was very hand to mouth: she’d count out the money, sometimes coppers, and go shopping every day. We all ate at different times: the only time we tried to have a meal together was Sunday lunchtime but because Nan and Grandad had been in the pub for hours it was often burnt. We had a drop-leaf table under the window that would only be pulled out on Sundays or at Christmas. Normal meals after I came in from school were egg and chips or ham, egg and chips if there was more money, a bit of brawn some days. I loved fish paste and used to eat it with a spoon from the jar. Nan would sometimes make shepherd’s pie and I loved her rice pudding with a skin on top, made in a bowl that looked about 100 years old. We all loved it when Nan brought pie and mash home: there was a real ritual to ripping the paper off, carving a cross and pouring in the bright green liquor from a polystyrene cup, then smothering it in vinegar and pepper. It was a real treat, bought from Arments in Westmoreland Road, off the Walworth Road. I think we only had pie and mash if Nan won a bit on the horses.
I loved the Joseph Lancaster School. When I started there at five, the head teacher remembered Alan and said he hoped I would do better: ‘Alan came in through the front door and out through the back and was home before your nan.’ But I was a good girl: my school reports are all great except every teacher said I was very chatty (nothing much has changed). We didn’t have to wear a uniform and, as you’ve gathered, I was always fashionably dressed. Mum used to buy me clothes in Carnaby Street, the trendy place in those days, from a shop called Kids in Gear. I loved my patent leather hot pants with yellow leather braces on them. In another shop (Buttons & Bows) she bought silk ribbons, buttons and bits and pieces to sew onto my clothes to jazz them up. The shopkeeper made a dress for me, crocheted in white with red satin ribbon woven through and a matching beret. It was for the wedding of one of Mum’s friends (they weren’t having bridesmaids but they wanted me in the pictures) so I was star of the show, my favourite place.
I wore the dress to school as well: there was never any of that saving your best for weekends in our family, I was always done up like the dog’s dinner. It was part of our thing. Look at us Maxwells: we’re not failures, we’ve got all the latest gear and everything we’ve got is on our backs. A lot of working-class people are like that. Nan had a ring on every finger, she’d bung it all on: it was about telling the world we didn’t need charity. There’s a pattern emerging when I look back at my life.
I was Miss Popular at school: bright, funny and loved by everybody except those I took the mickey out of. Putting the focus on someone else’s shortcomings meant no one got round to asking me the dreaded question: ‘Why haven’t you got a dad?’ Without thinking about it, I was always trying to recruit friends: believers in Lisa Maxwell, people who would think, isn’t she great? I’m glad Lisa is on the planet! One of the reasons why I liked being well dressed was that I thought it would make people like me more if I looked as if I came from a well-off family who could afford to buy nice things. Even as a kid I was acting out the philosophy that took me through a lot of my life and stopped me ever having to face up to myself: keep busy, stay at the centre of things, have a laugh. Whatever you do, don’t stand still long enough to be alone with yourself or to let other people ask too many questions. If I was funny and popular, who would care if I didn’t have a father?
Maybe the other kids did notice but they didn’t say anything to my face. Maybe the others clocked my background, but I was protected from name-calling and nasty comments because all the scary kids liked me, which meant no one else gave me any trouble. I was tiny, but I had this really tall friend called Delphine. Her sister Jackie could beat anyone up, including the boys. My loose tongue and ability to mimic people meant I was always taking the mickey, but I managed to duck out of trouble: if anyone threatened to meet me after school, I’d walk out with Delphine and the troublemakers would melt away.
Mum never admitted she was a single parent, deserted before her baby was born. At the offices where she worked she always said she was divorced or separated, and for years she told me my father had ‘died in the war’. I was too young to ask ‘What war?’ because it didn’t make any sense (there was no war when I was born, unless you count Vietnam) and what was an American GI doing hanging around South London with Mum? But it was something women always said, an excuse the previous generation had been able to use, so that’s what I told the kids at school. When I look back, I’m amazed, but they accepted it just as I did.
I found out my dad wasn’t dead from Nan, but not in a proper sit-down-and-we’ll-have-a-talk kind of way. We were in the pub when I was seven or eight and I said something about him being dead (I think a kid at school had asked me). ‘Oh, your dad ain’t dead, don’t be silly,’ said Nan casually, then turned to the barman: ‘Scotch and American and a martini, please, Jim. Oh, and can you tell the pianist to play “When Your Old Wedding Ring Was New” …’
It was just slipped in: it wasn’t explained, just a quick reference before ordering the next drink. I don’t remember being shocked or the news having a massive impact, so I think deep down I probably already knew but didn’t understand. Although I carried on pretending, the story changed: instead of saying Dad was dead, now I said he left when I was very young. It was a world away from being illegitimate because at least I had a father when I was born. If I had a dad, even for a day or two after my birth, it legitimised me being on the planet.
Secrets and lies and shame have had a profound effect on me. There was a big chunk of my life that I didn’t know about – ‘Father Unknown’ – but I also knew from early on that I mustn’t ask questions. Again, I don’t know how I knew this, but subliminally someone must have made me feel it was not a good idea: we don’t talk about things that hurt. It was a defence mechanism, I guess, filtered down to Mum from Nan and Grandad’s generation, who believed you put up and shut up.
As I grew up, I became adept at not dealing with things: I simply put my head in the sand. From a young age children pick up when something causes pain, and I didn’t want to put my mum through that agony. The bits of information I was given about myself were just snippets or downright lies; you become numb to the good stuff, the bad stuff, everything … Somehow you know some of it’s not true but you also understand the reason why they’re not telling you the truth is because it’s too hard for them so you never try to unravel things. Not that I went through childhood having deep thoughts about all of this; I was enjoying myself too much.
I was a bit of a star at school: the singing teacher (Miss Stokes) really encouraged me, telling me I was a natural. She gave me the role of Mrs B in our little production about Peter Rabbit when I was about six and I remember hearing my voice singing through a microphone, a song about Mrs Rabbit going through the wood with her shopping basket – I loved it. It was a massive moment in my life, hearing my voice amplified and performing to an audience.
I was clever at school but that didn’t matter in my family, they weren’t interested in academic things. For some reason, I had a reading age of 16 at 11 years old. We all took a test to see who should be on the school team for the Panda Club Quiz, an event started by the Met Police, and I was chosen. The four smartest kids took part in this quiz with all the other schools in London and we won, which made us celebrities at school for a while – it was a really big deal, everyone was very pleased. We had to answer questions about the history of the police, which is funny because many years later I would join the Force myself in The Bill – I guess my research started early.
Breaks and lunchtimes were spent playing and our favourite games were French Skipping, with girls jumping through a large loop of knicker elastic, and Two Ball Up the Wall – I always had two tennis balls with me and was a whizz at throwing them against the wall and reciting rhymes like ‘Holy Mary, mother of God/Send me down a couple of bob’. Blasphemous, but we never thought about the meaning. We weren’t a religious family, the Maxwells, although I was sent to Sunday school at the Abdullam Mission from about seven years old. I took a shine to a dog living next door to the room where Sunday school was held. I’d knock at the door and ask if I could take Teddy for a walk. A lady in an overall, just like Nan wore, would hand him over on an old chain lead with a worn leather handle.
