My life used to go like this: my daughters, Eddie, our friends, work, and domestic chores. That was about it, and it all pretty much worked beautifully. But then this thing happened, and it touched everything. My focus changed; life wasn’t simple anymore.
Since I found the photograph I carry it with me everywhere, like a good-luck charm, a Polaroid tucked neatly into my wallet. I worry about losing it, but I’d rather have it with me than not. More than ever in my life, I’ve been thinking about my mother and what I missed out on. And as my children get older, I think about what she missed too; by the time I was their age, she was gone.
It was just the two of us when I was little. No father or family that I knew of. I have some fleeting images of my mother in my mind, but they’re like butterflies: fragile, floating into my vision and out again before I’m able to get a proper look. And when she died, well, I don’t have any clear images of that: a feeling of loss, but also expectation and disbelief. I thought she would come back, really believed I would see her again. She was ill, I knew that, a chesty cough and no energy, although she would always smile for me. I could go to her for hugs and kisses anytime: open door, feet padding on carpet, climb into her bed, open arms, warmth. All a bit vague, but a good feeling. And then one morning, I woke up and she was gone. I went to a house I knew down the road and knocked on the door—an old couple—and told them my mother was sick and I didn’t know what to do. I stayed with them that night, Em and Henry, and stayed with them the next night too. They made phone calls, there were hushed conversations and a policeman, and they told me my mother had died, but I’d be okay. I ended up staying with Em and Henry forever, or rather, until college. They never gave me any details about that time, and I didn’t feel I could ask. We drove to a churchyard on a few Sundays to put flowers on her grave, but apart from that she was basically just gone from my life.
I had questions that could probably never be answered, and filled in the gaps with guesses. I guess cancer killed her, but I don’t actually know, because why wouldn’t there have been doctors, and why wouldn’t she just have been dead in her bed? Maybe, like Louis, that’s why I wanted this photograph to give me more information than it could, and the more I looked at it, the more I focused on the Space Hopper box and tried to think where I’d last seen it.
Not long after I lost my mother and was staying with Em and Henry, I went into my new bedroom, old-fashioned but comfortable, with lots of pink frills, and in the middle of the floor was the box that my Space Hopper had come in. It looked battered, but the sides had been taped up with brown parcel tape to strengthen it, and I opened the lid to reveal my things. Em and Henry must have finally decided that my stay with them was going to be long-term, and had gone to my mother’s house to pick up some of my toys.
I lined up my Smurfs neatly on the carpet—there were about five of them, and they fell over in the plush pile—and then my Slinky. There was a white plastic telephone on wheels, with eyes that rolled when you pulled it along, too young for me by then. There was my Little Professor, a handheld calculator with a clever face, like Einstein. I laid him next to my Major Morgan (a gift from Em and Henry) and they looked up at me like a pair of tiny electronic uncles; their happy faces made me feel sad. I switched on the Little Professor, and a mathematical question popped onto the screen. It was too easy for me, but I deliberately got the answer wrong. After three goes, he silently gave me the correct answer, and while a part of me wanted to smash him against the wall, I laid him carefully back down, next to the Major. A pack of Happy Families playing cards and my books were in the box, mainly Enid Blyton, The Magic Faraway Tree and The Wishing-Chair, and hidden between them like a stowaway was my mother’s cookbook, the only one I ever saw her use: small and well-thumbed with a soft, pliable black cover, like an old-fashioned Bible. I opened it to a page covered in smudges, ran my fingers over what I guessed were her fingerprints, and traced some of the tiny writing in the margin, and the tiny tick she’d put next to one of her favorite recipes. I kissed it and tucked it away carefully with my other books.
In the bottom of the box was a pair of roller skates, and I held them to my lips; the metal of the wheels was cold and rough and embedded with tiny stones from the path outside. The skates were adjustable, and Henry would help me loosen them so they would fit. There were other things in the box, and I emptied everything onto the pink carpet. The Space Hopper itself was in the corner of the room; it had a smiling face painted on it, but its sinister grin upset me—it looked like it knew something I didn’t—so I turned it to face the wall. When the box was empty I flattened it and stored it in my wardrobe. And when I moved out years later, I vaguely remember that box; I reinforced the sides with more tape, and it must have come with me for every house move I ever made.
* * *
THE NEXT TIME I saw that box after I found the photo was the day I made a cup of tea for Eddie and knocked on his study door; he turned on his swivel chair and took off his headphones, pressing Pause on the video he was watching on the computer. He stretched out his long legs and flexed his fingers, as he always does when he’s been working.
“What are you doing?” I said, putting the tea on his desk and running my hand through his ruffled brown hair. Is it wrong to think Eddie is too handsome to be a vicar?
“Learning about the book of Revelation, and how it relates to certain services.” He pulled me onto his lap and I straddled him, snuggling my head into the crook of his neck.
“You smell good,” I said, and he wrapped his arms around me. He’s so tall and I’m so petite I think he could wrap his arms round me twice. His thumb found the base of my neck and rubbed it. I leaned back to look into his kind brown eyes and he kissed me. Best kisser ever. I thought that the first time, still think it now. And I could feel him stirring.
“Revelation turns you on?” I said, smiling into his mouth.
“It’s pretty weird stuff.” He kissed me again.
“Want to get kinky later?”
“Let me think about that,” he said, and I pinched him playfully behind the arm. As I rested my chin on his shoulder, I noticed a battered box in the corner of the room. Like an old soldier, it had outward signs of wear that suggested it had a story to tell. There was a faded image of a girl on the box, wearing long white socks, black shoes, and a yellow dress, impossibly short—seventies short—bouncing right at you on her Space Hopper. Some of the writing was hard to read, because it was obscured by brown tape, or had been torn away when tape was removed or replaced.
“Where did you get that box?” I said, sitting up slightly straighter in his lap.
“The attic. I was looking for some of my old textbooks, and I brought them down in that. Looks ancient, doesn’t it.”
“It’s the one from my photo,” I said, and I leaned back so I could look him in the eyes.
“What photo?”
“My photo, of me and my mother, except, well, my mother’s not in it. The one under the Christmas tree.” I got up and went to retrieve it from my bag, bringing it back like a piece of children’s treasure: the thing that feels like treasure to the owner but not necessarily anyone else.
Eddie took it from me, and with his finger touched the face of me in the picture. “Look at you.” He smiled, first at the photo and then at me. “You’ve fared better than the box,” he said. “You still look perfect, but that box has seen some serious action. We should probably throw it out.”