*I'm finding the process of writing quite interesting. Some days I feel like I could write all day, that my thoughts flow and there's a nice structure to what I'm saying. Other days it's a real struggle to write over 1000 words. Funnily enough I find it easier to write on the weekend than I do writing during the week day, probably because I have time to sit down and write as opposed to spend an hour to an hour and a half on it. I did nothing on Wednesday, but that's why I wrote so much on the weekend: so that I could have a day or two off. Anyway, I'm rambling again. This post is rambly enough!*
My first glance of England was both incredible and
disappointing all at once. I’d been told by so many people that it rains a lot,
and so had this image of a rather grey looking country with rainclouds
permanently overhead. In my imaginings everywhere looked like it was in Mary
Poppins, and everyone wore dark suits and ran around with umbrellas permanently
up. England looked nothing like that. In fact it looked like a beautiful
patchwork quilt, with lush green fields, bright yellow fields and forests
dotted about. It looked beautiful. We landed in Manchester, took the train to
Keighley and a taxi to Sutton in Craven. My father had a friend who worked in
Scotland during the week and came back to Yorkshire for the weekend, so he was
happy for us to stay for as long as we needed.
It was a beautiful summer and our first taste of
freedom as children. I was 9, Alistair was 6 and up until this point we were only
allowed to leave the house and gardens if there was an adult with us. England
was different. From very soon after we’d arrived I was sent off down to the
newsagents to buy bread and milk as and when we needed it. I must have looked a
strange sight, barefoot and grubby, with a slightly odd accent. I know the man
who worked at the shop was lovely and kind, but I honestly couldn’t tell you
what he said to me. Yorkshire was probably not the best of places to live in
first. The accents of the people around us were so strong that all I could do
was nod and smile, looking at them in bewilderment. The two of us were allowed
to the park on our own. It was just down the street and across the road, but it
was our first taste of freedom from the adults. Our next door neighbours who
realised pretty quickly that we had no toys with us very quickly offered us the
use of various toys they had about the place for their grandchildren. Mom and
Dad seemed happy, and all was well.
We moved to a village called Gamlingay in Cambridgeshire
to a pub my Dad had bought. It was a lovely old pub, Tudor in age right next to
a church. Things started to go wrong from there. The summer was over, Alistair
and I headed to school and Mom and Dad started working in the pub. I think it
hit all of us that this was it, there was no going back and we were 6,000 miles
away from everything and everyone we knew. Mom’s pregnancy progressed and,
while she had been healthy for the most part, she started getting ill.
My first introduction to the NHS was when my mother
bundled me and Alistair into the car and drove to Addenbrookes in Cambridge. I
don’t know how she managed that. I don’t know why my father wasn’t there. I
think he had to stay behind and open the pub by a certain time. When you own
your own business I guess you can’t just leave everything unless it’s really
bad. I remember sitting down the hospital corridor as my mother was looked at
by the doctor and a nurse asking very kindly if my brother and I would like
some orange squash. I know I was feeling pretty worried, as the door was shut
and I had no clue why my mother had put us in the car and travelled all that
way. The nurse was lovely, though, and made sure we weren’t left on our own,
scared. I was trying not to show my fear as Alistair was there, and, well, I
was supposed to be the big sister and look after him. Eventually the door
opened and we were let inside. The doctor was monitoring the baby’s heart rate
and was doing an ultrasound. They took the time to show us our sibling. I remember
hearing the heartbeat thudding away and thinking how incredible it sounded. Mom
was given the all clear and we went home.
A bit later we were told that we were going to have
a brother. I stubbornly refused to believe this was true. I’d read about
doctors getting it wrong, and I decided this was definitely the case. If it was
true, I decided, I wasn’t going to love him. I wasn’t going to have anything to
do with him. I was struggling with a lot at the time. I think this was one
extra disappointment and I wasn’t sure how to deal with it.
Mom had a few more rush visits to the hospital. One
of these was a trip she made on her own, while we were in South Africa for my
uncles wedding. She tells me now that she was absolutely terrified during that
trip and doesn’t know how she made it on her own steam. Eventually she was
diagnosed with pre-eclampsia. They gave her the option of having her baby on
the Tuesday, the Wednesday or the Thursday of the following week. They picked
the Thursday. My Dad jokingly said it was so that she could have the weekend
off from working and come back on the Monday. At least, I hope he was joking. I
think the main reason was it was exactly a week after my birthday, and they
liked that fact.
