Last week you may remember that I had got into trouble staring at Gloria’s Bermuda Triangle, and broken Acker Bilk’s manager’s ankle. This week we’re going to Corsica.

I surface in a river. The water is cold and clear.  I am told I must wear a T-shirt at all times. Fine. I enjoy the iciness. I can feel the current around my waist. I am wearing a swimming mask that l have to push hard on my forehead to make it watertight. It leaves a red line when I take it off.  I push it on and dive. This is what it must feel like to be a piece of ice in my father’s Vodka flowing down his throat.

I’m in Corsica with my mother. We have driven the entire length of France from New Malden to Marseilles. The engine of the Renault is old and overheats. To keep it cool we need to keep the car heating on full blast. This runs cool air through the engine. We swelter. We need to keep the windows closed. There is no choice.

My mother has a new boyfriend. His name is Tim, he is a naval officer. She met him at a cocktail party at the French Embassy. He is a naval engineer. He knows that the way to keep the car on schedule to meet the ferry in Marseilles is to keep the engine from overheating. It is like being in an engine room. As we get closer to Marseille, temperatures are in the high 30’s. The heat in the car exceeds the heat outside the car.  Thea begs him to let her open the window.

He refuses.

 She won’t back down.

Zip it. Barks Tim.

I hold my breath.

She zips it.

We can have the car window open a tiny crack when Tim lights up. Tim smokes as much as my dad. I become obsessed with his cigarettes. They both smoke Rothmans though. I know what Rothmans mean.

We are staying in a small villa in the middle of nowhere. We are surrounded by miles of Maquis. My mother has saved all her holiday, and this house is hers for a month. She has rented us too. We will be returned in the same way she will return the keys.

I think it must have an experiment, a step-through, a dress rehearsal to see how a new family might fit together. The first thing that happens, as they open the outer shutters, a huge wasp, one which a hunter would be proud to bag, flies up, circles and stings my leg.  I cry out in pain, and tears swell up.

My mother takes me indoors and makes me lie face-down on the bed. She removes a sting with tweezers and pops up a suppository up my bottom whilst she is at it.  From experience, I know that this isn’t something to tell Gloria and Dad.

Meanwhile, Tim has found the wasp’s nest. It looks like a mushroom, with about fifty chambers inside.  It reminds me of Mushroom clouds which my cousin told me about. There is a thing called Nuclear war, and if it happens we will be vapourised. Tim has found a hose and is squeezing the tip to create a jet. The nest collapses into pieces. Furious wasps run screaming in all directions.

My bottom feels wet and uncomfortable as we sit down to dinner.

The next day we go walking.

We wade up the pristine gorge. It's August 1981, but we could be Neanderthals. We are alone but for the presence of 40 million years of erosion.  We feel their presence and the timelessness of our actions.  My mother’s hair is long and gleaming black. The pointed tip of her wet ponytail taps her brown shoulders as we walk upwards, against the current.

The stones at the bottom of the river hypnotise you with smoothness. I dive down and try to pick them up. When I break the surface, I push them up like shot-puts, they fly for a moment and splash back under to watch them see-saw sink and clink when they hit bottom.

I am thankful to be with my mother again. I want to please her with my muscles. I have a special feeling in my shoulders

Now that we are together again, I will make up for lost time. I will stand next to her when she is cooking. Pick up heavy things from the ground and hand them to her. I will follow her as she moves through the Villa. I will help with anything that she wants. She won’t have to do a thing, her presence is enough for me.  I will watch over her in the icy river.

I hold my breath, dive down again and try to lift a huge stone from the riverbed, my fingers slip away from it. I come back up. Tim and my mother are holding hands.

He is not my father.

My father, my dad, he walks into the living rooms covered in ketchup whilst we are all watching Zombie Flesh Eaters. It’s hilarious. Tim is none of that. He hasn’t made me laugh once yet.

