Surprise Me

Dan, in particular, went into overdrive. He’s a protective type naturally – he’ll always open a door for me or offer a jacket – but this was another level. He took time off work to look after the girls. He negotiated extra leave for me from Mrs Kendrick. He tried to get me to go to a counsellor. (Really not my kind of thing.) I remember the doctor told Dan I needed to sleep (of course I wasn’t sleeping, how could I sleep?) and Dan took it on as his responsibility, buying blackout blinds and calming music CDs and asking everyone in the street to keep the noise down. He still asks me every morning if I’ve slept. It’s become his habit, like he’s my sleep monitor.

Mummy, on the other hand, didn’t want to know. I don’t mean that to sound bad. She was grieving herself; how could she worry about me too? And anyway, it’s her way. She doesn’t cope well with outlandish behaviour. We once had a lunch guest who got so drunk he fell over the sofa, which I found hilarious (I was nine). But when I mentioned it the next day, Mummy just closed the conversation down. It was as if nothing had happened.

So when I went to stand outside Gary Butler’s house, she wasn’t at all impressed. (‘What will people say?’) It was Mummy who was keen for me to take some pills. Or maybe go abroad for a month and come back all better again.

(She herself seemed to process her grief like a caterpillar in a cocoon. She disappeared into her bedroom after the funeral and no one was allowed in for two weeks, and then she emerged, fully dressed, fully made-up, blinking. Never crying, only blinking.)

‘Grandpa is in heaven,’ asserts Tessa, looking at the picture of Daddy. ‘He is sitting on a cloud, isn’t he, Mummy?’

‘Maybe,’ I say cautiously.

What do I know? Maybe Daddy is up there, sitting on a cloud.

‘But what if he falls off?’ queries Anna anxiously. ‘Mummy, what if Grandpa falls off?’

‘He will hold on tight,’ says Tessa. ‘Won’t he, Mummy?’ And now both of them are looking expectantly up at me, with absolute trust that I know the answer. Because I’m Mummy, who knows everything in the world.

My eyes are suddenly hot. I wish I was what they think I am. I wish I had all the answers for them. How old will they be before they realize I don’t? That no one does? As I survey their questioning little faces, I can’t bear the idea that one day my girls will know about all the shit that the world really involves, and they’ll have to deal with it, and I won’t be able to fix it for them.

‘All right, Sylvie?’ says Dan as he and Mummy come out of the drawing room. He glances swiftly at the picture of Daddy, and I know he’s realized my train of thought. Photos of Daddy do tend to catch me out.

Well, to be honest, anything can catch me out.

‘Fine!’ I force a bright tone. ‘So, girls, what are you going to put on your pancakes?’

Distraction is crucial, because the last thing I need is Tessa talking about Grandpa sitting on a cloud in front of Mummy.

‘Maple syrup!’

‘Chocolate sauce!’

Anna and Tessa dash into the kitchen, all thoughts of Grandpa forgotten. As I follow them I glance at Dan, still walking right by Mummy’s side, and the sight suddenly cheers me up. Will Project Surprise Me have an unexpected side benefit? Will it bring Dan and Mummy closer together? Seeing them just now, huddled in the drawing room, they had a kind of directness and openness with each other that I’ve never seen before.

I mean, they do get on, as a rule. They do. Kind of. It’s just …

Well. As I’ve mentioned, Dan can be a bit prickly about Daddy. And money and … lots of stuff. But maybe he’s over that, I think optimistically. Maybe things have changed.

Or maybe not. By the time we’ve all finished eating, Dan seems more prickly than ever, especially when Mummy finds out about the snake and teases him about it. I can tell he’s struggling to stay polite, and I don’t blame him. Mummy has a habit of picking one joke and making it too many times. I almost find myself coming to the wretched snake’s defence. (Almost.)

‘I always wanted a pet when I was little,’ I say to the girls, trying to broaden the conversation. ‘But I didn’t want a snake, I wanted a kitten.’

‘A kitten,’ breathes Tessa.

‘Your snake would probably eat the kitten!’ says Mummy merrily. ‘Isn’t that what you feed snakes, Dan, live kittens?’

‘No,’ says Dan evenly. ‘It is not.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mummy,’ I say, frowning at her before she freaks out the girls. ‘Granny’s joking, girls. Snakes don’t eat kittens! So anyway,’ I press on. ‘I wasn’t allowed a pet and I didn’t have any brothers or sisters either … so guess what? I made up an imaginary friend. Her name was Lynn.’

I’ve never told the girls about my imaginary friend before. I’m not sure why.

No, of course I know why. It’s because my parents made me feel so ashamed about it. It’s actually taking me some courage to mention her in front of Mummy.

In hindsight – especially now I have children of my own – I can see that my parents didn’t handle the whole imaginary friend thing well. They were great parents, really they were, but that one issue, they got wrong.

I mean, I get it. Things were different then. People were less open-minded. Plus Mummy and Daddy were super-conventional. They probably worried that hearing voices in my head meant I was going mad or something. But imaginary friends are perfectly normal and healthy for children. I’ve googled it. (Lots of times, actually.) They shouldn’t have been so disapproving. Every time I mentioned Lynn, Mummy would freeze in that awful way she had, and Daddy would look at Mummy with a kind of disapproving anger, like it was her fault, and the whole atmosphere would become toxic. It was horrible.

So of course, after a while, I kept Lynn secret. But it didn’t mean I abandoned her. The very fact that my parents had such an extreme reaction to her made me cling on to her. Embellish her. Sometimes I felt guilty when I talked to her in my head – and sometimes I felt defiant – but I always had a horrible feeling of shame. I’m thirty-two years old, but even now, saying ‘Lynn’ out loud gives me a queasy frisson.

I even woke up dreaming about her the other day. Or remembering, maybe? I could hear her laughing that happy gurgle of a laugh. Then she was singing the song that I used to love, ‘Kumbaya’.

‘Did you talk to her in real life?’ says Tessa, puzzled.

‘No, just in my head.’ I smile at her. ‘I made her up because I felt a bit lonely. It’s perfectly normal. Lots of children have imaginary friends,’ I add pointedly, ‘and they grow out of them naturally.’

This last is a little dig at Mummy, but she pretends not to notice, which is typical.

I’ve promised myself that one day I’m going to have it out with Mummy. I’m going to say, ‘Do you realize how ashamed you made me feel?’ and ‘What was the problem? Did you think I was going mad or something?’ I have all my lines ready – I’ve just never quite had the guts to say them. As I say, I’m not brilliant at confrontation, and especially not since Daddy died. The family boat’s been unsteady enough without me rocking it more.

Sure enough, Mummy has blanked this entire conversation and now changes the subject.

‘Look what I found the other day,’ she says, zapping at the wall-mounted TV, and after a few seconds, a family video appears on screen. It’s from my sixteenth birthday, the part when Daddy stood up to give a speech about me.