OWLS HEAD

You bumble through life, dealing with it, going with the flow.
Until one day you wake up and have no idea who you are
or how you got there. It’s then that you begin to realise
you’ve been sold a massive lie, and a person you thought you knew hasn’t always been that person. Something happened before you,
and fragment by fragment you uncover the facts until
suddenly you realise who you really are and who you want to be.

(JESS 2018)

Chapter 1

No going back

Do you ever wish you could go back in time? And would you, if you could? After I started poking around in Mum’s past I often wondered if she would have changed her life if she'd had the chance. And now, here I am questioning my own choices, wishing that the late-season snow swirling around the unfamiliar street in front of me, is a vortex that will scoop me up and transport me back to those naive innocent days before mum became ill, and reset my life.

I check my watch. Michel is over twenty minutes late and my internal monologue has started to ramp up into a nagging whine. It's a red pill / blue pill moment. If he doesn’t come, I could let go of my obsession with her past and scuttle back to England. If he arrives, so does a golden opportunity to finally uncover what happened at the cabin. The second option is sure to be more traumatic. Everything I have discovered so far has irrevocably changed my perception of Mum. Michel‘s confession could ruin my memory of her forever.

A sympathetic sideways look from the receptionist tells me that she feels the pain of my situation. She’s obviously been stood up before. I can understand why she has made the assumption, after all, he was the one that booked the hotel. And picked me up from the airport. And sneaked out of my room before dawn this morning, so it may look quite a simple scenario to an outsider. At least it’s not disapproval.

Thankfully the Montreal Metropolitan has a more relaxed middle-class vibe than I was expecting, which I'm grateful for. The staff in the London hotel where I first met Michel only needed a quick glance at my crumpled, sweaty suit to know I didn’t belong. They were right of course. It was the perfect choice for him though. The sense of status had worked well in his favour, adding to the checklist of everything a single desperate nearly thirty-something could possibly want - an older, taller, wiser, well-dressed, manicured, tanned, straight man with the added bonus of a company credit card that seemed to have no limit.

The sound of a car horn pulls me back into the moment and the necessity to make a decision hits me like a fist. I dither caught in the limbo of decision before finally accepting the opportunity I have engineered. I stuff myself into my coat and give the receptionist a slight confident, sisterhood nod that says, "Thank you for your concern, but I’ve got this." The receptionist smiles back in a way that feels authentic and I can imagine her adding, ”You go girl!”

As I slip out of the warm, friendly safety net into the violence of the storm I nearly lose my footing. I tentatively skate down the path like Bambi in inadequate ethical shoes which were chosen for an autumnal day, not the arctic tundra. The Station Wagon is idling in the waiting zone and Michel is beckoning me to hurry through the passenger door which he is struggling to hold open from within.

As I settle myself into the cracked leather, another moment of indecision bubbles out of me and I lay the groundwork for one last escape route. "Are you sure we should do this today?”

"If you let the weather get the better of you in Canada you wouldn't do anything. Besides, Dad never switched the snow tires, so we'll be fine." The penny finally drops.
"Don't you want to go, last night you seemed pretty excited by the idea?"
"Yes...but what if we get snowed in?"
Michel shifts the column gear into drive."Trust me, everything will be fine, we're not in England now.”

He’s hit the nail on the head. Do I trust him? I can’t decide if he’s genuine or playing me. He’s almost too good to be true and I keep finding reasons to excuse his lack of disclosure. I’m I know more than he wants me to or is it just that the subject hasn’t come up yet, which is why we haven’t had that discussion yet.

As the snowy city starts to roll past the window I resign myself to the fact that there is no going back and I might as well probe for clues while he is concentrating on the road. It’s an ideal situation and could have been lifted straight from one of my training manuals. “Have you been back?”
“Many times.”
“Doesn't it bother you?”
“Why should it?”
I can’t quite see his expression but his body language appears relaxed and truthful. I push on hoping to trigger something. “It's...um. It's where she disappeared.”
“They never found a body.”
His response is a bit too quick and almost rehearsed. “That doesn't mean anything.”
“My father was many things, but a killer . . . I don't think so.”
I notice a slight betrayal as though his answer is loaded with contradictions. “But the court case. They must have suspected something?”
He surprises me by grabbing my hand and I almost squeal with shock as he takes it to his mouth to kiss it. “Note to self, Miss Smith has a very active imagination.”

