The Optician's Wife (2 page)

Walking away from my reflection I bowed my head, keeping my eyes on the pavement as I made my way back to work. I was avoiding stepping on any cracks. I was always careful and a bit superstitious. Dad said it was stupid to think like that. Maybe he was right.

When I got to the glass doors into the shop I was met by a gaggle of co-workers, chatting and smoking cigarettes. They would say that they were just stepping outside for a breath of fresh air. I never got the joke.

Silvia, a girl a few years older than me with long silky blonde hair, blew her smoke at me as I passed. The girls standing with her sniggered. I felt angry. I wanted to turn around and slap her but that would take courage and I didn’t have any back then. Instead, I pretended not to notice and hurried inside holding my breath.

Once indoors I headed straight to the bathroom to clean my face and wash away the foul smell of cigarette smoke. I bumped into Trisha. She was about the only person in the shop who ever bothered to speak to me. She was washing her hands and smiled when she saw me.

‘Good lunch?’ She checked her perm in the mirror from various angles.

‘Fine, thanks.’ I could still smell the smoke.

‘Stuart is really pushing us at the moment, don’t you think? It seems a bit extreme.’

Stuart was our supervisor, a short, balding man with elevated self-worth. He used to bark at people to stop chatting and get back to serving but he never told me off. I was never caught talking to anyone other than a customer.

‘He’s OK.’

‘I think he’s a total drag, Debs.’ Trisha rolled her eyes. She was the only person who ever called me Debs, other than my sister. I didn’t like it but said nothing. ‘Oh and you’ll never guess what. Sarah has only gone and got herself pregnant. Pregnant! She broke up with Luke a week ago and only just found out she’s got a bun in the oven! Awkward or what.’

Trisha had a large mouth that appeared to never stop moving. Her brown eyes were large and framed by too much mascara. Her large bust would heave whenever she laughed and her cleavage was often on show. Sometimes I didn’t know where to look.

I didn’t have a clue who Sarah was and certainly had never come across Luke. But I was thankful that Trisha talked to me the way she would with everyone else. It didn’t matter to her that I wasn’t part of the popular crowd. She was happy as long as she could share gossip with anyone who would listen.

‘But you didn’t hear it from me, OK?’ She gave a wink and left me standing alone in the toilets, the door swinging backwards and forwards on its hinges.

I was dreading going back to my till. Silvia sat a few seats away, surrounded by her gaggle of friends. Sometimes they would throw little balls of paper at me when Stuart had his back turned. Too ashamed to do anything about it, I’d tidy away the evidence scattered around my chair. People were much more immature in those days. Not like the young of today.

I straightened my blue polyester tabard and made the long walk back to my till, which was on the far side of the large shop floor.

The best thing about my job was that the shop had windows that went from ceiling to floor. When I wasn’t having my ear chewed off by a customer, I could look out across the road at the people walking by. I liked watching people when they didn’t know they were being watched. Men and woman going about their business, shopping, collecting their kids from school. Normal life. But it fascinated me and I used to fantasise about what those people were like behind closed doors. I’d give them all roles to play and pretend I was directing them. Once Stuart caught me staring out of the window instead of working. He shouted at me in front of everyone. I was so embarrassed. The others laughed and then he shouted at them.

It was a typical day for me. I’d wake up, have a wash, get dressed, eat some toast and then walk to work. I’d have my lunch, always a prawn sandwich, by the river unless it was raining very hard, in which case I’d sit at one of the bus stops or stay in the back room of the shop. I’d spend the afternoon serving customers until half-past five when the workday ended. Then I’d leave the shop and walk home in time to make tea for Dawn and Dad.

That day was no different.

I scurried out of the shop, keeping a low profile, and made my way along Chesterton Road and away from the town centre. At the time we lived in a small two bed on the northeast side of the city. Dawn and I had to share a bedroom, which we resented.

We moved to Cambridge in 1978, the year after my mother died from cancer. My aunt Mary, Dad’s sister, lived in the area and he said he wanted her to help look after us.

