Louise Kean - Material Girl

She is generally more sympathetic than that; she must have been having a bad day.

When Mum left I always knew it wasn’t my fault, and I never dreamt I could get her to come back. My life changed, but it wasn’t that bad. My weekends with Mum were now packed full of fun and adventure and talking. She seemed happy and the way that she put it everything was exciting. Dad was never a great talker, and now Mum and I could witter on all day about nothing and not hear him sighing dramatically in the background because he couldn’t hear the football on the TV. Sometimes on a Friday night I even went so far as pouring salt in Richard’s baked beans as they sat simmering on the hob, crossing my fingers that he would get stomach cramps in the night. Then he wouldn’t be able to come and see Mum that weekend, and it would just be the two of us instead.

She moved out to a house on the other side of Norwich and she painted it herself. She let me help, and we both put on oversized shirts that she bought at Oxfam and tied our hair up in scarves so we looked like 1940s war widows working in munitions. We painted her living room orange! Dad would come and pick me up on Sunday nights and they’d look at each other on the doorstep with confusion, trying to remember who the other was. They were like chalk and cheese, they were never even meant to be a part of each other’s lives. My mum would smile at least, and ask Dad how he was. My dad would look embarrassed and batten down the hatches of his emotions as always, particularly now that my mother had become a whirlwind on her own. He would give nothing away.

A year ago I asked Mum if Dad ever told her he loved her. ‘Yes,’ she said, nodding earnestly, ‘but only when I asked of course. The thing is, Scarlet, with your father, he was raised differently. You never knew his parents but they were both very strict. Whereas you know Grandma and Grandpa, they can’t stop giving you hugs! I was so lucky, Scarlet, and so loved, that I found it easy to show it to your father. I hope that’s how I make you feel now, I don’t ever want you to guess about my feelings for you, and neither should Richard. Of course, Richard is so kind, so good-natured, he has nothing but love in him, and he was lucky when he met Hannah so young, but they are so right for each other, and she is such a lovely girl, with such a lot of love to give too.’

She looked at me out of the corner of her eye, with concern.

‘I love you and Richard utterly. When I left people didn’t think that was possible, but in a way I left because I loved you. I always thought you knew that. Katharine Hepburn said “loved people are loving people”, and I believe that. Your dad didn’t have that sense of being loved, and he didn’t know how to show it to me.’

‘Is that why you left?’

‘Scarlet, things are rarely that black and white. I loved him, it was very hard. But you know that your father loves you, don’t you, Scarlet?’

‘Of course, he’s just not … demonstrative.’ Dad has never hugged me with abandon, he chooses his words carefully, and trips over sentiment clumsily. He can’t express himself, I know that. He can laugh, and does. But he can’t cry.

‘You’ve noticed that, Scarlet, and yet …’

‘And yet?’ I asked, waiting for her to go on.

‘Be careful, Scarlet. There isn’t just one type of man for you.’

Mum lives by the sea now, in a little village called Rottingdean, a couple of miles outside of Brighton, on her own. She prefers it that way. She takes long walks on the beach and reads a lot, and sees films with the man who lives next door.

Standing outside the Majestic Theatre I read the poster in the opposite frame: ‘ Tennessee Williams’s The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore: previews start Monday 20th! ’

There is a guy selling the Evening Standard a little further up the road. I check my watch and skip up towards him, rummaging for forty pence in my bag. It is always too late to get a paper by the time I get out in the evening, and it’s my only source of news. If half the world goes up in smoke I’ll read it in the Standard . Otherwise I might never know. Plus I like to leave it for Ben so he can do the sudoku. It’s a little thing I do, a point of contact, the Evening Standard left on the kitchen table. I hope he smiles when he sees it in the mornings, before I am even out of bed. I hope he thinks of me when he picks it up. I think of him when I leave it there at night.

I hold my hand out with my forty pence.

Behind the stand the old guy is wearing a flat cap and an overcoat. His glasses are thick and slightly smeared with grease. He smiles at me and I notice he only has his front four teeth, top and bottom, the rest are missing. I wonder if he can still whistle.

‘Have you got it?’ he asks.

‘Is it forty pence?’ I reply.

I look down at the two twenty-pence pieces in my outstretched palm, confused.

‘Or have you lost it?’ he asks, lisping the words through his four teeth.

‘Sorry? I don’t understand.’ I offer him my forty pence again, but he doesn’t take it. He smiles. Perhaps he is an idiot.

‘Your passion for life,’ he says. ‘You had it …’

I stare at him. He smiles and takes the forty pence from my hand, and replaces it with an Evening Standard , folded in half. A man walks over and offers him forty pence, which he takes as he passes him a paper and says, ‘Thank you, sir.’ An older woman nudges me out of the way as she offers him her change, and he passes her a paper and says, ‘Thank you, dear.’

I turn and walk back towards the theatre. I feel a buzzing in my bag, and reach in for my phone. I am standing outside The Majestic’s back door when I answer. ‘Hello?’

‘It’s me,’ Ben says. ‘I popped back to get the post, in case they’d delivered my Xbox game. They hadn’t, but you have a letter … from some clinic.’

‘I’ll open it when I get home.’

‘Why have you gone to a clinic?’

‘Women’s stuff.’

‘Okay. I’ll see you later then.’

‘Ben – we have passion, right?’

‘Sorry?’

‘We have passion … in our lives …’

I sense him squirming at the end of the phone.

‘I don’t understand what you mean, I’m working …’

‘I have to go,’ I say, and hang up.

I stare at the cobbles beneath my feet. Snapping myself out of my trance I reach forwards for the handle of the theatre’s back door, but as I do I notice a piece of paper, a leaflet, is stuck to the bottom of my shoe where my heel has pierced it. I have been walking with it pinned to me all this time, like a cheap joke. I lean against the wall, trying to keep my balance as I lift my foot in the air, and snatch the leaflet off. It’s an underground map.

On the front, in big red letters, it says,

‘Don’t waste time.’

You know those days just before Christmas when there are lights everywhere, in Highgate village or anywhere in London? I don’t mean the orange and red neon glory lights of Oxford Street or Regent Street, with their torrents of swarming shoppers below who fill every spare inch of pavement, as those lights, unlike puppies, are just for Christmas, and not for life. I am talking about the branches of white lights that string across the high streets of villages, dusting the everyday with Christmas sparkle, enough to remind you that it’s supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year. Some of those dotted lights even shine out from people’s windows, the optimistic ones. I think they should leave those lights up forever, for every day of the year. I’d like a life like that. Those strings of cheap diamonds are like a shared and hopeful smile. They punctuate the functional with magic, and increasingly that’s what I feel slipping away. My magic reserves are depleted, like dwindling natural resources, and they need a little topping up. I need a world with a little more magic.