Her father Zak was a gentle man, a drummer, the only white member of a ska band who had never quite made it, but who took drugs as though they had. Weed at first, irie and easy, no problem, but as the fortunes of the band dwindled and then plummeted, so Zak’s need to find his highs had increased. He was dangerously available for any diversion. Some were good. He wrote poetry, he helped people fix their cars, he kept an eye on Hope and her sister Glory when Doris went out to work, cleaning at the University of Bristol. He tried to quieten his frustrated inner voices with keeping busy, but inadequacy is a ferocious loud nag. The only time he had any peace from his demons was when he was sucking on a sweet sweet joint, when time stopped for a sweet sweet while. Then that wasn’t enough.
Zak had easily been persuaded to try heavier drugs. He liked the stories of how ‘golden’ his old band-mates felt, and how nothing bad inhabited them when they had these kinds of remarkable high. He was so desperate to forget his troubles that he only listened to their stories of ecstasy; he totally overlooked their sunken eyes, their loss of energy, and teeth, and reality … and loved ones. He craved the release from all responsibilities. At first. Then he craved it for itself. For its greedy jealous hold over him. He forgot to love his family more than the drug and, before long, the ravenous drug was almost his only love, to the painful exclusion of everyone else including his beloved girls. Heroin stole all his love.
Hope’s mum Doris had smoked a bit of weed occasionally back then, but she had been too afraid to get involved with smack. She watched Zak disappear into the fug of it, though, and rather than face up to the devastating impact it was having on them all, witnessing him gouched out so much of the time, she turned to her friends down the pub for support and comfort, those who had already turned to alcohol for support and comfort. She was too ashamed to confront her daughters with the awfulness of the situation, so she escaped to the pub and to vodka with orange. Her new best friend. Over a period of a year, Hope and Glory experienced the creeping neglect of both parents.
It might have been easier if Zak and Doris had been unkind parents you’d be glad to have less of, but that was palpably not the case. Zak was still the gentle funny dad they’d always loved; it was just that now he was the comatose version, either off his face or desperate to be, or very shaky and ill because he had been the night before. Their mum was still their mum, but either the embarrassing loud and drunk one or the grumpy hungover one.
When she was fourteen, Hope had had to go to Glory’s parents’ evening because neither parent showed up and Glory rang her in tears. ‘They bloody promised they’d be here, Hope, PROMISED, to my face! How could they do this to me?’
‘Hang on, don’t move. I’ll be right there.’ Hope had raced back to the school, hugged her furious, hurt sister, and then hurriedly explained to the various waiting teachers, ‘Sorry Mum and Dad can’t come, they’ve both … got … a terrible bug, so if it’s OK, I’ll be Glory’s stand-in mum for now. I’ll tell them everything you say, yeah?’
No one on the staff had been fooled. They had taught both girls since primary school and knew the family well. Of course they’d noticed the girls weren’t quite so fresh any more, they’d both become tattier and definitely a bit thinner. There were rumours in the staffroom about the well-being of them both, and about their home life, but they remained rumours; no one came calling to check on the sisters back then. There were so many more critical cases than theirs for the social workers to consider. So they slipped under the radar, these two valiant sisters, and Hope grew up very quickly.
Sometimes, on the days her mother was particularly frail and groggy, Hope would skip school to accompany her to work. No one seemed to mind that Doris’s daughter was with her. Furthermore, no one seemed to notice that it was mainly Hope doing the actual cleaning on those days while Doris slept it off in a chair. When she was sober, Doris was massively grateful to Hope, and she would apologize by buying her delicious pizza on the way home. They would laugh and walk arm in arm as they always had, and for a tiny while, it would all be like it used to be, and Hope would have a small ‘catching of happiness’ … until they walked in at home and Dad was out for the count …
The family kept doors firmly shut to outsiders. The secret of these darker notes in their life was to remain exactly that: secret. Even Doris’s family were kept at arms’ length, meaning that the sisters were starved of contact with their cousins and their uncles whom they loved so much. Occasionally there would be a ruckus when one of Doris’s brothers would turn up to confront them. They shouted from outside when their entrance was barred, imploring Zak or Doris to open up or at least let the girls out to spend time with the family. But no. Sometimes