We were picked up after school on the 11th
January by some friends of the family. My father picked us up from their place
an hour later and drove us to the hospital. Our car broke down on the way,
about 2 miles away. It was an old rusty thing that had overheated a time or two
before, but we’d managed to get it started. Not this time. We were stuck, 2
miles from my mother and about half an hour drive from home. My father called
the AA. When the driver turned up he asked my father where he was going to.
When my father explained the driver said that he has another job to go to after
this that shouldn’t take long and offered to drop us off at the hospital and
pick us up when that job was done. I think it’s quite honestly that kindness
that kept my parents with the AA for as long as they were.
I don’t believe in romantic love at first sight. I
don’t really think you can truly love someone until you’ve learnt who they are.
But I do believe at love at first sight. I’ve felt it. I was still determined
that I wasn’t going to like my little brother, this person who was not what I
wanted him to be. We went to my mother’s bedside on the ward and my new little
brother was brought to us. My brand new, wrinkled little brother. He was put in
my arms and I was lost. He was absolutely tiny, with small little starfish
hands that gripped onto my thumb with so much strength. His little head poked
out of the blanket he was wrapped in, his eyes shut tight shut to the world. I
vowed then and there that I would do my best to look after him and make sure no
one would every hurt him.
Somehow along the way I also decided that he was
going to prefer me over Alistair and myself. He was going to be my friend, on
my side. Alistair had his own friends and, at the time, I felt like I had no
one. Jamie was going to be my person. I’ve said and done a few stupid things in
my life but I’ve never regretted anything as much as I regret pushing Alistair
away the way I did. Because I felt like an outsider I made him an outsider. At
the time I saw him as being more loved than I was by my parents. I was hitting
my teens with all the hormonal surges that come with that. I was angry at the
world, at my parents at anyone and anything. All I could see was how Alistair
was everything I was not and how he seemed to belong in the family so much
better than I did. I was jealous, yet again.
I looked after Jamie a lot. I was 10 when he was
born, so my parents were able to rely on me a little bit. I changed his
nappies, fed him his bottle and was able to keep an eye on him when my mother
was busy with something. He wasn’t all that well and had pretty severe infant
reflux. I remember him screaming a lot, and my mother unable to sooth him. I
also remember him throwing up a lot. One day at school someone asked what was
down my skirt. It turns out I’d been walking around with baby sick on me and
hadn’t noticed.
He was such a sweet little boy. He would follow
Alistair and I around the house, trying to copy what we were doing. There’s a
video of all three of us pretending to do ballet. I was all awkward limbs, at
that stage where I was about to hit puberty and grow so fast. Alistair was
fooling around for the camera, prancing about while la la laing to whatever we
were dancing to. And Jamie, this tiny little boy, twirling about in the
kitchen.
For the most part the three of us did get on. As
the older siblings, Alistair and I looked after Jamie, and he in turn trusted
us to do so. However, there was a part of me that wanted Jamie to love me the
best, to prefer me over Alistair, to choose me to spend time with. It was a
nasty way to feel, and I can only imagine it stemmed from the fact I was
getting gradually more insecure. I felt like an outsider at school, bullied by
my classmates at two of the schools I went to. I didn’t feel like I had any
friends, or anyone I could trust, as people who had pretended to be my friend
before had then turned out to be trying to get information from me that they
could then use against me. At home I seemed to be causing one argument after
another between my parents. My mother and I had always butted heads, we’re very
similar and are just as stubborn as one another. My father would then try and
deflect her anger or stick up for me, and then they’d argued. She suffered from
post natal depression, and, like all of us, was desperately homesick. Her
unhappiness manifested itself in anger, as did mine, which was not a good
combination. After one fight with Dad, after he’d walked away, she told me that
if they divorced it would be my fault.
The one good thing in my life, the one person who
seemed to love me unconditionally, was Jamie. So I didn’t want to share him,
especially not with Alistair. I wish I’d been more empathetic, been the kinder
person I became. I wish I’d seen that by pushing Alistair away from getting
close to Jamie I was just as bad as those bullies were to me. I did it in
little ways, mostly by monopolising Jamie’s time and attention. I so
desperately wanted attention. In that same video, a few days before or after
the dancing scene my father was taking the camera around the house. He was
trying to make a video up to take back to South Africa for everyone to see. I
was in the kitchen and I kept interrupting him to tell him there was a robin in
the garden. It’s so obvious to me now that all I wanted was to be acknowledged.
It hurts to see that little girl in the video. She’s just so very lonely.
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