘Caitlin.’ Greg says my name, looking anxious, surprised …
‘I’d never do that, love. I’d never split you and Esther up, not for anything. And … we are a family. We always will be. Nothing will change that. I’m your dad, and you’re stuck with me.’

‘Good,’ I say, nodding. ‘This Paul Sumner … I don’t know anything about him. But you two … I can’t do without you two.’

Greg rests his hand on top of the book. There’s a thump from upstairs where Mum is in the bedroom, and we both look up. We both will ourselves to stay where we are, and not go and check on her. Mum hates it when we check on her, especially at home. She hates that her life is never private any more.

‘Look,’ Greg says. ‘Go and see your father. You need to. You need to look the other person who made you in the eye and declare yourself. I don’t see how you could possibly know yourself completely until you’ve done that.’

I shake my head. ‘There’s Mum, and Esther and …’

‘The baby,’ Greg finishes for me, choosing his words carefully. ‘If you like, I could take a couple of days off, drive you up there?’

‘No,’ I say, and suddenly the decision is made, and it feels freeing. ‘No. You know what? Gran is taking me to the hospital tomorrow for a check-up, and then I think I’ll just go. And stay in a hotel up there. I mean, if you and Mum will sub me some cash …’ I give him a hopeful smile, and he nods.

‘But you’ll be OK, up there on your own, in your …?’

‘My condition?’ I laugh. ‘I have to decide what to do, and I have to decide now, don’t I? Mum would never wait around, like I have been … dithering. She would never wait for life to happen to her – stick her head in the sand, hide away from her past or her future. She’s never done that, has she? She has always been brave. Look at what happened when she met you! She was brave, and took a chance. And look at what happened when Esther was born! She never gave up, not ever. And even this thing that she cannot fight … even now she isn’t giving up. So yes, fine, I’ll go and introduce myself to my biological father. It’s something to do, isn’t it? It’s something that I
can
do. And maybe it will help Mum, too.’

Greg is about to say something when a fat plop of water lands on the kitchen table. For a second, Greg and I stare at it, and then up at the ceiling … where a damp dark circle gives birth to a second droplet.

‘Oh,’ I say, standing. ‘She said something about going to run a bath …’

‘Wait here,’ Greg says. ‘I’ll go.’

But I follow him anyway, thinking about what Mum said in the shopping centre. Greg might be the very last person she wants to see.

He gets to the top of the stairs in three easy strides, skipping stairs as he goes. At once we see the water seeping out from under the bathroom door, and soaking into the landing carpet, a small tidal wave adding to the damp patch as Greg opens the bathroom door and we are enveloped in steam.
Stepping into the water in his socked feet, he hisses in a sharp breath: it must be boiling hot. Fighting the wave of heat, he turns off the hot tap and throws down what towels he can find before returning to the landing, where I am standing. Mum has let the bath overflow. It’s a simple enough thing, and an easy mistake to make, for anyone, not just her. So why does it feel so ominous?

There’s another bang and the door to Mum and Greg’s bedroom opens, slamming against the wall. Which is when we notice a pile of clothes on the landing. A shoe, Greg’s, ricochets off the doorframe and lands at his feet.

‘Claire?’ He approaches the room hesitantly. I am just behind him.

‘How dare you!’ Mum scrambles over the bed to confront him, her eyes full of fire. ‘You must think I’m an idiot. I’ve read about men like you. Well, you’ve met your match in me, mister. I’m not some poor little old lady who you can con out of her cash. Take all your stuff and get out of my home!’

‘Claire.’ Greg says her name again. ‘Babe, please …’

‘I know your game,’ Mum says, pushing hard against the centre of his chest. ‘You thought because I was older and single and lonely that you could fool me into thinking you were interested in me, then move in, take my house, my money, everything. But you can’t! I’m not about to be hoodwinked by you. You don’t frighten me. I want you to go now, or I’m calling the police.’

Her face is white with fury, her eyes hot and dry, and there is something else: she is frightened.