Before living in Cambridge we lived in Harlow. I missed it for a long time. We’d had a bigger house and I’d had my own bedroom then. But Dad reminded us that now Mum was gone things had to change. We all have to make sacrifices, he used to say. He would cry a lot then and I didn’t want to upset him more, so I stayed quiet and didn’t complain.

My mother, Sue Campkin, died in 1977 aged thirty-seven, after a short battle with breast cancer. She had been a loving mother and wife, and worked at a doctor’s surgery in Harlow as a receptionist.

I was just twelve years old when she passed away. Dawn was nine. Since my father found solace at the bottom of a bottle it was left to me to keep things running. My father was permanently drunk from September 22
^nd
1977, the day after she died, right up until he took his last breath. In the end his liver had had enough.

After mum died I became the housekeeper. I cooked and tidied and made sure that Dawn and Dad had clean clothes. My childhood was cut short but I was always older than my years. I wanted to look after them, just like my Mum would have wanted me to. It was my duty, and besides, somebody had to step up to the responsibility. Dad had no intention of doing so.

I have never been sure if Dad was sad after she died because he missed being looked after or if it was her additional income he missed. The rent got too much for him and, so, unable to afford to stay in that house he decided to move us all to Cambridge. Looking back, I suppose he was probably too ashamed to stay locally. He was a proud man. He wouldn’t have wanted his friends to see us downsizing. So he decided we needed a fresh start. But Cambridge had other attractions too. Namely his sister, Aunt Mary, who he hoped would be a substitute mother to Dawn and me.

Mary did her best to help out, but she had a family of her own and three young children, including twin boys. To begin with she would come over and bring meals, usually casseroles or pies. She was a good cook. But then as her family grew, and she had her fourth child, she spent less and less time with us.

Dad’s drinking didn’t help. She hated it when he was drunk. I used to hear her shout at him about it. It never made any difference. It just made things worse. When she left he’d go to the shop and come back with a bag full of beer. Those were the days when I used to take Dawn out to the park until it was dark, until I could be sure he had passed out in his armchair.

When we got back to the house I would get Dawn to take her shoes off and tiptoe past him up the stairs to bed. I remember how creaky the stairs were in that house. We would walk with our backs to wall to avoid waking him up. After we cleaned our teeth and got into our pyjamas, I would read her a bedtime story and tuck her in with her favourite toy, a bunny called Wilson. It had been a birthday present from Mum.

The room was so cold. There was a gap between the widow and the sill where cold air would pour through. I took the bed nearer the window and used an extra blanket in the winter to avoid freezing.

Our bedroom was really only a single but Dad had somehow managed to squeeze in two beds so we could share the room. He took the large double room for himself until we grew into teenagers and then he had no choice but to swap. But he was bitter about it and refused to give us any money to buy paint so that I could brighten the room up. Waste of bloody money, he used to say.

The most extraordinary thing was that, somehow, Dad managed to hold a job down. He was builder and finding work in and around Cambridge was easy for him. It paid the bills and left enough over to cover the cost of his beer intake, a minimum of six cans a day.

Looking back, I suppose I almost understood why he chose to get drunk all the time. It must have been lonely for him and difficult bringing up two girls without a wife. But it was hard for us too. Dawn was so young and I was barely a teenager. Still, I never understood why he picked on me so much. Dawn could do no wrong. He never got cross with her or shouted. His eyes would fill with tears every time he gave her a hug. ‘You remind me so much of your Mum,’ he would say. It was strange because I always thought I looked more like Mum. ‘Dawn got her pretty face,’ he said. I suppose that meant I had her chunky figure.

Growing up it would have been easy to resent Dawn, but I didn’t. It wasn’t her fault he loved her more. It wasn’t her fault Mum died. And it wasn’t her fault I was plain and unpopular. But as she grew into a woman she seemed to forget the kindness and care I’d bestowed upon her. She started to resent me. The irony wasn’t lost on me. ‘Why don’t you do something with your hair,’ she would say. I was not the cool older sister she longed for. Even her friends used to laugh behind my back. As we grew older we grew further apart. She had been the one good thing in my life up until that point. When she stopped making an effort with me I sunk deeper into myself.

