cheese for a while before it became something tasty, melded into something good, and Evie just munched the middle out of her sandwiches and discarded the crusts, impatient with the process. The tide was coming in. Some of the Antonys slipped below the waves, their clothes loosening.
Evie was the first to reach the playground.
‘Grannie,’ she called, ‘there are four swings!’ A man dressed wholly in red, including a prize-fighter’s belt and a scarlet baseball hat from which stiff dreadlocks protruded, stalked past us in the direction of the shore. Two workmen in Day-Glo overalls ate ice cream. One photographed his 99 cornet with his mobile phone while the other, holding an ice-lolly, laughed. Two robust identical orange-haired boys scaled monkey bars. Their mother was pale, with dark smudges under her eyes, as though the twins had sucked the goodness from her. We stopped for ice cream at the kiosk by the playground: Soft Ice-Cream Sold Here. Lolly Ices. Cold Cans. Slush. Hot Drinks. Popcorn. Candy Floss & More . Then, ice creams in hand, we made our way back over to the swings. Mum laughed at the sign that said only children under the age of fourteen could use the playground, and then graciously, but firmly, ignored it. She used the hook of her walking stick to bring one of the swings within reach, and then Evie held the seat in place while Mum manoeuvred herself onto it. Evie and I then sat on the two swings flanking her, and the three of us rocked to and fro, gazing seaward, eating our ice creams. Mum wore a woolly hat to keep her hair from the wind. She laughed when she caught me looking at her.
Mum had always been an enigma to me. Throughout my childhood she had remained unfathomable. When I was Evie’s age, possibly younger, Mum would bounce light from a compact mirror around the living room, swearing it was a fairy, and when I tried to touch the flickering image she snapped the compact shut and, laughing, dropped it into her handbag. It took me for ever to realise it was a trick. It was only now that Dad had died that Mum was starting to afford tightly angled views into herself, although she remained very difficult to read. She had an easy love of simple things, like swings, and ice cream, classic novels. Walking through wet leaves. Driving. She was uncomplicatedly happy. I had never seen her cry. It was her extraordinary engagement, her zest for life, that had drawn Dad to her, that drew all of us. I had always known that Mum wasn’t my ‘real mother’ and, for a long time, as a child, I had tried to make sense of our relationship, the word mother connoting something both formal and alien to me. For some reason Dad had been exempt from this sense of ‘otherness’. Perhaps because no one mentioned the possibility of my having another father, so for a long time he was the only candidate. It was only as an adult that I had grown curious about the man whose identity remained hidden, concealed behind the hyphen on my birth certificate.
Mum and Dad had met when they were children. Dad lived in a Cheshire village, defined by a Norman castle, in a community divided by Church and Chapel. Mum lived a couple of miles away, in the industrial township of Runcorn, but they had attended the same primary school. Mum left school at sixteen, and all I really knew about her early life was that she had once run a hundred yards in 11.4 seconds, that her mother was the District Nurse, and that her father had a car with white wall tyres. Most of the stories, although it was Mum who told them to me, were about Dad.
He had proposed to her when he was twenty-four, and Mum was twenty-two, at the top of Tryfan, in Snowdonia. On a clearer day the mountain might just be visible, across the estuary, from the playground where we now found ourselves. Certainly, if you look the other way – north-west from the summit of Tryfan – you can see Liverpool Bay. It is a deceptive and formidable mountain. Mum would tell how she and Dad
Evie was the first to reach the playground.
‘Grannie,’ she called, ‘there are four swings!’ A man dressed wholly in red, including a prize-fighter’s belt and a scarlet baseball hat from which stiff dreadlocks protruded, stalked past us in the direction of the shore. Two workmen in Day-Glo overalls ate ice cream. One photographed his 99 cornet with his mobile phone while the other, holding an ice-lolly, laughed. Two robust identical orange-haired boys scaled monkey bars. Their mother was pale, with dark smudges under her eyes, as though the twins had sucked the goodness from her. We stopped for ice cream at the kiosk by the playground: Soft Ice-Cream Sold Here. Lolly Ices. Cold Cans. Slush. Hot Drinks. Popcorn. Candy Floss & More . Then, ice creams in hand, we made our way back over to the swings. Mum laughed at the sign that said only children under the age of fourteen could use the playground, and then graciously, but firmly, ignored it. She used the hook of her walking stick to bring one of the swings within reach, and then Evie held the seat in place while Mum manoeuvred herself onto it. Evie and I then sat on the two swings flanking her, and the three of us rocked to and fro, gazing seaward, eating our ice creams. Mum wore a woolly hat to keep her hair from the wind. She laughed when she caught me looking at her.
Mum had always been an enigma to me. Throughout my childhood she had remained unfathomable. When I was Evie’s age, possibly younger, Mum would bounce light from a compact mirror around the living room, swearing it was a fairy, and when I tried to touch the flickering image she snapped the compact shut and, laughing, dropped it into her handbag. It took me for ever to realise it was a trick. It was only now that Dad had died that Mum was starting to afford tightly angled views into herself, although she remained very difficult to read. She had an easy love of simple things, like swings, and ice cream, classic novels. Walking through wet leaves. Driving. She was uncomplicatedly happy. I had never seen her cry. It was her extraordinary engagement, her zest for life, that had drawn Dad to her, that drew all of us. I had always known that Mum wasn’t my ‘real mother’ and, for a long time, as a child, I had tried to make sense of our relationship, the word mother connoting something both formal and alien to me. For some reason Dad had been exempt from this sense of ‘otherness’. Perhaps because no one mentioned the possibility of my having another father, so for a long time he was the only candidate. It was only as an adult that I had grown curious about the man whose identity remained hidden, concealed behind the hyphen on my birth certificate.
Mum and Dad had met when they were children. Dad lived in a Cheshire village, defined by a Norman castle, in a community divided by Church and Chapel. Mum lived a couple of miles away, in the industrial township of Runcorn, but they had attended the same primary school. Mum left school at sixteen, and all I really knew about her early life was that she had once run a hundred yards in 11.4 seconds, that her mother was the District Nurse, and that her father had a car with white wall tyres. Most of the stories, although it was Mum who told them to me, were about Dad.
He had proposed to her when he was twenty-four, and Mum was twenty-two, at the top of Tryfan, in Snowdonia. On a clearer day the mountain might just be visible, across the estuary, from the playground where we now found ourselves. Certainly, if you look the other way – north-west from the summit of Tryfan – you can see Liverpool Bay. It is a deceptive and formidable mountain. Mum would tell how she and Dad
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