‘I’m just worried about you.’ Jed turns to his daughter. ‘Emily isn’t feeling well – be gentle, okay?’ Dee Dee nods.
‘I’m going to tell Cam and Martin we need to go back to the yacht. I’ll get the key to the main cabin off them,’ Jed says, looking at me with concern.
‘Can I come back with you, Daddy?’ Dee Dee wheedles.
I open my mouth to say that of course she can, but before I can speak Jed laughs.
‘Nice try, Dee Dee, but you’ll be bored back on the boat. Anyway, a bit of exercise will do you good.’ He grins, pats her arm, then strides off around the corner towards Martin and the others.
A tear leaks out of poor Dee Dee’s eye. She keeps her head down.
‘Oh, sweetie.’ I give her shoulder another squeeze, unsure why the girl is so upset but Dee Dee is stiff with the desire to keep her pain to herself. ‘How about we take a picture?’ I suggest, hoping this will cheer her up.
‘Okay.’ Dee Dee offers me a weak smile. ‘Just you though, not me.’
‘No way.’ I point to her phone. ‘Go on, both of us.’
Grinning now, her mood altering with mind-bending swiftness, Dee Dee positions her iPhone in front of us. I move in close beside her. Dee Dee adjusts the angle, so the sea is visible behind us, then takes the photo. She peers at the screen and makes a face. ‘I look fat.’
‘I bet you don’t.’ I look over her shoulder. Unfortunately, the selfie has caught Dee Dee at a particularly unflattering angle. Plus, half my head is missing.
‘One more, then,’ I say. The band of tightness is starting to creep over one eye.
Dee Dee holds the phone out and positions it again. ‘I’ve got a secret,’ she says as she clicks.
‘Oh?’ I wonder what she means. Probably something about one of her friends, or a crush on some boy. I had millions when I was her age. ‘What’s that then?’
‘It’s something I saw.’ Dee Dee hugs me again. Her gold bracelet is cool against my skin. I have one just like it; they were engagement presents from my brother and his boyfriend – a typically sweet and generous gesture to include Dee Dee in their gifts. She is still clinging to me. I feel horribly hot, but I don’t want to push her away. Jed will be back any second and then it will only take ten minutes or so to get back to the cool of the boat.
‘So what’s this secret then?’ I ask gently.
Dee Dee’s body expands against mine as she takes a deep breath. ‘It’s—’
‘For goodness’ sake, let poor Emily be!’ Jed’s voice cracks like a whip through the air, making both of us jump. Dee Dee springs away from me, then sags down, her whole body collapsing into itself.
‘I told you, Jed, she’s fine.’
‘Right, sorry.’ Jed frowns. He pats his daughter’s arm again. She shrinks back, like a cowed puppy. My heart goes out to her. Jed clears his throat. ‘I didn’t mean to shout,’ he says. ‘I’m just really worried about Emily. She might have heat stroke or—’
‘It’s just a bit of a headache,’ I insist.
‘Right, okay.’ He turns to Dee Dee. ‘Sorry, Dee Dee, now run and catch up with the others. Go on.’
Dee Dee glances at me, smiles ruefully, then turns and runs off. At least she isn’t crying again. Yesterday she burst into tears because the strap broke on her new sandals.
‘Probably collapsed under her weight,’ Jed had joked in a side whisper to me. Dee Dee couldn’t have heard him and the way he said it was light – an attempt at being funny – so I laughed to show him I knew he wasn’t serious, but the truth is that we’ve both worried Dee Dee isn’t coping well with her parents’ break-up. Later I must take her to one side and remind her how much her dad loves her, how his bark – as the saying goes – is far worse than his bite. Jed’s ex doesn’t help matters, ranting whenever she gets a chance that he has ruined all their lives. She informed him accusingly the other day that Dee Dee had recently retreated into her shell, hardly ever going out or seeing her friends. I reminded Jed of what Dee Dee herself told me less than a month ago: that she’d had some problems with a few of the girls in her class, but her friends had rallied round and everything was okay now.