My father has muscles from lugging tyres around, Tim runs along the lanes in the morning. I have never seen my father run. Tim talks about keeping fit.

It takes a couple of days for Thea to get the measure of Corsica, and once her internal report is finished, she kicks off. And I mean she KICKS OFF.  She’s bored. She has a boyfriend who she wants to see. Corsica is too hot. There is no television.  There are no kids to play with, only a freezing river that we wade up and down in. I can see my mother’s heart begin to crack again. No!!!!!! I want to put my hands over Thea’s mouth and stop her talking. STOP. STOP. You don’t understand. As my mother breaks, I break. I stand closer to her as if to say, I’m not going anywhere. I am the bodyguard of her heart.

But Thea can’t stop. She is sad and she has a genius for capturing people’s attention. She alternates anger with fits of proper wretched tears. She is soon in a place beyond words. I spend my time on a swing rocking back and forwards. I find it soothing. My sister still won’t stop crying. When she cries, I cry. I follow her around. To and fro. To and fro. More days pass. I can’t eat anymore. There are three more weeks of this except there isn’t.

My mother drives into town and rings my father. He and Gloria agree to fly to Paris Charles De Gaulle airport and to meet Thea and me off the Corsica plane. If we can get a flight. The next day, we fly as unaccompanied minors on Air-France. A 12-year-old girl with a Marilyn Monroe beauty spot and teeth like a bunny, and me.  I feel dead as an aircraft hostess holds my hand up the aircraft steps. I feel dead inside as we take off.

We’ve left our mother in Departures. I have never seen a woman more lifeless. Tim is holding her up. I can’t wait to be as far away from my mother as possible.  Every mile I am away from my mother’s pain I feel a little better. Every year I am away from it, adds another mile. There is no film, there are no headphones, only the thick stitching of the back of the seat in front of us for entertainment.

When we meet Gloria and Dad at the airport, I run towards them. They are the king and queen of distractions. Please, please distract me, my heart is broken.

The return from Corsica marked the beginning of some deep changes between Gloria and Dad. We found out about them in a Chinese Restaurant called the Richmond Rendezvous.

As we climb into the deep bucket seats of the white XJS. I notice something immediately. This isn’t the same car. It looks the same, but it isn’t the same. Same, same, different.

The smell of black leather is even more nauseating and overwhelming than when we had left for Corsica.

I look around to double-check. There are no marks on the leather. 

Please open the window!

What happened to the other car?

The other car?

The other car, my clever lad, got wrapped around a set of Victorian gates. Whilst you were away.

In Richmond Park adds Gloria.

By my dear Lady wife. The wheels splayed out like duck’s feet. 

Before he says another word, she leans in with a kiss. Thank you.

No problem.

I honestly thought you were more under the limit than me. 

I said don’t worry about it. No problem.

You said you’d only had four drinks.

Peter Black will sort it out. He can sort anything out.

I have heard the name Peter Black before. He is the man my father used to win custody of Thea and Me.

He’ll get me off. Without a shadow of a doubt.

Inside the Richmond Rendezvous orders have been taken and we are waiting for Peking Duck. At the table, Thea plays with my father’s packet of cigarettes. She is watching my father with her dark twinkling eyes. I play with the wax of the table candle. He moves the plate from in front of him, he takes one of the cigarettes and places it in front of him.

Thea, do you believe that I can make this cigarette cross the length of this table, without touching it, and with just a little bit of static electricity?

We know static electricity.

Thea shakes her head. Gloria smiles. My eyes are fully open.

He takes his two thumbs and looks around.

Who's got the best electric hair?

He looks between Gloria and Thea. He chooses Thea. Gloria looks at the floor for a moment and smooths the back of her hair. He then rubs his thumbs on Thea’s head in circular motions. This is the way he makes balloons stick to walls at Christmas. Some of her hair stand up.

He then takes his thumbs and gently rubs them to the left and right of the single Rothman. Nothing. He tries again. Nothing.

