Читать книгу The Lost Properties of Love - Sophie Ratcliffe, Sophie Ratcliffe - Страница 7

— 1988 —

When I wake up in the morning, love

Bill Withers, ‘Lovely Day’

Death, for me, smells like summer and commodes, and sounds like pop.

It was September of 1988, and I’d already spent most of the holidays in my bedroom with my purple radio cassette player, waiting for my father to die. Guns N’ Roses were slipping back down the charts, and the highest climber was Jason Donovan with ‘Nothing Can Divide Us’. Kylie Minogue and Belinda Carlisle and Big Fun had a strong showing. I clung to the upbeat of Yazz and the Plastic Population, and the sunshine mix of Bill Withers. Term had started and nothing changed. I had a flute exam coming up. New in at 37 was ‘Revolution Baby’ from Transvision Vamp. He was still dying. Anthrax had gone down a spot with ‘Make Me Laugh’.

I was woken by a noise. I could tell from the volume that my mother was standing somewhere near the airing cupboard, the one with the copper cistern wrapped in a red life jacket. The baby, my sister, started crying, too. I got out of bed. As a short, flat-chested thirteen-year-old with unfeasibly large feet, I spent a great deal of time thinking that I had nothing to wear. But that particular morning, I felt it more distinctly than usual. Neither Just Seventeen nor Good Housekeeping’s ‘A Look for a Lifestyle’ had covered the matter of what to wear on the day your father dies – painfully and messily, before his time – when you have a day of corpse-viewing ahead of you.

In the end, I put on the skirt that I wore for choir, with panels that swirled on the bias, a three-quarter-length navy sweatshirt with an ersatz-Victorian plasticised picture of a floral bouquet on it, and my best electric blue loafers. The black tights were a mistake. It was going to be a lovely day.