Blood Ties: Family is not always a place of safety

Not that she cared that Mary, their regular barmaid, would have already filled all the regulars in on what had gone off. Once perhaps, but she was way past that now. In fact, lately, she realised, she’d even stopped being embarrassed when the locals took the piss over their pints. It was as if they’d even developed a kind of camaraderie with her, complicit in their amusement that Irene could be so thick as to keep falling for all the lines Darren spun her.

‘I wish I had a mother like yours, Kathy,’ one of the estate lads was saying. ‘I’d get fucking robbed every week an’ all.’

His mate burst out laughing, and handed an empty pint glass across for Kathleen to fill. ‘Nah, come on, Gez,’ he ribbed his mate. ‘Shame on you. You’re making out like Darren’s lying! Like he’s not in the bookies every single bleeding day backing anything that moves. Give the poor lad a chance. He’s been robbed blind. Again.’ He winked at Kathleen. ‘Any one of us could be as unlucky as he is.’

Kathleen felt a smile twitch her lips, if only a small one. And for all their ribbing, they were just speaking the truth. She knew it, her dad knew it, Monica probably knew it too – well, if she could find the energy to think about anything other than herself for two minutes at a stretch. No, the fact was that Darren’s problems with gambling were common knowledge, and no one could believe that Irene didn’t know it.

Kathleen pulled a nice top on the beer for him. ‘You’re right,’ she said mildly, glancing from one to the other. ‘My brother is the unluckiest lad in the world, he is. Take no notice of all the gossip. He hasn’t got the gambling fever at all. He’s just got big bloody holes in his pockets.’ She allowed her smile to widen. ‘That and a face that thieves like to punch …’

The two lads roared with laughter and Kathleen laughed with them. This shift – the seven-till-nine one – was the one bright time in her day. With her dad and Irene upstairs having their tea (or tonight, perhaps, throwing it at each other) it was a port in the storm before her dad came down and joined her and Irene did likewise – though her version of work was slightly different; more waltzing around the tap room playing the big ‘I am’.

But for these two hours, she felt free. She felt able to be herself. And it occurred to her that, actually, it was more than just that. For those two hours every day, people actually wanted to talk to her.

For two hours a day she wasn’t invisible.

Chapter 2 (#u73595e65-dd51-52c3-b66d-19de06eedf6d)

Kathleen always tried to wake up before the alarm went off in the mornings, but given how late she’d had to work the previous evening, she was still surprised to find herself staring at the ceiling a full quarter hour before it did.

Not that she couldn’t have predicted it. It was always the same when her dad and stepmum had one of their rows: Irene having one of her convenient migraines come on (because of all the shouting, obviously) then demanding that her dad stay up in the flat with her for the evening, leaving Kathleen to pick up the resultant slack.

Silly old cow, she thought. Pathetic. Though even more pathetic was the way her dad ran around after her all the time. Always had. She lay still a little longer, contemplating the unfairness of it all, then reached across to the brass alarm clock that sat on the chest of drawers that separated her bed from Monica’s, and clicked it off before it started ringing.

The air in the bedroom was cold, despite it supposedly being summer, and the lino beneath her bare feet felt icy. This was her dominion, being first up, braving the cold and – for half the year, at least – the dark, but Kathleen had learned to find a grim satisfaction in her Cinderella status. Always the first up. Always the one brewing the tea, opening the curtains and, in the winter, stoking the fire. Only then would she dare to get her stepbrother and stepsister out of bed – then clean the pub. Only then would her dad and Irene get out of bed.

As she tiptoed out of the bedroom, Kathleen glanced back at her sleeping stepsister and smiled to herself. It was funny, because today and for the next two whole months, they would be the same age. Both seventeen. Two months during which Monica couldn’t drone on about Kathleen being only sixteen. Come her own birthday, of course, Kathleen would start being only seventeen. But she’d enjoy the hiatus while it lasted.

