Luke Goss - I Owe You Nothing

He remembers coming in one night, late, and disturbing us. ‘The noise of me coming in woke Luke and Matthew. Carol automatically started to climb out of bed to see to them. Her eyes were closed and she was operating on automatic pilot – she was so tired. I did the feeding and changing for her that night: it took me three hours, and by that time they were ready to start again. I don’t know how she coped, but I have nothing but admiration for the way she did. I know I wasn’t around enough to take any pressure off her.’

Things were already starting to go wrong between my parents. Mum remembers when she came home from hospital after having us and found that Dad had not even washed the dishes from the dinner party on the night she went into labour, or changed the bed. She remembers feeling very alone during the eight months they lived at the Brockley flat after our birth.

But there were some good times as well. Mum has a really great singing voice, and they shared the same taste in music: Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight and the Pips, the Beatles, James Taylor. Wherever they lived, and however little money they had, my parents always surrounded themselves with music. Dad would get his guitar and his harmonica out, and Mum would sing. Because she was shy, she preferred to sing in the dark: they would lie in bed together singing. Even before we were old enough to remember it, Matt and I were surrounded by music.

Soon we moved from the flat in Brockley to a ground-floor maisonette at Hither Green. It was bigger and better than Brockley, although the tiny boxroom bedroom that Matt and I shared was damp and Mum constantly had to redecorate it.

For the first year of our lives, me and my brother were both bald, and then we sprouted a mop of blond, downy hair. We had big blue eyes and dimples. Mum says that wherever she took us, people stopped her and commented on how lovely we were. I’m sure that all parents of twins will know what it is like: one baby gets a lot of attention and fuss made over it; two are guaranteed twice the attention and twice the fuss.

Mum was completely wrapped up in us: ‘They were my saviours, they made my life worth living,’ she says. ‘We used to giggle together all the time, and I’d be so busy talking to them as we walked along the street that more than once I pushed the pram into a lamp-post. I loved them to pieces. My mum adored them, too. They were her first grandchildren, after all, and she was forever buying them clothes and toys. I’d go to see her once a week and she’d make sure I had a huge meal – she knew that money was tight and that I’d be making sure that the boys and Alan had everything, without worrying about myself. I never had to tell her, she just knew, and there would be a package of things for me to take back home with me.’

Dad was now working as a hosiery salesman, and he was also doing evening jobs to raise more money. It was while he was knocking on doors doing market research for Gillette that he met a man who is still a friend of his to this day, and who sparked in him an interest in joining the police.

‘This chap admitted bluntly that he had joined to get a police house and to have job security. He suggested that if I was interested I should try the City of London police, not the Metropolitan Police. I was worried about it, I thought we might alienate family and friends by joining the police. But Carol was philosophical: she said that if we lost friends because we needed good housing and a steady wage, they weren’t worth having,’ he says.

It took a long time for Dad to be accepted. The police force weren’t too happy about his employment record, but eventually they accepted him for training, when we were two and a half years old. Mum was very pleased and proud, and thought that life was going to get better for us all. She didn’t realize that her problems were just beginning.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.