Memoir Blast 20 — Torquay, the Mirrored Bedroom, and the Canal Story
This was Mr V’s friends — Mick and Marie — in Torquay. They’d just got married, My Mum to Mr V so honeymoon or maybe it was simply a holiday, but in my memory it arrived labelled honeymoon, so that’s what it became. And there we were: all four of us children, turning up like an unexpected travelling troupe. What kind of honeymoon includes four kids is beyond me, but that’s how it happened.
Their house sat on the steepest hill I’d ever seen, a proper Torquay incline that made the world feel tilted. And the palm trees — I’d never seen them before. They looked like something from a postcard, not England. Their garden was wild and rocky, full of tropical plants thriving in the seaside warmth. It felt like a different country.
The whole house felt like another planet. They even had a bar — an actual bar — which blew my mind because bars belonged in pubs, not people’s homes. Another sign that adults lived differently, on some glamorous-chaotic wavelength I didn’t understand.
And then there was the bedroom. Completely out of bounds to children, which of course made it even more magnetic. A round room (or a round bed in a square room; the geometry still won’t settle), a mirrored ceiling, black silky sheets, clothes everywhere, wardrobes circling the space. The smell, the shine, the strangeness. It was the first time I realised adults lived differently — strangely, glamorously, chaotically — and I wasn’t meant to see any of it.
At some point, in my literal ND way, I asked Marie about children. They told me not to ask, but then they told me anyway.
She had once been walking by the canal with her two‑year‑old daughter. The little girl fell in. Her Wellington boots filled with water, dragged her down, and she drowned.
They told me this as a child already wired for fear, already hypervigilant, already scanning the world for danger. And suddenly the sadness I’d sensed in her made sense — but the story lodged itself inside me, too big for me to hold, and I held it anyway. or maybe it was simply a holiday, but in my memory it arrived labelled honeymoon, so that’s what it became. And there we were: all four of us children, turning up like an unexpected travelling troupe. What kind of honeymoon includes four kids is beyond me, but that’s how it happened.
Their house sat on the steepest hill I’d ever seen, a proper Torquay incline that made the world feel tilted. And the palm trees — I’d never seen them before. They looked like something from a postcard, not England. Their garden was wild and rocky, full of tropical plants thriving in the seaside warmth. It felt like a different country.
The whole house felt like another planet. They even had a bar — an actual bar — which blew my mind because bars belonged in pubs, not people’s homes. Another sign that adults lived differently, on some glamorous-chaotic wavelength I didn’t understand.
And then there was the bedroom. Completely out of bounds to children, which of course made it even more magnetic. A round room (or a round bed in a square room; the geometry still won’t settle), a mirrored ceiling, black silky sheets, clothes everywhere, wardrobes circling the space. The smell, the shine, the strangeness. It was the first time I realised adults lived differently — strangely, glamorously, chaotically — and I wasn’t meant to see any of it.
At some point, in my literal ND way, I asked Marie about children. They told me not to ask, but then they told me anyway.
She had once been walking by the canal with her two‑year‑old daughter. The little girl fell in. Her Wellington boots filled with water, dragged her down, and she drowned.
They told me this as a child already wired for fear, already hypervigilant, already scanning the world for danger. And suddenly the sadness I’d sensed in her made sense — but the story lodged itself inside me, too big for me to hold, and I held it anyway.
Footnote: maybe only three children as one brother lived between both parents?
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