It was around that time when I discovered my love of books. I read like my life depended on it. I lost myself in the stories of faraway worlds and would dream of travelling the earth. I read travel journals and history books, romance and adventure. All the things my life was lacking I found between the pages of all those books. They were my friends. They were safe.

I never liked reading books about crime or anything like that. Ghoulish if you ask me. I didn’t want to think about all the horrible things in the world and all the nasty people. I wanted my books to take me to far off lands where Princes would battle for fair maidens.

Without even realising it I had arrived at our front door. I didn’t remember the walk or how I got to our street. I suppose I must have been daydreaming. Probably thinking about one of the stories I’d recently read.

Our terraced house was situated on Haviland Way, a cul-de-sac in the King’s Hedges area of town. The upper level of the house was a painted in a dirty cream colour and the lower level was exposed modern red brickwork. We had off-street parking in front of the house: a concrete space where Dad could leave his van. It was a dull street and home to dull people.

Our front door needed some attention. The faded racing green paint was flaking. Dad had been saying he would do it for as long as I could remember. I put my key in the lock and turned, pushing the door open. I hoped Dad wasn’t at home.

The front door led straight into the living room where he was normally found in his old armchair, holding a beer in one hand and the remote control for the telly in the other. But that day he must have been working late or at the pub. The house was cold and quiet. I knew Dawn was out because the drone of music wasn’t coming from our bedroom. She used to play a Madonna single on repeat. It drove me mad but I never said anything. I didn’t want to spoil her fun or risk an argument.

I liked it when no one was home. My shoulders dropped and I relaxed a bit. I pretended it was my house and I lived alone. No Dawn and definitely no Dad. Passing through the pokey living room and small, dark dining room I made my way into the kitchen. The cupboard doors were laminate chipboard. The cheapest kind that hung on loose hinges. Landlords got away with murder then. They probably still do.

It occurred to me how unfair the world was. But I wasn’t the type to mope. I made my cup of tea then did the washing up that was left festering in the sink. As I put the dishes on the draining board I wondered if Dawn or Dad ever realised I always did the washing up. It probably didn’t even register with them. They just assumed that there would be clean plates and saucepans. And there were. There were always clean dishes and an empty sink after I came home. I did it without thinking or questioning. It was my duty.

As I dried the last cup I looked out of the grubby window above the sink. The garden was seriously neglected. We had a small concrete paved patio. The rest of the square garden was laid with overgrown grass. No one ever used the garden. If mum had been alive, it would have been nice. She would have taken care of it. The pots that she once tended were now overgrown with weeds. I remember realising that Dad or someone, probably Aunt Mary, had taken the trouble to bring them from our old house.

The garden was always mum’s department. She took pride in it when she was alive. I felt so removed from myself looking out at this neglected patch. Mum had never set eyes on this house. She’d be upset if she had. She was a good housekeeper, proud of her little corner of the world.

Roses were her favourite. She liked the pink ones the best. Pretty in pink, she used to say when they were in bloom. When I grew up, I would have a garden with pink roses in it. I didn’t have the green fingers that she did but I figured I’d be able to nurture a rose bush or two.

‘They are tough plants,’ she used to say. ‘They might not look like it by they are. Be like a rose, Debbie.’ She was the only one who called me that. ‘Look nice but remember you have thorns,’ she would say. That was her advice to me. I never really understood what she meant. How could I be like a flower? Did she want me to stay still and remain silent? I did for a long time. I stayed invisible.

I dried the crockery before putting it back in the cupboard where it belonged. Then I went into the garden. I never did that. None of us did. It would only remind us of Mum and what we were missing. But on that day I was compelled to go.

It was about half past six. The sun was setting and the sky was littered with dirty lilac-coloured clouds. I stood on the weed-ridden patio. Unwelcome plants had seeded themselves in between the paving stones, fighting for dominance. The place was a characterless mess.