Free Being Lara by Lola Jaye Page A

nights dictated by this large almost majestic square box in the corner of the room. Coronation Street was a firm favorite with her mother, while the boys loved to sit and watch Till Death Do Us Part, a comedy that would keep them chuckling loudly as they slouched on the sofa and, for those minutes at least, out of Pat’s way. The only program she really enjoyed was Opportunity Knocks, a talent show with an ability to transport her from the live bickering of the family straight into a world of happiness, glitz, laughter, and … possibility.
    Possibility.
    And it allowed her to nurture a secret longing she was reluctant to share with anyone. Studying each and every performance, ending with a critique and a prediction of who’d go through to each round, she was particularly drawn more to the singers than the magicians. No one understood Pat’s fascination with the show or her taste in music, which was in total contrast to that of her siblings. She loved listening to the Jackson Five and Stevie Wonder as opposed to the Stones, and she would often practice singing with a hairbrush in front of her mother’s huge mirror when sent to fetch her reading glasses or cigarettes from the bedroom.
    â€œYou got those fags yet, Patricia?” Her mother only called her Patricia when agitation loomed. Pat had been practicing again, only this time to the imaginary strains of “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” by the Supremes. She could hear the music clearly in her head as she stiffly moved her hips from side to side. She’d never be as good as Diana, but with a lot of practice perhaps she’d be half as good. She flicked her shoulder-length auburn hair and tried to ignore the small group of freckles that had plagued her for as long as she could remember, her heart jumping as she heard her name called again.
    â€œPatricia!!”
    â€œSorry, Mum, I’m just looking for your cigarettes!” she lied, twisting her head from side to side as a flood of music filled her head, her senses, her bones—her entire being. Her mother’s bedroom was now a concert hall; and the clean washing on her bed, Pat’s audience. She enjoyed humming the tunes quietly to herself, to feel the real essence of the song with no one able to muscle in with a brainless comment or to disturb her flow. She was free when she sang and more important—so very far from ordinary.
    â€œOn the dressing table, you can’t miss ’em!” called her mother, voice riddled with impatience. The cigarettes sat beside a comb on the cluttered dressing table, long strands of her mother’s once blond hair entangled within the spikes. More gray than blond now, since Pat’s dad and her mother’s husband of twenty-five years had shot out of the house for a pint of milk and never bothered to come back. The fact that Gerry’s wife next door had disappeared on the very same afternoon after stuffing £500 of their marital savings into a scuffed leather handbag hadn’t escaped anyone’s notice either.
    Pat had missed her father deeply at first. She cried herself to sleep most nights until discovering the glorious link between humming her favorite songs and entering a space where she could just forget her troubles and melt into the melody of a tune. The imagination. The possibilities. They were both endless and painless.
    So now she cried less and sang more.
    The sixties was the decade that had taken her father as well as her childhood; but now, on the cusp of a new era and a period that would see her officially become an adult, Pat hoped there was a lot more to look forward to.
    â€œWhere are those blimming cigarettes?!” blasted her mother’s voice, which sounded sickeningly close. She placed the brush back on the table and rushed off to find her mother before she found Pat.
    By the time Pat was nineteen, her sister was already knocked up and married (in that order, but Mum swore otherwise) and, at