Not that today would be much different to any other day. Yes, it was Kathleen’s birthday, and yes, her dad had promised her he might take her to the pictures to see The Sound of Music, but if past birthdays were anything to go by, she wasn’t going to hold her breath. Instead, she clung to memories of happier times, when her real mother had still been alive. Before she’d died in the car crash, Kathleen’s mum had made every birthday special. Trips out and parties, fancy dresses and visits to family – these were always on the agenda, sometimes all on the same birthday, but that was all a long time ago. Since she was eight – that was the last one, still bright in her memory – a birthday was really no different from any other day. Well, except in so much as they served to remind her of the distance that was growing, and would carry on growing, between her childhood and the place she was now. How much she yearned to grow up, have it gone.

Her arms mottling from the cold, Kathleen pulled a thick cardigan over her nightie and ran downstairs to the bar. It wasn’t time to start the cleaning yet, but this was another of her rituals; to make a rough assessment of how bad it was so she could work out how long it was going to take.

She had to factor in extra time today, as well, it being Saturday, because on Saturdays, as well as cleaning the tap room and toilets, the foyer and back of bar, there was also the best room to give a proper clean. That was a particularly long job because in order to vacuum the enormous expanse of carpet, all the chairs had first to be lifted onto the tables.

She completed her inspection. Two hours, she reckoned, heading back into the foyer to go upstairs again, then she’d have some time to herself for a bit. She was just at the foot of the stairs when the letterbox rattled behind her, as Eddie the postie fed a clutch of letters through the slot. ‘Morning!’ she called out, waving to him through the frosted glass. She liked Eddie. He was a habitually smiling presence in a day often lacking them. He’d also, it seemed, delivered something for her.

Kathleen never got post. After all, who would write to her? Even on this day, her birthday, such cards as she might get would be delivered by hand. She’d had a pen friend once – a wild-looking girl called Ingrid, who lived somewhere in Germany, and would write to Kathleen in halting, sometimes comic English, but once she went to secondary school, it had all fizzled out. Since then, there’d been hardly anything, the only moment of excitement being when she’d written to a nature organisation, as part of a school project about wildlife conservation, and had received several leaflets, a letter and a poster of a tiger, which adorned her part of the bedroom wall for a good two years.

Funny to realise that she actually felt wistful about school now, despite counting the days till she’d left. But perhaps her eagerness to leave was because she saw better things ahead of her, yet, here she was, just over a year later, stuck working in this place, working like a skivvy for a paltry wage.

She scanned the envelope, wondering who on earth it might be from. There was something familiar about the handwriting, though, even if it was all written in capitals, and when she saw the postmark, it dawned on her who the sender might be.

She ripped open the envelope, as she climbed the stairs back up to the flat, smiling as she pulled out what was indeed a birthday card, and from the person she’d thought it might be from – her Auntie Sal. She was thrilled to see a ten-shilling note fluttering out, but then her face fell. This must mean that she wasn’t going to visit. And so it seemed, as she read the short message:

Have a lovely day, Kathleen

So sorry I can’t be there but our Lisa has the mumps. Hope to see you soon, though – just as soon as we’re no longer infectious!

Lots of love, Auntie Sal xxx

Sally McArdle wasn’t really Kathleen’s aunt. She was, in fact, her stepmum’s younger sister. Married to a lovely man called Ronnie (who she called uncle, and who was the blueprint for the sort of man she hoped to marry one day) Sally was the complete opposite of Irene. Blonde, slim and pretty, and with the sort of personality that could light up a room as soon as she entered it, she was everything Irene was not, and, as such, that Irene hated in a woman. Which was part of the reason that Kathleen loved her so much.

Auntie Sally lived in Thornton, which was two buses away, so she wasn’t able to visit all that often. But when she did, she always spoiled Kathleen rotten. She’d bring her a new jumper or something, and always a bar of Fry’s Chocolate Cream. She also shouted at Irene if she was being nasty to Kathleen, which meant she shouted at Irene quite a lot.

