Penny is a Melbourne born writer and non-fiction writing coach.  She spent 15 years as a professional photographer before turning to writing. Her work has appeared in Red Magazine, iPaper, You Magazine, The Telegraph and Radio 4. Penny’s first book Tender was published by Coronet Books in 2020. She co-hosts the podcast Not Too Busy To Write.

Penny is currently working on a novel about a mother and daughter, set on two timelines, 26 years apart. 

Instagram @pennywincer

Twitter @pennywincer

Email: penny@pennywincer.co.uk

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London – 1999

Alys looks down at the slip of paper with the address on it, 221A Southgate Rd, then up at the house. A glossy blue-painted door, half a flight of steps up. The building is old. It’s in a terrace that runs down to a junction where the road turns into a bridge over a canal. It was probably quite handsome once. The steps, at some point, have been replaced. They are plain, hard concrete with a functional curved metal handrail that has been secured to the old brickwork. Beside the neither navy nor light blue door, with its thick lumpy drip marks, is an ugly plastic grab rail, the kind you see in motel bathrooms. Grand looking arched windows sit on either side. 

A bus goes by and she sees the wooden window shudder within its frame, the flaked paint looking as though it will fall away at any moment. Alys goes up the steps and looks for the correct doorbell. There are six in total, peppered around the frame, each of them looking like they have been added at different times by different tenants. She finds a yellowing white button with a faded “A” written in marker pen. Putting the slip of paper and mini A to Z into her shoulder bag, she smooths her already tidy brown hair and breathes out a long breath as she presses the bell. She can hear a distant ring and takes a half-step back to wait, clearing her throat a little. 

It is not at all how she imagined her aunt’s house would look. Though the childhood stories her mother had told her had faded a little over the years, the details blurred, bits forgotten, what she sees before her doesn’t seem to fit. When she finally pulled out the Islington address that had been stowed in her bag since she arrived from Melbourne, she had pictured a quiet backstreet, maybe potted plants in the windowsill. A cosy pub down the street that her aunt would invite her to. Or a neat little courtyard garden where they would drink coffee as her aunt looked her over and recalled memories of her sister Valerie, Alys’s mother. They would have biscuits too and talk well into the afternoon. Her aunt would get teary remembering her childhood and all that they got up to. Alys would hear all the stories she had heard years before, this time from her aunt’s perspective. Standing by the door, she has a feeling in her gut that these thoughts are ridiculous. 

A movement catches Alys’s eye. The net curtain that hangs in the window to the right of the doorway is swinging slightly. She hears an internal door open and shuffling steps approach. The latch of the door opens and on the other side is a woman, broad-shouldered and as tall as Alys, with grey hair, a bob half grown out. She is wearing a t-shirt that clings to her and shows the outline of a slightly too tight waistband. She looks at Alys for a moment and then as if suddenly registering who she is, nods, the loose skin under her neck bobbing slightly. 

“You must be Alys then.” 

She stands square in the door, neither moving towards her nor standing aside to let her in. Alys hitches her shoulder bag up a little higher and smiles. The woman’s voice is throaty and deep with, to Alys’s ears, a strong Cockney accent. When she first heard her aunt on the phone a few days earlier, it had set in motion a churning and an unease in her stomach. How do sisters end up with such different accents? Her mother with the clipped tones of The Good Life and her aunt’s something from EastEnders (Alys’s only reference for English accents until a few weeks earlier being TV). She hadn’t realised until she was disappointed, that she had been hoping to hear her mother’s voice on the other end of the phone. 

“Yes. I’m Alys.” She hesitates and adds “Aunt Lucille.”

At that the older woman’s head falls back and she lets out a roar of laughter, her loose neck wobbling once again. Alys turns her head away slightly, not sure where to look. She keeps laughing for a moment, then sighs looking her up and down. Alys is in a neat mini skirt, tights and leather court shoes. She regrets the outfit now, feeling as if she is dressed for a job interview.

“No one calls me Lucille.” She smiles. “Everyone calls me Luce.” 

Alys gives a small smile and goes red, remembering that she had said so on the phone already. Luce seems to suddenly register they are standing in the doorway and takes a step back, opening the door wider and turning her back on Alys, calling out behind her with a wave of her arm “Come on in then. I’ll put the kettle on.” Her broad back retreats into the dark interior hallway. Alys lets out a breath and after a moment, follows her aunt inside.

If she had been wondering how on earth six flats could possibly fit inside the terrace house, it becomes clear once she is inside. The corridor is short with no daylight. A round light set into the ceiling makes a constant ticking noise, indicating it is on a timer and gives off a dull glow. A pile of takeaway menus and letters lie abandoned, along with a Thompson Local phone book, still in its shrink wrap plastic covering. She follows her aunt through a door and finds herself in a small front room, on the flip side of the arched window that overlooks the street. 

