looks like cold poreless clay. Her hair is that style that loads of old ladies have now because it was fashionable when they were young, sort of curled in towards her face and touching her collar and parted at the side, like you can tell she had it in curlers for the picture.
She’s not as pretty as I hoped, but she is striking. Even on the computer printout that’s still on my wall, which is rubbish quality, all grainy and grey, she’s got something you want to keep looking at.
Violet was a concert pianist from Hobart, Tasmania, and she lived in Australia and Singapore and Los Angeles and London. She got into the movies because she met someone at a party who was making a film about a deranged pianist, and the actress who was playing the pianist couldn’t play a note. Violet’s hands are actually in this movie. It’s called The Final Veil and it’s pretty dated, but her hands fly up and down the keys like little birds.
She’s in a lot of movies from that time, or rather her piano playing is. I borrowed some from the good video shop in Camden. People say “heppy” in them instead of happy, and pronounce their r’s and t’s and s’s, even in the middle of some emotional crisis. Films with names like Cruel Encounter and The Flower Girl and Where have all the Good Men Gone?
I took them round to Pansy and Norman’s so Violet could see them. Pansy loved it, she drew the curtains and turned the phone off (not that it rings much) and she sat on the sofa with Norman and said it was a trip down memory lane, just like the Roxy. Then she giggled like a schoolgirl, which I took to mean that her and Norm had done a bit of something in the back row but I didn’t ask. Every time the piano music surged in on things Pansy looked at Violet’s urn on the mantelpiece and nodded her approval. I could see she was getting used to having her around. It was heart warming, really.
There are all kinds of questions that can really get to the bottom of what sort of person you are. I don’t mean those useless questionnaires in the mags Mercy leaves lying around. I mean the questions that people answer one way or the other and you can really tell something about them because of it. Like
Do you believe in capital punishment?
If someone offered you £1million would you lie for them about something really important?
Do you think people are supposed to be monogamous (i.e. with one partner for life, like swans and lobsters)?
If you found someone’s diary would you read it?
The tricky thing about these questions is that you know what the right answer is, what you’re supposed to say to convince everyone you’re a good person. But it’s not until you’re in that position that you really know who you are. I’m sure about this because I found Mum’s diary and I didn’t think twice about reading it. I really shocked myself.
I could have done with finding Violet’s diary – I would much rather discover the innermost secrets of a mysterious dead old lady than someone I see every day, who does my laundry and kisses me goodnight and has no idea that I know what she’s thinking. Because the person in Mum’s notebook isn’t Mum, it’s Nicky, who she is when she’s alone, and she’s not the person I thought she was. Not better or worse, just different, more complicated, less loveable I suppose, more real.
When I first stuck my nose in it, I didn’t expect to find anything interesting. I thought it would say stuff like pick Jed up for dentist or dinner with David or yoga 7.00 pm, which shows how much I know. This is the first thing I read.
When I’m not livid with Pete for abandoning me, I’m jealous of him for getting out first. It was only ever going to be possible for one of us to escape.
So you can see maybe why I read on, or why I should have stopped.
It turns out that Mum is seeing a therapist called Janie Golden and one of her tasks (it’s all written in a printout stapled to the inside cover) is to write down thoughts and feelings for discussion.
Ready for another one?
I met Pete at a party when I was 19 and he was 26. He was so confident and good looking and everyone was buzzing around him because he’d just come back from some brink or other, and I was so honoured that he wanted to talk to me I forgot that I didn’t like him that much. I wouldn’t have guessed in a million years that he would lead me to the life I’ve ended up with.
I kept telling myself to put the diary back because I didn’t like what I was reading, but at the same time I couldn’t stop, I really couldn’t.
Of course, it wasn’t my honour at all, it was his. I could have had anyone I’d wanted in that room, I just didn’t know it. You never do at the time. When I’m 60 I’ll tell everyone I was a beautiful 40-year-old but I don’t feel like one now.
You always forget your parents ever had a childhood, and they admit they’re wrong so rarely they kind of brainwash you into thinking they’re perfect. But boy has my mum made some mistakes. I get the impression she regrets every single thing she ever did, pretty much. Like she never really knew who she was in the moment and only worked it out afterwards when it was too late.
For every decision I make there’s the other thing, the alternative route and I find myself hankering after it as soon as it’s gone. Pair of shoes, marriage, same.
I never really asked myself if my mum and dad were in love. You don’t. I never looked at the root of things because it wasn’t my job. Mum’s made jokes for years about her terrible marriage and I just thought that was her making heartbroken funny. Now I don’t know what to think.
One of the kids asked me why it was called a nuclear family and I said it was because it explodes with devastating consequences, which I’m sure has been said before. I don’t have an original thought in my body
Here’s something I never would have known without doing the wrong thing and invading my mum’s privacy. When I was about nine or ten she met a man and fell for him. Nothing happened but she wanted to give everything up for him, so she never saw him again or spoke to him or anything because she couldn’t handle what would happen if she did. I’d like to ask her all kinds of things like, was it worth it? And why don’t you look for him now? And are you sure? In her notebook it says that after less than a week she had completely forgotten what he looked like and could only remember bits, an eye, a stretch of gum and teeth, his hands. I want to tell her that she should have seen him again and kept on seeing him until something got to her, like he picked his nose or was rude to a waitress, so that then he could become real and annoying like we are and Dad was, not faultless and impossible. Then she wouldn’t end up talking about him to a therapist after all these years. But if I say anything about it she’d know where I’d been and she’d probably hate me.
My mum reckons she gets about an hour to herself, usually around ten at night, but that she instantly forgets what it is she’s been dying to do all day so she looks in the paper at what’s on TV and ends up doing nothing. For me doing nothing is pretty much the aim but at some point that must change because doing nothing makes my mum sad.
Mum has got quite a lot to say about us in her notebook. She sees straight through Mercy because she’s been there and done that, and she reckons that her job is to ignore Mercy as much as possible until she comes out the other side, when she will be on hand to pick up the pieces. I guess this is about sex and drugs and tongue piercing, and I think she’s probably right. Mum says very sweet things about Jed, like we all do because he’s our lucky mascot or something, unrattled by the skeleton in the cupboard, wrapped up in Lego and squirrels and Babybel cheese. She’s afraid of the moment he sacks her as Number One Important Person in the World and she knows its coming so she’s feeling a bit clingy. She says weird stuff about me, and of course it’s my own fault that it’s doing my head