We used to be normal. Once upon a time, we weren’t the custodians of all this memorabilia and signed junk. Dad was a university lecturer. Mum was Mum, needing someone to help her look after the baby. I was the baby, as you’ve probably guessed. We met. We lived in a house. Nine years passed. Then one day, Mum and Dad were discussing music they remembered from their youths. Not the cool stuff. The complete and total cheese. They were always into the stuff no-one else considered listenable. Like ‘their song’. ‘Super Sweet Chocolate Love’, by Natasha Jason. Sample of chorus lyrics:

I went out into the garden when they started playing it. I swung on the swing and then I heard El with his little brother and friends walking past the fence – we used to live on the same road, and my house was the end-of-terrace – so I picked berries off the trees and threw them at him, trying to stain his football shirt. Mum and Dad came out just as I’d managed to get all the boys running away.

‘How would you like it if we opened a shop, Betty?’ Dad asked, and I hid my berry-stained hands behind my back.

‘Don’t get ahead of yourself, Tim,’ Mum warned him, ‘You haven’t done the research yet.’ But she was smiling.

‘What kind of shop? A sweet shop?’ I can’t promise I actually asked that, but I was really into Buttons so I probably did.

‘A magical shop,’ Dad said, picking me up and spinning around till I screamed. That definitely happened. That happened all the time. I loved it really, but I’d scream and scream and scream, just because I had an excuse to make noise.

Mum wasn’t home on Saturday morning so I had to take over her tours as well as running mine. Downside of having your parents own a gallery-shop – they expect you to take over if they can’t work. Upside – guaranteed employment, guaranteed pay – if they’re doing enough business to pay you. I pulled on my Almost Ordinary t-shirt and stood in front of the mirror, otherwise wearing only pants and socks, trying to decide who I was going to be today. I remembered I hadn’t played Gloria Furoria, the blonde, buxom, fake-drummer (the drums were pre-recorded for performances by someone else) in late 80s pop band … oh, I’d forgotten what they were called. Revising for mock exams at school had driven half the pop culture knowledge I’d been cramming for years out. But I remembered what she looked like. So I put in the chicken fillets, pulled on my pink and red fishnets (anachronistic, but if they’d been around I’ve sure she would have worn them) and a black skirt, popped on the blonde wig and some glittery lipstick, and then I slid on a pair of sunglasses and went down to the gallery to read over the script a couple of times before the first tour, pre-booked by a birthday party for eleven, began.

Almost Ordinary is split into gallery and shop. The gallery section is much larger – it’s much more popular, the shop is an afterthought added to get a bit of extra cash really. Dad is running the shop all day today. He’s not such a charming tour guide as Mum and I are, and we get a few collectors popping in at weekends to discuss purchases or exchanges. Haggling is his thing. Weekdays the shop is only open to follow tours – the door on the street is locked. Whilst tours are running Dad does the admin and chores. He was agonising over the sales book at the shop desk when I came in.

‘Ta-dah! Your darling daughter here to save the day.’

He looked up, and smiled when he saw my outfit. ‘Good morning, Gloria.’

‘You recognised me!’ I frowned as he frowned, his eyes falling back to the book.

‘Grahms wants the L&K video set package for one hundred.’

‘Oh come on, it’s worth at least two.’ I twirled my fake hair around my fingers, and started to look around the displays for dust.

‘Betty, there aren’t that many collectors of Monday Mayhem memor–’

‘People in the gallery say they’d buy it all the time!’

‘Those aren’t serious offers, those are people caught up in the moment, remembering their nights down the village disco.’

‘Serious collectors are the same,’ I said, picking up the script from behind the counter. ‘But their moment never ends. It’s taken over their whole lives.’

‘We are serious collectors, you do realise?’

I stuck out my tongue. ‘We are professionals. Curators. A cut above the mere fanatics.’

‘You sound like your mother.’ He stared at me for a moment, and then looked back down at the book. ‘Betty, we need the money. Do you think it’s really such a big deal for the visitors? I don’t think anyone’s asked to see this stuff for a couple of years.’

‘Is he coming to take it today?’ I was stricken by his seriousness. ‘Do I need to say my goodbyes now so you can move it before we open?’

‘His offer’s good ‘til next Monday, but he’d come get it today if I was willing. I suppose I’ll think about it.’

‘Wait to ask Mum?’