Kathleen could never quite fathom how you could have the joy of a proper sister (as opposed to Monica, who she’d never grace with that name, despite her dad, from day one, always suggesting she should) and manage to hate her so much. Kathleen would have loved a sister – or a brother, just a sibling to call her own – but Irene didn’t seem to like Sally at all; she called her all sorts of names behind her back, and hated it when she visited. She had even accused Kathleen’s dad of fancying her. ‘You’d love to get her into the kip wouldn’t you, you dirty old get!’ she’d yelled once after Sally had left. ‘I’ve seen the way you leer at her.’ That had been followed by the usual four-hour argument, with her dad having to crawl round Irene and tell her how beautiful she was and how he didn’t ever want anyone else. It made Kathleen want to puke.

The kettle was whistling on the stove so she quickly propped the birthday card up on the breakfast table before filling the teapot. It was a huge blue ceramic thing and weighed half a ton, but a year of working long hours in the pub had built up her muscles. She might be downtrodden, but she was young, fit and strong, and that pleased her, even if it was just another reason for Irene and Monica, both short and podgy, to resent her.

She spotted Irene’s cigarettes on the windowsill and pinched one to smoke while the tea brewed. She did this most mornings, and didn’t feel a shred of guilt about it. Irene made sure half her wages got taken straight off her for her board and lodgings, so there was never enough left to justify buying her own Woodbines – and certainly not when her stupid stepmother was so careless with her own. It was another ritual she enjoyed before the rest of the family rose. The back door of the flat opened out onto a small section of flat roof with a railing round it, from when the last owners of the Dog and Duck kept their dog there. Now it served as a sort of patio, perfectly placed as a sun trap, and though her table and chair were an upturned beer crate and a wonky stool respectively, it always felt a treat to be out there, out of the way, with just her own thoughts for company.

Despite the nip in the air, the sun was shining and the day looked like being glorious, so Kathleen lingered as long as she could before going back in to start rousing the family. Darren was first; he needed to be off soon for his early start down at the hospital, and as she went into his bedroom her nose was immediately assaulted by the stale, smelly air that filled the room. What was it with lads and their bodily functions? It was the same in the gents downstairs in the pub. The ladies was never half as bad.

‘Daz! It’s half seven,’ she whispered, shaking him awake. ‘Time to get up.’

Darren rubbed his eyes and yawned, adding another gust of fetid air into the room. He looked done in and Kathleen wondered what time he’d come in the previous evening. He was a closed one – you never really knew what was going on in his head. Not these days, anyway. Not since he’d left school, really.

He sat up and rubbed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. ‘Ooh, is there some tea on, our kid?’ he asked, as if there wasn’t tea on every morning. Still, at least Darren appreciated how much she did.

‘Course there is,’ she said. ‘But you’d better hurry up. And don’t you be falling back to sleep,’ she added, fanning her face in the wake of another gale of foul air, ‘because I’m not coming back in here again, you smelly get!’

She left Darren and trotted along the corridor back to her and Monica’s room. It wasn’t much of a room, really – not like the big bedrooms that people always seemed to share on telly – just two beds, a chest between them, a wardrobe and a sink. A tight squeeze for two girls and all their things. Well, all Monica’s things, mostly, because she had so many more of them, so she had three drawers to Kathleen’s one, and took up most of the space in the wardrobe – in fact, Kathleen had never really considered it to be her room. It felt like Monica’s, right down to the horrible brown velvet curtains she’d chosen, which sucked all the life from the room, even when they were open, making everything seem relentlessly dark and dingy.

‘Time to get up, Mon,’ Kathleen whispered now. Monica wasn’t what you’d call a ‘good’ waker.

‘Oh, piss off, Kathleen,’ she growled. ‘It can’t be half past yet.’

‘It’s twenty to eight,’ Kathleen corrected. ‘Come on, Mon, get up. And hey, guess what?’ she added, unable to resist it. ‘Me and you are the same age now. How crazy is that?’

