Silent Child Read online

  So, for the most part I was not aware of the arrests of local drug dealers and petty thieves, nor did I take much notice of the shouts and screams that usually accompanied them. They were just part of the familiar background I had grown used to. In fact, right up until I began school and my mother brought him home, there was nothing much for me to worry about.

  My mother’s large family was well known in our small village. My eldest cousin was a great football player and my uncle was the local policeman. They were the kind of family no one had a bad word to say about – well, apart from my father, of course. He was quite a different matter, my little eavesdropping ears discovered.

  While I was both happy and content when I was with my aunts and grandmother, my memories of being with my mother are very different. Unlike my aunts and grandmother, Mum was a bony woman, all sharp edges and a face that seldom broke into a smile. Well, certainly not in my direction anyhow. With her fair hair and clever use of make-up, there was no doubt that she was attractive – well, I had heard her sisters saying that. I still wish I had just one memory of her picking me up, giving me a cuddle or even playing with me, but there isn’t one. Then, maybe that’s not so surprising when I was the one deemed responsible for breaking up her marriage.

  At least that’s what my parents told me.

  Not that I have a really good picture of what exactly I did to cause it. That information I gleaned over the years from both my parents as well as listening to my aunts’ gossip. The excuse that I had not even turned five at the time is not one that carried any weight – for years I carried the blame for that deed. So, it was lucky for me that my main carers during those vital formative years were my aunts and grandmother, a trio of dark-haired, blue-eyed women who thought I could do no wrong. And how I loved them! It was their soft arms that picked me up when I fell. Scraped knees were gently cleaned and sweets ‘to make everything better’ popped in my mouth. Before I was put to bed in the evenings, the aunts and my grandmother took turns in cuddling me against their comfortable, rounded bodies when they introduced me to various characters living in books. Now, years later, I can still hear their gentle voices telling me I was special.

  Weekends were simply the best times to spend with the family. Free from school, my host of cousins and their friends were there for me to play with. Even the children who were only slightly older than me had been told it was their job to protect me. Not only that, I must not be teased for those little idiosyncrasies that were becoming more noticeable. The twisting of my hair and the sucking of my tongue when agitated were the two most obvious mannerisms although there were others too.

  Now, how would I know that?

  My mother screamed it out at me. Told me my cousins thought I was peculiar. And did I really think they wanted to play with me? Well, they didn’t, they were only obeying their parents.

  Trust Mum’s voice to get in my head and spoil those good memories.

  I can remember the day she told me that; my grandmother had made me a dress – raspberry pink, with a square neck – and Aunt Lizzy had just sewn up a pink cardigan she had been knitting for me. When my mother came to collect me and I showed them to her, her mouth tightened in a thin line: ‘They spoil you,’ she hissed as soon as we were out of earshot.

  It was once we were back at our flat that the rest of her venom spilled out.

  Don’t let that part in, my voice told me, making me relegate it to the drawer labelled ‘Mother’s Insults’ and slam it shut. Now, go back to those happy days you spent with your grandmother. Obediently, I take myself back in time until I am in Gran’s kitchen, inhaling the various aromas of her cooking. I am listening to the trio as they gossip about Saturday’s family gathering and who’s going to be cooking what. Even now those memories can still bring a smile to my face.

  On Saturdays, as soon as spring arrived, my grandmother and I would make our way to where my aunts lived. She would help me dress in my dark blue dungarees and red T-shirt before checking in the mirror that her hair was tidy and putting on her lipstick. Then, picking up her handbag, she would say each time, ‘Ready, are you?’ and open the door. Once we were outside her tall terraced house with its bow-fronted windows and rooms full of dark furniture, ornaments and gilt-framed family photos, she would take my hand as we walked the short distance to where the rest of her family lived.

  Both my uncles and their wives lived at the same address. Not in the same house, but on the same plot of land, where they had built their large family homes. There were tall wooden gates that opened onto a gravel driveway leading past the velvety green lawns to the front doors of the adjacent houses.

  The moment grey clouds were chased away by a light breeze and a few rays of sun appeared, the families would gather for those homes had certainly been designed for family parties. At the rear of the houses actually joining them together was wooden decking with rattan chairs and sofas covered with plump, brightly coloured cushions and a long wooden table that took up most of the central space. Several feet away from the decking stood the red-bricked built-in barbecue. My aunts busied themselves in the kitchen while my cousins and I were allocated various tasks depending on our ages. Mine was putting out the cushions. The rest carried out drinks, salads and platters of marinated raw meat until the table was practically groaning under the weight.

  That meat, all pink and glistening, was something I avoided looking at. Just one glimpse made my fingers tighten round my hair as I pulled it hard, the sharp pain calming me momentarily. The uncles, both rather portly men with thick, dark hair and wide, white smiles, always made it clear that they were the ones in charge of the outside grill. I had heard my aunts say, with affectionate chuckles, that they rarely lifted a finger in the house though. Outside was clearly a different matter – they took over both the lighting of the barbecue and the grilling of the meat with enthusiasm. Once the embers were just glowing red, with beers in one hand and large forks in the other, they would turn the meat until it was cooked as they said ‘to perfection’, before being heaped onto plates.