Let me get some more electricity. He rubs Thea’s head even harder. This time when he rubs his thumbs the cigarette rolls accelerate off the edge of the table. I dive under the table and place it in front of him to do it again.

I look at my father’s hands. He has thick fingers on the left, but on the right hand, three fingers are stubby. The index finger has a joint missing. The middle finger is shorter than the index finger. They are covered in scar tissue. Often when I climbed into bed with Gloria and dad on a Saturday morning, I used to grab my father’s hand, hold it up in both my hands and study it deeply. There is scar tissue in between the fingers from a skin graft. There are scars on the back of his legs where the skin came from. It looks painful, but as I prod and touch the scars, I see that it doesn’t. My father can even squeeze the scars from the stitches and small worms of dirt come out. They are called blackheads. I ask him to do this again and again and am disappointed when there are no blackheads. I am obsessed with his hand. It feels like a strange bit of a fairy story in real life.

Meanwhile, Thea, who can read French and English, now begins a performance.  She reads out what is on the side of the packet in a sultry French accent. Thea looks at him with big eyes, fluttering between doubt and certainty. Gloria watches carefully. Gloria is from Harrogate and she is intimidated by anything French.

Rothmans!

KING SIZE!

She pronounces ‘SIZE’ like Zizi! The French world of Penis! We all fall about.

King Penis!!

Double Smoooze Filter TIPEU!

PLUSSS ZEEE EXTRA LENGTH!

When I look at the packet now I see what it is doing. I see what smoking is doing.

This is the salesman’s cigarette. This is an unfinished ego needing armour. A body of smoke around a soul. This is my father’s masculinity. He smokes 40 a day.

Gloria catches my father’s eye and nods.

Ah. We have a surprise.

What Surprise?

You’ll have to guess.

Thea and I look at each other.

We’re going on holiday to China! I say.

No.

Walt Disney World?  (There had been a lot of talk about Disney)

No.

We’re going to move house!

No…Maybe. Why would someone move house?

Because…

I could have guessed by this point. I had been with Gloria all week and we had been to the doctors, I had played with a car and looked out of the corner of my eye when she was lying on an examination table with her legs up.

Because you’re going to have a little brother or sister.

In-take of breath! Eyes light up! Excitement! Tears! We are a family at joy.

Crispy duck arrives. The waiter shreds it into strands in front of us.

In six months, there will be someone new in our little family.

I think it’s going to be a boy.

So do I says my dad.

I don’t mind says, Thea.

Neither do I says Gloria.

There is a way of finding out, my father says.

If, when I pour out the final glass of wine into this glass and a drips forms, it will be a girl. If it pours out in one go, without a drip forming, it will be a boy.

This makes little sense.

What’s the difference between a drip and a drop?

A drop is a drip that has dropped, says Thea.

He pours the bottle over the glass from a height. There are drops. There is no final hanging drip.

It’s a boy! We all cheer. I’m going to have a brother I think. I am ecstatic.

The bottle knows the answer to everything.

My father asks the restaurant manager if they have Flaming Sambucas. Like in the Italian up the street. They don’t. He orders us all more Plum Wine instead.

My father’s life depends on driving.  He is the kind of businessman that answers the phone from a customer at any time. He is capable of answering the phone in the middle of the night, driving to the warehouse, chucking a couple of truck tyres in the boot of his car, driving to the Leyton Buzzard to put them on an articulated lorry himself. That is the kind of service he provides. Losing his licence means that he lost his suit of armour. He becomes vulnerable.

He receives a letter to go to court. The letter causes a grandfather clock to be toppled over in the hall of our Richmond home. The letter causes a chunk of hair from my father’s hair to be pulled out and left on the lawn in front of the house. The letter causes me to be carried in the arms of a policewoman over the road to stay with a neighbour. When the policeman tells me my father is helping them with their enquiries a weight lifts from my shoulders.