CHAPTER 1

Acceptable Reasons For Late Arrival

?London

There was a specific moment I can chart as to when things started to go awry. My cheek was pressed to the lounge carpet at number forty-seven and Mum was bent over, her heels popping out of her slippers, consumed in what I thought was a narrow mesh of living: obsessing over small domestic problems, like dust or wiping skirting boards, or defrosting freezer compartments. Yet I worried how I still needed her in a way I couldn't specify. Now at twenty-five I was not allowed to be a child, I was an adult living back at home, and the scales no longer tipped in my favour.

'There,' she said, shifting the coffee table over an inch. 'Meet the new lounge.'

Lifting my head, I saw the latest configuration had given the room a lift. But the bay window above, once so cinematic, now began at my head and ended at my toes. My sister's freedom car, ready to whisk us off from Dad at any point, was no longer parked outside. This street was too small, too familiar. Back here in Penge I was a failure, cleaning my old secondary school toilets for cash. The girls stuck their used sanitary towels, face out, on the cubicle walls. Maybe this was modern witchcraft, or a fingers up to authority, whatever, it was certainly dismissive of the person cleaning up.

'Help me move the sofa. See if there's any grain of rice type things,' Mum said, like I would join in. 'That's evidence they're back.'

'Don't moths have stomachs and nervous systems?' I said. 'You shouldn't be killing . '

'Isn't there enough going on, without you .?' Mum said.

'You've hoovered once, so . ' I said, splaying my fingers at the room.

'God, you sound like your father. I'm double-checking.' Mum's cheeks had gone red.

'I'm not Dad,' I said, like I was thirteen. Her likening me to him was the last thing I wanted. I didn't have a drink problem. Plus, I had friends. Lots. My brain fired up after a pint or three, I danced and flashed and never got nasty.

While I was in Australia trying to make it as a performance artist, a horde of gold moths had been spotted here in the carpets, their larval pupas stuck behind the curtains. This was the big news she'd written in her letter, nothing more personal. If it'd been a metaphor for her dissatisfaction with Dad, I would've understood - how moths were drawn to fake light, believing it was the radiance of the moon - but we weren't a family who used metaphors.

After a long inspection she put the hoover attachment down. She rubbed her forehead, and from her sigh, I knew the pressure of me living back home was difficult. And Dad, she still chose him after all he'd done to us. Before I'd left for art college, I'd painted him naked and blue, strung up by a noose. Then I'd propped the picture above my bedroom door, trying to force the evil pull of the booze away. When he'd brought me a cup of tea the next morning, he'd walked in under the painting, not seeing it balanced on the doorframe. I'd realised the man I carried in my head from the night times was not the soft man sat on my bed in the morning. Because I loved him when he wasn't drunk, I destroyed the painting as fast as possible.

'Now, why don't you give the airline a call?' Mum said. 'I think it would do you good, see more of this world while getting paid for it.' She held out her hand to pull me up. 'You never know . I could even join you. Be a "cling-on",' she said, twitching her head in a weird way.

Motioning me over, together we slid the table in front of the drinks cupboard under the record player. This was the latest attempt at curbing Dad's drinking; the other week he'd stumbled over an open water works hole and ripped his best work trousers.

'It's not me, cabin crew. Tea, coffee, tea, coffee,' I said, moving my hands like a robot.

'Why shouldn't it be you? There are worse ways to make a living. You are always saving to go off travelling. And the art . well, it's not too late to retrain. I would think it would be good for you.'

My eyes darted down at the coffee table, feeling the shame. The first person in my family to study at university and I couldn't hack it now I'd left. All those years finding my wings: film-making, photography, nudity, wig-wearing, impersonations of Julie Andrews, following my gut, feeling my glow; I'd believed I was on the brink of becoming something big. Dad had suggested I study graphic design, so I would be sure to land a job, but that was selling out. When I left Cardiff Art School, I had a show at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and thought this was the beginning. Then I'd entered The World's First Miss Lesbian Beauty Contest held at the Café de Paris, thinking this was my way into my extraordinary future. When nothing happened, I couldn't work out how or why I should make art. So my sister got me a job at Barclays bank in Streatham, processing cheques with nothing but a portable radio to keep me human. Cellulite formed on the backs of my thighs, reminding me of cauliflower and rot. I'd read somewhere how you shouldn't let a job define who you were, but I couldn't work out how not to.

'You see, love,' Mum said, picking up the furniture polish, then performing a wipe round the television screen. 'Life is all about having to do things you don't want to.'

Her philosophy was threadbare, so poor it made me want to scream. I was not going to turn out like this, caught in a room, searching for moths. Only last week, after a particularly silent standoff with Dad, she'd disappeared. Later, when she returned, she confided she'd left home only to go on the 227 to Bromley and back. Twice, she said, and the driver hadn't charged her for the second journey which became the golden lining to the story. She'd have stayed out longer, she said, if it'd been Thursday late-night shopping.

'So, anyhow, I got you the airline phone number from Juan up the road.' She pronounced 'Ju-an' carefully, enjoying the foreign quality dance over her tongue. 'He loves it. Do you know he was in a hot tub in Miami last week? Took his mum to Kenya. She sat on an elephant.'

'Why are you telling me this?' I blurted. Too sharp.

She turned, flushed-face. 'You should focus on being like my side of the family. The light side.'

'Can I go now?' She nodded, and I noticed there was a roll of dust on her sleeve. As I went to pick it off, she stepped back. To the outside eye no one would notice this flinching, but to me it was everything. Since I'd told her I didn't like men, how I had never liked them in that way, there had been no more touching. I hoped I was imagining it, but whatever the reason, she was uncomfortable. I feared she believed if I held her too intensely, it was because I wanted her in a lesbian way.

The telephone number for the airline was in the hall. I grabbed it then took the stairs to Mum and Dad's bedroom, sinking onto Dad's side where I studied the marbled blood stains on his pillow. Last year's book on cricket scores sat closed on the table next to the telephone. I opened the pot where he stored his false teeth. He'd worn them since he was forty, losing his real ones early because he was too scared to visit the dentist. The container was empty; he was down the pub. It was a Saturday, and Mum allowed him to have lunchtime drinks on Saturdays. Along with Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays after dinner, she kept him on a tight schedule. The official line was his diabetes. Still, I found the pot intriguing, as if it were a way to get closer to him. I examined the dull shine in the plastic bowl. It smelt of unchanged pedal bins.

Picking up the phone, I smoothed the crumpled paper over my knee. Baulking at Mum's peach curtains, I pictured how many women were rearranging rooms right now across London, then multiplied this. I would not become another one. I would be strident. Taking in a deep breath, I dialled the number. It rang immediately, then clicked to a plucky operatic harp. I recognised the tune from the TV ad where people of different nationalities were reunited for a wedding in Japan. I wanted to be the kind of person who had friends in Tokyo and drank Martinis on rooftops in Manhattan.

When the call reached a human voice, I jumped, spurting out, 'hello?'

The gap which followed made me realise it was a recording. The office was now closed and would reopen on Monday morning.

Replacing the receiver, I felt relief. Mum had got it wrong about me being right for the job, of course. An air hostess was never going to make me into me. Everyone knew parents had the worst ideas for their offspring. So far I'd made it to my mid-twenties without having one hairstyle Mum liked. I certainly would not call back on...