Page 8 of The Tapes

SIX

Music bleeds through the wall from Faith’s room. There’s a pounding beat for a few seconds, then something more melodic, then back to a thump-thump-thump. She’s scrolling on her phone, her attention span such that she’s swiping from video to video while – I assume – barely watching them.

It’s easy to get all kids today about this sort of thing but I suppose every generation has this. My mum said I watched too much television – but then perhaps her mother told her she listened to too many cassettes. Each new set of parents is convinced their children’s minds are being rotted.

Faith is used to me being late home on a Tuesday.

I’ve not hidden the AA meetings from her, even when she was younger.

That’s another thing about today’s generation: none of them seem to think talking to one another about their problems is strange.

The fact I head off to a church hall once a week or so to listen to alcoholics tell their stories isn’t a great source of shame for my daughter.

If anything, the opposite is true. Even when she’s busy with school or her friends, she’ll find time to ask how my Tuesday night went.

It went fine, I told her – and then we were back to our own rooms and our own lives. If the discovery of that gun affected her, she isn’t showing it any longer.

For me, the large box of tapes from Dad’s garage is on my bed.

I filter through the rows one by one, still partially obsessed by my mother’s handwriting.

It would never have occurred yesterday that I’d be so hung up on such a thing but now I’m obsessed with the way she drew the letter ‘M’ with such rigid precision.

Almost all the tapes have months and years on the sleeve and I’ve tidied them into date order – but there are a few that are different. One is mine, of course: the perfectly printed ‘Eve’, cataloguing my early attempts to count and learn the alphabet, intermingled with Mum saying she was murdered.

Another simply has the word ‘Sorry’ written with letters so neat it’s almost as if they’ve been printed. I almost don’t want to listen to the contents, dreading to think what could be on it, except it’s an easier choice than randomly choosing a month and year.

The cable for the cassette player is short, so the device ends up balancing half on the bed as I try to get comfortable. I have work in the morning and should be trying to sleep – but it’s difficult to think of that when there are hours of my mother’s voice nestling in the box at my side.

It’s so satisfying to put a tape into the player with the clunk and click as it slots into place. I revel in that for a second, then push play. The now familiar microphone pops and then, again, my mum’s voice seeps from the speaker.

‘I went to the library today. I couldn’t find my card but the woman on the desk typed my name into the system and found me. She gave me a new card but said it costs two pounds if I lose it again. I think I went to school with her but can’t remember her name and she didn’t seem to know me.

The psychology section has moved. It used to be across from the kids bit, where there are always lots of parents with children.

It just means there are always people watching.

I went there but it’s books on tape now and the woman said that’s the new trend.

I joked that I’ve been putting things on tape for years but she didn’t get it.

She said the psychology books were upstairs – and I found them near the back wall where nobody ever goes.

I already had an idea what I was looking for because I’d started reading it in the bookshop – but I suppose it was the first time I was able to admit to myself that I actually am a kleptomaniac.

It’s such a fun word. Klepto. Kleptomaniac.

I suppose I proved the point because I kinda, um, borrowed the book.

I want to tell Bruce about the irony of it all.

That there’s a book that describes how I lack impulse control, and the reason I have it is because I wanted it.

It’s funny, isn’t it? But I don’t think he’d get it.

Actually, I know he wouldn’t. He’d much rather it all went away.

He wants to pretend it isn’t real. I do get it.

It’d be easier if it wasn’t but at least I have a name for it now.

I’m klepto. I’m a kleptomaniac. I sort of like the label.

I’d consider going to the doctor to ask for a proper diagnosis.

Maybe there’s help? But I don’t want to risk them taking away Eve.

She’s only nine and her dad left last week. It’s all been a bit ? —’

I stop the tape, largely because my mother’s voice saying my name is too much. The calm is so unnerving that goosebumps ripple across my arms.

‘Her dad left last week.’ But my parents were together my whole childhood, weren’t they?

The older I got, the more I realised something wasn’t quite right with my mother.

By the time she disappeared, I was past my mid-twenties and it was obvious.

I never heard her use the word ‘kleptomaniac’ to describe herself, and wonder if this tape was her way of getting it all out without actually having to tell anyone.

I google the word, and, suddenly, a lot makes sense.

She was admitting to herself that she couldn’t resist the urge to steal things she didn’t need.

The library book for one; plus my necklace.

So many other things, too. She stole from me because she couldn’t stop herself.

Not only that, she says I was nine in this tape, meaning it was a good ten years before she took my necklace.

Mum had known for a long time what she was and yet, when I went to her, asking if she’d seen it, she still said no.

My thoughts are jarred by a gentle knock on the door and I jump, instinctively, suddenly back in the present as I realise it can only be Faith.

‘Are you OK?’ she asks through the door. ‘I heard you talking to yourself…?’

It takes a moment to realise my daughter thought the voice on the tape was my own. She was only four when her grandmother disappeared and doesn’t remember her. I wonder whether this means I sound like my mother.

I’m up off the bed and open the door, to where my daughter is on the landing. Her hands are tucked into her armpits as she holds herself.

‘Are you OK?’ she asks again.

‘Just a lot going on, with Dad and all.’

‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘I don’t think so. It’ll be better after Friday.’

I keep talking about my father’s funeral, even though it isn’t really in my mind. It’s my other parent I can’t stop thinking about.

‘Can I get a yoghurt?’

‘You don’t have to ask if you’re hungry.’

‘I didn’t want to wake you if you were sleeping, but then I heard you talking to yourself…’

I don’t deny it, because the truth of torturing myself with my mother’s voice is so much more complicated.

‘Thanks for checking,’ I say.

Faith hovers for a moment, considering whether to say more. I’m almost always asleep before her and she’s concerned that I’m sitting up, chatting to myself directly after the AA meeting. All that not long after Dad died.

‘I’m honestly fine,’ I say. ‘I promise.’

She waits a moment and then nods, apparently satisfied, before heading downstairs to grab her yoghurt.

I move back into my room and close the door, then sit on the bed, listening to Faith make her way back upstairs.

She very much keeps her own hours, although I was no different at that age.

I could sleep for twenty-four hours, or for two, with seemingly little warning or preparation for either.

When Faith has settled, I return to my own bed and lower the volume on the player.

‘…she’s only nine and her dad left last week. It’s all been a bit ? —’

I listen to Mum’s voice again, but only briefly, because I’m struck by the realisation that memories simply don’t work the way everyone assumes.

The way I assumed. Everyone thinks it’s a binary black-and-white thing, where a person either remembers or they don’t, except my mother recorded these tapes in real time.

This is an accurate on-the-day version of how she saw things, yet, even from the snippets, I’m realising how much I’ve forgotten.

I don’t recall Dad leaving – but I do remember the time when Mum told me he had to go away to work for a few months.

All that time, I was going to school, visiting friends’ houses, or going to clubs – then returning to a home where I only had one parent.

I took it in my stride, as a child. It wasn’t worth remembering.

It seems so obvious now that he wasn’t working somewhere for that length of time; he’d simply walked out. Was it because of Mum? Me? Was he having an affair?

But that sparks another thought, because Dad was gone during a winter and I remember telling Mum I liked a coat I’d seen in a shop window.

When I got home from school the next day, it was on my bed waiting for me.

I assumed she’d bought it because I needed a winter jacket.

Now, having heard my own mother describe herself, and perhaps even without that, there’s such clarity to what actually happened.

All memories that are now so perfect and yet, an hour ago, didn’t exist.

I listen to more of the tape, where Mum continues to explain her problem. The pilfered book about kleptomania has clarified things for her and she says it’s like reading a biography of herself.