What could you do with art? Be an artist and starve? She liked it but she couldn’t see it going anywhere. Be cool to do album covers or posters, like for films and stuff, but how did you do that? They never had those sort of vacancies in the paper. You’d probably have to go to art school, and for that you had to stay on and do A levels and there was no way she was staying on.
She was dying for a fag.
She listened and worked out that Mum and Dad were in the lounge. Stephen wherever.
She went down and poked her head round the lounge door. Dad reading, Mum watching Upstairs Downstairs.
‘I’ll take Joey out.’
They grunted.
She went to the small shelf by the front door, where Dad left his keys and loose change and cigarettes. Five left. Do-able. She took one and got her Zippo from her schoolbag. She whistled for Joey and attached his lead.
Once they’d reached the banks of the river she let him off to mooch about a bit while she sat on a bench and smoked. The river was ugly, steep-sided banks shaped in stiff angular lines. Something to do with flood control. The river a grey-brown sludge between the towering banks, the banks covered in rough grass and clods of earth. Nothing like the rivers in stories. The rivers you imagined when you said the word river. A real river would have shallow banks, clear, burbling water; you could see the pebbles and the shadows of the fish. There would be stepping stones draped in moss and willow trees overhanging the edges, maybe a stretch of waterfalls making the water silver as it tumbled down.
She took a deep drag, held it and blew out.
This river went all the way to the sea. Somewhere near Liverpool. The Mersey. ‘Ferry Cross The Mersey’. Good song, they’d re-released it. Bit sad but she liked that. Sad things were more… real… they meant more. Like Chloe, her best friend, cut-throat Chloe they nicknamed her because she was so down and talked about killing herself and how pointless everything was. Her loony way of looking at things meant she knew exactly what Nina was on about when she talked about being a cuckoo and her dumb, happy family and all that.
She whistled for Joey. The dog returned, delighted to be summoned, his tail beating, ears perked up. He licked her knee. She rubbed his head. She finished her cigarette and flicked the tab into the river. It could go all the way to the ocean.
She walked home quickly. The light was starting to fade and she was ready to go to bed. Not much revision accomplished but another day done. Another day closer to freedom. Another step nearer to the journey she was intent on making.
She had only asked once, that she could remember, when she was nine. She had learnt somehow that her adoption and Stephen’s were not talked about. Close family knew, like Auntie Min and both the grannies and Dad’s brother John. Other people must have known surely. Mum turning up to Church with a babe in arms, no former sign of pregnancy? Presumably people just took their cue from the Underwood’s reticence. So she had learnt, not that it was shameful, but that it was private. Nobody else’s business. Not quite a secret but as good as.
She’d been driven to ask after having a nightmare. So bad it had sent her to Marjorie’s room. That was unusual, for she was a child who resented rather than sought out physical affection. She had always wriggled out of Marjorie’s embrace, preferring to be unfettered. In the dream she had chopped Marjorie’s head off. Robert had shouted at her and then she had pointed to her mother and said no harm was done. Her mother’s head was back on but the face was that of a stranger.
She had reared up gasping and switched the light on. It was autumn and a moth batted against the shade, which gave her another shock, making her heart race and her breath hurt. With shadows biting at her heels she went to her parent’s room. She let her mother hug her and delayed her return to bed by asking for a glass of milk. Her mother tucked her back in and kissed her on the forehead. She put the landing light on and left Nina’s lamp off so the moth would leave her room.
The following day she waited until she could be sure no one would interrupt them and then asked her mother, ‘When you adopted me did you meet my mother that had me?’
Marjorie froze, blinked fast, put the iron down and let her hands rest lightly on the edge of the board. Nina watched her.
‘No.’
‘What was she called?’
‘I can’t remember, erm… Driscoll, I think. Yes.’
‘What was her first name?’
‘I don’t know, Nina. I don’t think they ever told us.’
Her mum looked calm but Nina could tell she was really upset. She was squashing her hands together and her lips were tight. But Nina couldn’t stop.
‘What did she call me?’
‘Claire.’
It was a shock. She hadn’t expected an answer. Claire. Claire Driscoll.
‘Did she have red hair?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why did she have me adopted?’
‘Because she wasn’t married. She wanted you to have a good home, a proper family. And that’s all we know.’ An edge in her voice. Putting an end to it. The lid on it.
Nina had gone out into the back garden, walked up the rockery to her perch by the birdbath. She felt hot and mean for asking all those questions. Horrible, but there was a bit inside burning bright because of the red hair. Red hair like Nina. She didn’t even know her first name. But red hair, ginger. She knew that now. And Nina had been baptised Claire – Claire Driscoll not Nina Underwood.
She had never spoken to her parents about it since. She couldn’t. They couldn’t. So as she planned to find out more she knew it would have to be done in secret. She had learnt that from them. The way of secrets.
Maybe she would tell them, once she’d done it. But not before. Their hurt and disapproval would make her words come out all sullen and rebellious and this wasn’t about that. About her life with them. It wasn’t about them at all. This was about her – just her.
Marjorie
They were about to eat when the slam of the front door signalled that Nina was home.
‘It’s on the table,’ Marjorie called out, and returned to cutting up the quiche.
Stephen noticed first. Made a little strangled sound and then glanced anxiously at Robert and Marjorie.
Oh, dear Lord. She’d shaved her head. Her lovely glossy red curls all gone, just stubble, like something from a concentration camp. ‘Oh, Nina.’
Her daughter smiled and had the grace to colour a little.
Robert swivelled in his chair and dropped his cutlery. ‘What in God’s name…? What on earth have you done?’
‘It’s the fashion. Suedehead, everybody’s doing it.’
‘Don’t be so stupid. Have you any idea what a sight you look? What will people think?’
He was saying all the wrong things. Marjorie could see Nina recoiling then her chin rising, the defiance stealing into her piercing blue eyes.
‘I don't care what people think.’
‘That’s ruddy well obvious. Well, you needn’t think you’re coming to Church looking like that. Like a ghoul.’
‘Robert!’ Marjorie tried to intervene. Yes, she looked a sight but teenagers were like that, well, some of them. It really wasn’t the end of the world.
‘I’m not going to Church any more anyway so you needn’t bother. It’s all a load of rubbish.’
A stunned silence greeted that little bombshell.
‘It’ll grow back,’ Marjorie said.
‘I’m not growing it, I like it.’
‘Look in the mirror,’ he said, ‘you look ridiculous.’
Nina flinched. Marjorie felt her own pulse speed up as Robert’s voice rose. ‘Do you deliberately set out to hurt your mother and I? Do you get some perverted sense of satisfaction from causing upset? Eh? Are they going to let you go to school like that? You’ll have to wear a scarf or something.’
‘You can’t tell me what to do,’ her face was set, nostrils flaring.