In Search of Adam
3.5/5
()
About this ebook
A taut and beautifully written debut novel by an exciting and accomplished new author.
Motherless, rootless and unprotected, Jude Williams' childhood is fractured by the horror and experience of sexual abuse, forcing her to exist somewhere and nowhere in-between childhood and adulthood. Caught within the limitations of her own language and trapped within a family secret, Jude becomes the consequence of her mother's tragedy. As she moves through the 1980s, Jude's life is buffeted by choice and destiny and she collects experiences that layer her personal tragedy and plunge her into the darkest of worlds.
Caroline Smailes
CAROLINE SMAILES lives in the North West of England with her husband and three children. The Drowning of Arthur Braxton is her fifth novel. She can be found at www.carolinesmailes.co.uk and twitter.com/Caroline_S
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Reviews for In Search of Adam
41 ratings11 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I started to read this book and found it hard going, so I reverted to plan B my wife who enjoyed the book and the story that pulled you in deeper & deeper at time into some quite dark places.Very free flowing but at times was drawn out but the narrative was good to keep you wanting more, I will ebventualy finish reading this book for my self :-)
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5When she is seven years old, Jude finds her mother dead from an overdose. A bottle of pills lay scattered on the bedside table and there is a note. Jude approaches her mother carefully, slowly. The note says: Jude, I have gone in search of Adam I love you baby.Jude doesn’t understand. She climbs into bed with her dead mother and curls up beside her, taking in the last of her mother’s warmth. Taking in the last of her mother. She does not understand that her mother can’t come back. She doesn’t understand that she won’t be coming back, Adam in tow beside her. Her mother’s death starts Jude on a downward spiral. Floating through a sea of emotions, she is adrift and without her mother, there is nothing to anchor her. She tries to find love from her father only to have him look at her strangely. There is no acceptance there; there is no love. Jude begins to keep a book, a diary of sorts, where she collects anchors, where she gathers information to keep her grounded, so that she has something to hold on to. Something to mark time. She collects the number of coloured doors on the street, the number and colour of cars. The names Information on the neighbours, some nicer than others. Something happens to Jude shortly after her mother’s funeral that shatters something inside herself. Having no one to turn to for guidance, all Jude can do is collect, gather, observe. And wait for her mothers return. In Search of Adam is flat out incredible. We’re only part way through 2007 and I can state without a doubt that In Search of Adam is the best novel of the year. Hell, it may very well be the best novel I’ve read in years. I don’t have enough words to describe how good, how amazing, how mind blowing this novel is. I can’t find the words, they escape me. In Search of Adam left me breathless. Jude is an incredible protagonist. She is the ultimate observer, taking in all and everything around her; you live through Jude, you breathe through her. This is her world and her life and you are looking through her eyes. She has been drawn so beautifully, so completely, that I found myself looking for her when I wasn’t reading the book. She haunts me. While reading the novel I wanted to wrap my arms around her and hold her close to me. It has been an incredibly long time since I’ve been so moved by a book. This is a grim book but never have child abuse, suicide, rape, emotional issues and death been written about so beautifully. Caroline Smailes is no mere writer; In Search of Adam is no mere book. She is a wordsmith, an artist and In Search of Adam is a moving, changing, gorgeous piece of word art; a tapestry that lives and breathes beyond its pages. In Search of Adam is not just a novel you read. It’s a journey you take with Jude, holding on to her hand for dear life and watching, feeling everything that happens to her. Are you brave enough to take her hand? This is a book you don’t want to miss, a story that will move you and a journey that will touch your heart in its darkest places. I am staring at the book as it sits on my coffee table and I can hear Jude calling to me. She still haunts me though I have closed the book; but I will pick it up again soon. Now, though, I run my fingers over the cover, over the image of Jude and know that, when I meet her again, I will know her
