3 When Ada Mae and Sonny were sixteen and seventeen, they announced out of the blue one breakfast that they were leaving home we're going today and you can't stop us, Sonny said, spreading his legs wide like he was a grown man, shoulders back, daring his parents to challenge him we're not going to spend another day in the back of beyond baling hay, ploughing fields, milking cows and mucking out animal dung for the rest of our lives Hattie remembers it so clearly Ada Mae wore her new orange mini-dress with a high neck she'd ordered though the Biba catalogue, white patent leather boots that rode up to her knees, hair sculpted into a beehive, false lashes, black pencil around her eyes making them appear huge she was beautiful then, of course she didn't think so it's only now, when they look at old family photos together that Ada Mae exclaims, with more than a touch of sadness, look at me, Ma, I was quite lovely, wasn't I? Sonny was bone-thin in those days, in the way of teenage boys before they become men, his legs gangly and uncoordinated, he'd grown too quickly to the height of his father he wore his purple velvet flare suit, his hair was trimmed almost to the bone back then, to hide its kinks, she suspected with a side-parting that looked absurd neither were dressed for the long ride to London they left on Sonny's seventeenth birthday present – the Honda motorbike he'd begged them to buy him said he needed it to come and go more freely it cost them two bullhorns
Ada Mae sat pillion, Sonny revved the bike and the pair of them roared off out of the yard, down the hill, through the village and towards the glamorous streets that awaited them in London Ada Mae was to become a secretary to a pop star, Sonny a rich businessman they roared noisily out of their parents' lives leaving a plume of smoke and fumes leaving her and Slim marooned on eight hundred acres of farmland it took time to adjust to not hearing Ada Mae playing Dusty Springfield, Petula Clark and Cilla Black records on the record player in the Long Room, where she danced in the modern way if one of them made the mistake of entering, she shouted at them to bloody well leave her alone for once Sonny pretended to play the guitar in there, while listening to the Rolling Stones they used to peep through the windows to amuse themselves Hattie and Slim found it strange sitting down to meals for two instead of four, washing one set of sheets instead of three, to not taking the temperature of teenage moods when their kids were sloping about at home they never stopped worrying about them being so far away in the capital city where anything could happen to them London didn't last, they didn't even make it to three whole months (lightweights!) Sonny worked in a boutique in Carnaby Street that didn't pay enough to live on, Ada Mae washed dishes in the kitchen of the Regent Palace Hotel it was impossible to get accommodation other than in a run-down house with coloured immigrants in a slum area called Notting Hill the immigrants scornfully accused them of being like white people Hattie wanted to say she thought they'd see that as a compliment and contemplated how her bairns had gone from the Scottish Borders to London, only to discover it was an alien country down there she was happy when they settled in Newcastle, only seventy miles from the farm instead of over three hundred
Ada Mae married Tommy, the first man who asked, grateful anyone would she didn't exactly have suitors lining up in Newcastle wanting to proudly introduce their black girlfriend to their parents in the nineteen-sixties Tommy was on the ugly side, a face like a garden gnome, her and Slim joked, none too bright, either Hattie suspected the lad didn't have too many choices himself a coalminer from young, he was apprenticed as a welder when the mines were shut down he proved to be a good husband and really did love Ada Mae, in spite of her colour as he told Hattie and Slim when he came to ask for her hand lucky that Slim didn't lay him out there and then Sonny's experience was somewhat different, according to Ada Mae who reported back that women queued up round the block for him they thought he was the next best thing to dating Johnny Mathis he married Janet, a barmaid, whose parents objected and told her to choose.