‘Yeah.’ He closed the book suddenly, put it in a drawer and went out the back. I heard his footsteps going upstairs.

I sat down on the chair he’d vacated and just had time to brush up on the script before the door opened and the birthday party arrived. A woman called Tanya with her friends and parents. She wouldn’t say how old she was today, but she was probably in her forties. I did the tour in full-on Gloria Furoria – the middle-aged and older groups enjoy the acting the most. Families like it too, though the parents can sometimes get fed up whilst the kids really get into it – or vice versa, every now and then. I showed round a family group after lunch who were all very enthusiastic. A group of teenagers came in the late afternoon, and for them I dumped the usual script, dropped the Gloria act and acted like I was the celebrity so they wouldn’t dare to annoy me, and played more videos – they’re usually more interested in laughing at things than in facts and career stories. Every now and then one of the teens coming in is desperate to be a celebrity herself and hangs on every word I can tell her about pop singers, and I have a talk prepared for these kids: ‘How Not To Be A Pop Success: Lessons Learned from Eleven Years of Almost Ordinary’, but they’re usually in a group with people who couldn’t care less so it’s hard to indulge them.

‘You’re Gloria Thingy, right?’ El took a step back and looked me up and down. ‘Nice legs.’

‘Yes. Thanks.’ I sat down. ‘How was work?’

‘Mediocre, until the manager had me move a load of cans Brian shelved in the bread aisle. Then it was actively mind-numbing.’

‘Ugh.’ I groaned. Brian was the former significant-other of my mother, the person from which half of my DNA originated, in other words, my biological father, and someone that could be generously described as ‘bumbling’. ‘I feel like I should apologise, but he’s my biological parent, I didn’t create him.’

‘Could you not talk to him? You guys run Almost Ordinary really well.’

‘Did. Failing. Three tours today.’ I leant my forehead on the countertop and mumbled into it, ‘Anyway, I don’t really talk with Brian; I talk at him, and with Amrita. Brian just grins. Not sure how I’d get on to the topic of bread placement politely anyway.’

El sat on the counter and ruffled my wig. ‘It that bad? AO I mean, not Brian, I know that’s bad.’

I looked up at him. ‘Brian isn’t bad, just unfortunate. AO is bad. Dad’s thinking of selling stuff.’ I reached up to take the grips out that held the wig off, wanted to smooth it down in case El’s ruffling had caused any damage.

The door between the gallery and the shop opened and my dad stuck his head in. ‘I’m going upstairs to start dinner, Betty. Kids didn’t buy anything.’ He closed the door and I turned back to El.

‘I take it you don’t mean the tapes and CDs in the shop,’ he said.

‘Exhibits.’

‘Oh. Shit. Do you want to come to Simon’s tonight?’

‘You’re going to Simon’s again? Never mind.’ I sat up straight and stretched my arms above my head. El was absolutely terrible at providing emotional support, for himself as well as for me. His response to any upset of one’s mental equilibrium always involved alcohol. ‘No, thanks. It’d be nice to get drunk, couldn’t Friday, obviously, ‘cos work, but my mum’s been off…’ I tried to remember where Dad had said she was ‘…somewhere, since yesterday morning, and I’ve missed her; I want to be here when she gets in. If she comes home soon I might join you late, but otherwise, nope.’

‘Alright.’ El dropped down from the counter. ‘See you Monday, or maybe later.’ He waved and headed back to the door. I got up a few minutes later and went to the front to lock the door. Evening tours were appointment only or based around special events – we’d started doing a ‘One Hit Wonders of the Future?’ tour the night before musically-relevant reality TV shows had their finals, where we speculated on the destinies of the contestants and talked about the flops of the past. I turned all the lights off in the gallery, and went upstairs to set the table for dinner.

In the kitchen my dad was getting out two wine glasses and a bottle I recognised as being 3 for £10 supermarket special white.

‘Sold the tapes,’ he announced. ‘Or selling. First thing tomorrow, he’ll be over for them, he says.’

‘I thought you were going to wait and ask Mum!’ I dumped my bag on the floor and stared at him as he fumbled with the bottle and corkscrew.

‘I did ask her.’

‘She phoned? Why didn’t you say so? When’s she coming home?’

He filled a glass and drank it quickly, wincing at the taste, and then picked up the bottle again for a refill.

