I begged, but my mother was resolute. She hurriedly stuffed my clothes into my rucksack, handed me a few pounds, and pushed me out of the house. My familyjust a mother, a father, a daughter, and Grandad Alfredhad always seemed unremarkable, as ordinary as a rainy evening in Leeds. Life rolled along smoothly for my parents until my mum lost herself completely, neglecting everything, and my father wandered off with another woman.
Fathers sweetheart was remarkably youngalmost ethereal, barely past her own schooldaysand suddenly carrying my fathers child. Mum could not forgive the betrayal, and he left for his new life without a backward glance. Both parents built castles from the dust of their old lives, but neither constructed a room for me inside.
It was the year I finished Year 11. Mum brought home a much younger man, a stranger with a foxs gaze, and I protested at once. After that, I tumbled into strange company, unraveling into short hair, dyed it a melon-pink, and tasting cider on lonely park benches. Mum ignored my wildness, too absorbed with herself to care, and I drifted further into awkward peculiarity. After my first year of college, during a row that echoed like distant thunder, Mum swept my stuff into a bag and threw me into the street as if she was shaking crumbs from a tablecloth.
She looked at me then, her voice as cold and clipped as the January wind: Listen, youre grown now. Like your father, I yearn for my own happiness. Pack up and go live with your dad!
Left with no other choice, I begged her through sobs for mercy, but she shrugged off my pleas and set me loose into the sprawling, surreal city. When I stumbled to my fathers doorway, his face creased with discomfort, he too turned me away. You see, this house belongs to my wife now, and shes not having you here. Go back to your mothersort things out with her. With that, the door clicked shut, and everything was silent.
I wandered utterly lost, shelling out my last coins for a train ticket with no destination in mind. From that night, worlds shifted. I arrived in a tiny town in the north, where the streets curved like old storybooks and the rain tasted saltier. I took up a place at the local college, and after finishing, took shifts in a small kitchen, cooking endless breakfasts amongst clouds of steam.
Time telescoped strangely. I met a boyquiet and kind, with dreams stitched into his sleevesand we soon married. Together we put a deposit down on our own little flat, painting the walls butter-yellow. My husband, always gentle, urged me to forgive my parents, explaining hed grown up in a childrens home, never knowing family love, carrying a softness for those abandoned.
But I drifted in a liminal space, forgiveness always just beyond my reach. For years I delayed, until one day he looked at me with clear eyes and said, Youre luckyyou have your mother and father in the world. But your pride is making you an orphan. We all stumble; you must go to them.
So, with my husbands hand in mine, we caught the train back to my hometown. The buildings looked smaller, the air heavy with memory. We rang the bell at my old flat, and when the door opened, my parentsgrey-haired and smaller than I rememberedstood together. Mums eyes flooded, and she knelt at my feet, pleading in a tangled rush for forgiveness. Right then I saw Id already forgiven her long ago.
We stepped inmy husband and Iinto the muffled quiet of my childhood. I introduced him, and told my parents theyd soon have a grandchild. Tears hung in the air alongside dust motes. They told me theyd come back together searching for me, that my absence had pulled them closelike the closing of a storybook after a nightmare ends.
As for Fathers second wife, seeing how his heart was still cracked for my mother, she quietly let him go and soon married the man shed truly loved all along. The child shed borne wasnt my fathers; she discovered this only after the divorce when truth drifted in like fog.
Now, my parents smile at each other more often than not, and I am content in a way thats both familiar and impossibly strange. Everything came together just as Id wished in fevered teenage dreamsMum and Dad, beneath the same roof, sharing tea and laughter, while outside, the English weather drones on, half-remembered and distant.
