Love and Fallout

By Kathryn Simmonds

When Tessa’s best friend organizes a surprise TV makeover, Tessa is horrified. It’s the last thing she needs—her business is on the brink of collapse, her marriage is under strain, and her daughter is more interested in beauty pageants than student politics. What’s more, the “Greenham Common angle” the TV producers have devised reopens some personal history Tessa tried to store away. Then Angela gets in touch, Tessa’s least favorite member of the Greenham gang, and she’s drawn back into her muddy past. Moving between the present and 1982, and set against the mass protests which touched thousands of women’s lives, Love and Fallout is a book about friendship, motherhood, and the accidents that make us who we are.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seren
• Release date: Jul 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781781721476

Book preview

Esther

Things

There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public.

There are worse things than these miniature betrayals,

committed or endured or suspected; there are worse things

than not being able to sleep for thinking about them.

It is 5a.m. All the worse things come stalking in

and stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse and

worse.

(Fleur Adcock)

Saturday Morning

We are waist-deep in water and marching. At the poolside our instructor bounces on her toes, her compact body tight-sprung like one of the machines in the gym. ‘That’s it ladies!’ she calls, ‘keep working!’ Maggie marches behind me as the circle rotates. If she wasn’t so keen on Aquafit it’s unlikely I’d be here, not on a Saturday morning, but then friendship, like marriage, is sometimes a matter of compromise.

The class is halfway through. The dance music is pounding. I’ve nearly finished a To Do list in my head when I catch sight of a figure crossing the far edge of the pool – a girl of about twenty, her hair a mass of curls. She raises a hand to wave at someone, and as she smiles my list breaks apart and all at once the past comes crashing in. I jerk my chin back with a gasp as if to keep from taking in water.

‘Careful, Tess!’ Maggie is at my shoulder. I start moving again before there’s a pile-up behind me, trying to keep track of the girl as she heads towards the diving boards to scale the silver ladder.

The lesson continues. It’s only a girl, I tell myself. A girl swimming, that’s all.

Our instructor is bouncing with new urgency, her voice more insistent, the same tone used at fairgrounds when the rides speed up. Twelve women jump on the spot, spinning invisible hoops on their forearms until their muscles burn. The girl dives into deep water and disappears.

In the changing room, citrus shampoos mingle with the chemical tang of chlorine as we go about the business of dressing and undressing. Pool noise swells and fades with every flap of the swing door.

‘Honestly Tess, there it was, large as life. Larger. It practically needed its own introduction.’ Maggie is drying her hair with a beach towel. ‘He didn’t have a moustache in the photo. You need to be prepared for something like that. It was…’ she reaches for the word, ‘…transfixing. Over dinner, I had to stop myself from feeding it.’

I laugh and button my shirt.

‘And it wasn’t just the facial hair. I mean that doesn’t have to be a deal-breaker, but there were other things he didn’t mention. Like his age.’ Beside us a woman has a foot on the bench and is buckling her roman sandal with infinite care. Never too concerned about discretion, Maggie doesn’t seem to notice her lean nearer.

‘His profile said forty-nine, but if he was a day under sixty, I’m an Olympic athlete. Why do they think lying is all right?’

The internet dating has been going on for a while, but the only men she’s meeting seem to be deficient in some respect: the one who never paid for anything; the one who turned out to be married; the one who had a previously undisclosed enthusiasm for re-enacting historic battles.

‘We could try Salsa dancing,’ I say, thinking that might yield a few possibilities. ‘Do people still do that?’

Maggie says they do, but wouldn’t I rather go with Pete? For a moment I try to picture us in a community hall gyrating our hips. It’s been suggested in the room of the two-seater sofa that we should spend more time together – could a Latin beat improve the rhythm of our marriage? Possibly. But Pete’s never been much of a dancer – six foot three, beardy, size twelve feet, he’s more at home on a rugby pitch. Anyway, that isn’t a conversation for the communal changing room and, still musing on the idea of a shared hobby, I wring out my costume as Maggie tells me about a fantastic dress she’s spotted.

‘Just your colour,’ she says, sliding a comb through her bob.

‘Do I have a colour?’

‘You know you do … Colour me Lovely?’

A birthday gift three years ago – how could I forget the Colour me Lovely lady? I stood in her living room for an hour while she held material swatches against my face and told me I should be wearing more prune, ivory and sage green. She also said I could do topaz, lemon and pink (as long as it was tawny rather than baby). I thanked her, put my cycling helmet back on and pedalled home.

