‘Vee, do you have a boyfriend?’ I ask.
Her face twists in alarm and shock, with a liberal dose of disgust sprinkled on top. Each emotion was too quick and too briefly on her face for me to work out the real answer. ‘No,’ she says.
‘Be honest, would you tell me if you did have a boyfriend?’ I ask.
She doesn’t say anything. I don’t really blame her – as we’d recently had confirmed, she is not stupid – there is no possible good answer to that question. If I was her, I would keep it to myself. I did keep it to myself. ‘Mum, I can’t answer that question without getting into trouble.’
‘You can,’ I say, smoothing the covers that lie in crumpled folds over her biceps and chest. ‘I’m not going to get cross. I promise you I won’t.’
‘I don’t have a boyfriend, Mum.’
‘OK, I believe you. But I’m asking because I want you to talk to me. I want you to know that you can talk to me about anything.’
Vee rolls her eyes, and snakes down a little further under her covers. ‘It’s because of that book, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘You think because I’m reading
Forever
I’ve got a boyfriend.’
That book, your singing, your near-permanent good mood.
‘That’s part of the reason.’
‘Just cos I read a book about
that
doesn’t mean I’m doing what’s in it. I read a book about a flying horse the other week, doesn’t mean I’m going to try and put wings on a horse, you know?’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘I just like to read, you know?’
‘Yes, I know. But it’s not just about the book. It’s . . . well, you’re at that age. Boys might notice you, you might notice boys, and I want you to know that you can talk to me. I don’t want you to keep things to yourself. Even if you think I won’t like it, I still want you to tell me. It’s not good to have secrets like that.’
‘Did you tell Grandma about your boyfriends?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘No, I could never have told her stuff like that. I told your aunts, though. You haven’t got an older sister, so I want you to talk to me. And if you can’t talk to me, then maybe one of your aunts. They are your godmothers, after all. I just want you to always have someone to rely on. I’d love for you to talk to me, but if you really can’t then talk to one of them. OK?’
‘OK,’ she mumbles.
‘Promise?’
‘I promise.’
‘Great. Goodnight, gorgeous clever girl.’
‘Goodnight, Mum.’
I kiss her on the forehead again, resisting the urge to kiss both cheeks, too, like I used to when she was a baby.
After I switch off the light, I make a mental note of the places she glanced at – suitcase on top of the wardrobe, the gap beneath her chest of drawers, the area where her laundry hamper sits – when I was talking to her. That’s where she’s hidden things, that’s where I need to look to find out what I need to know. She is a teenager, she can’t help keeping things from me. I couldn’t help myself, either. I know what can happen when a teenager hides too much from those who love her. I let it happen to me, I won’t let it happen to Verity. She’ll be angry with me for a while if there is anything to find and I confront her with it, she might tell me in not so many words that she hates me, but I’d rather that than the alternative. Anything is better than the alternative.
June, 1986
‘But I don’t want to wear them,’ I said to him.
He had bought me a pair of fishnet stockings and a suspender belt, to wear with a black-and-white two-tone skirt he bought me. But I didn’t want to wear them. They looked complicated and silly and like something an old woman would wear. I was only fifteen, after all. I really didn’t want to do it. In the three months we’d been together he’d brought me so many things – a lot of it underwear I had to keep at his house so that Mum wouldn’t find them – that I didn’t really like, but I never said anything because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. This was the worst, though, and I really didn’t want to wear them.
They would be difficult to put on and I didn’t like stockings or skirts.
I used to wear leggings under my Lycra skirts, but he said they made me look like a man and I shouldn’t wear them around him. Then he said I shouldn’t wear them at all, even if I wasn’t with him in case we met up spontaneously, then I’d be wearing them around him. Then he said I wasn’t to wear leggings ever because they were ugly and they made me look ugly. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ I’d said about the leggings. But I didn’t think stockings were the answer – I’d just stick to tights.
‘What did you say?’ he asked me, conversationally, as I held up the suspender contraption, trying to work out which bit of pale pink lace went where. I couldn’t believe women actually wore these. They looked like a cross between a cat’s cradle you made between your fingers with a length of string and a slingshot. The pale pink fishnet stockings were horrible, too.
