EIGHTEEN
I’m back. . .
We hadn’t heard from Matty once. No phone calls, no Christmas card. Nothing.
A vanishing. Gone without a trace. Just like Olivia Paul, whose mother was on The OutlookShow again that night appealing for information about her daughter.
By the time we listened to his answerphone message, something in my mother had disappeared too. The despair that had plagued those first weeks of his absence had gradually eased and in its place came a sort of acceptance.
She stopped tormenting herself with what Matty might be up to, stopped bringing his name into every conversation. Began to move on without realising that’s what she was doing.
She’d even started mentioning a man from work, a boring sounding accountant called Barry. Repeating anecdotes he’d told her which she seemed to find hilarious, though I told her I couldn’t see why. Matty was much funnier and, unlike this Barry guy, he never stooped to dad jokes.
I missed him; thought about him every morning when I woke up and every night as I drifted off to sleep. I agonised that I’d never see him again, that I’d forget the sound of his voice the way I’d forgotten my father’s.
Even so, something had shifted in me too. The blame I felt towards my mother for driving him away softened. My anger at her subsiding, despite the gaping hole of his absence.
She’d been moody with him, often unfair. Though he could be moody too, I realised. He cancelled plans at the last minute or else didn’t show up at all. And when he did spend time with us it was often as though part of him wasn’t there.
‘In your own world again,’ my mother would say.
‘What’s that?’
It made me laugh though I’m not sure it was meant to. Matty would look surprised for a moment then laugh too as if only just getting a punchline.
I’d been given a diary for Christmas, had ambitions of being the next Adrian Mole. Wrote in it religiously for five days.
Okay, mum can be difficult. But that’s not a reason to walk out on your family. You don’t not call. You don’t not give them a way to call you.
And then the words echoed out of the answerphone– I’m back.
Straight away everything changed. Life was going to return to normal. Everything was going to be okay.
Disappointment, the cruel child of hope. Perhaps if I’d been less quick to believe things were looking up, I’d have been better prepared for their trip south.
In that moment though, we both believed. Both grinned from ear to ear at the thought of seeing Matty again.
‘Let’s go and surprise him,’ my mother said. A hot flush of pink on each cheek.
All this time and we’d never been to Matty’s place. He either came around to ours or else we went out together. Turned out he didn’t live far away, a terraced house near Hampstead Road Lock.
My mother kept her finger too long on the doorbell, hit the knocker too.
‘Give him a chance,’ I said.
Already I was hyper aware of anything she might do to piss him off. Whatever happened, we couldn’t lose him again.
The spy hole went momentarily dark. We heard him turn the bottom lock, pull back the security chain.
He opened up dressed like a catalogue model; white collared shirt beneath a baby blue V-neck sweater. Brown trousers with crisp creases down each leg.
‘My two favourite ladies. What a nice surprise!’
He glanced over his shoulder, hand resting on the door jamb. Blocking our path.
My mother peered past him into the hallway.
‘Aren’t you going to ask us in?’