‘Her mum is exaggerating,’ I told him, ‘making out Dee Dee’s moods are your fault. When I was thirteen my life was dominated by my parents’ deaths, but that wasn’t why I was all over the place. That would have happened anyway. And Dee Dee would be hormonal right now whether you’d split up or not.’
Jed puts his arm around me as Dee Dee’s thick white legs thud along the cobbles away from us. She is wearing shorts and a shapeless T-shirt that only emphasizes her bulk. That bushy hairdo doesn’t help either. I wonder why her designer-loving mother doesn’t give her some advice about how she looks.
‘You were a bit hard on her just then,’ I venture.
Jed sighs. ‘I didn’t mean to be,’ he says. ‘But she really needs to learn to think before she acts.’
‘She’s only thirteen, Jed.’ I purse my lips. ‘Do you think there’s something bothering her? She told me she had a “secret” to tell, something she saw.’
Jed dismisses this with a weary wave. ‘I’m sure it’s just mood swings. She was fine this morning, bouncing about eating croissants. Anyway, what’s she got to be “bothered” about?’ His voice tightens and hardens. ‘I pay her mother a fucking fortune so that nothing bothers either of them.’
‘I know,’ I say, wishing for the millionth time that Jed’s ex wasn’t still so angry about him leaving her. I understand, of course. But the fall-out on all of us, especially Dee Dee, is hard.
Jed sighs again, then steers me back along the path and through the tunnel. I fall silent, letting him take charge. As we walk along, my headache gets worse and worse. I’m concerned for Dee Dee still but also grateful – and not for the first time – that the full beam of Jed’s forceful personality is focused on looking after me. After spending my twenties with a succession of irresponsible boy-men, I was single for nearly three years before meeting Jed last November. The experience has been like finding a port after years of storms. The fact that he is seventeen years older than me has never been an issue. My friend Laura was initially adamant that I’d only fallen for someone so much older because of my parents dying when I was eleven, but I think that’s a cliché and that our ages are irrelevant. I just love the fact that, unlike all the younger men I’ve known, Jed knows exactly what he wants. And it still thrills me that what he wants is me. Jed asked me to marry him on my thirty-third birthday last month. We are planning a big wedding next year, probably in late spring.
‘Let’s do it properly: church service, a big party,’ he said. ‘It’s your first time and it should be special.’
Frankly I’d happily marry him on a towpath, but I love that he wants the best for us, that his view of marriage is still so positive even after the end of his relationship with his children’s mother and – most of all – that despite having Dee Dee and Lish, he still wants kids with me.
Of course there is a voice in my head that says that if he could be unfaithful to his wife with me, then there’s surely at least a chance he will one day be unfaithful to me with someone else – and that I wouldn’t want him being as impatient with any children we might have, as he often is with his own daughter.
But it’s only a small voice and, most of the time, I don’t hear it at all.
June 2014
OH. MY. DAYS.
So, like, I’d already decided to make a video diary for when I’m thirteen but I’m starting now, the day before my birthday, because the most AMAZING thing happened today and I HAVE to say about it. I can’t BELIEVE it happened because I’d been thinking and thinking that I am going to be thirteen tomorrow and I haven’t ever been kissed, like, properly, not pecks on the cheek or your mum but THAT kind of kissing and then I came out of school late after my piano lesson and Sam Edwards from year ten was round by the back exit near the Chapel just lounging about like he was waiting for something, a lift maybe, but
no one else was there and when I went past he said hello and I, like, nearly DIED because everyone knows who he is and he has these big brown eyes and blond hair with bits of very blonde in it and did I say he’s in year ten and he did a modelling job and everyone thinks he’s really cool.