Maggie slows the comb. ‘That was fun, wasn’t it?’

My agreement seems to make her happy, and she sings to herself as she fastens an earring. On paper we may seem unlikely friends, but shared childhoods can easily thicken water to blood, and forty years on from our first meeting in a Stevenage back garden where we made perfume from fistfuls of her mum’s roses, Maggie’s more like my sister. A louder, more extravagant sister.

‘Doing anything this afternoon?’ I ask.

‘Not especially.’

Her response is uncharacteristically brief and I raise an eyebrow. ‘Another date?’

She smiles, ‘Something like that,’ and whisks her make-up bag to a bank of mirrors. Whatever it is will keep until next Saturday, or a mid-week phone call.

The key to my bike lock isn’t in the pocket of my jeans, or the pouch of my shoulder bag, and I’m on my knees feeling under the bench, when I hear someone say Excuse me. I look up. Her curls are wet now, but it’s the girl from the diving boards. At close range, the resemblance turns my heart: the same almond-shaped eyes, arched brows, wide mouth. I move aside. She grabs a towel from the hook and enters a cubicle to dress.

When Maggie reappears I’m sitting on the bench with the bag gaping open on my lap. My legs feel useless, as if from the effort of treading water.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Fine.’

She regards me with a frown, and I nod to reassure her, to reassure myself.

‘Just… I can’t find my bike key.’

‘Tessa, you and keys.’ Together we finish the search.

It’s usually me with an eye on my watch, but today it’s Maggie who’s eager to be off into the Cambridge sunshine. But I don’t ask any more questions – wherever she is or isn’t going is her business. She brushes my cheek in a quick goodbye.

When she’s gone I remain on the bench, not wanting to admit what I’m waiting for, or rather who. In a few minutes the girl has finished dressing. I stand, ready to leave. My pulse throbs high in my neck as I approach and ask for the time.

She glances down at her sports watch then into my face.

‘Twenty-past twelve.’

‘Thanks.’

It is remarkable, her eyes are green, and at the corner of her lip is a beauty spot. I hesitate, wanting to speak, wanting to say You look like someone, someone I knew years ago. Could she be a relative? A distant cousin? But nothing comes. Instead I’m simply staring at her while women file past us barefoot towards the pool. The changing room is too hot and I have to get out.

‘Sorry,’ I say, accidentally brushing her shoulder in a move to the door. Sorry. Sorry.

Part One

With our lovely feathers

1

Saturday Afternoon

Pete lowers his paper and quietens one of his trumpet-playing jazz legends. We exchange a smile and I make sure to give him a kiss, albeit a slightly self-conscious one, because Valeria has reminded us that mutual acknowledgement is important and these small acts of appreciation will help re-establish intimacy. If we’re going to keep paying her sixty quid an hour for her advice, I for one am going to take it.

‘How was the class?’

‘Fine.’ My mind brushes against the girl from the pool, then withdraws. ‘Have you trimmed your beard?’

He passes a hand around his jaw. ‘No harm in looking presentable.’

‘None at all.’ Something else is different. The Hoover’s been out because our worn carpet is without fluff ball or paperclip. ‘Spring cleaning?’ The pile of newspapers usually stacked beside the bookshelves has disappeared; the broken dining-room chair propped against the wall for a fortnight has gone, and there’s no hint of the usual low-level clutter. ‘Looks great.’ Pete’s obviously trying too.

Assembling a cheese sandwich, I notice the fridge is whiter and all the kitchen surfaces have been recently wiped down. It smells lemony.

‘Where’s Dom?’ I ask, eating the sandwich standing up.

‘Working on his tan.’

That’s a joke. If he’s not plugged into Goth Friendly, his social networking site, the details of which he keeps a deliberate mystery, he’ll be locked in a garage with his band mates rehearsing for greatness.

‘There’s a Hitchcock on soon,’ Pete says. But I tell him I should get the seed potatoes in, then crack on with the leaflets.

‘What leaflets?’ His eyes leave the sports section.

‘For Heston Fields.’

‘Why are you doing them?’

‘Someone’s got to.’

He asks how much else I’m taking on, and I tell him we’re just working out a few ideas then stop because there’s a definite wrinkle in his brow, the wrinkle that leads to a frown and then on to the open highways of disagreement.

