Page 1 of The Tapes

ONE

It’s underneath a rusty power saw that I find the cassette player.

Dad’s inability to throw things out has led to a garage cluttered with everything from used sandpaper – better known as ‘paper’ – to a Danish butter cookies tin filled with small light bulbs he’d labelled ‘dead’.

No wonder he always left his car parked on the driveway: the garage is landfill.

Except for the tape player.

It’s about the size of a Kindle, or a mini iPad, though much heavier.

There’s a built-in speaker and something delightfully satisfying and retro about the chunky buttons and the way the lid flicks open with a substantial pop .

Now with Siri, Alexa, and all the touchscreens, it’s such a novelty to be able to push things.

A shoebox marked ‘cables’ sits underneath and I remove the lid to find a mangle of spaghettified cords woven into one another. There are the obligatory SCART leads Dad kept, presumably in case they ever returned to fashion, but also the short black lead for the cassette player.

Before he died, when Dad did one of his annual clear-outs that’s not really a clear-out, he gave me an old rotary landline phone.

My daughter is seventeen, a child of the noughties, who’d never known a world that wasn’t wireless.

When I took the phone home for her, she stared at it, baffled by the ancient tech, unsure how it worked.

I really want her to see this.

The cassette player goes into the very small ‘keep’ pile and then I continue rummaging.

It’s going to take a while to clear Dad’s house, to the point that I’m thinking it might be wiser to get the bulldozers in. My father was many things and borderline hoarder was definitely one of them.

God forbid he throw out anything himself.

After a few more minutes of sorting and clearing, I find a box with ‘Ange’ written on the side in faded felt tip. I’m about to dispatch it to the bin, except the name has me momentarily frozen.

Angela was Mum’s name.

Was…

The box has the dust-crusted look of something that’s not been moved in a very long time.

I’m half expecting old photographs inside – but the contents are even more of a treasure trove.

An old corded microphone has the wire wrapped around the handle – and then, underneath, are two long rows of cassette tapes.

I’m falling through time: sitting on my bedroom floor, a tape in the hi-fi, trying to press play and record and the exact time to cut out the DJ’s voice as I record songs from the radio.

There was a time when I’d carry my own mixtapes in my schoolbag and listen to them on my knock-off Argos Walkman while walking to school.

As I stare at the tidy stack of tapes, it’s so close, even though it’s thirty years ago.

At first I wonder if some of my old tapes survived, except these all have tidy handwriting on the sleeves.

Mum’s handwriting.

There’s another moment in which I’m blinking my way into the past. It’s such a long time since I saw such neatly capitalised letters.

Mum once told me she won a handwriting competition when she’d been at school and, when I was eight or nine, I had been so desperate to be as good as her.

It’s impossible not to feel those ancient tugs.

I choose a cassette from the middle of the row: one marked by a simple ‘September 1987’.

The tape inside is a translucent brown, with ‘C-90’ on a thin label that’s slightly peeling from the plastic.

I fumble the cassette into the player and push the lid closed with a gratifying clunk.

There’s a plug socket hidden behind something that looks like an old lawnmower engine, so I slot it in – and then press play.

A momentary silence is followed by a thunk from a microphone, a gentle clearing of someone’s throat, and then more silence.

I realise I can hear my own heart walloping its way through my chest. As soon as the woman’s voice says ‘Hello…’ a shiver flashes along my spine and I instinctively check over my shoulder, as it suddenly feels as if I’m no longer alone.

I am but I’m not.

Joining me is a voice I haven’t heard in thirteen years.

‘It’s Saturday today and we’ve been at Hollicombe Bay for a week now.

The caravan’s kind of small but it’s only Bruce, Eve and me here.

Bruce made friends with the couple next door, mainly because he’s found someone who is also happy to talk about motorbikes for hours.

I’ve been taking Eve for walks around the campsite.

She met her first puppy yesterday. I thought she might be a bit too young but ? —’

I stop the tape because it’s too much. I’d have very recently turned two years old in September 1987. The talk of being walked around a campsite and seeing my first puppy…

The last time I heard my mother speak was over a decade ago. If anyone had asked, I don’t think I would have been able to describe her voice – and yet it feels so familiar now. There’s a little more youth than I remember, and it’s perhaps slightly higher pitched – but it’s unquestionably Mum.

She sounds so young.

There’s a lump in my throat, which is gulped away while I remove the tape from the player. I return it to the case, then the box – where there are so many more.

It’s only now that vague memories swirl of Mum sitting at the dining table with a cassette player and microphone.

I’d forgotten that there was a time in which she used to record her thoughts as some sort of diary.

Like everything as a child, people assume your mum and dad are normal and everyone else’s are strange.

It’s only now I realise most grown-ups weren’t sitting down to record themselves.

I think I even remember the caravan park: not from the year on the tape, but we visited the same place every August until the early-nineties.

There’s a clear memory of being six or seven, complaining about Mum dragging me up a hill, or round a lake on one of those trips.

She was always more outdoorsy, while Dad would sit by himself and read the paper.

Dad’s garage still needs clearing but I’m almost paralysed by the box of tapes.

Almost all sleeves have identical type, with the month and year.

Everything’s out of order but there’s a couple from the early 1980s, before I was born; then a good half-dozen from the 1990s.

Even as the world shifted to CDs, Mum was apparently recording the earliest of podcasts for an audience of only herself.

I find myself wondering whether she ever listened back to the recordings, or if it was simply a way of getting the thoughts from her head.

I almost return the lid to the box. This is something for another day.

Almost .

Because tucked at the bottom of a row is a cassette that doesn’t have a month and date. Instead, there’s one simple word.

Eve

My name written by Mum’s hand. Another shiver rips through me and, before I know it, the tape is in the player. There’s that gentle thunk of the microphone being picked up, and then:

This is my second go at this. My name is Angela and I’ve been murdered…

…

…

Well, I think I’m going to be murdered.

…

…

I don’t know. It’s just… I don’t think I’m a good person. I did something. I’ve done lots of things…’

There’s a crackle and a click that makes me wince, then the voice cuts to something different. Mum is there again but her voice is younger, happier.

‘Can you count to three, Eve? We start with one, don’t we? One…’

I listen to a me of the ancient past repeat one-two-three in time after my mother, as she calls me clever.

She says I’m going to grow up to be an astronaut or a brain surgeon, except I’m still frozen from the first part.

I rest a finger on the stop button, ready to rewind and listen again, except there’s another crackle and click.

‘… if this is Eve listening, I just want you to know I’m sorry. If they say I’m missing, I’m not. I’ve been killed – and I need you to know that I love you.’