The longer he stared, the more uncomfortable I got. The more scared. Does he expect us to . . . ? He shed his pastel jacket, with its rolled-up sleeves, and threw it to one side, then went his white T-shirt.
His belt jangled as he unbuckled it, then he unbuttoned the top button of his jeans and unzipped himself, his eyes never straying from my naked body the whole time.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it. It was all happening so fast and I wasn’t ready.
‘Marcus,’ I said. My voice was wavering, shaking with fear. ‘I don’t want . . . Can we wait?’
He stopped pulling his jeans down. ‘What?’ he asked, looking at my face for the first time since he pushed us down on to the bed. His eyes weren’t focused on the here and now, with me, they looked as if they were somewhere else; as if he didn’t recognize me.
‘I . . . I want to wait,’ I said, my voice still fragile and shaky. ‘Please?’
‘Wait,’ he stated, frowning at me. ‘You want to wait.’
I managed a small nod, hoping he’d understand. Hoping he’d still like me. I snaked my arms around my bare chest, suddenly cold under his glare. He climbed off the bed and angrily snatched up his T-shirt and jacket from the pile of clothes on the floor.
‘Get dressed,’ he said, and marched out the room without looking at me again.
He was so angry he wouldn’t speak to me, wouldn’t look at me as he drove me home. As we got closer and closer to the spot around the corner from my house, where he always dropped me off so that my parents wouldn’t see, I was hoping he would say something. Anything that would mean he still wanted to see me and would show I hadn’t driven him away by not going through with it. He slowed his white Ford Escort and then pulled in, and still he didn’t speak. Still he kept the wall of frost between us.
I was scared then. Scared that he would never forgive me, never speak to me. I couldn’t live with that. I couldn’t live without him speaking to me. He stared straight ahead, his body tense, his hands clamped to the steering wheel. He was waiting for me to leave and he was going to let me go without saying another word. He was going to go back to his life with Serena and have no one to support him when she threatened to kill herself. He was going to forget about me.
‘Will I see you again this week?’ I asked.
He gave a short, silent laugh as he continued to stare out of the windscreen, shook his head slightly and muttered something that sounded like ‘unbelievable’ under his breath.
‘Marcus?’ I asked, desperate.
‘Get out of the car,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry, I was just sc—’ I said.
‘Just get out of the car,’ he cut in, his voice as cold and hard as steel. I’d never heard him speak like that before. ‘Get out of the car and leave me be.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered, moments away from tears. My hands were like slabs of meat that I couldn’t get to work as I tried to open the car door. His irritation was growing the longer it took me to open the car door. I finally managed to get it working and it sprang open, letting some of the pressure out.
I’d barely got on to the pavement when he leaned over, and pulled the door shut again. Then he sped off, his tyres squealing as he drove away from me. I stood on the street watching him go, terrified that this was the last time I’d ever see him. Terrified that I’d never feel the same way about another person as I did about him. Terrified of what I’d have to do if I did see him again.
I’ve had enough remembering. Enough, enough,
enough!
I throw back the covers – new ones I found in the airing cupboard – and reach down to pull on some socks before I reach for my old dressing gown. It’s not ideal, wearing the old blue-and-red striped thing, but it’s better than nothing and better than the things I had in prison. I still have to wear them because almost all the clothes in the wardrobe are twenty years old and too big for me now I’m prison-thin. And hideous. Let’s not forget they’re hideous. There are some gems in there, but most of them are just plain hideous.
I creep down the stairs, avoiding the creaks of the floorboards that I have learnt off by heart now. A glass of water, and maybe a few biscuits will help me to settle again. They’ve helped these past three nights of freedom.
I don’t switch the light on, instead I get the water and a few biscuits and sit at the table to eat them. Normally I would have taken them upstairs to my room, but that room is . . . unsettling. I can’t help but think about Marcus when memorabilia from that era assaults me from every angle. But I can’t just dismantle it. Either Mum or Dad took the time to put it together; I can’t rip it down as if I don’t care about the trouble they went to.
