Authors: Cathy Wilson
‘Must be the fuse,’ Mum said.
‘What’s a fuse?’
She explained about the plug and said she’d get Grandpa or a friend to fix it. A couple of days later, however, I was at Grandpa’s house and I asked him if he had any spare fuses.
‘Don’t tell me your mother’s going to fix something?’ he said. ‘Wonders will never cease.’
He gave me a couple of fuses and two screwdrivers – one a flat-tip and one a Phillips head. ‘Bring back whichever one you don’t need.’
Not long after that I was back at home and Mum was out. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Then I remembered the new fuses.
It can’t be that hard to fix,
I thought.
I got the hang of the screwdriver pretty quickly, then saw where the old fuse was housed. I levered it out with my little tools and popped the new fuse in its place. Then I screwed the backing in place and plugged it into the socket. Hey presto – music!
Not long after, I remember wiring a plug. Nobody told me how to do it; I just looked at another plug and copied what I saw. Can you imagine letting a child play with electricity like that today? Doesn’t bear thinking about. But the most dangerous chore I ever attempted was still to come.
I don’t want it to appear that I was in any way some sort of a slave. I have to stress, I didn’t do anything I didn’t want to. It just so happened that the thing I liked doing the most was helping Mum. If I could have gone out to work instead of her, I’m sure I would have.
It wasn’t so long after the plug change that Mum and I were having an afternoon nap and I was woken by sounds of laughing outside. Mum eventually came round and went to the door. When she opened it, two men just waltzed straight into the lounge.
‘Hey, Jenny, how’s it going?’
Mum didn’t try to stop them, but she didn’t look too pleased either.
They must be her friends,
I thought,
otherwise how else would they know where we live?
One of the men put his arm around Mum for a cuddle. Then he noticed me.
‘Hello, who’s this?’
‘It’s Cathy,’ Mum said. ‘My daughter.’
‘Hi, Cathy.’ The man smiled, but he looked about as pleased to see me as I was to see him.
Then the other man spoke. ‘I’ve got a job for you, Cathy. Do you want to help me?’
Mum looked shocked.
‘No, she doesn’t!’ For a second I could see she was scared. That made me scared too. Just as quickly, she laughed it off and said carefully, ‘What do you want her to do?’
‘Just a bit of rolling,’ the man replied.
Mum relaxed at that. Whatever it was, it wasn’t as bad as she’d expected. I, on the other hand, didn’t have a clue what anyone was talking about. In the kitchen the man – I’ll call him Mark – pulled out a pouch of tobacco and a packet of Rizla cigarette papers. I’d seen Mum with both, so no surprises there.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘what we’re going to do is roll a nice cigarette for everyone and add a bit of this.’
When he pulled out a small, clear bag I actually gasped. It looked exactly the same as the one I’d been told to secrete in the panda.
‘What if the police find that?’ I said.
Mark laughed. I don’t think he imagined a six-year-old would have any idea what he was showing them. It certainly never occurred to him that I’d know it was illegal. Of course, I didn’t. All I knew is that the police had come looking for that stuff and taken us to the police station because of it. The last thing I wanted was them calling again.
Mark assured me everything was all right and then he very carefully showed me what he wanted me to do. Illegal or not, I loved a challenge. Watching him sprinkle some tobacco and then a pinch of this other stuff into a flat Rizla, licking and rolling it, then adding a little white filter, was hypnotic. When he’d finished he said, ‘Think you can do that?’
‘Easy.’
‘Show me then.’
So I did.
My first go wasn’t the best and he made me do it again. But second and third time lucky, Mark was really impressed.
‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘Now, when I come here again, that’s your job, okay?’
I nodded. It had been fun. He seemed nice.
The next time I saw Mark he was with two different guys. Once again he dispatched me to the kitchen with his little bag of herbs. This time, though, he had something else for me. It looked like something from one of the Saturday morning science-fiction films I’d seen.
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a bong,’ he said.
‘What’s it for?’
‘It’s for smoking. This is going to be another of your jobs.’
Rolling a cigarette that doesn’t look too much like a trumpet is one thing. Getting your head around this glass contraption, with its arms and tubes, was something else. But Mark showed me what needed to be done and off I went. Once again, I had a puzzle and I was determined to solve it.
Mark and his friends came round quite a lot, probably about once or twice a week. I couldn’t put my finger on who they were because Mum never looked overjoyed to see them, but she never made any attempt to get rid of them either. So one or two guys would arrive, followed by another pair and another couple, and before you knew it the lounge was chockablock with men – and us.
I was kept busy rolling cigarettes – or ‘joints’ as they called them – and keeping the bong operational. I liked it. Anything to make Mum’s friends happy. But if I’m honest, I seemed to enjoy it more than Mum did. Every time I looked at her she would be smoking and smiling, occasionally inhaling from the glass tubes. But she never looked me in the eye. Her mind always seemed to be someplace else.
Usually everyone just sat around in a huge cloud of smoke, talking and laughing. If I wasn’t in the kitchen, I would try to squeeze up close to Mum, but the sweet-smelling fog made me cough. Mark or one of the others would sometimes suggest I go out to play. If Mum agreed, then I would. And Mum always agreed.
When Mark and his mates weren’t clogging up the flat, and when Mum was awake, we still had a lot of fun together. In the past every day with her had been an adventure. Those days were fewer and further between now, but when Mum was in the mood it was the best feeling in the world.
Sometimes, after the men had been, Mum had a bit more money than usual. Whenever there was a pound or two in her pocket she liked to go out to a café. So, after one impromptu party that had ended in the early evening, off we went. Mum was in a giggly mood all night, which of course was contagious. On the way home we were like a couple of young friends, not mother and daughter. Whatever the other said seemed to be the funniest joke in the world. It was a brilliant night. Then, about five minutes from our house, the night got even better.
