Family Fortunes: The off-limits items I found in my mother’s wardrobe

My mother always knew when I was up to mischief. Even as a small child my absence was noted, primarily due to the cessation of constant chatter and hysteria.

The silence would evoke comment and she would put down whatever was in her hands and stand at the bottom of the three flights of stairs with her ear cocked.

That little lady is up to no good, she would think, and call up the landing. “Sheeeeeelll, are you rooting up there?”

I would almost fall into the press where I was rooting, and, caught in the act, shout back down, “Nooooo, I’m just playing”, and leg it.

By the time she had negotiated the very top of the stairs I would be sitting nonchalantly, reading a book on my bed.

She knew well enough I was a consummate actor and, feigning unconcern, would walk across to straighten the curtains and peep out the small windows into the square.

“Well, whatever you’re at, you may come down now, it’s teatime.”

It was from rooting that I found everything. Despite the fact I had to stand on other furniture to access the secret places and spaces, it was in a spirit of discovery that I managed to find our Christmas presents (thus sabotaging Santa for me and my brother), surprises, selection boxes, jigsaws, letters and other off-limits items.

The best place to root was the corner of my mother’s wardrobe, behind the carefully folded blouses and shirts and beneath the boxed navy lace hat she had worn with her “going-away outfit” on her honeymoon.

When I grew bored of trying it on (over a cropped blond wig; it was the 1970s), admiring myself in various mirrors, wearing her shoes clopping around the room, I would find the holy grail.

One glorious day I found a pack of sanitary towels, which I dismembered on the carpet in wonderment, and Down All the Days by Christy Brown.

I remember this but my mother doesn’t. She is out at the edges where the pale blue lines soften and blur.