patiently.
âWhy?â Dad asked. He eased the cat out of the way with his foot and returned the milk to the fridge.
âI was thinking I might go and see her some time.â I kept my voice light and casual. â âNight, Dad.â I took my cup and went upstairs slowly, sipping at it while I walked. I couldnât even begin to explain why I wanted to see my mother after all those years, except that maybe it was something to do with Helen. I would have liked my mother to meet her, I suppose.
I listened to the tape again. My head was full of Helen now; brimming with her. I lay in bed and couldnât sleep for thinking of her. A new verse for the song started buzzing inmy head, and I decided to go downstairs and have some toast and marmalade and write it down.
And there was Dad, still sitting in the front room with a cup of cold Ovaltine in his hands, just staring at the way the sleet pattered and slid against the window panes.
February
----
I donât think I would have dared to ask those questions about my mother if it hadnât been for what had happened between Helen and me. I felt as if I was peering through a door into another room in my life. I wanted to know now what kind of a person my mother was; even if it hurt, I wanted to know. Once upon a time she and my father had loved each other, when he was a young man and she was a girl. I knew that this house that we lived in was the house he had been born in, and that he had looked after his parents here till they died. What must it have been like for my mother, coming here as a new wife? I knew she was younger than him. Had the house been full of ghosts for her? Old furniture, faded carpets, brown photographs; Grandadâs carver chair; Grandmaâs teaset; the polished wooden cutlery canteen; the chiming clock. I never knew my grandparents, but their presence is here, all right. But when I tried to imagine my mother here, it was as if I was holding up a candle inside a darkened room and noticing things for the first time because they looked so different now. There were no ghosts of my mother in the house. None at all.
It had taken me days to write the letter to her. Helen had helped me, and then we had started it again and rewritten it several times.
âAre you sure youâre doing the right thing?â Helen asked me. âYou wonât bring her back, you know. Not after all this time.â
But I didnât want to bring her back. I wanted to meet her again, that was all. I think I just wanted to believe in her, if you know what I mean. The mother in my memories was someone who read stories to me at night and held my hand to cross the road. She didnât fit in anywhere now. It was as if shewasnât real any more.
I carried the letter round in my pocket for a few days and in the end Helen posted it for me. After a couple of weeks I stopped looking out for a reply. I was nothing to my mother, after all. I was a speck of dust, and I had blown away. But when her letter came after nearly a month all I could think about was showing it to Helen. We were going out together that evening, out to the moors in the dark, and then for a drink. My letter was a warm secret in my pocket, waiting to be shared.
It was the night of the total eclipse of the moon, which had been promised for 6.52. It was all a great disappointment, the whole thing. The sky was completely covered in cloud that night, it was drizzling, and Helen was in a rotten mood.
We had taken a bus out to Fox House so we could see the eclipse away from the orange glare of the city lights. We walked up the track towards the moors, below Stanage Edge. In the darkness sheep rustled through the sodden ferns.
âI canât tell which direction weâre supposed to be looking in, even,â moaned Helen.
âTry up.â I put my arm round her. âA quarter of a million miles up.â She tensed away from me. Itâs not like her to be