And that was my birth story.
But here’s an inescapable fact about being born. You might live until you’re 101, experience wild success and mountain peaks and dancing monkeys, but however you live and whatever you do, the story of your life will end with a death.
Yours.
That’s the deal. Because the thing about human stories is: they all finish more or less the same way. On the final page. The end.
But because you’re dead you never normally hear that bit. Normally.
THAT LAST CHRISTMAS – our last Christmas – I grew strange to myself. My emotions felt wilder, my moods harder to control. I’d slam doors and cry for weird reasons.
‘Hormones,’ Mum would sigh to Dad when she thought I couldn’t hear.
I’d heard about those. I wasn’t completely sure what they looked like, but I had a feeling they weren’t good. Like dark things flapping about inside me. Like the massive wasps’ nest we’d found behind the wall in Birdie’s bedroom once.
Recently I’d been wondering if there was just a thin wall between me and my hormones too. That if you peeled back my skin there’d be an angry, quivering nest deep within my bones and all my words would turn to buzzes
that
no one
understood.
Other words I heard a lot: Hot-tempered. Temperamental. Moody. Volatile. Quite bolshie, for an eleven-year-old. They were written in my school reports. They were uttered in parent meetings. They were said about me so often that sometimes I didn’t know where I ended and those words began.
And I’m not saying that to excuse all of this – I’m just saying it. In the interests of a balanced debate.
It was the last day of the Christmas holidays. I was in Mum’s study. My best friend Ivy was on the phone.
‘Can you come for lunch at the Crab Pot?’ she asked.
The Crab Pot was the new restaurant down by the harbour. I’d never actually been inside, but I’d heard good things. Its white chocolate cheesecake was the talk of the village. Ivy said it was delicious.
So did Thea Thrubwell.
Thea Thrubwell had been hanging around us for an entire term. She looked like she was angling to become Ivy’s best friend instead of me. I felt like I’d been signed up for an invisible competition that no one was talking about, but which I was frankly losing.
Thea was in Ivy’s Guides group, and I wasn’t.
(I’d been thrown out because of a disagreement with my Guides leader. Well, I called it a disagreement – she called it arson. But I never meant to start a fire during the annual Scouts and Guides fundraiser disco. It was those tea lights that were faulty and, like I told the investigating officer at the time, you didn’t need a Fire Safety Badge to see that.)
Thea had a pony.
Thea had shiny brown hair that didn’t go frizzy in the rain.
Thea hadn’t burnt down any buildings.
Allegedly.
‘Oh, and Thea Thrubwell is coming too. Is that okay?’ said Ivy.
Obviously, it was not okay.
‘I guess that’s okay,’ I said.
Thea Thrubwell was bringing her family too, which was just great.
‘Our mums get on really well,’ said Ivy. ‘They do yoga together in the hall. Well, they did, until it was shut for the refurb—’
‘Mmm.’
‘Okay. See you at See Pee then.’
‘Where?’
Ivy laughed. ‘It’s just what we call it. It’s the initials for Crab Pot. CP?’
‘Oh, yeah. Great. See you at the Pot. That’s just what we call it, me and, er, them.’
I put the phone down and took a few deep breaths. Then I walked to the sitting room.
Arthur Christmas was on the telly for what felt like the hundredth time. Birdie was doing her new jigsaw puzzle. Mum was flicking through a magazine with one eye on the screen. (And the only yoga she was doing was stretching for the bottle of Prosecco by her feet and pouring it into her chipped QUEEN MUM mug.) Dad was fiddling about with paper and kindling in the fireplace.
‘Can we go to the Crab Pot for lunch?’ I said.
‘That pricey place in the harbour?’ Dad looked as enthusiastic as if I’d suggested grabbing a bite at the local crematorium. ‘I guess. One day.’
‘No, can we go today? Ivy’s going with her family and invited us along too. I said we’d go.’
‘You should have checked with us first,’ said Dad, lighting a ball of newspaper in the grate.
‘I’m checking with you now.’
Mum and Dad looked at each other.
‘It’s a nice idea, love,’ said Mum, lifting my hopes, only to dash them again by adding, ‘but we need more notice than that. Also, there’s no point eating out when we’ve got so many leftovers. All that turkey isn’t going to eat itself. Another time.’
‘But if you want a fancy lunch out,’ said Dad, missing the point entirely, ‘how about an al-fresco lunch in the garden? It’s got the best view in the village, and it’s totally free – you can’t argue with that.’
He really did think everything was brilliant if you did it in terrible weather. Even then, he was staring outside at the drizzly rain and churning ocean as if it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
Our house was called Sea View for a reason. A three-hundred-year-old, small fisherman’s cottage built at the top of the highest hill behind Cliffstones, it offered panoramic views of – you guessed it – the sea, from every single room at the back of the house. When Mum and Dad had bought it, it hadn’t had any electricity or running water. As they were fond of reminding us, our house was a labour of love. They’d spent almost every evening and weekend doing it up. Dad had been up on the roof the day of their wedding, and they spent their honeymoon putting in window frames.
And although Dad often talked about it like it was the greatest masterpiece he’d ever done, to be honest with you, I didn’t think it was completely finished. It was rickety.