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I received this book as part of the Early Reviewers Club.I have read the entire book even though it really wasn't to my taste, i can see that the book is very well written, in fact i very much enjoyed the ease with which i could read it the words flowed extremely well. However, as i say it isn't a genre that i'm naturally drawn to, so this was a down side for me. If you enjoy reading the new genre of book which describes the horror some people go through during childhood then this is the books for you. For myself i found it a little too harrowing, it had me in tears in many places, i was also frustrated by some of the characters as well. I found it so well written and descriptive of the characters that at certain points when it got too much to read i felt like jumping into the book to rescue Jude.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very good book.I read it in record time.Very hard to put down.Realistic story of events of the present day and associated feelings.Well written,light reading ,but heavy content that makes you think about her feelings and position.Coming from a care background in my job it made me think about services and help that were in place for individuals such as Jude and her family and how they had been let down by the associated agencies that assist in these areas.It also made me angry at the narrow mindedness of the older generation and how Judes mum was wrongly labelled.Excellent gripping read.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book really needs a health warning on the cover. There are so many painful and abusive issues addressed in it that if it were a TV or radio programme it would have an advisory notice broadcast in advance. The cover of this book could do with one of these.I found the contents of the book to be disturbing and grippingly relentless. As the narrator batters from one awful experience to another, the remorselessness of it all becomes overwhelming. The underlying discovery plot is well constructed, though I found the revelation scenes to be unconvincing. This was because I thought that they were not consistent with the characterisation of one of the central characters of the drama. On the presentational side, the deliberate use of typographical and grammatical innovation served its purpose without becoming too intrusive, although at times it came close to being a little bit too pleased with itself. Stylistically, the repetition of key pieces of the prose was effective.In summary, an experimental book that is worth reading, but look after yourself as you do.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5From the opening page the writing shocks, due to its content, style and formatting. Jude's personal tale exerts a strange hold over you because, although it is told graphically, it is told very simply, from a believable perspective. As the story continued, the barrage of negative events became somewhat unbelievable, but Jude's reactions never did. This enabled me to keep reading through some distressing events.Smailes finds a range of ways to play with language to help us experience the world from Jude’s perspective: repetition, rhyme, lists and colours. Although the use of lists is in keeping with the character's understandable need to document her world in a futile attempt to control it, (hence her ferocious reaction when one neighbour dares to buy a new car,) their prevalence did become frustrating at times and seemed to simply take up page space. Perhaps more detail would have helped these lists to create images rather than result in a faster reading time.Smailes also plays with grammar, in particular by reducing her sentences into fragments. Initially frustrating. This reduced my enjoyment. But. It did slow my reading. Then. Allowed me to appreciate the power of the events. On Jude. Overall, I think it was an effective technique, perhaps suggesting how Jude takes small steps in an apparently hostile and careless world, but it continued to cause me irritation until at least half way through the novel.Ultimately, the feeling I was left with was one of frustration: why did no one LISTEN to Jude? Without revealing the story, there are people who should listen and should be able to help her, but they fail. Perhaps what makes this, ultimately, such an uncomfortable story is not the descriptions of abuse, but the sense that Jude’s history was inevitable. Not because she couldn’t have overcome the initial traumatic suicide of her mother, but because she was surrounded by people obsessed with their own miseries and made triumphant by other peoples’ failures, it became inevitable. Jude’s final choice seems to suggest that we are all, ultimately, dependant on other people.However, the powerful ending is diluted by a strange ‘Afterthoughts’ section in which Smailes seems to argue with her own creation, raising questions about creativity, reality and her own motivations. Perhaps Smailes was afraid to simply let her creation literally speak for itself?Overall the novel is a departure from the mainstream that needs to be read with an open mind and an ability to ignore minor irritations.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5There is something self-indulgently harrowing about this book. I’ve read enough fictional stories of abuse and neglect (including fiction based on auto/biographical accounts) to be able to determine the ones that have something important or true to say, but Caroline Smailes, in ‘In Search of Adam’ spends too much time layering the misery on with a trowel, then attempts to disguise the heavy-handedness with some tricks of layout and repetition. Indeed, the author tries very hard to make artwork of a child’s hopeless existence, and that didn’t sit well with me. The book, overplayed as it is, actually serves to move the reader further and further away from any connection with real victims of abuse – while this might be a realistic description of a young girl’s development in such circumstances, Ms. Smaile’s handling of the subject is all off; the forces at work around Jude are not realistic, past events are contrived, her isolation is exaggerated