‘I don’t want to wear them,’ I said.
‘That’s what I thought you said.’ He put down his paper and took his legs off the squashy, square leather pouf, then put his feet down. He stood up and went to the window and looked out over his front garden. ‘Make us a cup of tea, there’s a good girl,’ he said, his back to me.
As I made his tea, I started to worry that I’d upset him. He’d left the school a month ago, because things were serious between us, and he was struggling to find supply teaching work, so he wasn’t very happy sometimes. He’d probably paid good money for those things. Normally I wouldn’t say anything, but they really were horrible and I couldn’t imagine wearing them. Especially not in pink!
‘Thanks,’ he said with a smile as I handed him his mug of tea. I’d wiped the dribbles from the side, just like he liked it. He took a sip and smiled at me. ‘Ohhh,’ he said, still smiling, ‘good cup of tea that. Ohhh, yeah.’ He carefully settled the mug on the wide windowsill and then turned back to me.
It flashed up in his eyes a second before the pain exploded in my right cheek, knocking me backwards off my feet on to the floor. I sat still on the floor, wondering for a second what had happened, and if he had felt that jolt too as the world rocked under his feet. But his feet were still planted firmly on the ground, he did not look as if he had moved. It must have been just me then, it must have only happened to me.
My hand went to my cheek, but my eyes did not raise themselves immediately to look at him. I sat on the floor, clutching my face and trying to breathe, trying to remember how to breathe.
‘Put on the suspenders and stockings, there’s a good girl,’ he said. ‘And don’t ever tell me you don’t want to do something again, OK?’
I sat still, staring at the floor; the fear twirling around and around my heart made me too scared to raise my head to him.
‘OK?’
he repeated.
‘OK,’ I replied with a nod.
I scrambled to my feet, the imprint of the back of his hand still burning its embrace on my face, my heart cantering in my chest as I went back to the suspenders, lifted my skirt and started to work out how to put them on.
I heard him take another sip of tea, even though he hated noisy drinkers – and eaters and breathers. ‘This really is a good cup of tea, thanks.’
‘What would you do if Vee had a boyfriend?’ I ask my husband, who obviously finished his goodnight a lot quicker than I. He has cracked open a bottle of beer and has his bare feet up on the coffee table and his eyes on a taped episode of
Match of The Day
that he’s already watched.
He lowers the bottle on its route to his open mouth as his eyes slide over to where I have flopped in an armchair. I need to get to the kitchen to wash up and hide the knives, but I want to sound out Evan first. I want to make him aware of what I am worrying about. I hadn’t expected it, but he uses the remote to stop the recording, and to switch off the TV.
‘What would I do or what would I say?’ he asks.
‘Both,’ I reply.
‘What would I like to think I’d do or what would I probably do?’
‘Both.’
His broad shoulders and chest move upwards and downwards in a sigh. He stares at the marble fireplace, empty and benign but still guarded by a bronze grille. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘As Dr Evan Gillmare I would sit her down, ask her to tell me about this boy. I would ask if it was serious, if he was nice to her, and when she thought she could let me meet him so I could judge for myself. I would also ask again if it was serious and what precautions she was taking.
‘As Verity’s father I would probably shout as loud as I could about not letting some pleb near her, I’d find out who he was, would lock her in her room and then hunt him down to explain that not only did Verity have an age of consent around the thirty-five mark, he still wasn’t allowed near her, even then. Then I’d never let her out of my sight.
‘The reality would probably lie somewhere between the two, although much closer to Verity’s father.’
‘Pretty much how I’d react then,’ I say.
‘So, has she? Has she got a boyfriend?’ He is holding his breath, his body is tense. I wonder what he would do right now if I said yes?
‘She says not.’
‘Do you believe her?’
‘She’s never given me any reason to not believe her. And you know she spends most of her time here, filling up that big brain of hers. I just worry that if she has got a boyfriend she’s going to hide it from us. I’d rather know, than not know.’
