the Tender Years

“You’ve got to get out more, Marie.” I sat very silent and just took
it. Looking over at him he really let me have it –
“You can start by giving your mother more housekeeping and oh
and, by the way, if you want to live in the bathroom, you need to pay
something towards the heating bills, OK?”
As his eyes started to bulge, as they often did, I just remained calm
and kept it all in. I had telephoned Stephen three times during the day
and unbeknown to my parents, had accepted the kind offer to live
permanently with him and his mother. Confessing privately to mum
that I definitely was going to leave home, her tears tumbled down.
She was losing me. It was inevitable that I would go, one day. “Your
dad didn’t mean it,” she said the next morning as she tried to help me
pack a large case with some of my belongings.
I was upset but had to keep my dignity and emotions intact to
enable me to concentrate on my next step. A giant step. I’d had
difficult times at home as mentioned and embarking on being free and
charting my own life was important. As I left the home, mum was
inconsolable. I had told her before I left that I would come back for
visits and gradually collect all of my personal belongings.
Moving in with Stephen felt like the most natural thing in the
world. A New Year had arrived and I had a new person to share it
with. My troubles seemed to be far away from me then. I did not
want any secrecy between Stephen and myself, and it was this fact
that alerted me to confide in him about the troubles I had endured in
my childhood with my step-dad. Talking with his mother, whom I
confided in later, she proved to be sympathetic and her philosophy for
me was to move on and never look back. She taught me a little about
cooking skills, even though I already knew quite a lot. Showing me
the best way to poach a humble egg was something I did not know!
She was what I call a very ‘correct’ lady and on a weekend when
she would be away with her friends, she made sure that my drill for
cooking the perfect Sunday lunch for her son and myself was a good
lesson. One to learn well.
I shopped for the meat and prepared Yorkshire Pudding, roast
potatoes and vegetables. But what a disaster! The beef was
over-cooked and dry, the Yorkshire Pudding was all sloshy (sliding
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