The Mother And Daughter Diaries. Clare Shaw

dog trying to dig up a buried bone. Nothing.

      Smiling at my own stupidity, I dropped the stale food into the bin liner and grabbed the radio from the hallway. I switched it on and allowed the rhythmic thump of some old rock music to smother any remaining illogical fears.

      Almost cheerily, I pushed the bed away from the wall and picked up Jo’s school bag which had been lying underneath. As I moved it, some books and a lunch box slapped down onto the floor. The lunch box was unexpectedly heavy and I peered through the plastic lid at its contents. There was no mistaking it. I peeled off the top to reveal the spaghetti bolognese I had served up days earlier. I stood still and stared at it for what seemed like hours. Then my brain jolted into action again and I tried to apply some logic.

      Of course Jo had already unexpectedly declared herself a vegetarian so why hadn’t she told me instead of stuffing the meat into a plastic box and hiding it under her bed? I supposed she must have thought I would be disapproving or critical. Would I have been? Possibly. I had always cracked jokes about vegetarians being wind-powered and likened tofu to small pieces of mattress. I cringed when I thought of all those stupid remarks I had made about deep-fried Brussels sprouts and plastic sandals. Perhaps the answer was to become a vegetarian myself and declare the house a meat-free zone, but then I thought about bacon. I could almost smell it. Still, surely I just had to reassure Jo that she didn’t have to eat meat, and she simply had to reassure me that she would get her nutrition in other ways.

      Yet I knew that such easy communication had broken down between us. Something told me that this wasn’t going to be at all straightforward. If Eliza hadn’t bounced into the room at that moment, I do believe I would have slumped down onto the bed and cried.

      ‘What’s wrong, Mum?’

      ‘Nothing sweetie, it’s just…Jo’s become a…’

      ‘Lesbian?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Drug pusher?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Prostitute?’

      ‘Of course not. Jo’s become a vegetarian.’

      ‘Oh, is that all? How boring, everyone’s a vegetarian.’

      ‘Actually, Eliza, I don’t think she’s eating properly.’

      ‘No one eats properly, Mum.’

      ‘But Jo’s so thin.’

      ‘Then make sure she eats more.’

      It didn’t seem right to be confiding in a ten-year-old. Yet sometimes it takes a young soul to see everything in its simplest terms.

      ‘How an earth can I get her to eat?’

      ‘Use your imagination.’

      Yes, I was good at that. Wasn’t I?

       FOUR

      I WANTED to go to Dad’s in August. Not because it ‘made a pleasant change’ as Mum said, but because he always left me alone to get on with it. To get on with what? Thinking, working it all out, making lists. He never went in for talking much. Talking can interfere with thinking. He’d moved to the country. It was only just under an hour’s drive from us, but as you got nearer it got greener. Fields full of cows. That sort of thing. Decent cottage, I suppose. Bit small. In a kind of village full of commuters and ladies making jam and divorced fathers. There was a town nearby—market town, they call it. Never seen a market there, though. You could walk into town in twenty minutes. The bus was quicker, but always full of ladies with baskets, wearing brown macs and staring.

      Mum and Eliza stayed for lunch. That was when I found out I couldn’t eat in front of Mum. Eating is a bodily function and like all bodily functions it should be done in private. When Dad lived at home they would shout at each other. They would say what they thought. Everything would be on the surface, on view, like portraits in a gallery. Now they sit and smile and clip their words so they do not fly off in the wrong direction. It is the gaps between the sentences you have to listen out for. I preferred the arguing, the obvious tension.

      Tension makes the air thick and difficult to breathe in. It makes voices high-pitched and annoying. It was like sitting in glue that lunchtime. Mum and Dad were trying to do and say the right thing. I knew how hard that was. I wanted to tell them not to bother, that it wasn’t worth the effort. But effort made them feel noble and righteous, or something.

      When Mum and Eliza left, the air cleared like the morning fog lifting and the sun coming through. We cleared the plates and talked of this and that. I asked about Alice.

      ‘It’s a pity Alice isn’t here this week,’ I said.

      ‘She had to go and look after her mother.’

      I wanted to ask whose idea it had been. I hesitated.

      ‘Did Mum make her go?’

      ‘Of course not, it’s just how it worked out.’

      I wished I hadn’t asked. I invited the lie and then was disappointed when it came. Let down. Kind of.

      ‘I’m playing darts tonight. Come along if you want, but I told Keith and Bev next door you might babysit—thought you could do with the money—but it’s up to you, your choice.’

      ‘Yeah, I’ll babysit.’

      The next morning I woke up and my period had started. It was about ten days early, dragged forward by a vicious moon. I hadn’t come prepared. I padded my knickers out with toilet roll and went downstairs.

      ‘No breakfast for me yet, I’m just going to the shop.’

      The best thing about Dad—you didn’t always have to explain yourself.

      ‘I’ll come too. We need some more milk.’

      ‘I’ll get the milk.’

      ‘OK.’

      The next best thing about Dad was he didn’t feel the need to shadow me. And he was practical.

      ‘Great. That gives me some more time. We’re playing in a tournament at Brampton. Got to rush.’ Dad coached an under-sixteens football team.

      The worst thing about Dad? He never changed his arrangements because of me. Maybe that was good, I could never work it out.

      I walked to the village shop two streets away. My body was slow and heavy. Every step was an effort, like I’d already walked ten miles or something. I folded my arms across my aching breasts. As if I could stop them getting bigger. I felt messy and grubby and infected. I had a disease that I didn’t want and the only cure was to travel backwards in time.

      I opened the shop door to let an old lady out. Then I backed in. I resented spending my babysitting money on tampons and paracetamol. I didn’t look at the girl when I paid for them. I envied Eliza her pre-menstrual childhood.

      When I was ten I would run everywhere. There was an urgency about life, as if time was running out. I ran to see friends, I ran up the stairs, I ran races with myself in the garden. Now, as if I wanted time to stand still, I swung my legs slowly back up to Dad’s. I hauled myself up the path to the front door and heaved along the corridor to fall heavily onto the bed.

      ‘Do you want to come to the football?’

      ‘No, I’ll get the bus into town.’

      ‘OK, see you later.’

      I had enough money to buy a new top. There was a freedom about shopping in a strange town. Nobody knew me which meant I could be who I liked. I wanted to be myself but I’d forgotten how. Instead I would be a model, an actress, someone with style, money, good taste. I would buy a top to suit the new me. Buy a top she would buy. Something classy and sophisticated, and very very different. Something Eliza would envy and