Creak!
on the stairs has my heart skipping a little, and raises my hackles. Seconds later, I watch Dad walk into the kitchen, heading for the glasses cupboard. He is in his dressing gown and slippers, and has obviously not been able to sleep, either. He does not see me at first. He doesn’t see me until he has poured his glass of water and turns away from the sink with the glass at his lips. He jumps a little and stops drinking as his eyes make out my shape, sitting in the dark at their table.
‘I couldn’t sleep either,’ I say, indicating to my glass of water and biscuits.
In reply, he puts down the glass of undrunk water on the edge of the sink, not seeming to care that it could easily slip off and break, then walks out of the room without looking at me again.
‘Daaaaaaaaa,’ I say softly. ‘Daaaaaaaaa.’
July, 1986
Three weeks.
It’d been three weeks and I still hadn’t heard from him. He didn’t wait for me outside the school gates. He didn’t wait for me in the usual place by the park. He didn’t come and wait near the clothes shop where I worked all day Saturdays and Tuesdays and Thursdays, during the holidays. He didn’t ring my house and hang up if someone else answered. Nothing. For three weeks, nothing. In six weeks the last golden rays of summer would be fading, autumn would be just around the corner, which meant I’d start back at school soon and we couldn’t meet more often like we planned. I was too scared to just turn up at his house in case he shouted at me – or worse, ignored me.
I was frantic. Going out of my mind. I cried myself to sleep every night. I stopped eating – it just made me feel sick. I didn’t want food, I didn’t want to watch telly, I didn’t want to read, I didn’t want anything but to have Marcus back. He loved me, he’d practically told me he loved me, and I’d let him down. By not going through with it I’d let him down, made him feel awful. I’d really hurt him when he needed me and now I’d lost him for ever.
‘What’s the matter, love?’ Dad eventually asked me. He came to my room where I was lying curled up on my bed.
I hurt. My stomach was hollow, but full of lead; my head felt like a helium balloon – all light and ready to float away – but banging with a dull, heavy ache; an elephant was sitting on my chest and my eyes would not stop leaking tears. I wanted to scream his name out loud, just so someone would know that he had been mine, that I loved him and now I’d lost him.
‘You’ve been like this for more than two weeks. We’re all so worried about you,’ Dad said. ‘I don’t like to see you like this, Pepper, love.’ Dad had called me Pepper since I was tiny. (‘That’s my little Pepper,’ he’d always say with pride, no matter what I did. ‘The cleverest girl on the whole street.’)
‘He doesn’t love me any more, Dad,’ I said into my pillow.
‘Who?’
I couldn’t tell him everything because Dad would NEVER understand, so I shrugged.
‘Have you got a boyfriend?’ he asked. I could tell he was hoping that I would say no – the last thing he wanted was for me to have a boyfriend.
‘He doesn’t love me any more,’ I said.
‘Pepper, love,’ Dad said, stroking his hand over my hair like he used to do when I was sick, ‘he’s not worth it.’
Dad didn’t know him. Marcus was worth it. He was worth everything. He was everything.
‘Any lad that can make you feel like this is not worth it. No one should ever make you feel like this.’
‘But what if it was my fault?’ I asked. ‘What if I did something wrong and now he won’t speak to me?’
‘What could you have done that would make him stop speaking to you?’ Dad asked.
‘I don’t know, but it was all my fault,’ I said, sounding almost hysterical.
Dad put his arms around me, and rocked me back and forth. ‘Don’t upset yourself, Pepper. It’ll all be OK, I promise you. You’ll forget about this lad soon enough and there’ll be someone else. Someone who is nicer to you and who doesn’t make you feel like this. I promise you.’
He didn’t understand: I didn’t want anyone else, I wanted Marcus.
‘Should I try to fix things?’ I asked into Dad’s chest.
He shook his head so hard it shook his body and me in his arms. ‘No, Pepper. No. You could do more harm than good. Sometimes it’s best to let things be. They have a habit of working themselves out for the good of all concerned.’
I knew what was best for the good of all concerned. I knew what I had to do.
‘I’m ready now,’ I said to Marcus, two days later, on his doorstep. He had opened the door and almost snarled when he saw me. ‘I don’t want to wait any more.’
‘Sure?’ he asked, the snarl waiting to be slipped back into place if I even wavered.