‘Excuse me,’ I said, grabbing both glasses, ‘Have you become possessed by the spirit of El or something?’ I laughed without confidence, knowing something was up. Dad stopped and looked up at the ceiling, his lips moving as if they were struggling to make words. I looked up as well. For a moment we watched the dust particles swirling just below the fluorescent tube lights.

‘Dad, what did Mum say?’

He shook his head.

‘She didn’t say anything? She didn’t call?’ He nodded. ‘This is like a fucking game of charades.’ I put the wine glasses on the side, where one promptly toppled over into the sink. ‘Did she call this morning? To say she would be back, definitely, this evening? Like you told me.’

‘Um…’ He shook his head.

‘Dad, did she say in her call yesterday that she would be back this morning?’

‘Um…Betty, about that, she didn’t actually–’

‘Didn’t actually what?’ I was livid.

‘Didn’t. Call. Ever. Since…’

I looked at the dancing dust, then back at Dad. ‘Dad, has she contacted you at ALL since Friday?’ He buried his head in his hands and sank into one of the dining chairs. ‘Dad?’

‘No.’ He looked at his lap.

I sat down opposite him. ‘Dad, what the hell is going on?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What do you mean you don’t know?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did she leave you a note?’

‘No.’

‘What happened Friday? When did you last see her?’

‘What happens every Friday. She went out saying she was going to a house clearance.’

‘Dad! She could be kidnapped! Murdered! Oh my god! I’m going to call the police and I can’t believe you haven’t done this already!’ I ran out of the room and down the stairs to the shop floor. I picked up the phone from the counter and was two digits into 999 when he snatched the handset from me.

‘She isn’t missing.’

‘How do you know?’

‘She’s taken all her clothes.’

I dropped the cord, which I still had round around my fingers. ‘Huh?’

‘I think, Betty, I think she’s left me.’

‘No. You’ve got to be wrong.’

I ran upstairs and into Mum and Dad’s bedroom, pulling open the wardrobes to see that not one single item of clothing remained on my Mum’s side. All the shoes. All the dresses. Coats. Hats. Scarves. T-shirts. Novelty slippers. Gone. I opened the drawers and they were empty. The hangers rattled around, some falling to the floor as I desperately searched for anything my mum might have left that she would come back for, besides her husband and daughter. A pair of pants, a pair of socks, a bra, a jumper, a hair pin, whatever a hair pin was, a ordinary pin…but there was nothing. A safety pin? No. I turned around to my dad, who was standing in the doorway, leaning up against the doorframe.

‘How could you not notice she was talking all this stuff?’

‘She didn’t take it all on Friday, just the last few bits of clothes. She’s been taking it out for weeks whilst you were at school. She told me she was clearing out, taking her clothes to sell to second-hand stores, cash-in-hand.’

‘Most of her clothes are from Primark. How could she sell them on?’

‘I don’t know anything about that stuff. I trusted her, of course, she’s my wife.’

‘She’s taken all her clothes.’

‘I know.’

‘She’s taken all her clothes.’

‘She’s left me.’

‘She’s left us.’

We both sat down on the carpet at the foot of the bed.

‘So you lied? She’s not at Julie’s.’

‘I made Julie up.’

‘Julie is a lie.’ I could feel my face stretch with shock. ‘Why? Why Julie? Why the lie? Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Didn’t want you to find out. I thought that she’d come home, at least for you. Pick you up from school next week or something. Take you too.’

‘Well I’d find out then, wouldn’t I?’

‘Yeah, but you wouldn’t feel like me.’

‘You are such an idiot.’

‘Do you think that’s why she’s gone?’

‘You’re not that much of an idiot.’ I stared up at the wobbling hangers. ‘We’ve got to find her. So that I can shout at her for leaving us, and find out why.’

‘Yes, we should probably do that,’ he said.

‘But right now, I think I’ve got to go cry,’ I said, squeezing my eyelids together. I got to my feet and stumbled towards the bedroom door, legs suddenly feeling all heavy whilst my arms and head felt light. I paused at the doorway. ‘Dad?’

‘Yeah?’ He looked up at me, and I thought he looked like a little boy, sitting on the floor, surrounded by hangers.

‘She couldn’t have taken me. I wouldn’t have gone with her.’

‘I know. I was just being wishful. Hoping she wouldn’t know that and would come back for you.’

I closed the door and wished myself that my mum didn’t know me that well.