Chapter 2

The beginning of the end

So, how did I get myself in this mess? I’m sure it wasn’t Mum’s intention for me to screw my life so completely up - I’ve done that on my own. Although I do suspect she chose me because I was the only one who would deal with all the facts objectively. What she didn’t realise was how bored and lonely I was. Or how obsessed I would become with her plan. It seemed so innocent at the start. A simple enough ambition. All she wanted was to revisit the places in her past and reconnect with the people that had meant so much to her. The secret, or so I thought at the beginning, was the lottery sized stash of cash she had accumulated to fund her dream. How was I to know there would be more, lots more, that would get under the skin and be scratched to the surface by my inquisitive nature.

The money was a big deal. Dad’s acceptable wage must have barely been enough for a family of five to survive, yet we never seemed to struggle like the families I witness in crisis every week at work. We dodged the embarrassment of food bank handouts or charity shop donations. She hid her thriftiness well because as kids, we accepted what we had, and never asked for more. Well, John and I did. Sarah’s teenage demands often created tension which inevitably ended with a point-blank refusal to be manipulated by her divisive behaviour by Dad. Thankfully she left home at sixteen.

We never went on holiday. We didn’t expect to. Mum’s dreams of travelling back to France and Canada stayed hidden from us as did the rest of her past. I have no memory of even the smallest yearning - no brochures on the coffee tables, no sighs outside travel agents' windows and definitely not any exotic cocktails on a warm summer day. I guess suppression was a great way to avoid disappointment.

Once the financial aspect was solved, Mum's second-biggest hurdle, presuming she wanted him to join her, which I think she did, was to persuade Dad to leave the country. He had never travelled further than Cornwall. Conscientious and honest he had never missed a day off work, so taking a month off would have been unthinkable. Still, she bided her time waiting for his retirement, slowly amassing a small fortune.

Tragically when Dad was offered voluntary redundancy Mum’s body created a stumbling block and her plans came crashing down around her. A successful first course of radiotherapy gave her a brief glimpse of hope before being quickly destroyed by a subsequent diagnosis. Always the pragmatist, Mum accepted the consultant’s analysis and moved on. She found a new way to live her dream, a way that brought focus to her long chemotherapy session. A blank scrapbook Sarah had left discarded in her bedroom, a pair of scissors and a stick of Prit coupled with scraps of her life gave her hands and mind something to do while the poison dripped into her veins. It was an activity that piqued the interest of the nurses and other long term patients who enjoyed the distraction and gathered what they could to help her swell the pages of her newly conceived memoir. Old ticket stubs and photos were joyously merged with magazine articles and written memories - until the doctors pulled the plug.

When the treatment was deemed ineffectual and her visits stopped, she reached out to me. At the time I presumed my reputation as a voracious reader and my good grades in English at school had prompted her to choose me over my siblings. She was desperate to finish her story but the cocktail of drugs they had pumped through her body altered her cognitive ability and diminished her capacity to write.

In those few stolen hours every week, Mum poured out her memories of Paris, Antibes, Cannes and Montreal through me. I typed them up late at night, trying my best to recapture her adventurous life in a snapshot of time before John was born and it didn’t take long for her stories to become my obsession. In my hands, her journal became a memoir, the progression of which ran parallel with Mum’s decline. As my notes swelled, her already small frame diminished to a birdlike fragility. Only her spirit and enthusiasm kept pace with her memories. Her infectious positivity made it easy to ignore the elephant in the room until her medication, increased to obliterate her pain, began to scrambled recollections. Mum struggled to hold onto her past and alternative narrative began to appear like the underwater current of a stream trapped under ice. She became obsessed with the crystal owl figurine that had occupied the same place on her bedside cabinet and her stories stopped making sense. The last chapter of the memoir - her return to Canada after she had met Dad - was never transcribed.

Chapter 3

Telling the family

John is easy to find as I pick my way through his timeless hideout - a damp overgrown wasteland littered with the discarded remnants of our childhood. The faint aroma of cigarette smoke has led me to the no man's land that he claimed as his own when a teenager. It is a forgotten place neither of us has visited for years.

Tall and gangly, with permanently ruffled hair, the kindest eyes and nearly ten years older than me, John is the best of siblings. Patient and understanding, he is a welcome alternative to my fiery sister Sarah, who rushes headlong towards any situation at twice the pace of the rest of the family.

With a lack of concern for the heavy layers of concealer under my eyes, John pulls me towards him and I rest my cheek against his white shirt. He continues to smoke over my head, inhaling deeply as he savours the forgotten flavour. His heart rate is linear and slow and as I absorb its rhythm all my anxiety starts to fade. I cling to him and stabilise.

