Some things represent big stuff from your past that you haven't managed to deal with yet. Lurking in dark corners, they lie in wait, filling you with guilt every time you see them. For me, one of these is the haunted doll's house in the garage.
My mother bought it in the late 80s for my eldest daughter, who was just a toddler at the time. 'It's an heirloom,' she said, so I knew it had cost her way too much. 'It's nearly as good as my old doll's house,' she added. 'The one my father made me.'
Unfortunately the doll's house my grandfather had made her met with a terrible, splintering demise when my father backed a car into it by mistake. All that had survived was the doll's house furniture, and the weird pipe cleaner dolls that lived inside (she'd named them Lucinda and Jane, after the dolls in Beatrix Potter's A Tale of Two Bad Mice. I was also named Lucinda thanks to that blooming book, and always hated it) Anyway, all these years later, my mother had carefully put the surviving furniture into the new 'heirloom', along with Lucinda and Jane.
My daughter was far too young for a fancy doll's house, but my mother already knew she was dying - and she wanted this to be something my daughter could treasure after she'd gone, just as she had treasured the doll's house her father had made, long after he had passed. The layers of hereditary guilt were building.
It turned out my daughter was more of a train girl than a doll's house girl. Thomas the Tank Engine was her best thing from a very early age (much later she became a train blogger, travelling the world on trains).
My son, who was born the week after my mother died, told me recently that he'd always wanted the doll's house for his dinosaurs to live in, but didn't like to ask. Which is a shame as I'd have been overjoyed that at least SOMEONE wanted to play with the damn thing. His dinosaurs would have had a great time living there, and even better, they had sensible names like Joe, Harry and Dan. Absolutely no Lucindas or Janes.
Instead, after a few more years gathering dust, the doll's house ended up in the loft. And there it might have stayed, out of sight, out of mind, until one Boxing Day the house caught fire, and everything in the house, including in the loft, ended up badly smoke damaged. Hurrah you might think. Finally I could dump the thing and claim for it on the insurance. Lose the guilt.
For some inexplicable reason, I didn't. Instead, despite the damage, I kept it. I have no idea why. Maybe because it was something tangible that my mother had attached so much importance to, and I felt bad about letting it go.
Silly me. I moved house soon afterwards, and the now blackened, haunted doll's house came with me, ending up where it is now. In my garage. Every time I go in there, I see it squatting in the corner, decaying slowly, filled with spiders and my guilt.
But time passes and things are changing again. My partner wants to convert the garage to a workshop, and the doll's house finally has to go, once and for all. I'm facing up to the fact it's not my thing and it never was. Maybe someone I know wants a Gothic doll's house that looks like a miniature Miss Haversham's place. If not I'm going to ritually burn it, along with Lucinda and Jane and all the guilt.
I can always write it into something later...
Lu Hersey.
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