and while it began as a wonderful exercise in forced pity, it could not, alas, be sustained at that pitch. Jude’s plight is further diminished by the timing of the wish-fulfilment scene (she confronts her father about the concealed truths and neglect that paved the way to abuse by a neighbour, self-harm and bulimia), which propels us into a phase where Jude grows up very quickly and has sex with men in the pub where she works, for money, and then we end with her eventual suicide which, frankly, is as much a relief to the reader as it presumably is for Jude.With all due sympathy to the writer, if she is writing from experience, she should first learn to tell a story before wallowing in this sort of prose... there is, sadly, an overwhelming amount of heartbreaking fact and fiction on the subject of child abuse and it’s results, and nearly all of it is better written – and a worthier read – than ‘In Search of Adam’ - and, if the child's name was meant to draw upon Hardy's Jude, then she should have a least paid him the respect of paying tribute to his subtlety and foreshadowing.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5In Search of Adam chronicles the abusive childhood of Jude, a creative but isolated girl growing up in the north of England during the late 70s and 80s. Smailes' descriptions of some of the more traumatic events in Jude's life are unapologetically graphic and work to immediately win the reader over to the character. From the very ambiguous and self-serving 'Thoughts' section at the back of the book, I get the idea that Smailes has purposely tried to blur the edges between fiction and reality in this novel, but the over the top nature of Jude's downward spiral through self harm, bulemia, low self esteem and suicidal depression left me feeling less and less able to suspend my disbelief. Within In Search of Adam, rest assured that everything that can go wrong will go wrong, in an obvious and cliched manner. Add to this the frankly annoying 'playing with language' that Smailes attempts, involving text font, colour and size, poor punctuation and pages upon pages of repeated lists/phrases/words (which, incidentally, just smack of padding) and In Search of Adam rapidly becomes a novel thats potential, unfortunately, far outstrips what Smailes can deliver.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5This was a book sent to me to read and review.I thought this was almost pornographic at times !It was quite harrowing to read stuff like this about a 6 year old child and not sure if it was based on a real life story.You almost knew what the ending would turn out to be.Not my cup of tea at all. Glad I didn't buy it !
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a Library Thing Early Reviewer Book that I was lucky enough to win in February.When the book starts on March 26th 1980 we meet Jude, a six year old from the north east of England. She has just discovered her mother's dead body, along with a suicide note which reads "Jude, I have gone in search of Adam. I love you baby." From this point on Jude's life spirals into neglect, abuse and self-harm and the story is very harrowing but compelling. I am not a fan of true-life victim stories and was expecting not to like this fictional account but the quality of Caroline Smailes writing is excellent and kept me hooked right the way through. Towards the end Jude has a conversation with her father that could break your heart and the ending just might finish what that conversation started. The story of Jude, her mother and Adam is tragic and very sad.The style of the book is possibly an acquired taste, the text makes full use of different font styles and sizes, with words in pattens all over some pages. I found that this helped me to get into the story and reflected Jude and her state of mind very well but some people may find it a distraction.After the end of the story there's a very odd bit that is part interview and part a continuation of Jude's story. I didn't quite get it right away and had to do a re-read to get it straight in my mind.All in all I think this book was great. The story was compelling but distressing, the writing was very, very good and the idea was tragic but interesting in the way it was developed. It truly is a very harrowing account of neglect and abuse and for that it is difficult to say that I enjoyed the book. I will certainly be looking out for the next book by this author and hope that the problems with the publisher won't delay that book coming out. I would certainly recommend this one as being a fantastic first novel by a new author but warn anyone thinking of reading it that it's not gentle reading material.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I read this book in a day although I sincerely wanted to put it down and couldn't.This novel (I'm still not sure it is complete fiction) is about the descent into despair of a young girl from the age of 6 to 18 who has lost her Mother and living with an indifferent Father who brings a hated new partner into the home. The detail of her awful life and inner thoughts is incredible if the author truly has no experience of such things in her own life. There are very graphic abuse issues which made me want to stop reading right there but thankfully that was not the major theme of the book. Caroline Smailes if nothing else has certainly created a book which cannot be ignored - I have never read anything like it. Harrowing.