The TV is on. Countdown. A show that Alys is discovering is hugely popular though she cannot figure out why. Inside the small room is a patterned two-seater sofa, an armchair and coffee table as well as a collection of side tables, lamps (all on, despite it being light outside), and various ashtrays and clutter. She stands in the middle of the room, not sure where to put herself. From down a narrow hall, she hears cupboards opening and closing, a kettle coming to the boil.

“Can I give you a hand?” 

“Nah, won’t be a tick. Milk and sugar?” 

“Just milk thank you.”

The armchair looks well worn, with a large sagging seat cushion and an ashtray, a remote control, a pack of cigarettes and an old cup of half-drunk tea are beside it. Assuming it’s her aunt’s usual seat, she turns to the sofa and sits on the front edge of the cushion to avoid sinking too low. She pulls at her skirt. The short skirt was a mistake. She arranges her legs this way and that. She places her bag beside her shoes and looks around. She knows what she’s looking for. She doesn’t find it. There are no photos anywhere. Lots of ashtrays. No photographs.

Luce walks back into the room and places a plain white mug on the coffee table in front of Alys, then settles herself into the deep low cushion of the armchair. She reaches over, shunting the half-drunk tea and making room for her fresh cup. She plucks a cigarette out of the pack along with a lighter. When she glances up and sees Alys watching she tips the pack towards her. 

“No, thanks…. I don’t smoke”

Luce nods and puts a cigarette in her mouth and lights it, her gaze not leaving Alys.

“You look a lot like her.” 

“Yeah,” Alys reaches for the mug of tea. “That’s what people say.”

She’s not sure if she can swallow anything but it gives her something to do with her hands. She looks down at the cheap mug. The scum that forms across the top of tea is something she is definitely not used to yet. Calcium, her Dad’s friend Margaret had told her on her first morning when she had looked down in horror after she’d let the tea brew too long. Because the water is so hard in London, she said. Everyone seems to find it normal. Who’d have thought that in a place where tea is the national drink they’d put up with scum floating in it. Alys wonders if they had the same problem at the Ritz, or other fancy places, or if they had some special way of getting rid of it. 

“How’s your Dad?” 

“He’s fine. Good, actually. He’s just got married. Last year, I mean.” Alys looks down towards her mug again.

“Oh right,” Luce says, raising her eyebrows. “Nice is she?”

“Yeah. She’s nice.” Alys stops there. Sarah is lovely, really lovely, but she doesn’t know how appropriate it is to talk to your dead mother’s sister about the woman who has essentially replaced her. So, she leaves it.

“Good for him.” Luce reaches for her tea and takes a long sip. Alys, uncertain of where to take the conversation next, does the same.

“So you’re staying with Margaret and Tony you said?” 

Alys nods, hot tea almost scalding her mouth. Luce is nodding.

“I think I remember them. Friends of your Dad’s right? They were at the wedding.” She says this last part almost to herself, as if lost for a moment in the past.  

The Countdown theme tune comes on, indicating the end of a round. Alys puts her mug down on the coffee table and reaches into her bag. She rummages around, pulling out a notebook and opens it to the centre page. 

“I brought this to show you actually. You might already have a copy….” 

She offers a square photograph to her aunt. Luce’s eyes narrow a little at Alys’s out-stretched hand and she takes the photo and pauses a long while as she looks at it and smiles.

“God that was a long time ago.” 

The photo is small. A man and a woman together on the steps of a grey building. The woman wears a wide brimmed white straw hat and a long white dress with a high neck, trimmed in lace with long voluminous sleeves, ending in tight cuffs. Light brown hair comes in thick waves from under her hat. The man wears a black suit and a floppy bow tie. They are incredibly beautiful, smiling as though they’ve just won the lottery. The bride holds a bouquet in front of her middle. There is another couple, brightly dressed and laughing, and a woman alone, stood to the bride’s left, a gap between them. She wears a smart suit and hat, a corsage pinned to her chest. The photographer has cut off all their feet and they appear to float above the municipal steps.

She brings the photo closer to her face and lets out a smiling huff.

“God, look at how uptight I look! She said it was going to be low key and I thought I’d be overdressed but Robert insisted. My husband. He was a bit… old fashioned. And then she turned up in that bloody gown. So like her. She borrowed it you know? It was designer.”

Alys has come to the edge of her seat, waiting for her to keep talking. When she sees Luce isn’t going to say any more she speaks.

“I didn’t know that about the dress. That’s Margaret,” Alys stands and points to the woman in the mini dress.  “She didn’t know Mum that well. They’d only met a few times. She’s told me bits.” She looks to Luce hopefully. Between them the unspoken words (Dad doesn’t like to talk about her) seem to be mutually understood.

Luce nods, handing back the photo and walks back over to her armchair, letting out a soft groan as she lowers herself in.

