I’m in his house again, but it’s not his house as I remember it. It resembles a 1960s bachelor pad, all Ercol wood and plush textures. Wide shelving covers a partition wall; turntable, records, magazines. There’s no furniture. Light screams in from a sliding window. Outside, a quiet American suburb feel.
I’m standing on a grey deep-pile carpet in the middle of the room, with the buggy and the baby and the dog. I need to make the 8.20 train, but I’m running late and I’m not sure why I’m here. We are not together. It has been a long time.
Everything is falling out of the buggy: clothes, bottles, books, and empty crisp packets that I know if I don’t pick up now, will eventually end up in the sea. I am flustered trying to shove it all back in.
He stands in the doorway and watches, arms folded. He is saying things about me that aren’t true. That I have become an embittered and hardhearted woman, just like all the others. He wants me to know that I have changed – that when I was 17, my romantic ideals were the truth. That my perspective has been warped by time, and other people.
“You’re wrong,” I say, wedging a soft toy behind the plastic hood of the buggy. I want him to know he has always been wrong; to hold up a hand-mirror so he will be forced to finally see. But I know there is nothing I can do to change his perspective. He has looked the other way this long.
Every time I stuff an item in the buggy, others fall out. The number of items seems to be growing, pooling across the carpet. Time is marching on. The light from the window is softening. I don’t know if I can make this train. I wipe my forehead with my sleeve, push on.
I look over at the shelves. He goes to them, picks out a large blue book and flicks through it. Images of the Blackpool Tower leaning at a jaunty angle on every quilted page. Maybe I would like to borrow it, he asks? No. I thought he only watched TV. I glance at a silly photograph of him and a friend gazing worshipingly up at Dawn French.
“You don’t need to make that train,” he is saying. “Just get the one after. They’re every 20 minutes, something like that.”
But I do need to make that train because it is up to me. If I don’t make that train, I might bottle it, dismiss the idea of getting on a train altogether. I need to make that train so desperately, and it will be on my own terms.
The baby is inadequately dressed, I know this, in a red nappy and a T-shirt. I put the baby in the buggy – but now the baby is sitting on the dog. Deep breath. Try again.
He watches me struggle. We both know there is not enough room in the buggy for this expanding array of stuff; that I am going to miss that train.
* * *
We’re outside now, in the street suddenly. It is hot, bright, New York-esque, and there are people everywhere. I’m still trying to load the buggy. It’s overflowing, but no one is stopping to help. He is telling me again that I have changed; that I’ve become just like my mother, he wants me to know.
I’m irritated now, and in a real rush. I do not have time for this. Of course I have changed. Of course, he is wrong. But I do not care enough about what he thinks to say it out loud. I don’t care enough to hate him with every fibre of my being anymore.
He’s sitting on a camping chair now, on the street corner, with a young teenager on his knee. There are others hanging around, girls, from the orphanage in the rough part of the city. They are sneering and snapping their gum at me and my buggy and my baby and my dog.
He is stroking the girl on his knee’s arm. Blonde plaits, strappy top, tracksuit bottoms. She caresses his crotch, unzips his fly and takes out his penis. They both make eye contact with me, sneering and jeering and mocking. They think they are in it together.
I turn away, and notice that the city has changed. I recognise a Wizard of Oz-green-tiled shopfront at the end of the street and my heart soars – I’m closer to the train station than I thought. Just around the corner, in fact.
I push the baby in the buggy up the deserted street. The dog trots beside. I feel calm. We might just make the train after all. I let the items from the buggy spill out onto the pavement, run.