Book preview
In Search of Adam - Caroline Smailes
1980
On March 26 1980, I was six years, four months and two days old. I was dressed and ready for school. It was 8:06am on my digital watch. My mother was still in bed. I went into her room to wake her. I found her lying on top of her duvet cover. She wasn’t wearing any clothes. Her ocean eyes were open. She wasn’t sleeping. And from the corner of her mouth, a line
of
lumpy
sick
joined her to the pool that was stuck to her cheek. Next to her, on her duvet I saw an empty bottle. Vodka. And there were eleven tablets. Small round and white. And I saw a scrap of ripped paper. There were words on it.
jude, i have gone in search of adam.
i love you baby.
I didn’t understand. But I took the note. It was mine. I shoved it into the pocket of my grey school skirt. I crumpled it in. Then. Then I climbed next to her. I spooned into her. Molded into a question mark. Her stale sick mingled and lumped into my shiny hair. I stayed with my mother, until the warmth from her body transferred into me. We were not disturbed until my father returned from work. At 6:12pm.
Exhibit number one—my mother’s note.
In the days between my mother’s death and her funeral, I noted that someone from every one of the thirty-one other houses in my street came to visit. Some just stood in silence in the hallway. Some drank coffee at the wooden kitchen table. Others sat with my father in the lounge. Smoked cigarettes and drank from tin beer cans. My father liked these visitors the best. There were some neighbours who came each day. Just to check on my father. And between them they decided on how best I should be cared for.
I was six years old. I was more than capable of taking myself to school at 8:30am. My father left for work twenty minutes before I left for school. 8:10am. That was fine. I loved those twenty minutes. I was alone in the house. I was king of the castle. I spent the twenty minutes sitting. Sitting on the bottom red stair. Staring at my watch. Glaring. Terrified that I would be late for school. I loved those twenty minutes. School was a ten-minute walk away. Over only one main road. But a lollipop lady watched out for me. They’d had a word. Then coming home from school. I could manage the walk. But. But they thought it best that I wasn’t at home alone. My father came home from work between 6:10pm and 6:17pm. So together. Those smoking drinking neighbours and my father. They decided where I should go each night.
I had my key. Tied to a piece of string and fastened with a safety pin inside my brown parka. That key was to lock the door each morning and only for emergencies at night. That key would allow me to escape from my neighbours.
During those days. Between my mother’s death and her funeral. I used to watch my neighbours slowing down as they passed by my mother’s house. I could sit on my bed and watch them from the window. I could open the window. Just slightly. Just enough to let their words fly in. They didn’t look up to me. I was already invisible. They never saw me. They never looked for me. Some neighbours would stand talking. Curlers in their hair. Slippered feet. Dressing gowns pulled across their chests. They would point at my mother’s house and they would chitter and chatter and yackety yacker. Gossip. Gossip. Gossip. Always about my mother. My precious, my beautiful mother. She was in the tittle-tattle. She was in the chitchat. Her demise. My demise. My mother’s house, Number 9 Disraeli Avenue was the centre of the universe. Front page gossip. The neighbours talked of a pure evil that was within my mother. They spoke of her lack of motherly instincts. They talked about a murderous past. I didn’t understand their words. But. But they were tinged and tanged with mean-sounding twangs. They talked. I listened. I heard them. Through the open bedroom window.
On the day of my mother’s funeral. Five days after her death. My father told me to put on my school uniform. A grey skirt. A blue blouse. A blue and yellow stripy tie. My blouse was creased. Crumply and worn. My tie was stained with baked bean juice.
My mother’s coffin was in the box room. The lid had been removed. She looked so beautiful. Her long blonde hair had been styled. She looked like a glamorous film star. She was covered in a white sheet and her bare feet were poking from beneath it. I crept into my mother and father’s bedroom. I took my mother’s favourite shoes from her wardrobe. I also took a blouse and hid it under my pillow. Her scent still clung to it. Combining Chanel, musk and Mary Quant. Then. I returned to the box room. I took her purple stilettos. I lifted the white sheet to see her ankles. I placed her purple shoes onto her blue feet. Touching her skin sent a throbbing ache into my stomach.
I feel sick. I feel sick.