Dad isn’t a hugger, and as pathetic as it sounds, with no husband or a long term boyfriend to hold me tight, John is my only source of physical comfort.
"He knows you smoke, you know? You don't have to hide amongst all this crap anymore."
John shrugs his shoulders beneath me and I hug him tighter. "Is it time?"
I nod and reluctantly release him. He holds me by the shoulders and looks into me.
“Are you ok?”
I nod.
“No. I mean really ok?”
I shake my head and start to cry. He pulls me into him again.
“Did you see the doctor?”
I shake my head again.
“You silly arse. Depression is nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“I’m not depressed, just a bit lost, that's all.”
He smooths my hair and I wish I could cling to him forever, but I’m aware that Roger is waiting for us in the living room so I pull myself away.

I know exactly where to find Dad too. The garden is his retreat, just as Sarah's flamingo pink room was hers and John's no man's land was his. Anchored to the worn homemade kneeler, I find him hunching over the soil like a gnarled apothecary in a children's fairy tale. The stress of the year had taken its toll on his physicality, and he looks older than his sixty-two years. He still tends to the garden daily, as if to absorb any expression of hope he can get from its flourishing borders in order to restore the balance of beauty that is now missing from his life.
I step quietly toward him and gently place my hand on his back. The thin checked cotton is soft, smooth and warm under my hand. "Dad. Roger is here."
He lays down his trowel and seems to sink further towards the earth as if willing to hide from the gathering. "I'll be in shortly. I need to wash up."
I back off and linger a moment longer, watching his breath quicken in anticipation. He’s done so well so far. The last thing we need is his heart to give out.

Once inside I put on my, 'I'm ok face', and cheerily set down a fresh coffee pot and more biscuits in front of Roger. He accepts my offer of a refill. With a sympathetic smile. Roger is the only one to know of our duplicity. The legality of what was to become of Mum’s savings was something neither Mum nor I had the skill to organise. Our family’s lives had been intertwined since the school gates, and I had fond memories of birthday parties and bank holiday BBQs in the garden of his enormous house. Although now in retirement, we recruited him out of acquaintance rather than a need for professionalism. And I can see from his stance that the familiarity of the situation is still ingrained in his mannerisms as he stands tall, quiet and confident by the window. His form has swelled slightly over the years to make his sombre jacket slightly taught around buttonholes, and his shiny dome lightly brushes the fluted pelmet that mum made ten years ago when the lounge was last redecorated.

Dad is the last to enter. He settles himself in his favourite perch still dressed top to toe in his khaki gardening ensemble despite his promise to change. Sarah repositions herself in readiness for what is to come. She is rigid and attentive in her poppy-red skin-tight business suit. An outfit more suited to a corporate meeting room than a family gathering. John drains his coffee cup, exuding an aura of calmness in his plain white shirt and inoffensive tie. As I look around the room I see the components of physicality I share with all of them, John's unruly hair, Sarah’s disappointing height and my father's masculine jawline.

I dig my hands into the pockets of my cardigan and run my fingertips over the smooth surface of the photograph, that has become my talisman. I need to keep my nerve, and having mum in my pocket calms me as if she is holding my hand. I have a history of giving up my secrets too easily. So far I have managed to hold on to this one. I had to really - it was the last promise I made.

Roger slips his cup back onto the coffee table, straightens and as if on the stage, clears his throat loudly before he begins the reading. "Jean has left a simple will. So this won't be a lengthy affair. Amongst her bequests are treasured items for every member of the family. However..."

His pace is perfect, and his voice is rhythmical. "...her will is slightly unusual and she has left a letter for me to share with you all." He clears his throat again to add a sense of drama rather than necessity. It’s the Am Dram coming out in him.

Sarah readjusts herself again, her self-obsession has been radiating off her in waves since she flung her Burberry over the bannister. Now the word 'bequest' has piqued her interest and she has the scent of money on her mind…

My darlings, if Roger is reading this out, then I am no longer with you. But I want to thank you for your care and patience during my last terrible months. I love you all, but hopefully, where I am now, I will not miss you...

I fall back into a memory of meeting Roger with mum in the last month of her life. Confused by her secrecy he had warned her of a possible backlash from the family. We both recognised the probability of Sarah blowing her stack. I promised her I could weather it, but here, now, when the stage was being constructed before me I’m not so sure. My palms were hot and wet, so I dig the remanents of my tattered nails hard into my flesh to maintain control.