my rug

this is a rug i have in my bedroom. i have had it everywhere i have lived since i was a kid. it is very special to me.

when i was about 7 my mum decided to decorate my bedroom. we lived in a flat which we rented from the corporation. we were the first tenants and the walls had been painted before we moved in but it was a bit bleak. my mum decided to make it nicer so she papered the walls with paper that had the texture of bamboo, made a bedcover with satin in a rusty reddy orange colour with piping round the edge, bought a lovely little light that was fitted to the wall and was switched on and off with a cord, and bought this rug.

i was so pleased with my new room. i felt like a film star. the silky bedcover was wonderful. i used to lie in bed just looking at it all. i kept it really tidy and put everything away so it was perfect.

one day i got home from school and it was all ruined. everywhere were clothes, make-up, bedding, piles of things. it was my mum's stuff. my dad had put a lock on the door of their bedroom and thrown everything belonging to my mum out. he later told me that he had been to a solicitor who had advised him to do this. it was no ordinary lock. it was one of those with a long thin key and the keyhole was small and round. this somehow made it seem sinister to me. it was not like normal locks but more like something you would find in a bank. the doors in the flat were pretty much made of cardboard so this was complete overkill. even i could have kicked the door in. it was more to make a point.

to my eternal shame i was horrible to my mum about her stuff messing up my room. the room that she had worked so hard to make lovely for me. i moaned about the make-up and the clothes. i moaned that her sleeping on my floor was wrong and that it was my room and that i shouldn't have to share it.

the only comfort i have is that my son would never behave like this. he is kind beyond belief to people in distress. he would give up his own bed rather than let me sleep on the floor.

somewhere inside me is the thought that things like this contributed to my mum giving me up.