‘You’re running another campaign?’

We’ve had the Heston Fields discussion. Or row, as it turned out, and as far as Pete’s concerned, if the council wants to sell a chunk of neglected land so a developer can build luxury flats there’s no point losing any sleep. He calls it scrubland, or backlands, but the truth is, it’s public land. All right, it’s a bit tussocky, but kids play football there and people cross it to reach the parade that qualifies as Heston’s high street. We used to play cricket there with the kids. But I know there’s no point reminding him of this because Heston Fields has become what Valeria would call a trigger point. Unwilling to provoke an incident, I stuff my mouth with a final sandwich crust.

When Pete appears at the garden door to say the film’s starting, I’m on my knees making divots in the soil. He seems unusually agitated.

‘What’s got into you?’ I ask, shading my eyes. That’s meant to sound teasing but it comes out as stroppy. Valeria’s right, communication isn’t easy: words have so many ways of defying your intentions.

‘Nothing.’ He pauses to assess me. ‘What have you got on?’

My shorts are in the wash, so I’m wearing an old pair of his, khaki and belted at the waist. ‘They’re only for the gardening.’ My tone goes wrong again. He retreats. Should I call after him? But what will that achieve? We’ll end up having an involved conversation about shorts which could easily escalate, just as other ordinary conversations have done, until we’re not discussing shorts at all, we’re arguing about why he doesn’t want to help me save the local library and I don’t want to watch him referee rugby.

The April breeze is warm and fresh and the hum of a lawnmower floats over from a neighbouring garden while I kneel, cutting seed potatoes into sections, spacing them in a row. All long relationships suffer strain, it’s only natural, every couple has their own argument playing out in different forms, the subjects they return to again and again, pressed like bruises that never fade. I sit back on my haunches. We never thought we’d end up seeing a therapist. In fact we probably wouldn’t have if Pete’s sister hadn’t discreetly suggested it to him after a lunch visit. Of course we didn’t row in front of her, but we gave ourselves away all the same. Lack of eye contact? Flinching when the other spoke? Plates clattered too loudly in the kitchen? Who knows. But because neither of us wanted to quash the idea, because we agreed the sessions were only a precautionary measure, we found ourselves in Valeria’s tranquilly decorated living room with its South Asian tapestries and life-affirming pot plants.

I make another divot and turn my thoughts elsewhere, wondering what Pippa’s up to at university on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Would it bother her if I called later? Perhaps a text? But it’s impossible to say anything in a text – all those paraphrased thoughts, at every sign off the hopeful: ‘be nice to spk sn, love mum xx.’

After a few minutes the doorbell chimes. It chimes again so I call to Pete. He must have his headphones on. I slip out of my clogs and hurry through the living room expecting to find Pru on the doorstep with a question about the meeting agenda. But when I open the door, Pru isn’t standing there. Instead, smiling at me is a thin woman in her early forties who has the gloss and wing-mirror cheekbones of a former fashion model. Behind her is a camera crew. A camera crew. And there, waving, is Maggie. For a few stupefied seconds I can’t work it out: in some bizarre coincidence she’s stopped by at exactly the same moment as a TV crew.

‘Are you Tessa Perry?’ asks the thin woman.

Partly shielded by the door and ready to close it at any moment, I confirm my identity.

‘Excellent,’ she says, ‘because we’re here to…’ Then she raises her arms along with her voice and everyone cries in unison, ‘Make You Over!’

The penny teeters, bright and coppery at the edge of my comprehension then drops into a slot and rolls away. Maggie has brought these people here. Before I know what’s happening, they’re piling inside.

The living room, which was empty just minutes ago, is now crammed with bodies. One of the crew switches off a bright light and Jude, the woman with the cheekbones, declares, ‘We’re going to work a little miracle, darling. In a couple of days even your own husband won’t recognise you.’ Pete enters on cue carrying a tray of coffee mugs and proffers a plate of biscuits towards Jude. ‘Gingernut?’

She looks at them as if they might be about to get up and tell her a joke. ‘Not for me,’ she says, flashing a stellar smile. That smile seems familiar now from the blur of television magazines racked up in Sainsbury’s.

‘Did you know about this?’ I ask Pete. The spring cleaning suddenly makes sense.

‘Not until the last minute.’

