I Owe You Nothing. Luke Goss

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ the best home we had ever had, with hot and cold running water and an upstairs bathroom, and they both thought this would give them the break they needed to get their marriage together again. The clearest memory I have of this house is of the ‘ghost’ who shared a bedroom with Matt and me. Both of us saw the figure of an old man in our room. We weren’t terribly frightened; he seemed to be a kindly presence who stood between our beds, looking at us. When we called for Mum he would disappear.

      Mum also thought the house was haunted. She always went upstairs with her back against the wall because she was sure there was ‘something’ on the stairs, where it was always very cold, no matter how hard she tried to heat it. On one occasion, after a row with Dad, Mum went to sleep in the small back bedroom. She heard footsteps on the landing that couldn’t possibly be Dad’s, and she felt the bedroom turn icy cold. When her sister Ann came round she, too, sensed some presence. Our granddad Harry was also aware of it; he says he never liked that house. Granddad has discovered since then that he is psychic, and I believe that Matt and I have inherited some of his abilities. We certainly have a very highly developed ability to communicate with each other without talking, something many twins have.

      At this stage of our lives we even had our own language, which Mum says started when we lay side by side in our shared cot. We would babble away together, understanding each other but excluding everyone else. Gradually it lapsed, as we became able to speak properly, but the bond between us did not lessen; to this day we have a sixth sense which tells us if the other is in pain or is upset.

      ‘They were so close that I could not come between them even when they were fighting,’ says Mum. ‘If I told one of them off the other would turn to me with big round eyes and defend his brother – even though that brother had been thumping him only a moment before. They made me feel wicked for even suggesting one of them was in the wrong! It was always the two of them against everyone else. I sometimes felt excluded, even as their mother.’

      It was at this house, though, that I thought I had eliminated Matt from my life for ever: I really did think I had killed him. He was perched on a kitchen stool which had wheels, and I gave it a hard push. He careered down the kitchen and hit his head on the corner of a cupboard. There was so much blood I was sure he was dead, and he’s still got the scar to prove it. I think I cried more than he did, I was so worried.

      While we were living at Lee my grandmother, Win, died of cancer. I wish she had lived longer as I would have loved to have got to know her better, although I even now sometimes have a very strong feeling that she is close to me. From everything I have heard about her from my mum and granddad, I know she was a terrific person, and I have a dim memory of her crawling around on the floor on her hands and knees, with me on her back. Mum was devastated when she died and still misses her after all these years.

      We got a transfer to another police house, in Mitcham. It was more modern, but still not modern enough to have central heating, and Mum seemed to spend a lot of her time carrying in coal for the fire and cleaning out grates. She was also very busy trying to earn some extra money for the family: she did typing at home, made jewellery, addressed envelopes. At one stage she got a job as a secretary, which earned enough money for her to pay for our extras. We were looked after at a nursery in Blackheath. I can remember that we had to go to bed for a sleep every afternoon on little camp beds, with itchy blankets over us, and Matt and I never wanted to sleep. I can also remember having jam sandwiches for lunch.

      But that arrangement did not last long because we both caught measles, and Matt had complications that meant that he had to be kept in the dark for several days, to protect his eyes. Mum had only had the job for three weeks, and had to give it up to look after us. Dad was away on a four-week course.

      Things were breaking down again between my parents, but I do have some very happy memories of my early childhood: of them singing together, Dad playing the harmonica and trying to teach Mum the guitar; of Mum sitting on the floor between our two beds, holding hands with each of us and singing us to sleep, songs like ‘Toora Loora Loora’ and ‘Fly, Fly Superbird’; of her putting on funny little shows for us on the landing while we were in bed, singing ‘Hey, Big Spender’ with all the actions. I remember going to a music shop on Lewisham High Street with Dad, and staring at a drum kit in the window. I was so small that only half of my face came above the windowsill, but I could see these huge, gleaming drums and I knew then that I wanted them. The kit might as well have been made from solid gold, it was so far out of my reach, but I dreamed about it for the rest of my childhood, and even now when I think about it I can feel again that same mixture of excitement and longing.

      It was while we were living at Mitcham that we went on the holiday to Majorca. The only holiday I have a memory of before that was camping in the New Forest in a tent. Just Dad and Matt and me, which was fun. Strangely enough, for several years after the holiday in Majorca I pretended I could not remember it. It was as though I were blocking it out. Dad would ask about holidays we remembered, and I would always talk about the New Forest, and when he asked me about Majorca I’d say I couldn’t remember. But in fact it is the holiday of which I have the clearest memories: I think, in my very young way, I felt that I was somehow betraying my own unhappiness by talking about it. To me, my father leaving home for good was always linked with that holiday.

      He left soon after we got back from Majorca. Apparently, when he told Mum he was leaving us as soon as he found somewhere to stay, he offered to let the three of us go on holiday without him. But she insisted that he came, hoping it would be a last chance to get everything right. She remembers ‘that awful, pathetic feeling of just hoping that someone will love you again, when their love for you has died’. But when we returned she knew it was finally over.

      I’ve never believed in using the breakdown of my parents’ marriage as an excuse for anything I’ve done in my own life. Lots of kids play on it, and make out it causes them all sorts of problems. I cannot pretend it made us happy, but I don’t believe it lets me off the hook for my own actions, and in some ways it may even have helped me. It made me more independent and stronger than I perhaps otherwise would have been. We weren’t shielded from it: Mum levelled with us that Dad wasn’t coming back, and I can remember sobbing my heart out.

      The worst thing was the unnaturalness of our relationship with Dad when he came to see us at weekends. Every time we saw him felt something like the first day at a new school – that strange feeling of having to get to know your way round, having to re-establish yourself, even the way we had to put on our best clothes and have our hair neatly brushed to go out with him. We had to build some sort of relationship afresh every time we saw him, and I always had huge butterflies in my stomach when I knew he was coming.

      I developed a sort of tunnel vision, shutting out a great deal of the thoughts and memories around me and concentrating on getting on with life from one day to the next; I’m sure that’s how lots of kids cope with it. It’s such a common experience, but I do think you have to live through it to fully understand what it’s like. You feel as excited at seeing your missing parent each time as you do, much later in life, when you are meeting a lover. It’s a different emotion, but just as strong, and you are just as desperate to make a good impression, be the person they want you to be. Somehow, in a childish way, you think that if you can be perfect maybe your dad will come back home.

      We went from seeing our dad every day of our lives to seeing him every couple of weeks – and that feels like a lifetime to a child. He became almost a stranger to us; we had things in common to talk about, but the closeness was gone, the comfortableness of a well-worn and familiar relationship where you don’t even need to talk. He would take us for a meal, and that was always a nightmare because I don’t think Dad was really cut out to sit in a restaurant with two small boys whose table manners weren’t always immaculate. He was probably not ready for young kids, he didn’t want to be embarrassed or shown up. Then we’d go to the pictures or the zoo or something. The worst bit was the gap between the meal and the start of the film, because he would sit with us in his car or on a park bench and lecture СКАЧАТЬ