I fought my weakness. I stopped myself from being sick. I needed her to be wearing shoes. I didn’t want her feet to become raw. She was off to hike through foreign lands. My mother was not smiling. Her face was blank. As I looked at her I realised that all expression came from her eyes. I longed for those ocean eyes. Open your eyes, please open your eyes. Just to connect with her one last time. My hair was tangled, still matted with her sick. So I sat on her hairdressing stool. Next to her coffin. In the box room. And I counted each stroke as I brushed my hair. One…two…three…four…five…six…seven…eight… I needed my mother. I needed her to get rid of the tatty tatty clumps. I reached into the coffin. Her coffin. I held her cold hand. I heard people laughing and chatting downstairs. Ding dong. Ding dong. Chatter chatter. Laugh laugh laugh. Aunty Maggie from Number 30 had brought rice, Mrs Clark from Number 14 had brought a platter of sandwiches and with each ding dong my father poured drinks and welcomed his guests. I sat. Holding my dead mother’s hands. Wishing that she had taken me with her on her journey. Downstairs they talked loudly. And then. Then hushed and whispered. She hadn’t left a note, she was so very selfish, how could she be so cruel to little Jude. They talked badly of my mother. I wanted to go and scream at them. To stop their evil gossiping. My father said that he wouldn’t speak ill of the dead. But. Sarah was an evil whore and ahm glad that she’s deed. And. She’d been threatening te dee it for years. And. She was an evil lass. A selfish murdering whore. She divvnae care aboot anyone but horsell. I hated my father. I hated that he fed the neighbours lies. I didn’t understand. Liar liar. Pants on fire.
My mother loved me. She did care about me. I didn’t understand why my father was telling lies. My mother was magical. She was beautiful and she loved me. Right up to the sky and back. She was thirty-two. She was clever. She was just going to explore the world a little. She would come back when she was done. She had gone in search of Adam. Her explanation was simple. I had no idea who or what an Adam was. She would tell me all about it when she found it. She’d come back then. She’d come back and carry on being mine. I’d wait. I’d always wait. I stroked her long slender fingers. She was cold. Too cold. Back into my bedroom. A hot water bottle. I took it into the bathroom. Turned the hot tap till it was burning. Burning. I filled my plastic hot water bottle. Then I returned to my mother. I placed it under her sheet. I gave her the shiny fifty pence that Aunty Maggie, Number 30, had given me the day before. Just in case. She may have time to buy herself a treat. An ice cream and a ten-pence mix up.
My father shouted for me. I stood. Over my mother’s coffin. I looked at my mother. The last time. She did not look back at me. Her eyes were closed. Sleeping. Sleeping Beauty. I would not cry. I could not cry. I had to be brave. They would think badly of my mother. My father had told me. He had warned me. Big girls don’t cry. Do you hear me? Big girls don’t cry. I bent down and kissed my mother. She did not wake. I was not magic.
I sat next to my father in the large black car. I lowered my head and tried to name all the foreign places that I could think of. My fists were clenched. I recited names. I could think of only five.
Spain…
France…
Scotland…
America…
London…
Spain…France…Scotland…America…London…
Spain…
France…
Scotland…
America…
London…
I tried to picture my mother in these countries. The Tower of London. Loch Ness. Disneyland. The Eiffel Tower. On the beach. Sunbathing. And in my head I could see her smiling. Her eyes twinkling with excitement. As she grasped her sketch book, charcoal and lead.
The funeral ended. Mr Johnson, from Number 19, took me to school in time for lunch.
Mashed potato.
Peas.
And carrots.
Mixed together.
Fish fingers.
One, two, three.
Jam sponge.
Custard.
The afternoon of the funeral passed quickly at school. Children avoided me. My teacher cried at the front of the class. I sat at my small wooden desk and held my tightly clenched fists in front of me.
Spain…
France…
Scotland…
America…
London…
Spain…
France…
Scotland…
America…
London…
Spain…
France…
Scotland…
America…
London…
I would not cry. I did not move during afternoon playtime. Teachers walked past the classroom window and peered in at me. My nails dug into my palms, but my knuckles were fixed and I concentrated through the pain.
Spain…France…Scotland…
America…London…Spain…
France…Scotland…America…
London…Spain…France…
Scotland…America…
London…Spain…
France…
Scotland…
America…
London.
I didn’t draw an Easter card. I didn’t practise my writing. I didn’t listen. I didn’t speak. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
The final bell rang.