  ‘You would think they had hunted that meat themselves, wouldn’t you, instead of us getting it from the butcher and tenderising it!’ the aunts would joke each time, while I tried to block my nose from inhaling what was for me the nauseous smell of meat. Not my favourite smell, though winding my hair around my fingers helped take my mind off it.

  Seeing my fingers busy in my hair, my grandmother would lean over, take my hand gently in hers and whisper reassuringly that there was different food for me. Usually it was chicken and sweetcorn. She knew not only of my dislike of any sign of blood on my plate, but of my need to have the vegetables sorted into different colours. To avoid that problem at these family events, she made sure there was only one vegetable for me every time. She never said anything about it, neither did she mention my twisting and pulling my hair – I think she sensed it was something I did when stressed and just accepted it.

  Once the meal was eaten, my cousins and I would help stack the dishes before running off into the large garden to play games. Kicking a ball into the net was one of the most popular ones. Ben, my favourite cousin, who was several years older than me, would grab hold of my hand and pull me out of my seat. Not that he had to force me; he was the cousin who, with his floppy blond hair and sun-tanned, lithe body, I totally idolised.

  ‘Come on, Sprat! Let’s kick a ball around,’ he would say laughingly. Surprisingly, even though I was the smallest of the lot, aiming the ball correctly and shooting it through the goal posts was something I was good at.

  ‘Well done,’ he would tell me, giving me a high five each time the ball shot through them, ‘you’re going to be the next great footballer in our family one day!’

  I would glow with pride at this praise.

  Yes, my memories of being in that garden with my cousins are happy ones – I felt safe there.

  Sometimes my parents made an appearance at these gatherings. My father always looked slightly uneasy as he tried to make c
onversation with the uncles, while Mum chatted to her sisters, the aunts. Usually the excuse that it took them time to get back to where we lived was made and so we left long before anyone else. It was then that I would hold my breath, hoping that I would be allowed to stay another night with Gran.

  Luckily for me, my mother often used the excuse that as our family home was not within walking distance, it might be better if I stayed over. If she did not say it first, my grandmother would suggest: ‘It’s a bit of a walk for her, why don’t I get someone to run her back tomorrow?’ Usually, Mum would agree.

  It was true my parents did live much further away but there were buses, weren’t there? I guess there was more than one reason why they made their excuses to leave early and were happy for me to remain there. First, it gave them another day without me and what must surely be my irritating habits and second, Dad felt that he was just tolerated, which is not the same as being welcomed, by my mother’s family. Not that I knew then that my father’s father had ‘done time’. Again, my little ears had heard that expression used more than once. So perhaps being in the company of his policeman brother-in-law, who had been part of the team who arrested his father long before Dad met Mum, was hardly enjoyable.

  Whatever the reason, being with the family was best for me. In their homes I was never shouted at, ordered to leave the room or told that I was making anyone feel sick listening to me. No, there I felt totally loved. The few photos I have managed to salvage from that time show a little blue-eyed, blonde girl, tall for her age, smiling happily into the camera lens. In fact, the only two people who did not seem besotted by me were my own parents.

  Chapter 5

  If my grandmother saw only good things about me, she also saw my mother in a rosy light that she hardly deserved. Everything was my father’s fault, not hers – not necessarily an opinion completely shared by the aunts, her sisters, even though they had little time for him.

  More than once I had overheard them saying that he might be good-looking and have a certain amount of charm, but he was also uncouth – a word I took to my cousin Ben to ask what it meant before adding it to my growing vocabulary. ‘A bit rough’ was his answer. By the grin on his face, I guess he knew where I had heard it and who they had been talking about. Knowing what Mum’s family really thought of Dad did not stop me seeking his approval though. Unlike my mother, he never shouted at me or told me to get lost. Instead, he would turn away and look at anything in the room apart from his daughter.

  But I was not the only one who was aware of my parents’ lack of interest in me. I overheard comments made by the three female relatives when they thought I was out of earshot. They seemed to have forgotten that small children can just about hear grass grow, but then they were a trio whose hobby was gossiping.

  The moment I heard my parents’ names mentioned my ears were on full alert. I mean, maybe we are always more curious about those people who do not love us than the ones who do. I know we would have to go back to the beginning of that marriage to get a full idea of the family dynamics. Not that I can for there was never much said about how my mum and dad met, or how long they had been together before I arrived. It was the present my aunts and grandmother talked about, with much sighing and concerns about me.

  ‘He was never right for her,’ my grandmother said more than once.

  And working in the same place hardly helped, they all agreed.

  ‘Not good, that,’ said Aunt Lizzy. ‘Couples never do well when they spend all their time together.’

  ‘Get to know each other too well, you mean,’ sniffed her sister, Maria.

  So that was the first bit of knowledge that was stored in my mind. The second bit they would certainly not have wanted me to hear, but then children lying on a couch with their eyes closed are not always asleep.

