The Blooming Of Alison Brennan

Chapter 6

Mum was in a state when I got home from school.

She was yelling at Dad, ‘See what you’ve done. Because you won’t cut the grass, now the council’s after us.’

Dad grumbled back, ‘I can’t cut the grass because of all the stuff you’ve got out there that you won’t let me throw away.’

‘Don’t talk to me,’ she wailed. Then she cleared a patch on the couch and sat with her head in her hands. A pile of papers slid to the floor.

‘He’ll call Child Protection. They’ll take Alison.’

I gradually got the story. A council guy had come to the house and told them it was a fire hazard. Of course it was, and on this hot day it was stifling. I could hardly breathe for the heat.

‘Did you tell him I live here?’ I asked.

‘No,’ Dad said. ‘But he would have seen you. You came in as he left.’

This could go two ways, I thought. He may decide not to get involved, or he may be conscientious and decide to report it.

This could go two waysHe may decide not to get involved, or he may be conscientious and decide to report it.I didn’t want Mum and Dad more upset, but after talking to Mrs Goodall, I was beginning to rebel. Something inside me, a small hope, wanted the man to be conscientious.

They came at seven o’clock in the evening, a man and a woman, about Uncle Leo’s age, in their forties. Their names were Bruce and Marilyn. They had kind faces. At first, Mum wouldn’t let them in. She thought she could talk to them through the door as she did with the council man, but they were persistent.

‘It’s only to discuss a complaint that came to our office. We won’t keep you long, Bernadette,’ Bruce said.

So they knew our names.

‘What complaint?’ Mum demanded, still refusing to open the door.

This wasn’t going to work.

‘It will be best if you handle this,’ I said to Dad. I took Mum over to her seat on the couch and sat on its arm next to her.

At last Dad opened the door and they came through. I watched them carefully. They didn’t register any shock at the state of the house; perhaps they’d seen this before. They didn’t ask to sit down — it would have been pointless — but stood in a space that Dad cleared for them. The man spoke and the woman looked around.

Please don’t go to the kitchen, don’t ask about the hot water, don’t badger Mum, she’s fragile. The fears circled in my head.

Please don’t go to the kitchen, don’t ask about the hot water, don’t badger Mum, she’s fragile.But the woman, Marilyn, did go to the kitchen, picking her way through the rubble. The kitchen was the final horror. When she saw that she would know everything.

Dad began, apologetically, ‘Sorry about the place. Things have got a bit beyond us.’

Bruce talked then about what they did, why they were there, and that they needed to make sure I was safe.

‘She’s safe,’ Dad said.

Mum sat with her head down. Any minute she would try to disappear into her bedroom.

Finally Marilyn said, ‘We need to speak to your daughter alone for a few moments, please.’ She turned to me. ‘Is there somewhere we can talk?’

I thought of the rest of the house, just as junked as this room. ‘No. I’ll come outside with you.’

So we stood on the overgrown nature strip and they asked me questions.

‘How long has the house been like this?’

‘All of my life.’

‘The kitchen’s unsafe. Where do you cook?’

‘We don’t.’

I decided not to make it anymore difficult for them. I told them everything that I’d told Mrs Goodall — about how I had learnt to look after myself, going to the gym to shower, buying food at the gym and at school, washing my things in the laundromat at the weekend. It was a relief to tell it to someone official.

The man was nice.

‘It’s serious, Alison,’ he said. ‘It’s dangerous and unhealthy.’

‘Please,’ I answered, ‘I cope okay. Don’t make trouble for Mum. She’s not well.’

‘We’re going to come back every week for a while to check on you,’ he said. He gave me his card.

‘Now, please be honest with us, do you need help?’ Marilyn asked as she handed me her card too.

Yes, yes, yes, I need help — that little voice of hope whispered in my head.

Yes, yes, yes, I need helpBut I took their cards, promised to call them if I needed to, and went inside to Mum and Dad.

Mum was still sitting on the couch, crying now. I was so used to making excuses for her that at first I didn’t acknowledge the feeling that swelled inside me, like a balloon gradually inflating. It was fury… at Mum and her self-pity, and at Dad and his weakness. Fury at the situation they’d put me in, having to be monitored like an abused child.

‘This isn’t about you, Mum,’ I said in a voice I’d never used with her before.

I then left the house, taking my phone. I knew what I had to do.

After four years, it was time.