I left my desk. Children moved out of the way. Terrified that a touch from me would make them catch the evil eye. I had the evil eye. Mothers at the school gate turned their backs. Talked in packs. Always in hushed tones. No one wanted to look at me. No one could find the words. My mother was fresh in the ground. I was at school. The neighbours were drinking. Eating. Celebrating. I had to walk home alone. Alone. Alone. Alone.
It was a Wednesday. But Mrs Clark was at my mother’s wake. In a pub called The Traveller’s Rest. A wake. The neighbours were trying to wake my mother. I had tried that too. Given her a kiss. It hadn’t worked. She needed a handsome prince. The neighbours would wake her. They were old and clever. Aunty Maggie was nearly one hundred and ninety-five years old. She was the oldest person in the world. She had to be the wisest person in the world.
I used my key and let myself into my mother’s house. It was cold. It was silent. I rushed to the box room. Ran up the red stairs. Quick quick quick. Just in case she was still there. But. But the room was empty. She was gone. I went into my mother and father’s bedroom. I opened my mother’s wardrobe. It was empty. She had taken her clothes with her on her travels. She had packed. She had gone. I went downstairs. Into the kitchen. I found her things. Next to the door. Waiting to go into the garage. They were in black plastic bags. Waiting to be thrown into the garage. Ready for the bin man. One bag for her clothes, one bag for her secrets. For her stuff. I took her secrets. A bag full of letters and beads and books and her sketch book and a box. I took that bag. I hid it in my room. Buried within a basket of teddies and dolls. I would keep it for my mother. I wouldn’t look. She could show me when she came back. We could take it with us. When she took me away. When she had found herself an Adam.
When it was time.
I took my mother’s blouse from under my pillow and held it to my nose. I tried to sniff in her smell. But. But already it was fading. I was forgetting. I curled onto my bed. Onto my blue duvet. I curled into a question mark. I held my mother’s blouse tightly to me and I stared out of the window. I stared up to the sky. I watched the day fall into night. My father and some of the neighbours returned home. I heard them chatting and laughing and cheering and singing. I felt their happiness. It kind of stuck into me like a fork. They sat downstairs, smoking and drinking beer out of warm tin cans. They didn’t come into my room.
Life entered into a robotic routine. I existed. I grew. I was quiet. A thoughtful child. I had no friends. I carried the world inside my head. I carried the world on my shoulders. In my hands. There was no room for play. There was no way of playing. I sat. I thought. Always about my mother.
Aunty Maggie gave me a shiny fifty-pence piece. Every Monday evening when my father came to collect me. I saved all of them. And eventually. I was able to buy an Atlas. I held the world in my hand. It was a large hardback book. Glossy. The pages stuck together. New. Crisp. I learned of new places. Unsure if my pronunciation was correct.
Spain…
France…
Scotland…
America…
London…
Libya…Malta…Tibet…Victoria…Boston…
Greenland…
Spain…
France…
Scotland…
America…
London…
Libya…Malta…Tibet…Victoria…Boston…Greenland…
Spain…
France…
Scotland…
America…
London…
Libya…
Malta…
Tibet…
Victoria…
Boston…
Greenland…
Spain…France…Scotland…America…London…
Libya…Malta…Tibet…Victoria…Boston…
Greenland.
I placed a small heart-shaped sticker onto a country. Onto a place. Then. I moved it around each day. I plotted my mother’s travels. I watched her move through my book. I watched her move around the Atlas. I held the world. I held her world. I carried the world with me. Always. Always with me. My room was tidy. Always. I asked for and received so very little. Yet with the uncluttered space came calmness.
I started to write poetry. I started to draw. I spent hours scribbling words. Or sketching my mother. In different countries. Outlines of her, with signs pointing to her next destination. My drawings weren’t very good. They weren’t good enough. I had no photographs of her. My father had taken them all. I tried to sketch her. In case I began to forget. But. I couldn’t capture her ocean eyes. I wasn’t good enough. My drawings were rubbish.
But.
Her eyes.
They penetrated to my soul.
At night.
As I closed my eyes in the cold darkness of my room.
My mother appeared and her eyes warmed me.
I longed for my mother. My precious mother.
As I closed my eyes.
In my darkness.
My mother.
Behind her a signpost.
Pointing.
Four different directions.
