‘The others have gone to the pub. I didn’t … I just needed to be on my own, you know? How are the girls?’
‘Good, yeah. Took Phoebe to violin, and while we waited in the car, Rosa chatted me to near catatonia. Wow, that girl can talk.’
‘She can.’ I smile. My cheeks feel like they’re under a fine face mask, which is cracking; the edges of my eyes are sticky.
‘Then nothing much, really. We went to Pizza Express for dinner.’
‘Tea, you mean.’
‘Don’t go all Northern on me,’ he says mock-gravely. ‘You’ve been there less than twenty-four hours.’
He has managed to make me laugh. Although, thinking about it, I have laughed a lot today. My family are very funny, their friends a hoot. To be perfectly honest, there have been moments when I wasn’t sure whether I was laughing or crying. Eventually I just gave in and let my eyes leak.
I chat to Seb a little longer, let him soothe me until he yawns, making me yawn, and we say goodnight. He’ll kiss the girls for me, tell them I love them, he won’t forget Rosa has hockey practice in the morning, he loves me, he’s with me in spirit. I ring off and think about what a lovely husband and father he is, how safe our girls are with him, how safe I am. I chose him through love, yes, but there was something else in there too, always, some seed of determination for history not to repeat itself. Like much of history, mine doesn’t bear repeating. I needed a different kind of husband. And whatever children I had, I was going to make damn sure they had a different kind of father.
In our separate careers, Seb and I deal with people like my father all the time. It saddens me to say that we also deal with people like my brother. If you meet me in my professional capacity, it probably means you’ve made some poor choices. It will be a low point in your life. You will be sharing details with me that you wouldn’t tell your closest friend. Grubby secrets, bloody facts. And regardless of whether I like you or not, whether I believe you or not, you have a right to a defence in a court of law. You will be relying on me to give you that to the best of my ability. What you will never know are my reasons for entering into this career and how utterly I give myself to it. I have made some poor choices too. But I try not to think about that. It isn’t, as they say, helpful.
Another thing my clients will never find out is how deeply and personally I understand how grave the consequences of a guilty verdict are; how easily a beautiful soul can become a murderous mess. We have evolved from capital punishment, yes, but the loss of liberty to be with the people you love, to provide for your family, to experience your children’s childhoods, your friends, your favourite places and even your parents’ last days is for many a far greater torture than mere death. Those who go to prison suffer. Those who are left outside suffer too. My brother was guilty and served his time. My father was guilty but never made it as far as a court. His justice was of the poetic kind, as it turned out. As for myself, I am guilty too, but I use the law to try to make things right day to day. For the rest, my aim is to keep my daughters for as long as possible wrapped up in blissful ignorance.
As a child, I could have done with a little more ignorance. I didn’t want to hear the things I heard, interpret the evidence I saw. Watching my mother leave for Tommy and Pauline’s wedding that afternoon, I could never have known that the next time I saw her would be in the dead of that same night: eyes wide, words hissed into the dark.
I need you to keep quiet for me, love. Can you do that? Not a word, all right? Good girl.
Graham knew more than I did. He was sixteen. I was ten. I never witnessed my father’s physical abuse at first hand. Through the walls of adjacent rooms, there were shouts, bangs, roars. Yelps too – like the sound my friend’s dog would make if you stepped on its paw. The way my father spoke to my mother was, for me, normal, although I do remember that my stomach used to tighten sometimes when he was around. But I hadn’t yet spent enough time in other people’s houses to realise that other fathers spoke to other mothers differently. I could not have clarified the tone of his voice as that of withering disdain, nor perceive how anxious he made her, how her every word and move around him was tentative. My unease was loose, vague. Only later did I realise that she, Carol, spent our entire childhood living in dread, that she did that for us, every day, from some received notion that she should put up with it, and because she thought she had no choice.
Tommy and Pauline’s wedding reception was held at the community centre on the housing estate where we lived. I knew the hall well, because as kids Graham and I spent every summer there at the volunteer-run play scheme while my mother worked on the till at Safeway. The centre was by turns a function room, theatre, dance studio, sports club, pub, church, youth club and disco. The storeroom was a cornucopia of equipment for every possible activity: badminton nets, boxes of Golden Wonder crisps, footballs in huge net bags, scenery from last year’s Christmas play …
I have no trouble imagining the place kitted out for a wedding. The DJ has set up on the stage at the back – huge black speakers, those eighties red, amber and green disco lights, dog-eared boxes of vinyl. He talks between records, takes requests, wears his thin leather tie a little askew. Long trestle tables, fetched from the storeroom earlier in the day, most probably by my parents’ friends and relatives, have been pushed together in rows. Paint splashes and chipped veneer are disguised with white paper cloths. The blue velvet chairs I would sit on later at weekly teenage discos fill now with chatting, smoking, drinking guests. Down by the long bar on the left, men lean in, heads fogged with smoke, hands tight around pints of brown and yellow.
And there’s Ted, his back to Carol, a five-pound note folded between the middle and forefingers of his raised hand.
My mother is sitting as far from the action as she can, at the back, where the hall is a little darker. She is wearing long sleeves, as she always does. She will have refreshed her foundation in the mirror of the ladies, will have waited until no one else was looking to do this. All around her there is motion and noise. Joy. Some of the guests barely stop to put down their bags and coats before heading straight for the dance floor, laughing together, arms pumping, mock-disco moves.
They know how to have a good time.
Five
Carol
1984
Carol is watching Ted. He’s back-slapping, pointing, downing a chaser before picking up their drinks. Now he’s heading over, has her locked in his sights. When he gets to the table, he puts the cola she never asked for in front of her. He sits heavily, sups half his pint in one go. The urge to tell him to slow down still comes to her, but, knowing better now, she keeps her mouth shut. He pulls out his cigarette packet and shakes it.
‘Fuck,’ he mutters, his expression bitter. Without looking at her, digging in his pocket, he adds, ‘Have you got fags?’
She scrambles in her bag, offers him her pack of B&H. ‘Here y’are.’
Eyes screwed up, he holds up his own cigarettes, pushes the packet close to her face. ‘I don’t mean now. I’ve got one now, but it’s my last one, i’n’t it?’
She nods, takes one of her own and lights first his then hers.