October 1987

The great storm of 1987 was the before and after of Claire Mills’ life. More than twenty years later, she still woke in the middle of the night with a sudden ice-cold alarm that had her sitting up and seeing with luminous clarity those uprooted trees and crushed vehicles. The terror in her heart in the lonely hours of the morning was always the same: that the smaller traces of disaster in her life that she had chosen to ignore for so long had, on the morning after the storm, been emphatically written on the landscape, crying out for her to notice them at last. Among the many, many reproaches she made to herself was this one: she had failed to pay attention to portents.

She had known her daughter had secrets.

She had known too that her husband was having an affair, but whenever she had thought of his all-too-obvious infidelity – and she admitted to herself now that she had strived not to think of it – her sideways-glancing decision had always been to ignore it. It would blow over. His affair had perhaps not been the cause of what happened, but it was another symptom of her wilful somnambulism. She had been too attached to her becalmed life. She had kept a tidy house. She had loved her central heating and fitted carpets, the newly installed Everest windows.

When daylight came, it offered the consolations of reason. The storm had, perhaps, facilitated in some way what followed, but it had surely been no supernatural harbinger. Still, each year, whenever the days shortened into autumn, she faced alone her belief that her own wilful blindness had brought such disaster on her.

Those trees, those upturned roots.

In the warm confines of number 14 Eccleshall Drive, the evening of 15 October 1987 had held no surprises, no deviations from the normal. Alone in her sitting room, Claire had watched the late-evening weather forecast. Michael Fish – bald pate, thin-framed glasses – stood confidently in front of his isobars. ‘Earlier on today,’ he said, ‘a woman rang the BBC and said there was a hurricane on the way.’ He gave a little chuckle: it was easier after all in the 1980s to dismiss the fears of women. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said with a smile. ‘No hurricane is on its way.’

So England went to bed. This was a newly minted country. An Iron Lady had put the Great back into Britain. This was not a nation that was frightened of wind.

Claire stirred herself from her seat in front of the television. Her husband, Ben, sat alone in the dining room, his head bent beneath the overhead lamp as he studied for his yachtmaster’s certificate, not considering the ships that would break their moorings in the night. She got up and pushed the button on the television. In the kitchen, she boiled the kettle, filled a hot-water bottle, and then, in her slippered feet, walked steadily up the stairs to her daughter, who was sitting at her desk doing her homework. She lifted back the duvet of her daughter’s single bed and placed the bottle on the mattress.

‘Lights off now, Tania.’

It was in the early hours that Claire became aware of a constant banging, as if horses were galloping on hard floors above her. Still asleep, she couldn’t place it. What was happening? Was it an argument? Was someone throwing chimney pots from the roof? Gradually it drew her towards the surface of consciousness. There was a continuous wailing glissando, as if the atmospheric layers high above the bay window of her bedroom were being played like a saw. The house, she realized, now fully awake, was moving, actually moving, leaning and creaking. She reached out to her husband, said, ‘Ben, Ben,’ but he rolled away from her, groaned, pulled the covers over himself. She swung her feet out of bed and into the pink flip-flop slippers that waited for her beside the bed. She pulled on her dressing gown and went downstairs.

Tania was already there, standing in the front room in silky ivory pyjamas and bare feet. The storm was howling outside, banging and crashing, but she seemed to have found her own little pool of silence. The light switches were empty of power and she was standing in the half-light shed by the window. Claire felt blessed by this suddenly intimate image of her daughter. Usually Tania had that teenage awkwardness that distrusts or is ashamed of its beauty, that hunches over and avoids the gaze of others, but here, thinking herself unobserved, she stood gracefully, with a timeless poise like one of Degas’ dancers. Her hair, tied into several long plaits as preparation for her latest silly hairstyle, fell down her slender back. Her weight was on one hip, the other foot arched, with the toes turned under as if carrying some memory of primary-school ballet classes. Claire had always loved her daughter’s long, thin feet, felt she had known the hard little heels even before Tania was born. They had made corners through her taut pregnant stomach, as if she was concealing little anvils inside her belly.

She joined her daughter at the window and they stood side by side and watched the lime tree in the garden opposite as it bowed constantly like a courtier desperate to please the wind. The noise was incessant, wailing, banging. Lights were on in other houses in the street. Faces stared from other windows.

Tania said quietly, ‘I love it, Mum. I love it.’

‘You’re not frightened?’

Tania, mesmerized by the travails of the tree opposite, did not answer immediately. A flowerpot had fallen from a first-floor window and crashed into the street. A solitary uprooted geranium lay on the pavement. A bin, taking the opportunity to escape its usual drab destiny, rolled down the road.

Tania said, ‘It’s scary, but it’s fab too. Like The Wizard of Oz. I’ve always liked the first bit the best, the black-and-white bit. How the house turns in the twister and the cow blows past the window, and the two men rowing in a boat raise their hats to Dorothy. The Cowardly Lion and the Tin Man are there already in their overalls. And the Wizard himself, with his horse-drawn caravan—’

Claire interrupted, doing her best Professor Marvel. ‘Better get under cover, Sylvester, there’s a storm blowing up, a whopper.’

Tania laughed, and Claire sneaked her arm around her daughter’s narrow waist, hugging her to her. Tania was too old for that usually, but somehow the storm had made an exception.

‘Oh yes. I loved it too. That howling wind and the galloping horses and the trees outside the window, just like now.’