  ‘I mean,’ said one of the aunts, ‘spending all that time together must have been what put those cracks in their marriage. Oh, the rows they had! And didn’t we have to listen for hours about how bad he was to her? But did they sit down and try and work something out, or let’s face it, decide it was over?’

  ‘No, not her,’ my other aunt replied with a snort of contempt. ‘She never did like the word “Miss” in front of her name so what did they do instead? They had a save-the-relationship baby. Hadn’t given a thought to the reality that babies cry, need feeding, changing and bathing. Oh no, they thought that would make everything all right between them.’

  Suddenly, I understood from the glances in my direction which I could see beneath half-closed eyes that it was me they were talking about.

  It was me who was the save-the-relationship baby!

  A bit ironic, that.

  Chapter 6

  Not that my parents’ marriage crumbled overnight. My dad had other ways of occupying his time, which must have provided him with a defence against Mum’s nagging. Now, it was clear that neither she nor her sisters had any idea that he had started cheating on her. Perhaps everyone in our family thought that it was his wife who put the happy expression on his face – if they did, they got that wrong. Something they would have found out, had they been able to make themselves invisible before creeping into their home and listening to just how my parents spoke to each other.

  That idea would have flown straight out of their heads then.

  In many ways, as small children can, I was able to do just that. For angry adults rarely realise just how much they are listened to. When I stayed with my grandmother, crayoning away busily, both she and my aunts appeared to believed that particular activity blocked my ears and prevented me from hearing. Over the time I spent with them, through titbits of their conversations, I learnt that none of my mother’s family considered my father was good enough for her – a heartfelt belief that they had no problem discussing. Listening to them, I discovered he was in a badly paid job and that was why my poor mother had to go out to work. On top of that, he was content to live in an area so rough it was embarrassing, and of course they worried about me.

  ‘I mean,’ said Aunt Lizzy, ‘just what sort of children is Emily going to mix with on that estate?’

  Even so, I understood that while they might not approve of my mother’s choice of husband, they hoped, more for my sake than hers, that the cracks in my parents’ marriage had now been filled in and peace was reigning. That might well have been the case had it not been for one thing: my loose-lipped mouth. Well, those were the words my dad, red-faced with anger, shouted at me when he discovered that I was the one responsible for letting my mother know just what he was up to. Though looking back, I think maybe as I was not quite five and he was an adult, perhaps he should have been held accountable for his misdeeds.

  Whoever was to blame, once my mother’s suspicions were confirmed, it was not a good time in our home. She had to face up to the fact that her husband’s philandering had been going on for longer than she had already guessed. To make matters worse, who was it he had chosen to have that final extramarital fling with? Why, none other than her best friend, Lily. If that wasn’t bad enough, she also worked in the same place as Mum and Dad. In fact, to add insult to injury, it was my mother who had got her the job. All this I learnt through the screams and shouts vibrating through our house.

  As an adult, I can just imagine the tension that affair caused between Dad and his girlfriend once it got under way. But then certain types of people get a kick from taking risks and if that was the case, those two must have been on a permanent high. Not that when the affair was brought out into the daylight Lily didn’t do the decent thing and disappear from both my father’s life and their workplace. Although, when huddled in my bed shivering, I heard enough to know that was not something he wanted. As I listened wretchedly to my mother alternating between sobs and screams of anguish and anger, my father made it pretty clear that if he had to choose one of them, it was not going to be her – a decision that was to change all of our lives, but mine more than theirs. And not for the better either.

  In one da
y my mother lost her husband and the only woman friend she had trusted. Though maybe she should have guessed that with her wide smile and loud laugh, Lily was not what you might call a ‘woman’s woman’.

  The last time I saw her, apart from a certain hardness around her eyes and mouth, she was little changed from when she was young. Thanks, no doubt, I thought uncharitably to generous helpings of Botox and a good hairdresser. When I allow myself to conjure her image up, I always see her as she looked when we first met. Glossy dark hair, shimmering down to her shoulders, olive skin and brown eyes fringed with thick lashes, gazing up at my father. That was when she believed that I was incapable of noticing anything. Another memory skittles into my mind of her hand with its long red-painted nails resting on my mother’s arm as they laughed loudly at one of their shared jokes.

  Looking back, I would say then that she resembled those models seen on travel brochures advertising warm Mediterranean holidays. ‘She’s Italian,’ my mother had told me when I asked where she came from, ‘that’s why she always looks so well turned out.’ She was still in thrall of Lily’s glamour. Gran, on the other hand, with a sniff of disapproval called it ‘dressed to the nines’, which soon became ‘sluttish’ when it all blew up. Certainly, there was no doubt that Lily, with her bright red lipstick, high heels and pretty, clinging dresses, always made an effort: ‘And she doesn’t dress up like that to impress her girlfriends, now does she? Though women like that seldom have any,’ my grandmother added, her tone of voice implying Mum should have guessed who it was after Lily began visiting our home.