Afterwards, my father set out to paint the downstairs, at Winsome’s encouragement, in a shade of terracotta called Umbrian Sunrise. Because he did not discriminate with his brush between wall, skirting board, window frame, light switch, power outlet, door, hinge or handle, progress was initially swift. But my mother was beginning to describe herself as a conscientious objector where domestic matters were concerned. Eventually the work of cleaning and cooking and washing became solely his and he never finished. Even now, the hallway at Goldhawk Road is a tunnel of terracotta to midway. The kitchen is terracotta on three sides. Parts of the living room are terracotta to waist height.
Ingrid cared about the state of things more than I did when we were young. But neither of us cared much that things which broke were never repaired, that the towels were always damp and rarely changed, that every night my father cooked chops under the grill on a sheet of tinfoil laid over the piece from the night before, so that the bottom of the oven gradually became a millefeuille of fat and foil. If she ever cooked, my mother made exotic things without recipes, tagines and ratatouilles distinguishable from each other only by the shape of the capsicum pieces, which floated in liquid tasting so bitterly of tomato that in order to swallow a mouthful I had to close my eyes and rub my feet together under the table.
*
Patrick and I were a part of each other’s childhoods; there was no need for us, newly coupled, to share the particulars of our early lives. It became an ongoing competition instead. Whose was worse?
I told him, once, that I was always the last one picked up from birthday parties. So late, the mother would say, I wonder if I should give your parents a ring. Replacing the receiver after a period of minutes, she would say not to worry, we can try again later. I became part of the tidying up, then the family supper, leftover cake. It was, I told Patrick, excruciating. At my own parties, my mother drank.
He stretched, pretending to limber up. ‘Every single birthday party I had between the ages of seven and eighteen was at school. Thrown by Master. The cake came from the drama department prop cupboard. It was plaster of Paris.’ He said, good game though.
*
Mostly, Ingrid rings me when she is driving somewhere with the children because, she says, she can only talk properly when everyone is restrained and, in a perfect world, asleep; the car is basically a giant pram at this point. A while ago, she called to tell me she had just met a woman at the park who said she and her husband had separated and now had half-half custody of their children. The handover took place on Sunday mornings, the woman told her, so they both had one weekend day each on their own. She had started going to the cinema by herself on Saturday nights and had recently discovered that her ex-husband goes by himself on Sunday nights. Often it turns out they have chosen to see the same film. Ingrid said the last time it was X-Men: First Class. ‘Martha, literally have you ever heard anything more depressing? It’s like, just go the fuck together. You will both be dead soon.’
Throughout childhood our parents would separate on a roughly biannual basis. It was always anticipated by a shift in atmosphere that would occur usually overnight and even if Ingrid and I never knew why it had happened, we knew instinctively that it was not wise to speak above a whisper or ask for anything or tread on the floorboards that made a noise, until our father had put his clothes and typewriter into a laundry basket and moved into the Hotel Olympia, a bed and breakfast at the end of our road.
My mother would start spending all day and all night in her repurposing shed at the end of the garden, while Ingrid and I stayed in the house by ourselves. The first night, Ingrid would drag her bedding into my room and we would lie top and tail, kept awake by the sound of metal tools being dropped on the concrete floor and the whining, discordant folk music our mother worked to, carrying in through our open window.
During the day she would sleep on the brown sofa that Ingrid and I had been asked to carry out for that purpose. And despite a permanent sign on the door that said ‘GIRLS: before knocking, ask self – is something on fire?’， before school I would go in and collect dirty plates and mugs and, more and more, empty bottles so that Ingrid wouldn’t see them. For a long time, I thought it was because I was so quiet that my mother did not wake up.
I do not remember if we were scared, if we thought this time it was real, our father was not coming back, and we would naturally acquire phrases like ‘my mum’s boyfriend’ and ‘I left it at my dad’s,’ using them as easily as classmates who claimed to love having two Christmases. Neither of us confessed to being worried. We just waited. As we got older, we began to refer to them as The Leavings.