Ghosting Read Online Free Page A

what that might involve, I especially dreaded, even though he usually made a point of adding, as if by way of polite afterthought,
if you're not careful.
I was never absolutely sure about what being careful might entail, or how it might be achieved. Nothing was adequately explained. Questions were hardly ever permitted. It felt dangerous sometimes even to think about asking why.
    Nowadays children have to be engaged in creative play; they have to be stimulated and nurtured so that they can achieve their full potential. Babies have to be given educational toys in order to increase brain activity, toddlers have to have their cognitive skills sharpened up by special diets and flash cards. But in the fifties and early sixties, provided you didn't bother your parents too much, it was perfectly acceptable to be aimless and unmotivated.
    Our front door was painted red and it was opened with a flourish every morning by my mother. The earlier it was opened, the better she appeared to feel. There would be a hint of triumph in her swagger along our hallway. It was not clear to me why opening the door, or more precisely opening the door bright and early with such verve, could in itself lead to a sense of wellbeing. But I remember feeling glad that she was glad. When the sun shone, a curtain was drawn across the shiny tiled vestibule to stop the red paint blistering. Red was my mother's favourite colour—red doors, red garden gate, red carpets, red Formica in the kitchen. I pretended to like red too. Other houses had lobbies where our vestibule was. I wasn't allowed to say
lobby
because lobby was common. I had to remember to say
vestibyhool.
I sometimes practised whispering it to myself again and again. I could make it sound like bullets flying through the air.
    Our house was large and smelled of damp and old potatoes. The smell came from the cellar. It seeped through the floorboards and hung in the cold air. Most of the houses in the streets round where we lived did not have cellars. I secretly envied my friends their lack of cellars, and many other things besides. The other houses were in the scheme, which was evidently not a good place to be. There was talk of coal being kept in the bath, furniture being bought on thenever-never. According to my mother, the people from the housing scheme had no
finesse.
Was a finesse like a cellar, I wondered? I decided quite early on that our finesse was probably part of our large bathroom, a place which gave rise to particular perplexity on account of its being strictly out of bounds to members of the family except on Sunday evenings.
    The bathroom was my mother's pride and joy. My best friend's house had a lavvy, but we had a bathroom. It was a long narrow room with a very high ceiling and no heating. The red bath mat and towels were neatly folded over a towel rack made of wood and painted red. All the mats and towels had a huge embroidered C denoting our family name, though none of the family was ever permitted to use them. My mother said they were just for show—a potent concept in our family. In addition to the thick red carpet there were two woven rugs, both red, one at the door, the other curved round the toilet bowl. The toilet bowl had a red seat and lid. The lid was kept closed at all times. Like the lounge, and just as cold, the bathroom was reserved for the use of chance visitors. It was therefore also a source of great anxiety to my mother since it had to be kept clean at all times in case someone needed to use it.
    In reality, hardly anyone visited us by chance. But in my mother's world, uncertainty was pernicious and had to be guarded against at all times. Only on Sunday evenings, therefore, when it was absolutely certain that no one would call, were we allowed a bath. This was quite a ritual and one attended by my mother's thin-lipped umbrage. She approached it in the spirit appropriate to arranging a hanging—it was something that had to be done but there was no joy to be had in it.