Monica groaned and wriggled herself up into a sitting position. First thing in the morning, before she’d applied all her war paint, Monica looked a lot like Darren. Same eyes, same rounded chin. They weren’t that close, though. Darren was too much Irene’s golden boy for that to happen. Mostly on account of simply being the boy. Kathleen didn’t think Irene liked females in general. ‘Oh, yeah, I forgot,’ she said groggily. ‘It’s your birthday today, innit? Well, many happy returns and all that.’ She flapped a dismissive hand. ‘Now piss off out while I get dressed.’

‘Dressed’ in Monica’s case didn’t really cover it. It was a full twenty minutes after Darren had left (and in a right arse because it was the biggest racing day of the week so he hated working every other Saturday) before she appeared in the kitchen, done up to the nines. Monica told everyone she was a hair stylist, but in reality she was no more than a bit of a dogsbody for Carol, who ran the local hairdresser’s from her house on the estate. Carol operated from her back room and the majority of her clients were pensioners, and as they mostly wanted curly perms, Monica’s job mainly consisted of winding perm curlers around grey hair and sweeping up. Not that she’d ever admit that. Far from it. She liked to give the impression she was working at a fashionable top-end salon, and dolled herself up accordingly. Immaculate hair and make-up, mini skirt and heels – all to go run around after Carol and her pensioners all day.

Still, Kathleen conceded, at least she made an effort. Perhaps it was good that she acted like she did – you never knew. Perhaps one day Monica would work in some fancy city-centre salon, whereas Kathleen could see little for herself in the future, other than toiling away in the pub, running around after her horrible stepmother, and for what? Out of some stupid idea that she couldn’t leave her dad. That he needed her to stay there. That if she left and found something better, they’d be somehow broken. Like she was abandoning him, leaving him, just like her mum had.

She was busy taking her frustrations out on the beer pumps when her dad wandered down. ‘Morning, lass,’ he said coming round to join her behind the bar. ‘By ’eck, you’re doing a grand job of them brasses, girl. I can see my face in them.’

He made a big show of looking, too, turning his chin one way then another. She wondered if he’d remembered that it was her birthday, but decided not to give him an opportunity to prove that he might have forgotten. If he had, then she’d rather not know. So she helped him.

‘Morning, Dad,’ she said brightly. ‘Did you see the card upstairs from Auntie Sal? That was nice of her, wasn’t it? Shame she can’t come and see us, though.’

‘I did, lass,’ he said. ‘And don’t you worry. I haven’t forgot. Happy birthday, love,’ he added, giving her a cuddle.

She decided she believed him anyway. ‘Well, what with yesterday and all that, I thought you might have. I wouldn’t blame you if you did,’ she added, even though she would – deep down, she would. ‘Anyway, we still off to the pictures, then?’

It was only then that she realised her dad had something for her behind his back, but there was something in his expression that signalled not all was well. He handed her an envelope with her name on, and a large paper bag. ‘I can’t do it, love,’ he said, his face a picture of guilt and misery. ‘I completely forgot the brewery were due this afternoon. Completely forgot. Well, till your mam reminded me. But we’ll do it another day,’ he promised, gesturing towards the bag now in her hand. ‘Go on, take a look, lass. I think you’ll like what we’ve got you, at least.’

Kathleen thanked her dad through gritted teeth. Trust Irene to mess things up on her birthday. Not that she’d expected any less, because Irene was a cow, but couldn’t her dad, just for once, find the guts to go against her? To tell her that no matter what, he was going to do something with his own daughter, and she could piss off and see the brewery men without him?

But expecting that was like expecting it to snow in July. It wasn’t going to happen, and that was that. She opened the bag, already knowing that the present was going to be a record, and it was. And the one she most wanted. She felt a rush of affection for her dad then, for going into Smith’s and getting it. For caring enough to know exactly what to choose. It was ‘I Got You Babe’ by Sonny and Cher, Kathleen’s current favourite song – and everyone else’s pretty much, because it was currently number one, and might even have been sold out before he got there.