Matt Goss - More Than You Know

Mum and Dad were living at 94 Tressillian Road, a one-bedroom flat in Brockley at the time, with Mum working as a hairdresser and telephonist and Dad working long hours within the souvenir supply trade. They had very little money and with Dad away working so much, Mum was faced with most of the day-to-day demands of looking after twins. Perhaps inevitably, the stresses and strains on this young couple gradually began to take their toll and erode that idealistic and exhilarating love they had felt when they first met. Dad left briefly when we were less than three years old, but he and Mum soon reconciled.

I’m not going to pretend that I have vivid memories of every house we lived in and every street on which I wandered as a child: I don’t. My mind is a scramble of different addresses, friends made then lost, countless new school gates and the repeated realization that we were moving once more and it was going to start all over again. What I do recall are certain events, particular moments of extreme clarity in that transient haze, like stark rays of sun piercing a mist. When I think of these moments, they are absolutely crystal-clear, as if I had lived them only yesterday.

One of my earliest memories is of a house in Bramdean Crescent in Lee, before I was even of school age. It was a three-bedroom terraced house with an extra feature – it was haunted. Mum hated it there because of this presence – a very dark spiritual energy – and eventually we left. We weren’t going to be one of those families in the horror movies where they check out the cellar and make friends with ghosts. It was very unsettling indeed.

In 1973, when Luke and I were heading towards our fifth birthday, we all went on holiday to Majorca. Put simply, this was the last time in my childhood that I remember feeling part of a family. My mum and dad just looked so good together. I thought my dad was incredibly handsome (and still do), with his dark hair and piercing blue eyes; Mum was beautiful, so fair-haired and with beautiful green eyes. Of course, during the holiday they acquired lovely sun-tans – the weather was amazing – so I have this overriding memory of them being very brown, healthy and just so good-looking. They were wearing Seventies gear that was the height of fashion and they looked extremely cool. I was bursting with pride.

I cherish so many good memories of that holiday. My parents would go out for dinner looking fantastic and come back full of chatter, having had a great night. I can still see myself running through the streets of Majorca with Luke, both of us holding Dad’s hands as he said, ‘You’ve got to see the bull in this shop! You’ve got to see this!’ When we got there, breathless and laughing, there was a huge stuffed bull from a local bullfight. It was quite scary, but it was so exciting as well for Dad to run with us all that way to make sure we saw it. That’s what dads do.

We stayed in a lovely villa. One night when Mum and Dad were out having a meal, there was a violent thunderstorm. I was upstairs, walking around in the dark looking out of the windows at the black clouds and torrential rain. Next thing I knew, I was lying winded on a bed downstairs . Luke was shouting out, ‘Matt! Where are you?’

‘I’m downstairs!’ I replied, totally confused. I hadn’t noticed the edge of a balcony and walked straight off, falling down a floor and on to a bed. We laughed so much.

I also squashed a cockroach with my bare feet, a big black cockroach, which was fairly unpleasant. Luke and I would play in the pool for hours – I had a Dumbo inflatable and Luke had a Mickey Mouse; I can still smell those rubber rings to this day. Silly memories, important memories. Family memories.

Reminiscing about that holiday, I can still sense the sun-tan oil in my nose, I can still picture Mum and Dad looking so bronzed and stunning, I can still feel the excitement and emotion of being a proper family welling up inside me. In my adult life, I have been fortunate enough to travel the world many times and enjoy some wonderful holidays, but that time in Majorca was easily one of the best holidays of my life.

Unfortunately, it was also to be my last happy memory of childhood for a while. Three weeks after we came back, my dad left home – for good.

Who knows what undercurrents had been bubbling between Mum and Dad in Majorca. They certainly did not allow any problems between them to spoil that fabulous holiday. In retrospect, that must have been very difficult for both of them and I am grateful that we were shielded in that way, even though it made what was about to happen back at home a very sharp shock.

I have a vivid memory of the night when my dad actually left. Mum sat Luke and me on the windowsill, and said, ‘Dad won’t be coming home, me and your dad aren’t going to be living together any more, he loves you deeply but . . .’ That was the beginning of a feeling of strangeness in my life.

From then on, my childhood felt somewhat transient, emotionally and physically. It was very disjointed and hard to feel connected to one place. To feel safe . That’s never changed, particularly with what I do for a living. I have such a need to feel safe in my life – but I don’t feel safe. I think this undercurrent started that night on the windowsill.

While we were in Majorca, I thought, This is so fantastic, I hope we can do this all again next year . That’s how you view things when you are so young. But it wasn’t to be. With Mum and Dad separated, there would never be enough money to take us away to such glorious places again. Even if there had been, that sense of family would not have been there anyway. It just wouldn’t have been the same.

I am so conscious of talking about these events, but I must preface it by pointing out it’s just one of those situations that happens in life; it’s nobody’s fault. Separation is not easy on anyone. Dads go through loss, mums go through loss, and husbands and wives go through loss. But purely on the level of being a child, the starkest realization was that we were not going to go back to Majorca next year after all. It’s also strange how after Mum and Dad separated, I became so much more aware of certain elements that I’d previously been blissfully ignorant of. Suddenly, school was full of other kids from broken homes, little people with secret histories.

By the time my parents separated, my father had been a policeman in the City of London force for over two years. He’d trained when Luke and I were two and a half, and even back then there were tensions between him and Mum. When we went to Majorca, we were living in a police house at 17 Priestley Road, Mitcham; that provided our family with a level of security that was very welcome. Unfortunately, the crumbling edifice of my parents’ marriage never matched the solidity of a safe, secure police house.

Separation and divorce were not looked upon in a very good light within the force, so it was an especially difficult time for both Mum and Dad. One unsettling memory I do have of the police house in Mitcham is that for a couple of weeks, a man stood outside our home. We were never sure of what was going on but it might possibly have been someone watching to see if Mum was living with anyone, because there are obviously rules about who lives in a police house. We reported this to the police, as did several neighbours. Sometimes this man would be sitting in a car and other times he would stand by our hedge reading a newspaper. We were only kids and it scared the hell out of us but it was especially disturbing for Mum.

My early childhood was painful, constantly seeing my mother in tears, genuinely aching. Every night she would come in to our bedroom and give us a kiss, then sing us to sleep, songs like ‘American Pie’ and ‘Fly, Fly Superbird’ – I can hear her singing them now. But then she would leave the room and we would wait for her to start crying. Many years later, I wrote a song which my mum doesn’t know about called ‘Ms Read’, her maiden name; ‘I can hear you crying Ms Read’. It was very sad to see her like that.