Free Secrets My Mother Kept by Kath Hardy Page B

trouble.’
    There were also times when she went to the phone box on her own. Once when she returned, her mood was black and bleak. She had that same look in her eyes again, the one that made her look like a different person, the look that took her away from us. Josie had got in from work and gone straight up to bed. She often did this; in fact she spent long periods of time in her room, listening to music on her little radio and writing stuff down in little notebooks. Pat was sitting in front of the television and Marge and Marion were trying to do their homework on the stairs before they were asked to help out. Mary had gone round to her friend Helen’s house straight from school and Margaret and I were playing out in the garden. It was the beginning of the autumn and was starting to get dark and a bit chilly. Mum blew in through the front door and we heard her shouting at the twins: ‘Where’s Mary?’
    ‘She’s gone round to Helen’s,’ one of them answered.
    ‘What on earth for? I need her here – Marion go round and get her now.’
    ‘I can’t Mum I’ve got to finish this homework for tomorrow.’
    Mum stomped through to the back door. ‘You two inside now,’ she said roughly. We looked at each other; we weren’t ready to stop playing so we just carried on. ‘I said now!’ she shouted. This was unusual; Mum rarely shouted at us and never with so little cause.
    ‘Marion, Marge get down here,’ she repeated, ‘I want Mary home now.’ The twins descended the stairs resentfully. They grumbled their way out of the house to walk the ten minutes round to Helen’s house. By this time Margaret and I had come inside and were snivelling at having to leave our game. As they left, Mum walked into the kitchen and looked around her. Aunty wasn’t yet home from work, the room was untidy and cold and there was no dinner cooking; the damp washing was hung around the walls as it had been raining earlier and she hadn’t been able to put it on the line in the garden.
    Pat murmured, ‘Don’t shout at the littluns. They’re upset now.’
    Mum spun round and snapped: ‘I’ve had enough. I’m going out.’
    ‘Where are you going?’ Pat asked, shocked. Mum didn’t usually go anywhere in the evenings unless it was to the phone box and she had just got back from there.
    ‘I don’t know, just out.’
    Pat’s face lost its colour. ‘Why? What’s wrong?’
    Mum moved towards the door. ‘I’m fed up, I’m fed up with all of it, and with the lot of you.’
    Margaret ran to her and hung on to her coat. ‘Mummy, don’t go,’ she cried, but Mum just shook her off and left, banging the front door behind her.
    Margaret broke down in sobs, so I tried to comfort her. ‘She’ll be back soon,’ I promised, but inside I was terrified of what might happen next. Pat went upstairs to talk to Josie and then the twins came back with Mary.
    ‘What’s happened?’ asked Mary, at which I started crying along with Margaret, because I really didn’t know.
    Mum storming out become a recurrent theme throughout my childhood, and even though our experience showed us that she would usually return after a few hours, it didn’t stop me feeling terrified that this time it would be different and she wouldn’t come back. After all, I’d heard stories of how she’d disappeared for weeks at a time when my sisters were young. Sometimes Josie or Pat would go to look for her if she hadn’t come back by nightfall. They would usually find her wandering around, or sometimes pretending to wait for a bus, just standing at the bus stop smoking and thinking. When she came back, she would be quiet and absent for a while, with that same faraway look in her eyes, but it never lasted long. She always did come back, because I guess by that time she didn’t have anywhere else to go.
     
    Mum didn’t usually get up to see us off to school in the morning, but one summer morning she was up early and called to us to get out of bed.
    ‘Come on you