I’m out of hospital, but I’m still aching all over and I have stitches in my scalp.
Dad has rented a house in Monkseaton. He wants me and Gram to move in.
To be honest, I think he wants me to move in and has asked Gram out of politeness, but I hope she does. It’d be fun.
In the end, I had to ask Gram to stop saying sorry.
She’d been doing exactly what Mum asked her to do. For my sake, she endured ten years living as Beatrice Leatherhead instead of her real name, Belinda Mackay. She worried every day that someone might recognise her, or make the connection between her and ‘Felina’.
She persuaded Great-gran to go along with the deception, on the promise that she would tell me the truth when I was ‘old enough’. But by then she was so far into her lies that she couldn’t extract herself.
I grew up as Ethel Leatherhead, and that is who I am. I did not grow up as ‘Boo Mackay (or Malcolm? Who knows?), daughter of the tragic princess of pop, Miranda “Felina” Mackay’ – and that suits me fine.
Who wants to be that visible?
And if Gram hadn’t lied, what would be different?
My mum still would not be here. That wouldn’t have changed.
My dad would still have had his ‘lost years’, as he calls them, and would still have come back.
I might have grown up in London, but do you know what? I went there on a school trip once and it’s not all that. There’s no beach, no seagulls, no lighthouse.
And there’d be no Boydy, a proper friend who makes me laugh every day.
I’m going round there later. He invited me with this text:
Supper ‘and revelation’?
What the totally heck?