Mice Read Free

stone, the varnished oak mantelpiece, the neat little lozenge shapes of the mock-Tudor windows. I loved the worn wooden staircase, with the fourth stair from the bottom that squealed loudly no matter where you placed your foot on it. I loved my bedroom with its exposed beams and the built-in window seat, where I could sit and read for hours in the purest, clearest light I’d ever known. I loved opening the curtains in the morning and seeing a patchwork of ploughed fields, instead of the identical red-brick ‘executive homes’ of suburbia, each with its BMW or Mercedes parked on the drive outside. Most of all, I enjoyed being able to drag a chair into the back garden, where I’d sit and watch the clouds slowly forming and re-forming in the sky above me like melting wax in a lava lamp.
    Staring up at the sky, I liked to imagine that I lived in a simpler, more innocent time – ideally a time before there were any human beings at all, when the earth was one vast green paradise and cruelty, hurting for the pleasure of hurting, was completely unknown.

3
    Mum had been a brilliant young lawyer, headhunted by a top London law firm while she was still at university. She’d taken the job on graduating, but it hadn’t worked out for her. She’d hated living in London, with the aggressive crowds, the packed rush-hour tubes, the drunken winos with their bloodied faces ( London is no place for a mouse to live ), and after four years she’d decided to move to the country. She took a job at Everson’s, the largest law firm in town and that was where she’d met my dad, eight years her senior and already a partner. After dating for little more than six months, he’d asked her to marry him.
    I’ve often wondered, given how different they were and how the marriage was to end, why Dad chose her and why she let herself be chosen by him. I’ve no doubt he was attracted to Mum – her wedding photographs show how pretty she was, with her dark features and bashful smile. But I’m sure he also saw a challenge in conquering the heart of this awkward, stand-offish girl with her first-class degree and imposing reputation for procedural brilliance. Maybe after Mum’s experiences in London (her flat was burgled, her handbag snatched in broad daylight) she wanted someone strong like Dad to protect her. Perhaps she thought that his strength would magically rub off on her. It might just have been his good looks and smooth charm that won her over; Dad was always suave – even as a little girl I was jealously aware of the effect his easy smile had on other women.
    When I was born four years later, my dad insisted Mum give up work in order to stay at home and look after me full-time. He didn’t want his daughter being passed around from nanny to nanny like some parcel, he said; he didn’t want his daughter coming home from school to an empty house because both parents were out working, he said; his salary was more than enough for us to live on and there wasn’t any need for them both to work, he said. His insistence had nothing to do (of course) with the fact that Mum was on the verge of being made a partner herself. It had nothing to do (of course) with the fact that she was generally held to be the best lawyer in the firm and that her quicksilver mind often left him feeling inadequate and stupid.
    Mum dutifully did what he wanted. He knew best, after all; he was older, he was a partner, he was a man . How could she have resisted him, even if she’d wanted to? How can a mouse resist the cat? So she gave up the job she loved, and for the next fourteen years dedicated herself to looking after me and the house – cooking, shopping, washing, ironing – while my dad gradually worked his way up to become senior partner at Everson’s.
    When he walked out on her, she was forty-six years of age. Her legal knowledge was hopelessly out of date – withered away like fruit left to moulder on the tree. Her solicitor’s practising certificate hadn’t