Anyway, he said hello and I stopped and said hello back and we just got talking and he was really nice, asking about where I’d been and how it was late to get out of prison (by which he meant school) and he said his dad had lost his job and was at home a lot at the moment which was a nightmare and he might even have to leave the school. So I told him how my dad wasn’t at home AT ALL and that he’d moved out in February and gone to live with Emily and my mum was all upset and he said he was really sorry to hear that. Then he got a bit closer and said he’d noticed me before and he said I looked different than before half term and I asked what he meant and he looked at my coat, at the front of it, which was open, and he kept looking and the way he was staring made me feel a bit tingly and he touched my face and said I had very kissable lips. IMAGINE it, Sam Edwards from year ten actually thinking I was attractive and I couldn’t speak and then he gave me a kiss and it made me feel all wobbly and even more tingly and he asked if I was in a hurry and I said no (because Mum wasn’t even going to be home yet and I’ve been letting myself in on Tuesdays and Thursdays since September). So Sam put his arm around me and we started walking and somehow we ended up behind the Chapel just after the bit where the light comes on when you go past but there’s just trees so it’s all shadowy even when the light’s shining. And he kissed me again. And at first it was lovely but then he put his hand on my school shirt, like, over my chest and he felt around a bit and I felt a bit uncomfortable but he was still kissing which I liked so I let him. Then he stopped kissing and tried to put his hand up my skirt and now I felt a bit scared but he said I was really hot and his breathing was all heavy and I liked that he was all looking in my eyes but not the touching. So I kind of wriggled back away from him and he asked what was I so worried about and I shrugged because really I wasn’t sure.
And Sam said he wanted a feel for ‘just a moment’, that he wasn’t going to do anything, so I let him feel around a teeny bit more while I waited and I didn’t like it – I mean I know that you can’t get pregnant that way OBVIOUSLY, not unless they smear their stuff on their fingers first, I just didn’t like it – but it was Sam Edwards and he looked so gorgeous in the shadowy trees and I didn’t want him not to like me. Anyway, after it had been more than ‘just a moment’ I wriggled away again hoping he wouldn’t be cross and he said ‘all right then’ and I thought maybe we’d do some more kissing but he started unbuttoning my school shirt and I REALLY did want to say no then but I’d already stopped him touching me so I let him and his eyes were like HUGE when he saw I hadn’t put my bra on today because some days I do and some days I don’t and today I didn’t. And I felt REALLY self-conscious because there isn’t much there and I didn’t like him seeing so I pulled my shirt across me and he looked up and I said I should go and he said I was hot, AGAIN, and that we didn’t have to do any more touching and what would I like to do and I sort of said ooh I like kissing, hoping he’d go back to that, but he just laughed and said they don’t kiss in the films of it and I wasn’t sure what he meant but I was feeling confused anyway – and a bit scared and a bit worried I should go so I’d get home before Mum.
And then he got out his phone and he said I was SO hot that he wanted a picture of my front, like I was a MODEL. And I wasn’t sure but Sam said again that I was the hottest girl in the school and he was staring at my chest when he said that and I was AMAZED because to me they are just shapeless lumps so I said yes though I really don’t know why except that he did ask all polite and his eyes were all sparkly and it seemed rude to say no and I know it’s what he expected and he was REALLY hot and I didn’t want him to not like me. So he took a picture and it was so sweet because then he did kiss me a bit and he said the picture was just for him, he wouldn’t show anyone, so he could remember them when he thought of me. And it was nice he liked them but I’ve never done any modelling OBVIOUSLY so I felt a bit embarrassed. But he said I was just like a model and then I said I really had to go and Sam said ‘see you, Dee Dee’ which means he wants to see me again. Oh my DAYS! So it was all worth it. And I buttoned up and came home. And like I said before it’s AMAZING because yesterday NONE of those things had happened and now they have and just in time before I’m thirteen tomorrow.
August 2014
I feel better as soon as I’m on board, in the shade. Martin has told Jed where to find the spare key – under the tarpaulin that covers the lifeboat in the stern of the boat. Once we’re inside the Maggie May’s main cabin, Jed tells me to go and lie down while he looks for painkillers in the bathroom.
I stretch out on the bed in Martin and Cameron’s stateroom, pulling the blue silk throw over me. I smile to myself. With its neutral tones and designer touches it is a far cry from the decor in the terraced south London house where we grew up. Martin has certainly landed on his feet when it comes to his partner’s finances. Cam is a trustafarian, in his late thirties like Martin but with a massive monthly income courtesy of the wealthy, land-owning Scottish dynasty from which he is descended. Cameron neither has nor needs a proper job, though I know he’s involved in all sorts of charitable projects. Martin could easily choose not to work too if he wanted but, like me, he clings to the sense of purpose his job gives him. At least he only works parttime now.
