Project part-funded by the European Union
What Would I Do Without You
I’d run home from school, turn the corner, and see his car parked outside Mrs Borrowscale’s. It wasn’t every afternoon, usually Tuesday and Thursday, but once it was a Friday. I wanted to die when my mum answered the door in her nightee, neck all red and blotchy.
I’d brought Tracy Kehoe back. It was the school disco and the hairdresser in the precinct said she didn’t cut afro hair. I’d never cut hair before. Took over an hour. I kept cutting and cutting.
‘Why’s your mum still in bed?’ Tracy asked as the hair mounted up on the lino.
When she’d gone, Mum came into the kitchen and opened a packet of custard creams. Her nightee was short and she didn’t have any knickers on.
‘Joe’s coat’s in the living room,’ she whispered as she ripped off a piece of kitchen roll and wiped in between the top of her legs. ‘Go in the pockets and see if you can find anything.’ She screwed the kitchen roll up and put it on the worktop. ‘Go on, go and look now,’ she mouthed as she put the biscuits on a plate.
Walking past the bedroom, I heard him cough. I hurried up in case he came out. Mum didn’t like it when he saw me.
‘Don’t be parading yourself in front of him,’ she’d say if I wandered into the hallway, or needed the toilet when the bedroom door was open.
The living room of smelled of air freshener and had been hoovered.
His coat was dark brown sheepskin and draped over the arm of the sofa. My heart thumped as I lifted it up slightly to get my hand into one of the pockets. It slid off the couch onto the rug.
I heard my mum in the hall. Her silver bangles jangled and the plate moved around on the plastic tray. I crouched down quickly and smoothed the rug with my hand, made all the tufts go the same way.
The bedroom door shut and I lifted the coat back on the arm of the couch. It smelt exactly the same as mum smelt when he’d gone, and she’d shout me in to help her change the fitted sheet.
‘Open all the windows,’ she’d say. ’Let’s get some fresh air in.’ Then we’d lie on the bare mattress, her on her back, me cuddled in on my side. ‘You’re the only thing that keeps me going,’ she’d tell me. I loved the feel of the silky mattress on my face.
I found three pieces of Ddentyne and half a packet of Eextra Sstrong Mmints in one pocket. Then I found two tickets. They were white cardboard and had ‘Mr and Mrs J Hatchard’ typed in a box near the top. I read them back and front, then ran upstairs for my note pad.
Coach departs eleven twenty p.m. Pick up point, Adelphi hotel, Mount Pleasant, I wrote in red felt tip. I underlined ‘eleven twenty’ and ‘Adelphi hotel’.
As soon as I heard the front door shut and his car drive down the road, I ran downstairs.
Mum was in the bedroom. I expected her to be pleased when I gave her my notebook, but she just sat on the edge of the bed and stared at it.
‘You’ve spelt ‘Adelphi’ wrong,’ she said, then stood up and threw the quilt onto the floor and started to drag the fitted sheet off the bed. I asked did she want me to open the windows, but she didn’t answer.
I found the notebook in the bin that night, the first three pages soaked in tea.
‘I just need to see him with her,’ she said the following afternoon. She was sat in bed propped up with a bolster pillow. I’d taken her a cup of tea. The room smelled stale and the skin under her eyes was all baggy.
She reached out for my hand. ‘’What would I do without you.’
The taxi was booked to pick us up at ten. At nine she turned the lights and the fire off. I sat on the edge of the couch, mum stood by the window so as not to crease her trousers.
Whenever there was a noise outside or a car went up the road, mum would part the Venetian blinds with her fingers and look out. By half past nine, I felt sick.
‘Do I look alright?’ She asked. I told her she looked lovely. She had bought a new blouse, bright pink with a bow that tied at the neck. I was in my pyjamas with my school coat over the top.
The taxi came at five past ten. I was desperate for the toilet.
‘Davis, the Adelphi,’ the driver shouted out of his window. The engine was still running when we got in and I slid down into the brown leather seat.
‘Going anywhere nice?’ hHe asked, as mum took her lipstick out and I poked my finger into a little rip I’d found in the seat.
‘No,’ she answered, then sat in silence all the way into town.
Every time the taxi turned a corner my mum’s bag slid along the floor. I held on to the rip so I didn’t slide into her and crease her trousers.
It was cold when we got out of the taxi. The streetlights were lit and there was a man sat on a piece of cardboard by a bin. As mum dragged me past, he smiled and I could see his tongue poking through the gaps where he should have had teeth.
‘Stay there,’ mum said, as she ran across the road.
I hid behind the wall and watched as mum checked her hair in the phone box.
Cars pulled up and people got out with suitcases and bags on wheels. A black taxi came around the corner and stopped on the opposite side of the road. A woman got out. She was fat, with fluffy blonde hair and a red jacket with a fur collar. Then he got out. Joe, in his big brown sheepskin coat. They were both smiling and laughing and as she got on the coach he put his hand on her bum.
After the coach drove away, mum walked slowly back across the road. She wiped her lipstick off with the back of her hand. ‘’Come on, let’s go.’
There was no rip to hold onto in the taxi going home, I held my breath and pressed the backs my legs against the seat every time we turned a corner.
A week later I brought Tracy Kehoe home after school. She’d promised to teach me some of the dances she’d learned at the disco.
We ran all the way home and when we turned the corner I saw his car parked outside Mrs Borrowscale’s.