if you would. I’m glad, though. Really pleased.’
‘No, well, I don’t remember you THAT much…’ I said, annoyed. Of course I remembered her. Unlike Dad’s younger sister Ina, Auntie Philomena called me up a few times a year – mostly birthdays and Christmas. She even sent the odd hideous blouse, pictures or a lump of spice cake wrapped securely in tin foil through the post, when I’m sure a visit would have been more hygienic? But, apart from Mum making me travel up to Granny Bates once a year, I didn’t really have that much full on contact with my dad’s side of the family. And I was okay with that. Really, I was…I am.
I crunched a knuckle.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘For what?’ I shrugged.
‘For not being around much. I live pretty far away. And the kids…’
I stifled a yawn, the frilly fabric of my ridiculous dress beginning to irritate the tops of my knees. She beckoned me outside away from the crowds – and, thankfully, away from the sight of Great Auntie Elizabeth swinging larger-than-average hips to ‘Let’s Twist Again’.
The only bench we could find was soiled with bird crap, though it didn’t concern me, as it would probably improve the look of the dress anyway. My mind did begin to wonder what Corey and Carla were up to, though.
‘I need to talk to you,’ said Auntie Philomena, who on closer inspection had yellowing teeth.
‘Talk to me? Me? About what?’ I raised my voice in that high-pitched manner that made me sound as if I really wanted to know. And I didn’t. Not really. Okay, maybe a little bit, then. Especially as the only time a grown-up ever wanted to talk to me was to ask about my homework (teachers) or nag the fun out of me (Mum, teachers).
‘I have something for you, Lois… And it’s really, really important.’
‘Right…’ I sat on my hands, believing it could stop me from exploding. I wasn’t good at this patience thing that grown-ups always spoke about.
A wave of fear washed over me, especially as she began to look at me weirdly, before her manicured fingers began squeezing my hand so tightly I thought she’d break the left metacarpus (I’d learned that one in biology a week earlier).
She continued, ‘It’s something we should have told you about a long, long time ago…’
We? Okay, the woman was freaking me out now. My mind glossed over a number of likely scenarios: genetic disease; Public Enemy splitting up? The possibilities were endless and I’d had enough of this guessing game. I JUST WANTED TO KNOW.
‘Is it about my dad?’ I asked quietly, hopefully. A shot in the dark.
‘Yes, it is.’ Auntie Philomena’s mouth formed into an unusual smile. One tinged with sadness.
My mind started to wonder as suppressed joy threatened to leap from the pit of my stomach and out of my mouth like a mound of vomit. This was all too much. Something I’d dreamed of ever since I was a little girl. You know, finding out he wasn’t dead after all. It had all been some silly mistake after he’d contracted amnesia in the early hours of that morning, seven years ago. Of course, it would be difficult to piece together what occurred in the interim years, but after recently regaining his memory, Dad had set out to find us – his loving family – and finally succeeded today, the night of his wife’s wedding! But seeing how happy she now was made him all confused, as he stood alone outside the number twenty-one bus stop located just around the corner from where Philomena and I now sat. He was too scared to talk to me – just in case I too had betrayed him. Poor Dad!
‘Lois?’
‘Yes, sorry Auntie Philomena, you were saying…? About my dad?’
My heart was ready to leap out of my mouth.
‘I have something for you…a message…from your dad.’
* * *
I remember my dad lifting me up by his large hands and twirling me around in the air. Me, giggling with wonderful anticipation of the giddy feeling that would grip me, right before the remnants of my breakfast would start to rise in my throat.
‘She’s going to be sick, put her down!’ Mum would shout. Spoiling the moment. Our moment. And that’s basically all I could clearly remember about him. Oh, and the mole under his eye. The picture on my dressing table, and others banished to a small box in the loft, was all I had to help piece together the size of his nose, curve of his large lips, cute little button ears encased in what I could only imagine to be the smoothest skin I could ever wish to touch. I often imagined jumping into that photo, if only for sixty seconds – each one spent running my finger across the surface of his skin, the contours of his face, implanting an image in my brain that would live there for ever and ever.
But I didn’t have the power to jump into a photo.
And Dad wasn’t alive again.
In fact, when Auntie Philomena left the reception I ran into the reeking toilets of that restaurant and cried. I continued to sob for the rest of the night, away from the noisy crowds and uncool music. And then again in my bed, still dressed in that awful frilly dress, dolly shoes banished to the ether. As usual, Mum didn’t notice, she was too loved-up with the Bingo Caller to care. I wasn’t even sure why I was crying because, as Auntie Philomena had put it, this was a good thing. Right? Like hearing a message from the grave. But I suppose that’s what really bothered me the most: he was still dead. Lifeless. His ashes scattered in a foreign sea thousands of miles away along with old tyres and rotting bicycles. He hadn’t come to rescue me from my life of endless days at school, Mum’s moaning and now a stepdad thinking he’d acquired the right to tell me what to do just because he was knobbing my mother.
Dad was still gone.
Philomena had handed me a crumpled old Tesco bag like it was a pot of glistening gold; a perfect, divine specimen needing special handling. It was heavy, with something book-shaped inside. Great, I thought. Yet another book to read. So all I could do was chuck it on the floor among my Doc Martens, twelve-inch singles and one of the pink dolly shoes, staring at it from time to time with a cocktail of confusion, fear, excitement and sadness floating in the background.
Luckily, that weekend was spent with Carla while Mum and the Bingo Caller honeymooned in Cornwall. Although my best mate and her family lived only next door, same south London, same Charlton, it felt like a trillion miles away. And it might as well have been. Carla and her brother Corey were allowed to stay up late AND were allowed to eat ice cream AFTER nine o’clock. So, staying there was perhaps a great way of forgetting about Dad’s ‘message’ for a while and get my head right. But my head remained jumbled and I couldn’t get it out of my mind, counting the days till Mum returned. And the minute the sickly newlyweds arrived back home, complete with their first all-shrieking, super-duper, mirror-cracking argument over what to watch on telly, I raced to my room, desperate to peer inside that Tesco bag.
‘Don’t I get a kiss, young lady?’ shouted Mum as I reached the top of the stairs – just outside my room and that Tesco bag. My heart raced as Mum slowly climbed the stairs, moved towards me and smiled wildly to reveal her front gapped teeth.
‘Sorry, Mum. Welcome back,’ I said, one eye on the door to my bedroom as she planted a wet kiss onto my cheek.
‘Is there one for me as well?’ said the Bingo Caller, opening the door to their bedroom. They couldn’t have heard my silent toot as I replied, ‘Yes.’
At last on my bed, I carefully removed the plastic and instantly clocked the ugly green notebook with the words The Manual written on the front in thick black ink.
Mum