‘Look at that!’ Mum said, stopping suddenly outside a beautiful terraced house.
I followed her gaze to the front door, outside of which stood a terracotta pot containing a sumptuous, colourful trailing plant. I had no idea what it was, but I knew it was stunning. Mum did too. But whereas I was about to consign it to memory and move on, she a better idea.
‘Come on,’ she whispered, desperately trying not to laugh. ‘Let’s get it.’
So that’s what we did. The pot was heavy and it took the pair of us to lift it. Then we staggered home like a pair of drunken sailors, weaving all over the pavement until we reached the flat. Once inside, Mum put it next to the fireplace, then collapsed on the bed, exhausted.
What a night,
I thought, still smiling.
Brilliant.
Unfortunately, it was about to take a turn for the worse. We’d been in about twenty minutes, maybe half an hour. I’d managed to get the fire going and our new acquisition looked stunning in the flickering light. I was thinking of joining Mum and going to sleep when there was a knock at the door.
Not those men again. They’ve only just left.
Mum was sound asleep, so I opened the door. But it wasn’t Mark and co. It was the police.
‘Hello, miss,’ the officer said. ‘Is there a grown-up at home?’
I must have instinctively looked towards Mum because the policeman followed my glance.
‘Is that your mum?’
I nodded.
‘Would you wake her up for me, please?’
That was easier said than done, but a few minutes later a bleary-eyed Mum was upright – and ready for an argument.
‘We have reason to believe you have stolen a flower pot from a house near here.’
‘No I bloody haven’t!’ Mum said, as indignantly as she could muster. ‘How dare you come round here suggesting that.’
The policeman was not fazed by Mum’s fury. All the while she was speaking, he was staring at the flowerpot by the fire.
‘Can you explain where you got that from?’ he asked.
‘I bought it.’
‘Okay,’ he sighed. ‘Be like that if you want.’
Great,
I thought.
He’s giving up.
‘But,’ he continued, ‘can you explain where this has come from?’
My heart sank when I saw where he was pointing. Just by his feet, at the front door, was a little pile of mud. On closer inspection, it went across the hall and out the door of the building as well.
‘In fact, we followed the trail all the way from the house you stole it from,’ the policeman said. ‘So you may as well admit it.’
It’s laughable really, isn’t it? We were so incompetent we’d left a muddy line all the way to our front door. Mum didn’t have a leg to stand on, but she was still denying it when the policeman picked up the pot and, chortling to himself, took it back outside. When he closed the door she was still swearing about the liberty he had taken accusing her of stealing.
‘But we did steal it,’ I said, confused.
‘Oh yes,’ Mum said, ‘we did, didn’t we?’ and broke out into a huge laugh. I had to join in; it was contagious. ‘Did you see the look on his face?’ she squealed. ‘Why didn’t you spot that mud?’ But she wasn’t angry. She was relieved, I think, that they hadn’t put us in the patrol car again.
‘What are we like, eh?’ she said, and I shrugged.
We were what we were. A team. Which is exactly how I wanted it to stay.
Even though Mum wasn’t arrested this time, there was another consequence. If I’d thought about it long enough, I would have remembered that it was the same consequence that had happened after the panda episode. By being naughty, by getting herself noticed by the police, Mum had flagged us up to all the authorities. Sure enough, a few days later, there was yet another knock at the door. Once more I was met by the familiar smartly dressed couple from social services.
‘Would you like to come in?’ I asked, out of habit.
‘That would be lovely,’ the woman said. ‘Now, is your mother here?’
Then they saw her, waking up from her afternoon nap.
‘Mrs Wilson?’ the man said firmly.
Mum squinted at the guests.
‘Oh, it’s you. What do you want?’
‘We’re from social services,’ the man said. ‘We have a warrant from the courts . . .’ He paused and looked at his colleague.
‘And we have come to take Cathy into care.’
FIVE
It had come out of nowhere.
What had we done wrong? We’d given the plant back. We were so happy, ask anyone. All these thoughts, and more, rushed through my head. But it didn’t matter. No one was listening.
The adults started talking. I couldn’t follow everything, just a few phrases. They said Mum hadn’t replied to letters. They said she had failed to turn up to meetings. They even accused her of not caring enough about keeping her daughter by refusing to talk to them.
That made her angry. I hadn’t heard her swear much before, but I did then. It sounded like she’d picked up a few phrases from Mark and his pals.
The upshot was that Mum told them to go to hell and they said that, in fact, she was the one lucky not to be going anywhere because of the way she’d been bringing me up. She was offended, but I was just confused. ‘Neglect’, ‘unruly behaviour’, ‘a disorderly house’, ‘enabling truancy’. There were too many words I couldn’t comprehend, but the overall meaning was clear: they weren’t happy. And, whether I liked it or not, I needed to get ready to leave.
More than thirty years later, I can’t believe the actual process of getting me out of the house wasn’t more protracted than that, unless Mum really had been seriously slack and had forgotten she’d arranged the meeting. But that confrontation was the only one I remember – just them arriving and me packing a bag and leaving. Alone.
I cried as I left the house and climbed into their waiting car. Normally I would be brave in front of Mum, but she wasn’t there. And the realization that she wasn’t there made me sob even harder. Wave after wave of questions flooded my head. What had I done wrong? Where was I going? And why?
The two grown-ups in the car with me had the answers. They had briefcases and a file about me and everything. As much as I hated them, I could tell they thought they were doing the right thing. But how wrong they were. They were taking me away from the home where I felt so safe, from the person I loved more than anyone in the world, and replacing it with what? I soon found out.