It was a shop, that much never left me. The shop was on a long street, a street of houses though, not your typical row of shops (well typical of where I lived).
I knew the shop really well, I even knew my way around it, in my head I did anyway. It was a funny angled shape, its door wasn't on the front, it was sort of on the side. Imagine a square and you slice the corner off, that's where the door was.
I remember I used to sit on top of big hessian sacks of potatoes in the back of the shop while the adults drank cups of tea in the front. It was always cold in there and smelt of onions!
The outside of the shop had red pointed railings that pulled across the door of a night and fastened with a pad lock. I always remembered the step (I know, weird!). The step was shiny and dipped in the middle where it had been worn away and it was slippy!
Having something that vivid in your head either had to be real or you must be slightly mad. Well no one could tell me how I knew the shop. I asked dozens of times over the years and always heard the same thing, 'you've imagined it'. When I was about ten I must of been going on about it again and my sister who was two years older than me said she remembered it and said the shop was Josie's. I'm not sure how it went but I know it only took a few words from my adoptive mum to convince my sister she was wrong and had been thinking of somewhere else.
When I was 25 I was going through a rough time, It isn't easy to explain, but here goes; I had spent most of my childhood being told I was imagining things that I believed I was. Believing it was my imagination didn't stop the thoughts I had though so obviously I did think I was crazy.
I had ran away from my home town at sixteen and in a way reinvented my self.No one knew me or knew I was a bit mad and that's how I wanted to keep it. I never spoke about my past ever, just in case they guessed I was a bit mad. I did a good job of acting normal, well, normalish, having an eating disorder is a bit harder to hide! Every now and again though my crazy thoughts would appear and it was getting harder to ignore.
Back to when I was 25, the red shop came back with avengance. I had been put on anti-depressants (didn't mention my thoughts to doctor) and had started to feel I was losing the plot. I knew if I found the shop with the red door I would be ok. I would know I wasn't going mad again. I arranged for a friend to pick my son up from nursery the next day and have him over night. I dropped my son off and got the train to Liverpool.
I went to every area of Liverpool that I knew as a child, nothing. I got the last train back home. I must of cried for the hour and a half journey home. I had been convinced I would find it and everything would make sense. I just wanted to get my son and shut myself in the house. I got to my friends and my son was fast asleep it was obvious I had been crying (god, forgive me but I had lied to my mate and said I was going to a family funeral) so she convinced me to stay the night with her. A month later I had what they said was a nervous breakdown. A complete shock to all my friends because they had always seen me as a strong person.
The second time I met my real family was in Liverpool. I had found them two weeks earlier and had gone to stay with them for a couple of weeks. I stayed at my real sisters house (though the whole family live in the same street) on the second night we were going through all the family photos and getting to know each other slowly. I told her about the red door but she didn't comment on it.
The next morning she insisted we go and get some fags. We had been in our pyjamas since the night I got there( pigs Yeh! but we had a lot of catching up to do!). We got dressed and she asked if I'd go to the shop while she fed her baby. She said I couldn't get lost because it was only near the bottom of the road. I saw the railings they were blue though not red, I felt physically sick. I walked in bought the fags and left. My sister was standing on her doorstep and she just hugged me. She said she knew straight away what shop I was talking about. The shop is called the sister shop in Peel rd Bootle, I had been born in the next rd. The name my adopted sister had mentioned Josie, was my real mums best friend.
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