My sisters and I were putting on a play, just like we did most summers at Seaglass, and the empty chairs for the ‘audience’ were filled with teddy bears and dolls. I don’t remember how or when the annual Darker family plays started. Like most family traditions, it became something we always did simply because it was something we had always done.
Dad’s piano had been wheeled out onto the lawn, with some considerable team effort. That would have made him cross, which is perhaps why my mother let us do it. She loved to see us singing, or dancing or acting. Nothing seemed to bring her more joy. Nancy loved all things theatrical. She always helped with the costumes and the choreography, and was our most enthusiastic member of the audience, whooping and cheering while Nana and Mr Kennedy just clapped. I remember that was the first year my sisters allowed me to have a speaking role. Rose and Conor were fourteen, Lily was thirteen, and I was nine.
The fabric of the relationship with my sisters has been repeatedly stretched, torn and restitched over the years. A patchwork quilt of antiquated love and lies, born out of duty and expectation. We are supposed to love our family. It’s an unspoken rule. Whenever I see pictures of other families, their happy faces all covered in matching smiles, I find myself wondering whether it is real. Or if the happiness they’re portraying is simply a mask worn for the sake of others. Surely all families have fights, and disagreements and conflict . . . maybe the way we were with one another was more normal than I thought. We all have our own version of the truth, and it is rarely whole.
As always, our play that year was a strange mix of stories from our favourite films, blended into an elaborate tale of our own. It’s clear that 1984 was a year when we were all into Star Wars. Lily walks out onto the ‘stage’ dressed as Princess Leia, with her plaited hair in giant buns on either side of her head. She stands on top of the upturned blue boat and starts talking about a galaxy far, far away. Before she finishes, I see nine-year-old me hurry out of the kitchen door and sit down at the piano. I avoid eye contact with the audience or my co-stars the whole time – I was always horribly shy compared to my sisters – possibly even more than normal on that occasion, because I was dressed as Gizmo from Gremlins.
We were a musical family before our composition changed. Some families know all the lyrics to one another’s songs and live in harmony, but not us. My sisters showed little interest in following in our father’s footsteps after he divorced our mother – Rose dabbled with the recorder, and Lily could just about keep time with a tambourine – but I always enjoyed playing the piano. I used to play imaginary notes on the kitchen table when I couldn’t play the real thing, my fingers silently moving to a melody that could only be heard in my imagination. Nana said that I sometimes did it while holding her hand, and that she occasionally saw my fingers twitching even when I was in bed, as though playing the piano in my sleep. My dad was so proud and pleased that I had shown an interest in what he loved most, music. And he was the real reason I played, desperate to earn his affection. I was definitely a daddy’s girl when I was a child, but he could never live up to the man I turned him into inside my head.
I was still delighted when he appeared in the garden at Seaglass that afternoon. He had a frown on his face as he sat down next to Nancy in the audience. I presumed it was because his precious piano was outside, but now I think it might have been more to do with the other man sitting next to my mother. Dad smiled when I started to play, and it made all the hours of practice seem worthwhile. Rose was tone-deaf, and Lily had as much rhythm as an arrhythmia. Playing the piano was the only thing that I was better at than my sisters. By the age of nine, I’d taught myself to play rather well.
It is fourteen-year-old Rose’s turn to take the stage next. She was just about young enough to still take part in the family play, although I doubt she would have told her friends at school about it. Rose is dressed as a ghostbuster, and I think it was by far the best home-made costume that year. I play a little bit of the film’s theme tune as she walks out, and Lily glares at me when I get a couple of the notes wrong. I remember how bad that made me feel, even though I had practised for days. The story we were trying to tell – about a princess, a gremlin and a ghostbuster – makes as little sense to me now as it did then. But I get goosebumps when teenage Rose starts to sing.
‘Hush, little baby, don’t be afraid,
The beds we lie in are the ones we made.
And if that means you can’t sleep at night,