Paige after Paige

I lift my eyes from the book in my hands and glance wearily up at the fireplace. It was near impossible to read through the tears, so I lay it down carefully beside me. I could feel the flames that were warming my feet, but I couldn’t see them any more. Rather than flames, I simply saw a swirling of colours tangled together. It was no longer clear where the logs ended and the fire began, let alone words on a page.

Her words were almost illegible anyway, even without the obscuring lens of tears. I had always tried to get Paige to adopt a nice cursive style, but she had argued that she doesn't have the time to make her words look pretty.

I had just finished reading Thursday. That was 6 days ago now.

I couldn’t tell you how long I had been sitting there reading in the middle of the living room carpet. The girls had already gone to bed so I was hugging my legs against my chest and rocking slightly to the chords of silence. It must have been quite a while, as I had only just realised that I had become victim to the inevitable consequence of my stationary position. Numbness had begun creeping slyly up from my toes all the way to my thighs - pins and needles.

I took a sip of the red wine I had placed daringly beside me. One wrong move and the cream carpet’s new home will be the attic. Hypocritical I know. I always tell the girls off for taking drinks to the living room and yet here I am with a drink that is infamous for its ability to stain. But tonight, I just don’t care. Tonight I think I need this wine more than I care about that carpet.

I have 6 more pages to read.

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Friday 3rd April

Friday is always game night. I used to hate it. I mean, Friday night is the best night, the perfect night, to go out and see where the night takes you, but I could never go. Because Friday is always game night.

But now, I hate to admit that I’ve been enjoying our weekly tradition for a while now. Although we play a different game every week, the night always plays out the same way.

First, Marie and I refuse to play. I don’t know why we always play this game. The game before the game. Mum always initiates. She has to coax us out of our rooms and beg us to play. We, of course, outright refuse. Then she tries one of her 5 predetermined moves. Asking again, pulling us by the hand, tickling us till we forfeit, asking us ‘do we really need to do this whole song and dance every time?’, and the last resort - unplugging the WiFi. All three of us know that, whether we reach move number 2 or number 5, pretty soon we will all be cross-legged on that ugly carpet, hunched over a flimsy piece of cardboard.

The game itself is irrelevant.

The first forty-five minutes play fairly normally I would say. But when it hits an hour… that’s when the chaos seeps in. You see, we often hear that Marie and I are carbon copies of Mum, but Dad did leave us one trait of his before he left - his competitiveness. While Mum is scrambling for control, Marie is screaming at me and I’m throwing Monopoly money at her face. But regardless of how heated it gets, Mum always ensures that we finish the game and pack up together.

It sounds like a nightmare to endure such bickering every Friday evening, but once we are all in bed after the tempers have cooled, we know we enjoyed it.

Today’s game was Dobble. We didn’t even last the usual 45 minutes of calm because Mum let us win and I can’t stand that. That’s more frustrating than her beating us fair and square.

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At some point during that entry, the fire had transitioned from its vibrancy to a subtle glow, so I restocked the log supply and watched the flames catch. There is something quite toxic about the comfort that fire gives you. It’s not that the room isn’t warm enough without it. In fact, it was quite stuffy at this point. But somehow the warmth makes you feel a little less lonely. Maybe it makes you feel that way in a desperate attempt to prolong its lifetime even just by an hour or so. Either way, I give in and make the room hotter and hotter still, despite my sweat and discomfort.

I always knew they loved our Friday nights under all that moping. But I wasn’t expecting such a positive tone, especially only 5 days ago. She seems so happy living in this house.

And yet she wants to leave.

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Saturday 4th April

Ben said that I had to open the shop today. As if I haven’t been put on the last 3 morning shifts! I know you have to be firm with your managers but Kiera was working today and…

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No! I don’t care about Ben and Kiera. I am two glasses of wine deep and it’s 1 in the morning. I’m here to know one thing and one thing only and reading through anything else makes my anxious self incredibly impatient. So I skip to the sections that give me at least a clue.