I nodded quickly and said ‘Yes’ just as quickly, so he wouldn’t think I was about to change my mind – and so that I wouldn’t change my mind.
A grin spread itself across his face as he stepped aside and used his hand to sweep me in.
It hurt. He hurt me. I don’t know if he meant to, but sometimes it seemed as if he enjoyed hurting me. But afterwards it didn’t really matter because he took me in his arms, he kissed my forehead and he told me it was worth the wait. I was worth the wait.
‘Aren’t you glad you changed your mind?’ he asked.
I nodded and said yes, quickly, so he wouldn’t question if I meant it.
‘You deserve a gold star,’ Marcus said as he pushed me back on to the bed again. I didn’t even bother to ask myself if I wanted to do it again, especially when I hurt below and inside and when I hadn’t particularly enjoyed it. He did, and that was all that was important.
Isn’t your first time supposed to be like this?
I thought to myself.
Doesn’t practice make perfect?
‘You’re a good girl, really, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘You’re my good little girl.’
I’m drifting off now. My eyes are growing heavy and my body is sinking down into the unfamiliar spaces in the mattress, settling itself to sleep. I’m going to sleep. Now that I’ve stopped fighting it, now that I’ve let those memories play themselves out, I can relax and allow myself to drift away.
I’m wrong, of course. There’s one more. One more unexploded memory bomb ready to detonate. As my grip on this reality finally loosens, it goes off, ushering me into the land of nod.
September, 1986
‘Poppy, this is Serena; Serena, this is Poppy,’ Marcus said, standing between the two of us. She was tall and slender, and even more glamorous close up. I had been with Marcus officially for three months and he said I should meet her so that we could relax when we were together, so we wouldn’t always be on edge in case she found out.
I had wanted to ask him why he was bothered if they weren’t together any more, but I didn’t. I decided to leave it for another time, and just meet her. See what she was like for myself.
She forced a smile on her face and held out her hand to shake mine. Dumbstruck and nervous, I took her hand and shook it back.
She doesn’t seem vulnerable
, I thought.
She doesn’t seem the type who would kill herself if he dumped her properly
. But there was no reason for Marcus to lie to me about that, was there? She was just probably very good at hiding how crazy she really was.
‘Good to meet you,’ she said, even though her face said otherwise.
‘You, too,’ I said.
‘We’re all going to get on famously,’ Marcus said. ‘I promise you, the three of us are going to have a really good time together.’
serena
I reckon that paperboy gets some enjoyment from doing things like this. From making me leave the house in my dressing gown to get the paper from the other end of my front garden, from leaving it where it’ll get wet if it rains, or – as he’s been doing for the past week – putting number thirty-nine’s paper through our door and putting ours – number ninety-three – through their door.
Thankfully, the people at number thirty-nine are OK: Ange, the mother, is nice and Ryan, her eldest son, is Con’s age so they play footie in the park together if we’re ever there at the same time. Ryan is in a posh private school so they aren’t schoolmates, but I like that Con has someone his own age to play with outside of school. I like them, but not enough to read their paper.
In my hallway, I slip my feet into Verity’s too-small trainers – all my shoes are neatly put away on the shoe rack at the other end of the hall, then shrug Evan’s big overcoat on top of my dressing gown – I’m only going up the road and it’s early, so no one will see me.
Feeling like a spy or something, I dash down the road to Ange’s to swap them over. Usually I’m able to just pick it up from by their gate and drop theirs in its place, but today the little so-and-so has actually pushed their paper halfway through the door.
‘You’d better pray I never get to meet you, boy,’ I say to myself as I open the gate and creep up the path to get it.
Just as my fingers make contact, the paper is yanked through the letterbox and the door is suddenly snatched open. Ange stands in front of me in her pink fluffy dressing gown, her hair a sleep-induced blonde mess, and a ring of black, blue and purple around her left eye.
Internally, I draw back, a little shocked but not as much as I probably should be. She is always perfectly made-up with just a bit too much foundation no matter what time of day it is; she always wears long-sleeved shirts no matter what the weather; she always looks on edge whenever she mentions her husband. Those are the clues, those are some of the many, many clues.