Darcie Boleyn - Something Old, Something New

Julie leads me into the hallway and up the stairs. I keep a hand over the chinchilla and negotiate the steps carefully because every one seems to have a tower of paperbacks, a pile of ironing or a pair of shoes on it. With me being rather clumsy, I’d never manage to live here. I’d be sure to break a bone every day of the week.

At the top of the stairs, we turn right then head up another flight. Joshua’s room is up in the attic. It’s a fabulous conversion that Julie showed me two years ago after they had it done. With four boys, a husband and all their pets, they needed to make the most of what space they had. When we reach the top of that flight, we walk across a small landing and through an open doorway. Henry is sitting on the floor with Joshua and they are staring into a vivarium full of tiny bearded dragons.

‘Look Mummy!’ Henry squeals. ‘Joshua has so many of them. He’s really lucky!’

I smile and take a step closer. The lively black and green creatures scuttle about inside the blue-lit tank, chasing after small crickets. They hop and jump in the pursuit of food, their instincts driving them to feed, to survive, to be on top. I think briefly about school but shake the thought away.

‘Which one do you want, Henry?’ Julie asks.

Henry stares hard at the viv. ‘Um. I don’t know. I wish I could take more than one home.’ He eyes me over his shoulder, chewing his lower lip, his childish attempts at manipulation being honed even at this early stage. I will myself to be strong, to take only one lizard home with me. Not every animal needs to be paired off like in some perfect children’s movie, surely?

‘Choose, please, Henry. We can’t keep Julie and Joshua waiting. And we have to get back for Janis.’ The latter comment isn’t strictly true, although having three children does give me an excuse if one of them is dallying somewhere.

‘Okay…’ He sighs, defeated, and points to one of the babies.

As Joshua places the dragon into a plastic tub, Julie hands me a smaller tub full of crickets and explains about feeding times. ‘It’ll be like having another baby,’ I say, though at least once the lights go off, these creatures apparently sleep through the night. I eye the plastic tub in my hand and shiver as the contents shuffle around; they remind me of currants with legs.

‘You’ll love him!’ Julie replies. ‘They’re such friendly creatures and he’ll have such fun roaming your house.’

I’m not so sure that’s a good idea as I think about Dragon and Fairy Princess and how they love chasing house spiders and woodlice. There was also that time when Janis was looking after the school hamster and it escaped. We only found it when Dragon refused to leave the fireplace in the living room because he could smell it under there. At the time, Dex had been with us and he’d had to remove the front of the fire to get at the chimney space. By then, the hamster was a little worse for wear and we’d had to nip out to the pet shop and get a new one while Janis went to Cassie’s for an hour. I just didn’t have the heart to tell her it had died. She was too young and being my first, I hadn’t gone through all that before. Henry is tougher though, more of a realist. For instance, when he had goldfish, I bought him a proper tank that we put in the kitchen on the Welsh dresser and for a few months it was his pride and joy. He’d feed the fish every morning and clean them out at weekends. Then one Saturday, we came down and the biggest fish, Bob, was gone. It had just disappeared. I thought that the other fish might have eaten it, but there was no evidence left in the tank. Henry had thought about it quietly for a few days in that way he does, then one day over pizza, he’d announced his conclusion. Bob had leapt from the water and fallen to the floor, where Dragon or Fairy Princess had consumed it. And just like that, without emotion or elaboration, my son had cleared up the mystery. To this day, I still don’t know if he was right, but we don’t have a cat, and as the dogs spent the weeks following the fish’s disappearance lurking in front of the tank, watching the remaining fish intently, I had to accept that perhaps my then six-year-old son was in fact correct. Bob had leapt to his death, a bit like my post when it falls through the letterbox and into Dragon’s mouth. I hope that this bearded dragon won’t suffer a similar fate.

At the door, I give the sleeping chinchilla back to Julie and Henry holds on tightly to the plastic tub containing his dragon. He and Joshua share a smile and Joshua solemnly tells Henry to take care of the beardy and to bring him back to play any time he likes. Just imagine! A reptile play date.

As I open the door, I realise that something is missing.

Anabelle!

‘Julie, is Anabelle still in the garden?’

Julie slaps a hand to her chest. ‘Oh my lord yes! She’s so quiet, I’d completely forgotten.’

We rush through the house to the kitchen and peer through the window. And sure enough, there she is, my beautiful little girl, driving around in the red plastic car talking away to herself. Then I look more closely and there, on the dashboard, I can just make out a green shell.

Julie rushes out into the garden and I follow.

‘Oh thank you, thank you!’ she gushes as she scoops the shell up. ‘You’ve found Larry!’

‘Larry?’ I ask as I help Anabelle out of the car and let her take the tub of crickets from my hand, hoping she doesn’t loosen the lid in the car.

‘Yes, our tortoise. Joshua let him out the other day for some exercise but he forgot about him and it was dark by the time he realised. We thought he’d escaped under the fence so it’s an enormous relief to see him again. Well done, Anabelle!’

My little girl smiles and nods, as if it’s an everyday occurrence to find a missing tortoise and take it for a drive, then she takes my hand and we head home.

****

Later that night, after I’ve tucked Henry into bed and checked on Anabelle, I pop my head into Janis’ room. ‘How’s it going, sweetheart?’

She glances up from her laptop. ‘Hey Mum!’ She removes her earphones and I realise that she probably didn’t hear me.

‘Everything okay?’ I sit on the edge of her bed and look around her room. I come in here all the time to drop ironing off and to speak to Evan on the laptop but I rarely actually register how it has changed. The little-girl pink was painted purple a few years ago then covered in posters. It makes me smile as I meet the eyes of long-haired rockers and smouldering movie stars, the beautiful people who grace our screens and make us dream of another life. The room could do with a fresh lick of paint but Janis would not be happy at all if she had to remove all her images of rock gods and stars of the silver screen, as well as her inspirational quotes and study notes. It seems that every spare inch of wall has a yellow sticky note bearing some literary quote or revision tip on it.

When did she grow up? When was it that her feet grew so much that she now wears a size and a half bigger than I do? I’m often struck by how quickly time passes. I take each day as it comes and work busily through it but at moments like this, when an evening stretches out before me, these niggling thoughts creep in and I feel sad that time has passed so quickly, that my babies are growing up and I’m hardly aware of it until another stage in their lives has passed.

But I can’t stop it can I?

It would just be nice if I had someone to share it all with, someone who understood.

I think then of my mother, the woman who gave up so much for me. She worked all hours and never once complained, not even when I had to tell her that I’d gotten pregnant, that all her hard work had been in vain. She surrendered some of the best years of her life working two jobs just to make ends meet and saving every spare penny so that I could go to university. She wanted me to achieve my dream of being a globetrotting photographer, to be independent, self-sufficient and to experience a freedom she never could. How did she feel when she found out that I’d risked all that for love? She didn’t try to encourage me to get an abortion and she didn’t even shout or cry, she just nodded and asked me what my plans were. She must have been disappointed, yet she took it all in her stride. Did she ever look at me in the same way I look at my children and think how quickly I’d grown? Did she ever wonder when I changed? These are questions I’ve never asked her, things I fear questioning her about in case she tells me something that hurts, that confirms my worst suspicions – that I did hurt her when I let her down.