He was listening to them all fume and get fired up about your mum and dad – they managed to turn it into some big class warfare rant, and I think the word ‘compensation’ was mentioned, and there was a lot of anger. All very weird, as I can say with 99 per cent certainty they don’t actually give a toss about me – they must have been bored.
So this Liam, poor dumb kid, decides to ‘make a stand’ that night. He made a stand by setting the shed on fire. That definitely showed them, didn’t it? So next thing I know the police are involved, and your dad is ready to hire a hitman, and your mum’s in tears on the phone, and everything goes even more tits up than it was before.
It wasn’t me, and I was round at Belinda’s when it happened, so nothing came of it. But you know how I feel about the police, even though they were decent to us after the accident it still freaks me out when they knock at the door. Your dad isn’t stupid – even though it wasn’t me he knew it must have been something to do with me. He said he’d prove it one day, that I’d obviously set it all up.
It probably would’ve made life easier if I’d told him who it actually was, but I couldn’t dump Liam in it like that, could I? Liam will get himself in trouble soon enough without my help anyway, but I didn’t have it in me to grass him up.
I tried to warn him, Liam, to tell him to not get too involved with the Crazy Bunch, to just take the food and shelter and not let them suck him in – but he’s young. He’s a few fries short of a Happy Meal. He just wants them to love him – he doesn’t realise they’re not capable of it.
Nothing I can do about that, I suppose. I did try and fix things at the other end, with your parents, but – big shocker here – I couldn’t. I felt really bad about it all – they were just settling down for bed (you can picture the scene: quilted dressing gowns and cocoa, and barely 10 p.m.) when your mum went into the kitchen to wash the mugs, and saw the garden on fire. She must’ve been terrified. That kind of thing just doesn’t happen where they live, does it? Round here the odd burning car isn’t unusual on a Friday night, but not there.
So, I felt bad. I went to your house to try and talk to them, but your dad was screaming at me on the front steps. His face was red and he was spitting when he shouted and he looked like he might explode – he didn’t even seem to care what the neighbours were thinking, which isn’t like him.
Honest, I wanted to argue back, or at least explain to them how much damage they were doing by keeping me away from you – but I genuinely thought he looked ill. That he could keel over and have a heart attack or something. And then he called me the scum of the earth, a ‘street urchin ratbag’, and told me I’d ruined your life, which was nice.
I thought everything would cool down, but I got a letter about a restraining order this morning, which isn’t very cool. It won’t be a hardship, keeping away from them, to be honest. Every time they try and convince me this is your choice, or for your good, I come one step closer to believing them – and believing them kills me. Believing them is what makes me feel like I’m getting swallowed up into those earthquake holes.
I’m sorry about the shed. I’m sorry my alleged family are such fuckwits. I’m sorry for swearing. I’m sorry you’re not here, and I’m sorry our Gracie is gone. I’m sorry about everything.
I’m not sorry that I love you.
Joe xxx
10 Sep. 2004
Hey Jess,
Happy birthday, gorgeous – here’s your pack of gum! Wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, I hope you’re OK. I can’t deliver this to your parents’ house – that pesky restraining order’s still going strong! – so I’m posting it a few days early and hope you get it in time. Or at all.
I’ve been thinking, love, and this will probably be the last letter I write. This might be a huge relief to you. Logic tells me either you’re seeing these letters and not replying, because you don’t want me in your life, or you’re not seeing them – in which case, Ruth and Colin, if you are reading: FUCK YOU!!! And fuck your restraining order!
(I’m pretty sure that if they just read that, it made your dad snort through his nostrils and rant about foul language being the sign of a foul mind. So I repeat – FUCK YOU!!!)
Anyway. You’re seeing them or you’re not – but I can’t carry on. There’s just too much to tell you, and only so many times I can pretend you’re listening. The longer it goes on, the sadder I feel, and if I’m honest I feel other stuff too – I feel hurt and angry, and lonely. I lost my baby, and I lost you, and nobody in the entire world seems to really give a toss. I sound like a spoiled brat, don’t I? But I can’t keep on with this. It’s bad for me, and I need to make some changes.
I’ve fallen behind with the rent, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t care any more. It was our home – mine and yours and Gracie’s – but it’s not been a home since you left. It’s just been somewhere I sleep, and wait, and try and convince myself things will be all right in the end.
I don’t think I can stand even one more night in there, sitting on our sofa, listening to our records, remembering the days when we needed the safety gate into the kitchen and those special shields on plugs or that orange plastic step she used to get on the loo. I keep looking at that picture she drew that you got framed, of the three of us under a rainbow, where I look like a giant spider and your smile is bigger than your actual face and we have a black Lab as well (though it kind of looks like a black slug?).
Everything was so good then. We had such a lot of fun. I loved the way she used to get her words all mashed up, but look really serious when she said them. Like when she was cold she wanted us to ‘put the radios on’ instead of the radiators; and the way she said ‘yellow’ as ‘lellow’, and the way she abbreviated all the berries because they were too long and annoying – so even now, I still say ‘strawbs’ or ‘bluebs’, or ‘rasps’. And how she thought chocolate éclairs were actually cakes called Clare that were chocolatey – chocolatey Clares! I was in the supermarket the other day and I saw some boxes of them and burst out crying. People were walking around me in the aisle, like I had a contagious disease.
All of the laughter and sunshine she brought into our lives is precious, and I’m not saying I want to forget a moment of it. But I don’t think I can carry on living in the middle of it either, with her toys and clothes and the Dora backpack and her little lilac bed and that book about the hare.
It’s not just her, it’s you as well. I miss you so much it feels like a physical pain. Like someone has their fist inside my chest and is clenching their fingers around my heart. I love you so much – always did. You had me at ‘thank you’, which were the first words you ever said to me.
After that – on those first dates and our first nights together and when we moved into the flat and we had Gracie – it should have been me thanking you. Being there with you, raising Gracie together, was the happiest I’ve ever been. I’ve never felt so loved and wanted and needed. Even the worst days had joy in them.
Now, I don’t feel loved or wanted or needed, and even the best days are joyless. Parts of you are still here, and like with Grace’s stuff, I’ve not been able to say goodbye to any of it. Your hair is still in your brush, and your lip balm is still in the bathroom, and the silver angels you made are still under the bed. When I’m feeling especially pathetic, I hold that hairbrush, and I smell that lip balm, because they are part of you.