Somewhere Only We Know ....... Read Online Free PDF Page A

and
pulled the cover up over my head. The row continued and on other
nights I was woken up many times with the shouting and screaming
and banging about, sometimes the rows were about me, sometimes
about other things but one thing was clear, their marriage was in
serious trouble.
    My mam and
dad ’ s behavior
didn ’ t calm me down, if
anything I grew wilder. I spent all my spare time with Jenny, her
home was always calm and happy whereas in mine you could cut the
atmosphere with a knife.
    One thing
that I found disturbing happened one Saturday morning. My dad
always worked overtime and although I had stayed with Jenny on the
Friday night, I had gone over home on the Saturday morning to get a
top I wanted to wear that night. As soon as I went in my mam asked
me if I would bring the record player down from my bedroom and put
it onto the hall table and plug it in. She then appeared with a
record and said when the phone rings, put this record on, answer
the phone and play the record down the phone. I asked her why but
she just giggled. Anyway I did as she asked and when the phone rang
I played Doris Day ’ s Move
Over Darling to the person on the other end. The record finished I
put down the phone, took the record player back upstairs, collected
my top and left the house. I never did ask who was on the other end
of the phone, it was all just too weird.
    The next
couple of months continued much the same, I partied and my mam and
dad rowed. A couple of weeks before we were due to break up for the
summer holidays Jenny dropped a bomb shell. She was 16 now and was
just leaving school, she was starting work at her
dad ’ s solicitor’s office at
the end of August and as a treat before she went into the wide
world her mam and dad had rented a villa for the whole summer
somewhere in Spain. I was devastated. Even though I now had lots of
friends, Jenny was my best one and the thought of not having her
around for the whole of the summer was unimaginable.
    But a bigger
shock was in store for me at home. I was summoned into the kitchen
for a chat around the kitchen table. I thought here it comes, they
are splitting up, but what I wasn ’ t expecting to hear from them was that we were moving,
moving back to Kinsley!!!! Our house had been sold and they had
bought one back in my birth place, a place I had visited
infrequently for the past two years and somewhere I
hadn ’ t lived for 8 years. My
world was crashing down around me.
    Those last couple of weeks before Jenny went
on holiday were unbearable. We laughed and we cried, we got drunk
and we both whispered long into the night when Jenny eventually
lost her virginity to a lad named David who she really really
liked.
    The morning
that Jenny flew out to Spain I
couldn ’ t go and say goodbye.
I stayed in bed in my usual position with the covers pulled up over
my head and pretended I was ill. I heard my mam talking to Jenny
when she came across to say goodbye but I
couldn ’ t go down and see her
and I wouldn ’ t allow her to
come up. And then she was gone.
    A week later
we moved back to Kinsley, to a replica house of the one we had just
left. “ New house new
beginning ” my mam chirped.
The only good thing about the move was that we lived just along the
road from my Granny ’ s house
and my Granny took over Jenny ’ s role; without the drink, tabs, lads and parties of
course.
    I met up
with Jenny in Newcastle a couple of times over the next year, but I
felt painfully shy around her. She was all grown up and
sophisticated now that she worked in the solicitors and she seemed
to have put her wild days behind her. She had settled herself down
with David and they were saving to get married. When her dad died
unexpectedly, I went to the funeral, I was also at her wedding and
then we lost touch for a while. By fluke we both ended up working
in the same office for a while, our friendship blossomed again and
when she had her first baby David Junior I was his Godmother. After
the birth