The Day I Discovered My Mother Was A Lunatic
On the 157 bus
Children are inherently conservative. They wish to be ‘normal’ like other children. They wish their lives to reflect those of other children. To be different is a burden.
I was twelve, on the cusp of my teenage years, those years when you are allowed, expected even, to challenge and rail against the strictures of your parents.
My mother and I had gone to town for a spot of window shopping. We visited the perfume counter at a department store. My mother was in her Opium period and sprayed a tester bottle over her body, including her hair and her feet and under her arms.
It was quite a show and the shop assistant was most put out because my mother could not afford the perfume, and the assistant knew this — she must have had radar for such things — and snatched the bottle from my mother and gave her a look.
I was used to people giving my mother looks, and I accepted it just as I accepted that we never went to restaurants, that I had to wear my sister’s hand-me-downs and that I wasn’t going to get a pair of high-heeled shoes anytime soon.
My mother glowered as we passed Marks and Spencer.
‘Buy nothing from that shop unless you want to look like every other woman in England.’