“Yeah, it was all pretty quick I suppose. The wedding and all that. They’d only known each other a couple of months, I think. That was also very like her.” Luce rolls her eyes and laughs.

Alys is not sure exactly what she means. She stands by the mantel, holding the photo, waiting for her to say more. 

“I’m not sure there’s much I can tell you about that time. I mean, I wasn’t seeing a lot of her then. She was always so… busy.” This last word came out a bit sadly. “I only met your Dad that day and then they were off to Australia straight after that. To have you.” 

Alys sits back down, putting the wedding photo between them on the coffee table. Beneath the bouquet of the bride, when she looks very closely, she thinks she can see a small swelling. One detail Margaret had been able to tell her was how cleverly the gown was cut to skim over the bump growing underneath. 

“She had it in her head that you had to be born out there. New life, a new start.” 

Luce smiles at her and shakes her head. 

“God you look like her.” 

Her eyes are a little watery and she turns her head away, reaching for her tea. 

“I’m sure she’d be wondering what the hell you were doing back in this shithole.”

Alys has never heard anyone refer to London as a shithole before. Shitholes back home are country towns and boring suburbs where you have to wait for a parent to drive you anywhere. Working a boring dead-end job till you have saved enough to buy a crap car. Shitholes were where nothing happened and girls got pregnant and boys drank beer, watching footy all day. Shitholes had shopping malls, with cheap shops and rides for toddlers that cost a dollar a go, and endless streets with browning grass, drought thirsty trees and life-sucking, beige buildings. London is not a shithole. It is dirty, busy, fast and sometimes ugly. It is poor. Much poorer than she thought it was going to be. But it is also wild and crammed full of life of every kind and there is so much beauty in between the ugliness. London is most definitely not a shithole.

“Well it was good of you to look me up.” 

Luce looks towards the TV, which still murmurs on through vowels and consonants and studio laughter. Alys draws her knees together, resting her hands on them.

“Sorry it took me so long. It took Dad a while to dig out your address……” 

There is an awkwardness in this statement that neither of them acknowledge. That she feels the need to excuse herself for taking a few weeks to work up the courage to call, when her aunt had never made the journey to meet her niece, not even to attend her sister’s funeral. Since her mother had died when she was eight, Christmas and birthday cards had been their only communication. A few scribbled lines, life updates, some well wishes.

Luce waves a hand as if to dismiss the statement, relieving her of the responsibility but not acknowledging her own. 

“Well, it’s lovely to see you. Val’s girl, all grown up.” Luce looks back towards her and gives her a small smile. 

“So, you’re a photographer then?”

Alys recalls the conversation they had on the phone a few days earlier. Margaret had been gently probing her about when she would call her aunt. Her Dad too, over the phone on their weekly call. “She’ll be so glad to hear from you Alys.” His voice sounded both so familiar and at the same time, so odd now, even after only a few weeks of being surrounded by English accents.

“Will she though? I mean, they can’t have been that close. She didn’t even come out for the funeral.”

“That’s not really fair. Her husband was really sick. And do you know how much it used to cost back then?” She nods even though he can’t see her. She wraps her finger through the phone cable over and over, twirling it, letting it go. 

“It’s just…. weird, I don’t know.” Alys does know. She is thinking that if she had a sister she would cross the Earth for her, no matter what it cost. 

When she finally psyched herself up to make the call, her aunt had been surprised but pleased. Alys found herself rambling about her move to the UK and only stopped to register her aunt’s thick London accent after she had hung up the phone. 

 Her mother’s accent was one of the many ways which people liked to point out was different about her. There was also her height, the way she dressed, how beautiful she was. Embarrassingly beautiful. When her mother used to collect her from school, all the heads would turn. It always made Alys feel a little ashamed and she didn’t know why. Everyone looking. Her accent made people stop too. Those polite yet commanding clipped tones (RP her Dad had called it). It was an accent people paid attention to, just like her looks. Alys would shrink back behind her legs in the greengrocer when it rang out clearly above the fruit boxes being moved and vegetables being bagged up. This mismatch between the sisters’ accents makes her feel uneasy. Whose was the correct one? 

In Aunt Luce’s front room Alys swallows, fiddling with the hem of her top.

“Yes, portraits and documentary.” 

Luce nods, her face towards the TV still.

“So not in front of the camera then? Like Val?”

“Oh god no!”

“Why not? Pretty decent money I’d say. And you’ve got your mothers looks alright.”

“Just… not really my thing.” 

Luce nods. Alys finds herself feeling irritated. Talking about her mother’s beauty annoyed her. So pretty, people used to say. Such a tragedy. Alys lost track of the times she heard that. As though it was only her beauty that made her loss felt. 

“Still, taking pictures. That’s interesting.” 