‘I’m probably not the best person to reassure you, Sez, I’m sorry. I see girls all the time who are getting up to stuff their parents have no idea about,’ says Evan. ‘They come to me for the Pill or the morning-after pill, or they get condoms from the nurse. Some of these girls are not much older than Vee. I always ask them if they’ve talked to their parents. Almost all of them haven’t, of course, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking of Vee when I’m tempted to send them away and tell them to come back once they’ve spoken to their folks. But I know they won’t, they’ll just find someone else to give them what they want or even do it without any kind of precaution or protection. I always say to them to think about waiting, or to come back with their boyfriends so the three of us can talk through all their options.’
Agitated and a little sad, Evan runs his hand slowly over his close-shaved head, then rubs his head back and forth, quickly. He takes two large swigs of his beer before he speaks again. ‘They never bring them back, of course, but I try. I hope it sinks in that if a guy isn’t willing to be man enough to come with them to sort out contraception and STI protection, then he probably isn’t right for them. But let’s be honest, by the time a girl walks through my door for contraception or advice on an STI, it’s pretty much too late, nothing I say is going to stop her.’
‘You never know, they might think twice.’
‘Think twice, still do it. They think they know, they think they’re ready. I mean, how old were you when you first did it?’
‘Fifteen,’ I mumble as the heat of shame burns another permanent mark on my already-scarred soul.
‘Could anyone have stopped you?’
‘No, I guess not.’
‘Did he come with you to—?’
‘No,’ I say.
‘There you go.’ Evan swigs some more beer. ‘I see it all the time.’
He does, doesn’t he? He sees it all the time and he is understanding, he is empathetic, he is open minded. This is the time. The time I should tell Evan everything about
him
and what happened. He’ll understand then why I’m worried and why I want his help to keep an extra eye on Vee.
Not telling Evan about
him
is something I’ve sweated blood over for years. Since I met him, in fact. It’s easier on my body and mind if I try to shut all that out. When I think about it, I feel the world closing in on me: I find it impossible to breathe, things start to get blurry around the edges and that thing happens to my memory where I can’t remember everyday things. Like I couldn’t remember it was Saturday a week or so ago. When I think about the past, I lose time and I lose myself. Who knows what talking about it would do? But time is not on my side right now. That piece in the paper . . . All it’ll take is for another snippet to appear and for him to see and then, not only will I have to deal with the fallout of him finding out, I’ll have to explain why I didn’t tell him.
‘I need to tell you something,’ I say.
‘That’s the second time someone’s said that today,’ Evan says, his lips had been on the lip of the bottle and now they are away again. ‘It’s a secret, so when you see him, don’t say I told you. Act like you know nothing, OK?’
‘OK.’
‘But he’s got to know I’d tell you, right?’
‘I guess so.’ I really wish I knew what he was talking about, why it has stopped me from telling him this huge monumental thing I have been carrying with us every day of our relationship.
‘He’s always calling me a girl cos I tell you everything.’ Ah, Max. He calls every bloke who isn’t constantly drinking ten pints a night, and chatting up women who aren’t his wife, ‘a girl’. Better a girl than being a sad, short accountant from Portslade, but that’s by the by. Evan plays football with him and they get on, so I mostly ignore it. ‘But why wouldn’t I tell you everything? I have nothing to hide. And you have to stay with me, for better or worse, right?’
‘No,’ I say, ‘I have to stay married to you because I love you. Anyway, what’s the big secret?’
What is the problem so I can get on with what I really should be doing?
‘Max came to lunch with me and Teggie today. And he told us that his missus was married before,’ Evan says.
‘What? June?’
‘Yup. Did the deed in Vegas a while back, apparently. And that scar she says she got falling off her bike? Actually the scar from removing the tattoo of her ex’s name from her shoulder. And the bike she didn’t fall off was actually a Harley.’
‘This is June? Mousey little June?’ The woman who I’ve always thought deserves a medal for putting up with Max.
‘Afraid so. Max is gutted. He thought the reason she was so cool about the wedding being a registry office job and a small do was because he’d been so firm about not wanting a fuss, she knew her place because he’s the man and she’s the woman when, really, it just made it easier for her to cover up the previous marriage.’