Maggie kisses my cheek, ‘Isn’t it brilliant?’ She’s wearing a turquoise dress I’ve never seen before. Her hair is shining. And another conversation is explained, the Colour me Lovely lady. Nothing comes out of my mouth, though there are thoughts, half formulated, careering at speed on unfinished tracks. But there’s no time for discussion because the director, a wiry young man who’s introduced himself as Zeb, gathers us together and we watch as the scene that’s just played out is replayed on a tiny monitor.

There’s me, startled in Pete’s shorts, and there’s Jude at the door saying, ‘It’s all thanks to your best friend,’ and then Maggie stepping forwards for a hug, the camera framing us in close up, a faint streak of mud striping my cheek.

‘Perfect!’ Zeb claps his hands.

The waves of weirdness subside until I’m touching reality again, and when it comes my voice has an untethered quality, ‘Wait!’ The room falls quiet and the man who’s been twiddling a valve on his headset stops twiddling. I look around at them trying to reason, like someone speaking to hostage takers. ‘There’s been a mistake. I don’t want a make-over.’ I turn to Maggie and repeat it, as if she might translate. ‘I’m not going on television.’

Zeb steps in.

‘Tessa, Tessa, don’t worry, lots of our guests are nervous but we’ve got a great package lined up. We had a look at Maggie’s letter and we’re going to start with the Greenham Common angle, then bring in your charity work. Everything will reflect you, organic products, fair-trade fashion…’

‘Greenham Common angle?’ My stomach drops at speed, like a bucket freefalling down a well shaft.

He consults his clipboard, ‘You were there, weren’t you?’

‘Well yes, briefly, but…’ The sentence fades away. Greenham Common tumbles about in my head like dirty laundry as Zeb continues his spiel. While he speaks I’m bumping through images from the past, images I’ve not thought about for years, or rather not since this morning, when that green-eyed girl appeared at the pool.

He’s asking if I’ve any photos I could dig out. ‘We like to give the viewers some back story, a feel for who you are.’ But I don’t want the unidentified masses to feel me. And I certainly don’t want a discussion about Greenham Common. ‘You’d be very now,’ he says, ‘with your environmental charity, and your…’

‘Issues,’ says Jude, with an eye on my shorts.

The clematis bush has caught Zeb’s attention; he thinks we could do some nice shots beside it for the reveal. I have to make this stop.

‘I’m sorry, but this programme isn’t for me.’

Zeb says the programme is for everyone, it will be wonderful, it will change my life and amazing things will happen. I tell him I’m quite happy with my untelevised life. Our exchange goes on until Pete steps in and diplomatically suggests the TV people leave. Zeb now has a harassed expression. He looks from Pete to me as if he might find a solution.

‘Tell you what, we’ll give you guys some space,’ he says. ‘Talk things over. Give me a ring later, or in the morning if you like.’ I accept his card but say I won’t be changing my mind.

When they’ve finally trooped back into their people-carrier there’s only Maggie left in our living room.

‘Tess,’ she begins, and stops, as if unsure of what should follow. Her lipstick has bled away but a stencil of pink liner remains.

Pete collects a couple of coffee mugs and retreats to the kitchen. Then Maggie starts with a pitch just like the telly people, how exciting it’s going to be, how they’re going to spend a small fortune doing me up. I tell her I’m not a semi-detached. We’d usually laugh off cross words before it got to this, but in fact, I can’t remember how it got to this at all – wasn’t I planting potatoes?

‘I thought it would be fun,’ she says. ‘I wanted to give you a treat, a helping hand.’

‘If you wanted to help me you could distribute a few campaign leaflets, not arrange a lynching.’

‘Tessa, you’re overreacting. Most women would be thrilled.’

‘About what? Getting shown up on national TV by their best friend?’

Maggie manages a pub, she always dresses the part and sometimes a little extra, but that’s all right, that’s who she is and I wouldn’t try to change her, so why is she trying to change me?

‘What about Colour me Lovely? You enjoyed that,’ she says. I look at her for a second, she’s giving me no choice. ‘No, I didn’t, I only went because you’d brought the bloody thing as a present. What else was I going to do?’

A ripple of hurt breaks over her face. I turn my gaze towards the newly tidied bookcase and wish none of this was happening. ‘And anyway there’s a big difference between that and going on telly. What was in your letter?’ This is what I’m anxious to know. ‘What’s Greenham Common got to do with anything?’

