Sick Days

‘Do you remember when we lived at The Old Laundry and we were allowed half a Redoxon tablet when we were off school sick?’ I was talking to my sister Esther about a period in our childhood when we moved in with another single parent family as lodgers. To our dismay one morning, the father of the other daughters announced ‘Your mummy is going to have a baby.’ There was a silence. I had a flash of pity for my mother and piped up with a hollow ‘Yippee’. I never believed in his love for my beautiful mum. I could mark the short amount of time that she captivated him through her clothes. She almost never bought new things but one day they came back from East Grinstead and he had got her a halter neck khaki dress from Katherine Hamnett – and other things too. Mum was lit up with this attention. I hadn’t really seen her like this. A year or so later he announced he was going to buy her some new shoes. I felt a flicker of cynical hope but she came back with some flat leather boots which he described as being practical. Flat leather boots might sound cool now but we are talking about the 70’s and my mother was in her early 30’s. This was not a sexy present - even age 11 I realized something was wrong with his attitude towards her. The sad thing was that I became increasingly alienated from my mother even though it was this stepfather figure that I was rebelling against. Partly because I didn’t trust him. As the war between me and him escalated my mother and I became more estranged, until we didn’t speak to each other at all. Until one day I was ill – and I stayed home from school. Mum administered the prized half Redoxon tablet and I allowed it to dissolve – it’s orangeness frothing and fizzing in my mouth. Left alone together, mum and I got on incredibly well. We had a lot in common as she was only 18 years older than me. She understood my rebelliousness because it came from her. This day of closeness was like being in a time warp but it was over as soon as he returned home and she was back in the appeasement role. Trying to appease both of us I suppose. The last Christmas we all spent as a family he gave her a vacuum cleaner. Then she found out he was having an affair with an 18 year old A level student he taught at my school. We all left home.