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I’ve got my resignation letter all typed out, but I don’t have the courage to hit send. Not because I’m scared to leave or worried about how my manager will take it, but because this will mean that I’ve taken the first step. It means that the second step is telling mum and I don’t know if I’m ready for that. More importantly, I don’t know if she’s ready for that.

It’s been a couple of days now and I still haven’t heard back from that culinary course in London, so maybe the decision will be made for me. Maybe I will just stay at home. Like Marie.

I feel so guilty even looking for jobs because of Marie. She is so content just staying in the same town for 27 years. Is she sacrificing her ambitions for Mum too? Or does she simply not see beyond what she has already seen?

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The tears were gone now. I was no longer sad. Complete confusion took its place. This diary was meant to clear things up for me. That’s why she put it there. But it’s muddying the waters even more.

I found her diary left neatly on the dining room table. The same diary that has never been taken out of her room. She has never let any of us read it and we’ve never tried to. So the way she placed it neatly on the table, directly in front of the chair I always sit in… She wanted me to read it.

She was trying to explain herself while still giving me the space I need.

But this is just stirring up more questions.

Does Marie want to leave?

Am I stopping her in some way?

Why would they feel they have to sacrifice anything for me?

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Sunday 5th April

The three of us were having breakfast together as usual. I had made us a Full English and Marie agreed to give me a hand. She placed a plate of charred rubber pieces on the table that were originally meant to be halloumi. She looked me right in the eye as she did so, daring me to criticise them. I didn’t of course. Even if I can cook better than her, she is still my older sister. She will not hesitate if I push her too far.

So we ate them all. Feigning ignorance at where the crunchy sounds were coming from.

And then I mentioned it. Moving out, I mean. I don’t know why I did, I knew I would get upset, but I just needed to test the waters. I thought that maybe if I drip feed them the idea, it won’t come as too much of a shock when the time finally arrives.

I mentioned how I want to be a full-time chef. Maybe even run my own restaurant one day. This isn’t news to them. I’ve wanted to be a chef since I was a little girl. Mum used to let me call out the instructions from the recipe book and it made me feel like a wizard making a potion. I’d even mutter an incantation or two before a cake went into the oven. I still remember the day I successfully cracked my first egg. I was happier that day than on my birthday, shouting manically about how there were no shell pieces in the bowl.

But, today, when I hinted towards getting a job out of town (I didn’t say London, they don’t need to know how far out of town just yet) Marie shrugged and Mum didn’t even look up from her plate. I was expecting them to be shocked, sad, or even angry, but they were simply indifferent. Why is that so much worse?

That’s when it hit me. They don’t care, because they think it will never happen. It doesn’t matter if I don’t become some great chef. That’s not the point! They are so sure I won’t leave this house that they think such talk of dreams is futile. What I see as ambition they perceive as simply childish.

They truly think I will never go.

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I closed the book in my lap and allowed myself to reminisce for a while. I remember when she used to do that ‘wizard’ routine. It’s cute in retrospect, but having a little girl waving her ‘magic’ hands over the bowl every time you add an ingredient loses its cuteness pretty quickly, especially after multiple flour spills and ruined batches. I just never thought she was serious about it. She cooks at home all the time, but cooking out there… that’s different. Maybe I should have supported her more.

But supporting her to do something that would take her away from me? That feels so backwards.

It’s a selfish thought, but it’s true.

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Monday 6th April

Marie called and said she had an awful time at work today. She didn’t give us the details but, to be completely honest, I don’t think I would have understood them anyway. She works in finance, so it’s all numbers and wiggly lines that mean something extremely important.

But I bought some popcorn and maple syrup (an amazing combination) and Mum got us a takeaway to eat while we watch a movie together. If Marie is choosing it’s always La La Land or some other Ryan Gosling movie.

Snuggling under the blanket with our sticky maple syrup fingers, I couldn’t help but feel guilty.

This is all Mum wants. Company. Us to stay together.

Dad left a long long time ago and she is over him. But she never got over the loneliness.

