I nodded, scared that if I spoke, my voice might crack. She could tell, and this time, I let her hug me.
‘Try not to worry. Simon will be back soon.’ She leaned back from me and gave me an encouraging smile. But all I could wonder was how many times people would tell me that before it came true.
SIMON
Luton, twenty-five years earlier
5 June, 8.40 a.m.
Cars and lorries thundered past the motorway slip road as my feet sank into the soggy grass verge.
With little money and no alternative means, hitchhiking would be the best way to reach London, provided I could persuade a driver to take pity on me. But both man and machine appeared deliberately oblivious to my optimistic thumb. However, I had patience on my side.
After a restful night in my tatty caravan, a family car with a roof rack strapped full of weathered plastic suitcases had parked by my side early in the morning. With minimum fuss, I’d grabbed my clothes and scrambled out of the rear window like a fugitive, dressing as I ran.
My pace slowed when I reached the gates, then I paused at the sound of a child’s scream. One of the new arrivals, a little boy of no more than three years, was unable to contain his excitement and had run eagerly towards the caravan. He must have tripped and taken the brunt of the impact on his knees.
As I watched, his mum discarded her handbag, ran around the car and scooped him up in her arms. Fatherhood had taught me the difference between genuine and exaggerated tears. The boy knew what he was about. The longer he made his pain visible, the longer he’d remain her priority.
Not that this had ever worked for me with my own mother. The last time I’d seen her had been some twenty years earlier – when I’d longed for her death.
My father, Arthur, was a loyal but weak man whose only mistake in his mediocre life had been to offer his heart to a transient soul. Doreen was his polar opposite – a flighty, part-time wife and parent who sauntered in and out of our lives through her own set of revolving doors.
When she gave us her attention, she was fun, attentive and loving. You could feel her presence long before she made her entrance into a room. Her infectious laughter filled corners my father and I couldn’t reach. She and I would giggle as we built dens in the living room using polyester bedsheets draped over the sofa. We’d crawl inside to escape the world, and pick at crumbled digestive biscuits from the tin filled with cast-offs from the supermarket’s damaged-goods shelf.
But Arthur and I only ever had the woman we loved on loan. It never mattered how long she remained in our company – a month, six months, maybe a year if we were fortunate – we always kept one eye on the clock, waiting for the inevitable.
Doreen’s extramarital liaisons were both frequent and humiliating. Sometimes it only took a stranger’s wink and a sniff of greener grass and she’d dig her way out to the other side. Once she absconded with the local pub landlord to work in his new premises in Sunderland. Then a Pan Am pilot with an American twang promised to show her the world: she reached as far as Birmingham before he cast her aside.
And there were her extended stays in London with the one my parents only argued about when they thought I was sleeping. Doreen was terrified of being happy, but equally frightened of being alone. Anytime she reached the middle ground, she ran either from us or to us. Just because I grew accustomed to it, didn’t mean it made sense.
‘I get suffocated, Simon,’ she once strived to explain. I’d caught her one Saturday teatime trying to slip away without being noticed. She knelt with her suitcase in one hand and my hand in the other, talking to a six-year-old like he knew how to navigate the trenches of the heart.
‘I love you and your dad, but I need more,’ she cried, then closed the front door and disappeared in a stranger’s blue Austin Healey.
We always forgave her dramatic vignettes. Eventually her departures came as a relief, as anticipating the melancholy they induced was far worse than the actual rejection. When I wished her dead, it was only to force the merry-go-round to stop.
Even today, as a grown man about to embark on a brand-new life, a small part of me still ached for my mother’s love, despite myself. After all the promises she’d broken and the tears I’d shed, I needed her to know she was forgiven before I moved on. And London was her last known location.
The heavens opened and the rain poured down just as a car’s indicator flashed and it pulled over up ahead. I ran towards it.
My wife’s actions had made me understand there were times when there was no other option but to leave everything behind, and to hell with the ramifications. And I had a better reason to leave my family than Doreen ever believed she’d had.
Hemel Hempstead
1.10 p.m.
After being dropped off a few miles south of Luton, I attached myself to a metal chair in a motorway service station and waited patiently for the rain to stop.
I was sitting near an oil heater to help dry my damp clothes. I wedged a bunch of napkins under the table leg to stop it from rocking on the uneven floor tiles. A stocky man in a red cap and apron behind the counter frequently took pity on me, refilling my mug with hot tea for no charge.
I mulled over what I might say to my mother when I found her. I’d followed her once before. I’d been thirteen years old when she suddenly began writing me letters from her new home in London. She’d reassure me I was never far from her thoughts – words I’d longed to hear in the five months since she’d last left. And I read each sentence again and again until I knew them off by heart.
I’d missed her too, and even though it wasn’t something I felt I could share with my father, I suspected he felt the same. So I kept our correspondence covert. I’d intercept the postman and squirrel away her letters between books about building designs on my bedroom shelf. I’d reply hastily, recounting my day-to-day activities, life at my senior school and the things I’d do with my friends. I even told her about a wonderful girl I’d met.
Then, out of the blue, Doreen asked me to visit her. She told me she was sharing a house with a friend and had a spare room. It was mine to use if I wanted it. Doreen was working in a nearby restaurant and had saved some money, so offered to send me the train fare.
I wrestled with my conscience before I broached the subject with my father. He was surprised, and probably a little disgruntled to learn it wasn’t just his wife who kept secrets from him. He tried to make increasingly flimsy excuses as to why I shouldn’t go, warning me she would only hurt me again.