The harsh bell of the phone woke them in the morning from their resumed sleep. Tania was too quick for her mother, hammering down the stairs and scooping up the receiver. Claire rolled onto her back and rubbed her exhausted eyes. Ben had already left without saying goodbye, but the bed still carried his whiskery male smell and the warm indentation of his sleeping form. Ignoring destruction, he had set out to weave through the blocked streets in his new Audi. He was proud of that car. It was brand new. Gold-coloured.

Claire called down to her daughter. ‘What is it?’

Tania’s feet running lightly up the stairs. Suddenly she was in a hurry, but she popped her head round the bedroom door.

‘Oh, just Katherine, Mum. School’s cancelled for today. There’s trees everywhere apparently. We’re going to meet up.’

Katherine: Tania’s best friend. Since primary school they’d been inseparable. When Katherine had started playing the violin, Tania had insisted on learning too. Katherine was from a musical family, but from the start everyone said it was Tania who had real talent. Claire’s heart filled to bursting when she saw the two girls walking down the street together in their school uniforms, their violin cases swinging by their legs. They hadn’t been getting on so well recently – perhaps it was because Tania’s playing seemed to be irrevocably pulling ahead of her friend’s – but still, Claire could tell that this was one of those friendships that would last. She could see them at each other’s weddings.

She made her way downstairs and set to work clearing up her husband’s breakfast things. She needed to get a move on. There’d been no call from Mrs Hitchens, the woman whose child she minded. She must be trying to get in to work too. Claire turned on the radio. From upstairs came a loud pounding and a female voice filled with longing. She recognized the song. ‘River Deep Mountain High.’

She called upstairs. ‘Tania, turn it down, I’m trying to listen to the radio.’

Train lines are closed, and thousands have been left without power . . .

Through the ceiling came the wall of sound that was pure Phil Spector. Fancy Tania getting into that stuff. She was twenty years too late, surely. The music built, cavernous, with a rhythm that wrenched at Claire’s heart and seemed to insist she tap her feet and click her fingers. She switched the radio off and called up again, trying to compete with the music.

‘Tania, do you want porridge or an egg?’

She climbed the stairs. Tania was in her bedroom, swinging her hips from side to side, and doing that punk jumping-about thing that her generation were all doing. Her back was turned. She was admiring her moves in the mirror.

Claire moved in behind her. After a slightly sceptical pause, she began to swing her own hips. She raised her arms and moved her hands from side to side.

‘This is how you do it.’

Tania cringed. ‘Oh Mum.’

‘Don’t be mean. I was young once too.’

The sound was building again, irresistible. A pounding rhythm that she couldn’t seem to ever catch up with. Tina Turner breaking your heart. Claire put her hands above her head, turned them from the wrists in flamboyant 1960s circles, swung her hips. It was a long time since she’d danced, but she used to love it before Tania was born, before she was married.

Tania laughed and joined in, moving in synch with her mother.

The memory is very strong, and nearly twenty-seven years later, Claire Mills conjures it: Tania, wearing her big colourful glass earrings and blue sparkly eyeshadow. The music has stopped leaving them both breathless. Tania has lost the grace of last night and recovered her adolescent awkwardness. Her skirt’s too short. Her hair is out of its plaits and has frizzed out. There’s a smell of hairspray. Her school timetable is pinned to the mirror. Claire will miss her when she goes to university. Not long now. Just three years. At this moment, she is so beautiful that Claire could squeeze her until she could breathe no more. She says, ‘Darling, you look lovely.’

‘Thank you, Mum.’

She doesn’t want to spoil the moment. But still, you have to bring them up properly. It’s part of loving them.

‘Just that skirt . . .’

Tania wrinkles her nose. ‘What?’

Claire kisses her daughter on her head. ‘Well, just maybe a tiny bit short. Up to you.’

From downstairs, the smell of burning.

‘Oh Christ, the toast.’ And Claire runs down the stairs and opens the windows, fanning the smoke outside with a tea towel.

Five minutes later: Tania in the kitchen doorway. Denim jacket, drainpipe jeans, two strings of necklaces, orange lipstick, school bag slung over her shoulder, violin case in her hand.

‘I’m off, Mum.’

‘You haven’t had any breakfast.’

‘It’s OK, I don’t want any.’

Outside the kitchen window, Mrs Hitchens draws up in her new Sierra. Fancy her trying to get in to work on a day like this! If it were Claire, she would have jumped at the opportunity to spend the day with her child. But even though the school has closed, Tania is still going out. She’s going to revise with her best friend, hang out, listen to records.

‘But you’ve got to eat, Tania.’

Sitting alone in her bed, Claire sees it as if it is the present. Mrs Hitchens unloads her toddler and his day bag from the car. Tania passes, kisses Claire on the cheek. ‘It’s OK, I’ll be fine.’

She opens the front door, Claire stands just behind her in the hall. The lilac tree from the garden opposite is lying across the road. It’s a shame. She loved that tree, particularly in June, when the street smelled of blossom. Mrs Hitchens is walking up the path with little Simon’s hand in hers.

‘You going to Katherine’s, Tania? What time will you be home?’

Tania kisses her again.

‘I dunno, about six.’

Then Mrs Hitchens blocks Claire’s view of her daughter as she walks along the path and away down the street.

And alone in her bed, Claire remembers The Wizard of Oz: Professor Marvel in his horse-drawn caravan. He looks into a crystal ball and persuades Dorothy to go home to Aunt Em and Hunk and Hickory and Zeke, and as Dorothy runs away into the storm he says:

‘Poor little kid. I hope she gets home all right.’