Thursday 2nd November

“Oh, what have you gone and done Phil?  Why didn’t you just talk to me?  Funny, you never told me that you still wanted me.  When it all came out about me and Ted all you kept saying was that we had to stay together, you didn’t want me to leave, we just had to remain a couple and keep everything together somehow, even though we both knew it was broken and no amount of sticking things together would ever really work.  And you never said you loved me, you never even asked me if I still loved you, or asked me what I wanted. You had what you thought were the answers and never asked me what I felt, what I thought about it all.” Wailed June into the empty kitchen.

“Even at that most desperate of times, when if there had been any real connection left between us we should have been trying to build on that, you were thinking about what people might say, how you and I would be judged, not about how we ourselves felt about it all.  Just like my mother when I was a little girl, always more worried about what the neighbours would say than what we thought about things ourselves.

“And now what have you gone and done?  Do you really think that running away will solve anything?  Come back Phil, come back to me now.  Despite all that has happened, my affair with Ted, your apparent lack of affection for me, the missing money and the mistakes we have both made – maybe we really do need each other.  Maybe in some strange way we have always needed each other, but never fully understood it, until now.  Besides I don’t know how I’m going to begin to cope without you.  So, come back home Phil, and somehow we will get over this.  It’s only stuff, it doesn’t really matter.”

*  * *

Harriet felt so bloody alone amidst all this chaos.  She was back at University again, when by now I should have been in London, starting her new life.  Only now she had to resolve all this nonsense of her mother.  She really hated her now, and she thought she had hated her for years, but now she was beginning to really hate her.  ‘What did she think she was doing?  Apart from ruining Harriet’s life, of course; she probably enjoyed that aspect of it all.  But Uncle Ted, of all people, didn’t she have any sense at all?  What was she thinking about?  She must have known it would all come out one day.’

And Harriet’s attempts at getting away from here and starting a new life in London had still not come to anything.  She hadn’t even had a chance of looking for the savings book either.  Why had she wandered upstairs when she thought the place was empty, why hadn’t she gone straight into her Dads study and found the savings book, and left.  If she hadn’t discovered them she could be in London by now, and they could still be doing it.  ‘God, how sick is that?  My mother and my uncle, can you imagine it?’   Instead she was back in shitty Leeds with Jim and those other idiots she hang around with.  ‘God knows why, they’re such a bunch of no-hopers, and I am so much better than them, I am going to be someone one day.  I just have to find a way out of here, an escape route, that’s what I need.  Then I can begin again.  Somewhere where no-one knows me, somewhere I can find some space to think, somewhere away from all this chaos.’

*  * *

Jane felt completely alone, and as she sat on her own in the Mikado (it was a school day and again she was not at school). She tried to put her thoughts together.  She knew she couldn’t really make sense of other people’s behaviour; her mother’s reckless disregard for anyone else in her pursuit of Uncle Ted; her father’s disappearance, his fleeing the scene like a common criminal; and Harriet, her withdrawal into drugs, what could possibly have possessed them.  So she had to try to make sense of her own actions; she knew she had become withdrawn since Harriet had left for university, that she had been so depressed that she had started making herself bleed, she still had the scabs itching under her blouse, just waiting for that rush of release.  But as she sat there she began to grasp the fact that it wasn’t her fault, all of this.  She had simply not been considered by her family at all, she had been less than a consideration, she had not even come onto their horizon’s as they each in their own way had pursued their own goals.   And so, she was not to blame, and she was suddenly angry, angry at them; for what they had done, for wrecking her life at only sixteen, and most of all for not caring one jot about her.  None of them had considered her at all.

And mostly she was angry at Harriet, her darling big sister, who had nurtured her, used her as her protégée, guided and shaped her, and who now couldn’t care less about her.  She knew there was only one thing she cared about nowadays, and it certainly wasn’t Jane.  But if the truth be told she was angry with herself for allowing it to happen, for her reliance on Harriet, her worship of her, her utter dependence on her.  Jane realised as she sat there listening to pop songs that told of youthful exuberance, and love affairs, that if she were to survive this mess, if she was going to come out of it with any degree of sanity she would have to shake her ideas up a bit.  She would have to stop feeling so bloody sorry for herself for a start; she would have to stop worrying about them all, even Harriet – if she wanted to drag herself down with drugs then that was her choice – it had nothing to do with her sister.  she had to start thinking and worrying about her, Jane.

But that was easier to say than do, it all seemed so impossibly hard; she had never been really on her own before, she had always had her sister to rely on, and her parents even; her Dad had always been there too, even if Jane had never confided in him, he was there at least.  But now he was gone, just as Harriet had left her, my Dad had left her too.  And her Mum was falling apart in front of her, she was crying all the time now, Jane hardly recognized her.  She knew she should be brave, because she was the only one left.  She just didn’t think she might be strong enough, that was all.