BETWIXT AND BETWEEN
Easter 1992 was not a good time to get kicked out. When the sale of my house went through, I couldn't have had an easier move. The large articles went into storage but I carried everything else into the furnished house next door, which was currently empty.
No sooner had I got settled in, though, when I was informed by the rather scatty owner, who lived elsewhere, that she had completely forgotten that she had some American academics coming over for a month and I would have to get out. This was a major blow, but the builder of the houses, who had by now moved into one of them, said I could have his back bedroom.
With my belongings piled up to the ceiling, there was just enough room for a single bed and me. I was still commuting to my magazine publishing job on the South Bank every day and could have done without all the upheaval. But a phone call from my mother made everything ten times worse. "Can you come up?" she said. "Something's happened to your dad."
Making my excuses at work, I was on the next train to Liverpool and found my father in bed with both his arms paralysed. My mother was in the early stages of vascular dementia and couldn't cope. My father's regular GP was away, but a locum visited and agreed that my 86-year-old father might have had a stroke and should be admitted to hospital.
The news wasn't good. A scan revealed that it wasn't a stroke, but very advanced lung cancer. The tumour was pressing on nerves which controlled my father's arm movements. The next five weeks were harrowing. My boss was screaming at me about publishing deadlines, so I had to return to London, leaving it to my sister to ferry Mum to the hospital every day.
On Good Friday, I had an overwhelming feeling that I MUST get up to the hospital and see my dad. It was a strong instinct, impossible to ignore. But fate decreed otherwise. My temporary landlord had been asking his girlfriend to move in for months and at last she had agreed. I was out. He gave me till the following day to move myself and my stuff - and all the while this instinct was screaming at me to get to the Royal Liverpool Hospital without delay.
I rang some numbers in the local paper and, to my relief, found a flat down the road which I could move into the next day. It was a miracle. I met the landlady, handed over a large check and mustered friends with cars (I don't drive) to help me move in.
Then I rang my mother. Dad had lapsed into a coma. I had missed my very last chance of speaking to him. I was desolate. It was my worst Easter ever.
My rented flat was in a 1930s block on the main road. There was a lot of traffic noise and one of the windows was jammed open. I had to sleep on a mattress in the lounge. All the other residents were elderly and had been there for years. There was a smell of boiled cabbage and cats. The corridors were dark and creepy. It was the kind of building where you expected bodies to fall out of wardrobes.
My father passed away from pneumonia a few days later. Once the funeral was over and the worst of my grief had passed, I started flat-hunting again. I didn't want to stay in Crouch End, the scene of so many distressing things (including a miscarriage, but that story will be told elsewhere). I viewed a flat in Croftdown Road, Dartmouth Park, NW5. It was on two floors and had two terraces, one of which was the flat roof of the house. The kitchen was squashed under the sloping roof but I reckoned I could manage.
I put in an offer which was to include a share of the freehold. Soon, I was in.