From the moment her Dad had given her a camera for her 16th birthday she had been hooked. She learnt pretty quickly that she became invisible behind the camera. As though people’s eyes would just pass over her. When she had her camera she became the unseen observer. But it was when she had printed her first photo that she really understood the power the camera held. To be able to control what people see, how they see, often without them even noticing that you were choosing for them. That was interesting.

She pauses, picks up her mug and tapping quietly on the edge of it, decides to ask what she’s actually been wanting to ask.

“I was hoping you might be able to tell me a bit about our family. Mum told me stories about your summers in Wales when you were little. I really want to visit. I’m thinking of shooting some landscapes around the area, you know, a kind of return to country sort of thing.” 

She stops, noticing Luce’s frown. She waits but Luce doesn’t speak right away. The Countdown music drones on again as the credits roll.

“Your mother wasn’t well, Alys,” Luce says, a note of weariness in her voice. She looks away from her, as if, Alys thinks, she is revealing some kind of new information that she’s reluctant to part with.

“I know… I know that.” It comes out more irritated than she meant it to. People have always assumed that just because she was a child when her mother died, she was somehow oblivious to it all. But she knew better than anyone. Felt her illness and her loss more than anyone.

“I mean, long before all that business.” 

Business. Is that what she calls it, she thinks.

“She liked to make things up. What did she tell you about Wales? That our grandparents lived there?” 

Alys nods. They were her favourite times with her mother that she can remember. She would tuck her into bed and tell her all about changelings, ladies in lakes and magical musical instruments. As she recounted the stories she would describe her grandmother’s house, how when she was little, she would be tucked up, just as Alys was, under blankets, listening to these stories that had been told in their family for generations. That even though they were far away in Australia, that she must remember that she was Welsh too. “That’s why I called you Alys,” she would say. “To remind you of where we come from.” She had loved the way her mother had said “we”. “Nos da, cariad,” she would say each night, kissing her on the forehead before turning out the light and leaving her bedroom door ajar a little so she would hear the noise of her parents cleaning up the kitchen, just the way she liked it.

“We never went to Wales.” 

Alys is silent. 

“We didn’t know any of our grandparents. I’m not sure what else she told you… She used to make up stories. When she was little, it was just innocent, she didn’t mean to lie, it was just a bit nicer than the truth you know?” 

She feels hot suddenly. She has made a mistake in coming, she thinks. She puts her tea down. The TV on, the lamps on in the daylight, her raspy-voiced aunt who doesn’t look or sound at all how Alys imagined. No, not how she had imagined, how her mother had described. Had she described her? Or had she just left a lot out? 

“I think it stuck, that’s all. The stories followed her, until I suppose she really believed them.”  

“Nicer than what truth?” Alys asks, her cheeks prickled red.

Luce lets out an almost laugh and takes a drag of her cigarette. 

“The truth…” she begins but doesn’t go on.

“But my name,” says Alys.

She leans forward on the sofa, right on the edge with her knees now touching the wood of the coffee table, shaking it slightly so the hardly drunk tea spills over its edges. 

“I was named after my great-grandmother. Alys Jones.”

Luce is shaking her head.

“She lived in North Wales. Mum spent summers with her. I don’t remember the name. There was a house with freezing cold bedrooms, even in the summertime. And an aunt who taught her to sew. And …” Alys reels off this information, her speech getting faster. She knows she sounds panicky now. She takes a breath.

“That’s what she told you is it? I don’t know what her name was. Mum never talked about them. Just said she’d never go back.”

Alys feels as though she might be sick. She thinks of all the times she has explained her name. Alys. No, it’s A-L-Y-S. It’s Welsh. It’s a family name. She feels like a fool. She only has fragments of her mother as it is. Bits and pieces pasted together. A collage that abruptly stops when she is eight years old.  Her aunt was supposed to be giving her more of her mother, not taking parts of her away. She shouldn’t have come.

“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Alys.”

Luce is looking at her, her brows furrowed, the ash on her cigarette growing long. 

Luce changes the subject, asking where Margaret and Tony live and more about her plans. Alys answers politely, going back to sipping her now lukewarm tea. She tries to hide her disappointment but she’s not sure she’s doing a very good job of it. When she feels enough time has passed and the tea is almost drunk, she says some polite goodbyes. Luce follows her out, kissing her on the cheek and giving her shoulder a squeeze. 

Alys walks quickly down the street turning back to wave at her aunt who is watching from the blue glossy door, giving her a broad smile that drops away as soon as she turns her back. The fresh air is a relief after the stale smokiness of the flat and she takes a deep breath of it. The cool air feels good on her still hot cheeks. Alys has always hated how red her face goes when she’s upset. Like a betrayal of her body, letting out its secrets. It isn’t until she reaches Highbury and Islington station ten minutes later, that she realises that the photograph of her mother is back on Luce’s coffee table, in that cramped front room.