She shrugs, as if I might as well know the truth. ‘That’s where it all started.’

‘All what started?’

‘Your saving the world thing.’

‘My what?’

‘You know what I mean.’ Her tone is matter of fact.

My heart thuds. Do I know what she means?

She sighs. ‘Look, this was supposed to be a nice surprise, a way to treat you, give you time for yourself, get you out of the bag lady gear for a…’ She stops short.

‘Bag lady?’ The words are neon-lit, they’re a massive Blackpool extravaganza and we’re standing beneath them. The letters are ton-heavy, teetering on a wire, sparking, ready to come crashing down between us.

‘God, I didn’t mean…’ she reaches at the space between us.

‘What did you mean?’

We stare at each other. When Pete appears from the kitchen, Maggie is in the hall still apologising, but this has been enough for one afternoon and I walk away while Pete sees her out.

Afterwards me and Pete sit on the sofa. He puts out a hand uncertainly then settles his fingers on the small of my back and makes circles while I try to understand. Bag lady? Okay, there are lots of jeans and jumpers in my wardrobe, but I can dress up if I want to. My hair is an average brown with the first traces of silver running through. Sometimes I wrap it with a scarf or clip it up with combs. I don’t wear make-up because I don’t like the feel of it, or the palaver.

‘She wouldn’t have wanted to upset you; you know what she’s like.’

‘I can’t stand the idea of those programmes.’

He nods. ‘She wanted to give you a boost, a bit of, what do they call it, me time.’

‘Me time? Seriously?’ He shrugs, the circles stop and he removes his hand.

I can’t help thinking this is the second time she’s gone behind my back, even though we never discuss the first, having tacitly agreed years ago never to mention it. I say bag lady aloud, hoping Pete might rush to my defence but he doesn’t, he tells me not to worry about Maggie, she was simply being clumsy.

My hands are resting on my lap, nails ridged with dirt from the planting, wedding ring grazed after years of wear, crosshatched with the knocks and scrapes of daily life. We bought the ring in Broadstairs when we were camping. Sunburnt under our shirts from three hot days, the sky threatening rain, fingers interlaced as we climbed a steep slope away from the beach. What must we have looked like asking to unlock cabinets and inspect the jewellery? But I think we enjoyed looking out of place, all that love everywhere we went, dancing invisibly around us like the flecks of salt in seaside air.

The question I’ve been resisting finds its way out.

‘Do you think I need a make-over?’

‘No,’ Pete says. And then adds troublingly, ‘You’re just you, aren’t you.’

An hour later The Heston Fields Action Group are gathered around my kitchen table. News of the Make me Over visit has caused a minor frenzy.

‘When’s it going to be on?’ asks Pru, who is well into her seventies but has more vim than most thirty year olds.

‘But Pru, I’m not actually going to do it.’

‘You’re not? Oh,’ she says, disappointed. ‘I do love Jude – what’s she like in real life?’

We chat about Jude for a while until I manage to steer the conversation back to Heston Fields. This is only our second meeting and there are fewer people involved than in our drive to save the Post Office.

I begin checking my notepad, ‘So David, if you could investigate the planning laws, as agreed?’

David Parish nods with a ‘Will do’. He’s a retired architect. Excellent with detail. I run through, ensuring everyone’s happy with their roles, assign someone to write to the local paper and someone to circulate a petition. I’ll design leaflets, create the web page and ring local friends.

‘Eventually we could build towards a placard walk. But for now we need to think about ideas for fundraisers.’

‘A placard walk?’ repeats Alice Ainsley. This is the first time she’s done anything in the way of campaigning. ‘Do you… do you think that’s necessary?’

‘We need to be visible, Alice. This is common land, public green space. It’ll take work but we can turn things around.’

She nods as if willing herself to believe it and we begin to brainstorm publicity ideas. Pru, who’s been unusually quiet for the past few minutes, sits up. ‘You know Tessa, I’ve had a thought, something to get the message out.’ Everyone looks towards her. She pauses, ‘Television!’

I laugh. ‘Full marks for positive thinking but that’s slightly beyond budget.’

She smiles and lays down her pen. ‘But doesn’t one of us have the opportunity to become a television star?’

‘Oh marvellous,’ says David Parish, ‘top drawer.’

