I grew up in a small mining village with my mum and her younger sister, Aunt Pat. Their parents had both died young and Mum, who was six years older, had essentially raised Aunt Pat. When Mum got married, she’d taken her in as one of the family. Aunt Pat worked as a travelling cosmetics sales rep and spent long periods away from home on the road. Dad was killed in an accident at the coal face, crushed by a faulty conveyer belt, before my first birthday. So most of the time it was just me and Mum.
We weren’t too badly off financially. Mum had received a modest payout from the National Coal Board. There was always enough food, and, unlike some of my classmates, I always had new clothes and shoes when I grew out of them. But Mum was a naturally frugal woman and her budget never stretched to an annual holiday or little luxuries.
The only bit of excitement came when Aunt Pat returned home from a trip, glamorous and looking so vibrant and young. She’d always bring me a gift, a ‘meaningless trinket’ as Mum called jewellery or anything remotely pretty that didn’t have a practical use.
‘Loosen up, Irene,’ Aunt Pat would taunt her disapproving sister. ‘Learn to live a bit. You’ve got enough put by that you could treat yourself and our Janey now and again. Maybe a little break by the seaside, or a meal and a night out at the theatre. Janey would love that, wouldn’t you, princess?’
‘You leave her out of it,’ Mum would snap. ‘We don’t want her getting ideas above her station, like you.’
‘Charming!’ Aunt Pat would huff, but then she’d wink at me and we’d have a little grin at Mum’s expense behind her back. Mum’s insults were like water off a duck’s back to Aunt Pat, but I internalised every last one of her criticisms.
I remember my aunt giving me a dazzling gold and ruby necklace when I was ten and encouraging me to wear it to school under my blouse so that Mum wouldn’t know. Then, just before she died, there was a white-gold bangle studded all the way round with tiny diamonds. They were the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. I have no idea if they were real precious metals and gems, but Mum snatched the bracelet out of my hands and she and Aunt Pat had a blazing row in the kitchen about the ‘inappropriate gifts’. I never saw the bracelet or the necklace again.
Aunt Pat and I mostly kept her gifts a secret between the two of us. She’d slip me the odd tenner, and once, when I was just thirteen, she loaned me an expensive designer handbag for the school disco that she said was made from real snakeskin. She just seemed so cool compared to the local people and the humdrum village life I led. When she was home, my life seemed full of colour and excitement and when she went away, everything turned grey again.
When I became an adult, as a result of Mum’s disapproval of Aunt Pat’s gifts, I learned to harbour a great deal of guilt when it came to buying myself anything nice. This extended to splashing out on an outfit for a special night out, make-up, accessories… anything that couldn’t be labelled as ‘useful’. Mum’s words echo in my head still, but these days our tight budget stops any impulse purchases, so it’s not really a problem.
Even though we’re worlds apart, I do feel I know the sort of women I encountered at the school gates this morning. Like Aunt Pat, their self-value comes from the very possessions Mum frowned upon. Their razor-sharp tongues might wind me up on one level, but at least I can hold my head high in the knowledge that I don’t judge myself by the size and clarity of the diamonds on my fingers. I suppose I have Mum to thank for that.
Still, the parents back at Rowan’s old school seemed so much more normal. The mums with their hair hurriedly stuck up in a ponytail, the dads in sweatpants and sliders in the summer months. Just ordinary people, doing their best under often difficult circumstances.
I looked smarter before I became Mum’s carer because I had to dress for work before the school run. Once I stopped having a good reason to make an effort, I quickly lost interest in what garments I pulled on before leaving the house.
At Lady Bridge, the women who gathered outside the gate looked as if they were meeting up for a night out. Hair all done, full face of make-up, and ostentatious designer labels that screeched silently from casually cut clothing that was clearly not casual at all. I didn’t dress up to take Rowan in this morning, but perhaps I ought to have done. Edie had certainly pulled out all the stops, looking far more groomed than yesterday, so maybe it was the done thing around here.
I want our new life to be perfect in every way. I don’t want Rowan feeling different to the other kids and being excluded because their mums turn their pert little noses up at me.
‘You must do something to irritate them,’ I remember Mum saying when I got older and a couple of the other teenage girls in my year started to bully me at school. ‘You’ve got to learn how to fit in, Janey.’
Rightly or wrongly, I tried to change to make the popular girls like me. I copied their hairstyles, persuaded Mum to buy me some second-hand shoes that were more modern than the flat lace-ups she favoured for me. I even applied a little mascara and eyeliner before I left the house to look older, but it never worked. I was consistently bullied from the age of thirteen until I left school at sixteen and finally escaped to college to train as a classroom assistant, initially caring for kids under four and then studying at night school and graduating to working as a qualified teaching assistant for older children.
I sigh and shake myself out of this maudlin mood, troubled that these deep feelings of inadequacy still run through me like a core of ice.
Moving here represents the start of our new family life. Plus, it’s early days, and who knows, maybe given time, I can start to make conversation with the other parents and fit in a little more. One thoughtless comment doesn’t add up to complete exoneration.
I stand up with my hands on my hips and arch my back to ease the dull ache in my coccyx brought on by hours spent sitting on the floor. My eyes alight on the box in the corner of the room. It’s secured with brown packing tape like the others but written across the top in thick black marker is the single word MUM. Inside, under a ton of screwed-up brown packing paper, is a small wooden chest that, for as long as I can remember, was kept under Mum’s bed, stuffed with old photographs and various documents. It’s a box I’ve never taken more than a cursory glance inside. All I know is that Mum pulled important documents out of there as and when they were needed: birth certificates, passports, insurance certificates and that sort of thing. Mum’s box, I’ve always called it.
It’s definitely not mine, even though she’s gone now. I don’t want any of it to be mine, and so I haven’t opened it since she died.
‘The complete picture is in there, Janey,’ she told me in her final days. ‘And when you feel strong enough, it will answer all your questions.’
But I haven’t got any questions, because I’ve no wish to hear the answers.
When we moved, Isaac offered to take the chest off my hands. ‘If keeping that stuff upsets you, why not just get rid of it?’
He’s so logical, so pragmatic. He can’t possibly know how I feel about it all. But I did consider the idea, imagining the freedom it might bring. Would leaving the box behind also lock its secrets firmly in the past? If only. Deep down inside, I know I can’t run away from it indefinitely and yet nothing I do will ever make what happened right. Nothing.