definitely makes Mum happy. She’s finally got her own office. People were shocked by how quickly she sprang into action, how she took over the business and turned it around, but she needed a fresh start, and I suppose she had a lot to prove.
You see, when Dad was alive, our ye olde family business, The Patois10 Press, wasn’t much of a business at all. Dad’s books never sold as brilliantly as we’d hoped, and we were always tripping over them. Even his magazine, The Occupation Today, which had real-life subscribers and contributors, was running at a loss. Without Mum’s common sense we’d have definitely gone bankrupt. Dad couldn’t accept the trouble we were in because he didn’t care about money/my schooling. Mum said that he was so wrapped up in the past that he couldn’t think about the future. She said you can’t change History – the things that have already happened – but the future is wide open.
Now, Mum reckons what’s ahead makes her happy and I should want her to be happy. Isn’t that what all children want for their parents?
And yes, I do admire her, because she kept up appearances and pretended things were fine, when they really weren’t. It was a bit like when the Germans invaded Guernsey: most islanders tried to ignore them and carry on like normal. This is called sang froid, which sounds better in French, because in English it’s cold blood. I wouldn’t call Mum cold-blooded, but she is a pragmatist, and it’s a shame Dad won’t see how she’s transformed the business. A third of Guernsey’s advertising flyers are now produced by The Patois Press, and we’ve (trumpets, please) just launched our first-ever Escape to Guernsey Calendar.
Mum, it turns out, is an excellent businesswoman.
Which is why she wasn’t around much after Dad died, and why she never noticed when Nic started to come over. I’m not blaming her (really, I’m not), but because she was always working Nic and I could please ourselves. Nic really liked our house – I thought it was shabby compared to Les Paradis but she called it ‘real’. She snooped in every room and Dad-filled cupboard and decided that this room, Dad’s study, was the best place to sit. It was seven months and eleven days since he’d died and not much had changed. I thought she’d find it creepy but I remember her sinking onto some cushions on the floor and looking right at-home. After that the study became our den, and nobody noticed the mess we made because it was a mess already.
At first Nic made me nervous. She was the expert in sex and boys and make-up, none of which I knew about. I usually hate it when someone knows more than me, but Nic had this way of talking. She was so honest and I felt like we could tell each other (almost) everything. She actually listened to me, as well. She couldn’t believe it when I told her Mum and Dad had slept in different rooms, and that we weren’t allowed a TV, and that Dad’s fingers had turned black and died before he did. I remember feeling so proud when she lifted up her head, scanned the dusty shelves and said: ‘. . . and I thought my parents were fucked.’
I was the only girl in our class with a dead dad and it made me demi-exotic. Nic wasn’t scared of death, like some people. Is that why she liked me? I don’t know. I just don’t know! She definitely liked Dad’s study, though, and in between plucking off my eyebrows/trying to pierce my ears I told her grisly stories about the German Occupation.11 They were much better than the brainless trash you read in Jackie or Just Seventeen.
But the one story I couldn’t tell her was the one she most wanted to know. I had this huge pile of papers that I’d been carefully putting in order. I’d labelled it ‘The Whole Grim Truth’ (very catchy, I know), because it was the story of Uncle Charlie, Dad’s older brother, who got in trouble with the Germans and ended up being starved and tortured and driven mad. He only just survived the War and he was the reason Dad made himself an expert on said German Occupation.
Nic wanted to know what Charlie had done to get in so much trouble, but I decided not to tell her. I just said he chose the wrong friends, which I think was