Oh God, she’s right. If I go on the programme and mention the campaign it’ll be the best publicity we’re ever likely to get. Then again, what about the Greenham Common angle? An uneasy feeling trickles into me. Television? No. I can’t.

‘Things are so busy at work,’ I say, which is true. It’s only a two-person office and we’re approaching a funding review, Frieda can’t get everything done by herself.

Four pairs of eyes fix on me. Pru’s gaze is unwavering. ‘I’m sure filming is swift.’

But I couldn’t have them package me up as a Greenham Woman, not after everything that happened. While the others talk, memories start to move around in my head like uninvited guests at a party, they initiate unwelcome conversations and hold forth with embarrassing anecdotes and pass around snapshots which I attempt to snatch away: a journalist in a burberry hat, a bicycle with a bent wheel, a flaring camp fire on a winter afternoon.

Pru knows the format of the show, she says they could easily include a couple of minutes on Heston Fields. We could make it a condition. Whatever my personal feelings, I can see it’s a brilliant idea. Imperilled, like a woman balanced on a high diving platform, I agree.

Coffee cups are chinked in celebration. David Parish, who’s taking notes in his beautiful copperplate handwriting, asks if he should amend the minutes with a new action point and his fountain pen hovers over the page: Tessa to appear on television.

It takes a while to find the right shoebox, and in the process I sift through a succession of others crammed with the odds and ends accumulated over years – cards from long-forgotten restaurants, books of souvenir matches, wedding invitations with felty corners, a handful of snaps from the early days with Pete. In one strip of pictures we’re squashed together in a passport booth, me on his lap, him pressing his mouth to my cheek in an exaggerated comedy kiss. Strange to stumble upon that intimacy again after so long, almost an intrusion, like passing lit windows and glancing at figures caught in an embrace.

Among the memorabilia are photographs which have never been sorted into albums and I find a picture of Mum in her early thirties, hair backcombed into a beehive, showing off her slim legs in a mini dress printed with overblown pink and orange roses. There’s a photo I thought we’d lost, Pippa as a newborn, soft and curled into herself, staring solemn-eyed at the camera. In another she’s sitting on my lap after her fourth birthday party, giggling while I hug her to me. I stare at the photo for a long time. Then I remember what I’m supposed to be looking for.

The Greenham stuff must be under the bed. I feel around behind a tartan rug and an old pair of trainers until the Freeman, Hardy & Willis box slides free. It’s a few seconds before I lift the lid. Inside is a badly knitted scarf – an early attempt before I gave up knitting for good – and beside that a few handwritten leaflets, two snapshots and an exercise book, the cover smeared with ancient splatters of mud. I pick it up as if it might bear radioactive traces and, with a deep breath, flip it open.

28 October 1982

Hope this wasn’t a mistake. Too late now. Met a girl called Rori (sp?) who helped me put up my tent. They’ve all gone to a meeting somewhere. Not sure what I’m supposed to be doing. It’s freezing. Fingerless gloves a mistake.

As I unravel the scarf, a little velvet box drops into my lap. Inside is a pair of silver earrings in the shape of peace symbols. They feel as strange as tiger’s teeth after all this time.

The photos are smaller than I remember. The first is a shot of a blockade. I’m squeezed up with a dozen other women, singing. This is the one I’ll show to the TV people. But the other is not for public view. I pick it up by the edges, and there we are, me and Rori with our arms slung around one another, the heads of passing women blurring in the background and at the far corner of the frame a child grasping a stick with a paper dove attached, just in shot. On the back of the photo, in handwriting that hardly resembles mine any more is written Embrace the Base, 1982. We’re both laughing at some private, lost joke, faces turned towards each other, eyes meeting in an instant of joy. And the day returns with all the sharpness of cold weather. Rori’s smile, her springy curls spilling from her hat, the two of us clamped together as if we could stay like that forever.

I sit on the edge of the bed gazing down into the image and her lovely face rises up from where it’s been buried so long.

2

Life and Death

Mum sat on the settee peeling a saucepan of potatoes with the smallest, sharpest knife in the drawer, something she could do while barely taking her eyes off the six o’clock news. It was September, still warm, and outside a few kids were kicking a ball about before their mums called them in for tea. When a clip from Greenham came on, Dad mumbled to himself and turned his attention back to his Daily Express while I took a deep breath and said, ‘I was thinking, I might join them for a bit.’

Mum gave a quick