All leading to Adam.
All searching for Adam.
Her bag of secrets.
Her bag of her. Still buried. Untouched. Waiting. Waiting for her return.
In the year that followed my mother’s death, my father entertained many women. I would be sent to my room, as he played his records, smoked his cigarettes and drank from cold tin cans. Lionel Ritchie would float through my floorboards. He would dance around my room. I hated his voice. I hated my father’s music. I hated those women who giggled and groaned in my mother’s front room.
The women came and went. Good riddance.
But. But then one woman started coming around more and more and more. It was in December 1980. Just over eight months after my mother went away. I didn’t take much notice at first. Thought she’d be replaced. Like the others. My father liked to have a different woman to visit. A different woman every night. Then. Then she started coming back. More and more. She was in my mother’s house every day. Every night. Her voice was squeakier and her groans were louder than the rest. She called my father babe and she slept in my mother’s bed. She slept under my mother’s purple duvet. She slept on my mother’s sheets.
She was introduced to me.
She was called Rita. Jude pet, come and say hello te Miss North East 1981. Jude meet Reta. I didn’t understand my father’s words. He was smiling. He was excited. Rita’s hair was bleached white and she wore short skirts. Her thighs were really fat and dimply. She wore blue mascara. It clogged on her lashes. Her lips were ruby red and her skin was orange.
She was a monster.
She talked of sunbeds, fake tan and keep-fit videos. She was fat and ugly. She wasn’t like my mother.
My father liked Rita. She kept her toothbrush in our bathroom and within the year after my mother’s death, Rita would walk around my mother’s house without any clothes on. Her breasts were saggy and her nipples were huge. She was hairy. Black hairy. She was scary. She wibble wobbled about. Her fat wibble wobbled about. She smoked cigarettes. Between twenty and twenty-four a day. She drank out of tin beer cans. One two three four five. Sometimes she would wake me in the night. She’d be giggling. Cackling. Squealing. Falling downstairs. Or. Coming into my room. I didn’t like her coming into my room. She banged the door. She cackled. She breathed her nasty smell into my room. Onto my things. I didn’t like Rita. She didn’t smell very nice and her eyes didn’t sparkle.
I missed my mother. As I curled up in bed. I covered my ears so that I couldn’t hear them. I thought of my mother’s ocean eyes. I longed to be with her. Maybe. Maybe one morning I wouldn’t wake up. I’d just go away. I’d go off looking for an Adam too. If I was really lucky. If I wished and wished and wished. Then just maybe I’d wake up in my mother’s arms. She’d have come back for me. If my mother wrapped her thin arms around me. If she pulled me tightly to her. Then. Then I’d be safe and nothing else would matter.
I could sleep. I looked forward to bed. It was the waking that destroyed me.
1981
Two years, six months and twenty-one days before I was born, my parents moved to New Lymouth. From a block of flats that were as high as a giant. My mother’s house was brand new. It was shiny. Spick and span. There were two new estates being built in New Lymouth. The housing estate that I was to live on and another one. They each had four parallel streets and formed a perfect square on either side of the main road.
On this Coast Road, there were The Shops. Dewstep Butchers was also New Lymouth Post Office and displayed a smiling pig’s head in the window. New Lymouth Primary School. My primary school. Was a perfect E-shaped grey building with a flat roof. Mrs Hodgson (Number 2) told Rita that many cuckoos were put in nests on that roof. I didn’t understand. New Lymouth Library was on the Coast Road too. It was a rectangle. Like a shoe box. Inside the library there were eighty-seven Mills and Boon novels and three Roald Dahl books. There were signs everywhere. ‘Absolute silence at all times’. The grumpy librarian liked to read her Introducing Machine Knitting magazine. I read the first chapter of Danny Champion of the World twenty-seven times. I read all of Matilda and The Twits. Thirteen times each.
Brian’s Newsagents stretched across 127-135 Coast Road. Inside the shop I heard gossip being tittled and tattled, as I stood looking at the jars of delicious sweets.
Rhubarb and Custard. Chocolate Raisins. White Gems. Aniseed balls. Coconut Mushrooms. Brown Gems. Cola Cubes. Pear drops. Cherry Lips. Licorice Comfits. Toffee Bonbons. Jelly Beans.