Next door, Jed is rummaging through the bathroom cupboards, swearing under his breath that he can’t find any painkillers.
‘Martin said they’d be in here,’ he calls out, clearly irritated.
‘It’s fine,’ I call back, ‘I just need to rest my eyes for a bit.’
Jed reappears. ‘I’m ringing your brother.’ He goes back to the main cabin. I close my eyes, not really listening as my fiancé, in characteristically direct fashion, demands to know where Mart and Cam keep their paracetamol and, on clearly being told by my laidback brother that if there isn’t any in the bathroom, they must have run out, orders him to go to a pharmacy and buy some. ‘Not anything with ibuprofen or codeine though,’ Jed dictates. ‘She shouldn’t take that on an empty stomach.’
He’s over-worrying but I kind of like it. I feel better now I’m lying down too. It’s so wonderful that we are all together. This is a real family holiday of a sort I’m not used to, with Jed at the helm: guiding and managing and, of course, paying. Well, he isn’t paying for Martin and Cameron. They aren’t actually on the holiday with us, they’ve just pitched up in Cameron’s yacht for a couple of days. We all went out in the boat yesterday and again this morning. It was lovely, though treacherously hot. That’s probably why I have such a headache.
The crisp cotton pillow under my head is cool against my cheek, the waves outside soothing, like a whisper. Jed is making another call now, keeping his voice low so he doesn’t disturb me. I lie, my head easing as I slide into sleep, grateful for Jed, for the air con, for my family around me.
When I wake up, Jed is sitting at the end of the bed, watching me. I’m used to this tic of his now, though the first few times it creeped me out. But then Jed explained and I just felt embarrassed. ‘You look so beautiful asleep,’ he said. ‘Like a child. Which is how I love you, Em. Do you realize how extraordinary it is that I love you like my own children?’
I didn’t. And don’t. How can I? I’m not a mother yet – though soon, I hope, once we are married, babies will follow.
Right now, I’m yawning myself awake. Jed has pulled the blue silk throw up over my shoulders. I push it off and prop myself onto my elbow.
‘How long have I been asleep?’ I ask.
‘Not long, baby,’ Jed says. ‘How’s the head?’
I rub my eyes. ‘Better, thanks.’ I sit up properly. I do, indeed, feel fine. Perhaps I was just tired after last night’s late barbecue to celebrate our first night in the villa. The strap of my
dress falls off my shoulder. I scrape it back up, over my tan line. The porthole is closed, so all I can hear is the gentle slap of the water against the boat’s hull. Music is playing from a distant café. It’s strange to be so private, yet so close to so much life.
‘Everyone’s still on shore, baby. I called when you fell asleep to say there was no need for them to hurry back after all, give you some peace and quiet. Martin’s taking them for cocktails in some bar in the citadel.’ Jed holds out his hand. ‘Come here.’
I wriggle closer. Jed pushes the silk throw completely away, then lifts the crisp cotton sheet off my legs. He takes my hand and kisses my fingers. ‘Baby,’ he groans. ‘Oh, baby.’
He pulls me towards him and nuzzles into my neck, then presses me back down, onto the bed. I lie still, letting Jed move around my body, allowing myself to become slowly, sleepily aroused and trying to ignore the fact that I am making love on my brother’s bed. Across the room I can see my tanned legs reflected in the mirrored wardrobe doors. Jed’s paler-skinned bum rises and falls comically between them.
‘Daddy loves you,’ he croons in my ear.
I flush with self-consciousness, resisting the impulse to pull away. It’s not a big deal, I remind myself; just Jed’s way, though sometimes it still makes me feel uncomfortable. Has done from the start, if I’m honest. It was bad enough him calling me baby all the time, but when after our fifth or sixth time in bed he started making those occasional references to himself in the third person as ‘daddy’ I didn’t know whether to laugh or feel grossed out.