Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

in the handcart and we started again. There were a lot of cheap places to rent in those days.’
    My maternal grandmother bore ten children, two died in infancy, four are left. She worked all her life, and when she wasn't working she was a ballroom—dancing champion.
    ‘And she lived to be ninety—seven,’ said Ann.
    I go to the bathroom. All my life I have been an orphan and an only child. Now I come from a big noisy family who go ballroom dancing and live forever.

    Ann's youngest sister Linda arrives. She is technically my aunt, but she is the same age as my girlfriend, and it is ludicrous to be collecting aunts at this stage in life.
    ‘Everybody wants to meet you,’ says Linda. ‘I saw Oranges on the TV but I didn't know it was you. My daughter has ordered all your books.’
    That shows willing. We have all got adjustments to make.
    I like Linda, who lives in Spain, where she runs women's groups and teaches dancing, among other things. ‘I'm the quiet one,’ she says. ‘You can't get a word in edgeways when that lot are all together.’
    ‘We should have a party,’ says Ann. Then she says, with an almost Mrs W—style segue, ‘Every morning I wake up and I ask myself, “Why am I here?'”
    She doesn't mean ‘Oh no, I am still here’ — it isn't quite Mrs W She really wants the question answered.
    ‘There must be a meaning but we don't know it,’ says Gary. ‘I'm always reading about the cosmos.’
    Linda has been reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying , which she recommends to Gary.
    This is the old Manchester working—class way; you think, you read, you ponder. We could be back in the Mechanics’ Institute, back in the Workers’ Extension Lectures, back in the Public Library Reading Room. I feel proud — of them, of me, of our past, our heritage. And I feel very sad. I shouldn't be the only one to have been educated. Everyone in this room is intelligent. Everyone in this room is thinking about the bigger questions. Try telling that to the Utility educators.
    I don't know why we are here either, but whatever the answers, I'm back with Engels in 1844. We're not here to be regarded ‘only as useful objects’.
    They are easy to talk to. Five hours pass very quickly indeed. But I have to go. I have to get to London. Susie will meet me. I stand up to say goodbye. My legs are weak. I am exhausted.
    Ann hugs me. ‘I wondered if you would ever try and find me. I hoped you would. I wanted to find you but it didn't seem right to try’
    I am not able to say what I want to say. I can't think straight. I hardly notice the taxi ride back to the station. I grab some food for me and Susie, because she's been working all day, and I get myself half a bottle of red wine. I try and phone Susie but I can't speak. ‘Read the paper. Chill. You are in shock.’
    There's a text from Ann. I hope you weren't disappointed .

15
    The Wound

    M
Y MOTHER HAD TO SEVER some part of herself to let me go. I have felt the wound ever since.
    Mrs Winterson was such a mix of truth and fraud. She invented many bad mothers for me; fallen women, drug addicts, drinkers, men—chasers. The other mother had a lot to carry but I carried it for her, wanting to defend her and feeling ashamed of her all at the same time.
    The hardest part was not knowing.
    I have always been interested in stories of disguise and mistaken identity, of naming and knowing. How are you recognised? How do you recognise yourself?
    In the Odyssey , Odysseus, for all his adventures and far—flung wandering, is always urged to ‘remember the return’. The journey is about coming home.
    When he reaches Ithaca the place is in uproar with unruly suitors for his hard—pressed wife. Two things happen: his dog scents him, and his wife recognises him by the scar on his thigh.
    She feels the wound.
    There are so many wound stories:
    Chiron, the centaur, half—man, half—horse, is shot by a poisoned arrow tipped in the Hydra's blood, and because he is immortal and cannot die, he must live forever in agony. But he uses the pain of the wound to heal others. The wound becomes its own salve.
    Prometheus, fire—stealer from the gods, is punished with a daily wound: each morning an eagle perches on his hip and rips out his liver; each night the wound heals, only to be scored open the next day. I think of him, burned dark in the sun where he is chained to the Caucausian mountains, the skin on his stomach as soft and pale as a little child's.
    The doubting