No one has ever told me that I have to stay. But it doesn’t need to be said out loud. I know Marie can hear the unspoken words too, otherwise, why would she still be here? And now I feel like she is saying them to me as well. I do love my family (the fact that I have to clarify that makes me wonder if I really am doing the right thing) but it’s not being able to leave that bothers me.

I feel trapped here. And even if you are trapped in a place that is wrapped in love and happiness, isn’t it natural to want to get out? To see what is out there?

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It was bittersweet to read this page. At least it drowns the multitude of doubts about whether she ever liked living with us. But apparently, I have been ‘trapping’ my children here for years.

I want to ask her when she first started feeling like this, but I doubt she even knows. This is the kind of thing that builds over time, I guess.

My legs were no longer numb, but it felt like my brain was. I felt nothing. At all.

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Tuesday 7th April

I know it’s unjustified, but I can’t help but be a little mad at Mum and Marie. Because I got it! I got accepted! And when I found out, I didn’t feel the excitement or relief I should have after working so hard. Instead, I just felt dread trickle through my entire body, because now I have to tell them.

Even when I was applying or searching for apartments, I never let myself be excited about it. Partly because I didn’t think I would get in, but mostly because I knew what I would have to do if I did.

They didn’t do anything wrong, they weren’t even there today when I got the result, but I feel like, somehow, they took that enjoyment from me. I knew I had to tell them tonight, otherwise, I would carry all this inside and become bitter about it.

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Wednesday 8th April

Everything is different now.

This is not what I wanted.

Mum’s not spoken to me since last night and Marie said I was selfish for leaving them. But I think I need to do this.

I was sitting in my room earlier, thinking about what I would take and what I would leave behind. I don’t have to pack any time soon, but I think I’ve got to make myself excited about this change. Imagine, I finally get out. I get a cosy apartment and new friends, maybe from the same building or my course.

I’m scared that I will have all of this in the palm of my hand and will still be looking back. What if I can’t enjoy the freedom because I tore my family apart to get it? I’ll be living in guilt the entire time that I am there.

So, to distract myself from the soon-to-be existential questions, I scanned my room and placed every item in a mental box labelled either ‘take’ or ‘leave’.

I’m not taking that much with me. I hated the idea of Mum walking past my room and seeing, not my room but, a room that used to be mine. I wanted it to be obvious to them that I am coming back. And I will come back. More often than they think.

I know Mum thinks that I’m doing this because I don’t enjoy living at home anymore or that she’s done something wrong. But I think this will be just as good for her as it will be for me.

Ever since we could stand up on our own she has been marking our heights on our doorframes. I get it, it’s emotional to see how much we have grown over time, but, of course, when you are younger you don’t see the bigger picture. Mum had made sure that we had never missed a year when it came to this stuff. But when Marie was 16 she wanted to paint her room. The dye in her hair had begun to fade and so she decided that the walls needed to take over. She bought some baby blue paint and began painting away and didn’t stop to think before she painted over the pencil lines that had formed an oddly stretched barcode on her doorframe.

Mum lost it.

The house was suddenly filled with shouts about family and history and memories until Marie shouted back.

‘Mum! I’m 16! How long did you think we were gonna keep doing this? What, we turn 40 and we still come and stand against the door? It doesn’t make any sense!’

But as ridiculous as that sounded to us, it did make sense to Mum.

She sat crying in front of that wall for an hour after that.

Yes. I think this will be good for her.

Hopefully, she can see that soon.

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I stared at the last two lines. At some point, this transitioned from a diary to a letter and by the final page she was talking directly to me.

The fire had died out a long time ago, so I stood up slowly, taking the glass to the kitchen, the book still in my hand.

Passing the girls’ room, I saw the pencil lines that Paige was talking about and smiled to myself. Paige's room had marks all the way from the bottom, but Marie’s only started two-thirds of the way up. She had felt guilty after that day and let me continue measuring her every year since.

But that’s what it is. Guilt.

I’ve been making them feel guilty for growing up.

I placed Paige's diary outside of her door and walked the corridor to mine.

We still had time and I needed to make these last few weeks guilt-free. She needs to know that we don’t hate her and that we will still be here when she comes back.