Well, he might still get the chance, if things work out for me the way they’re meant to. The way they’re going to – because I’ve found her. I’ve found Serena.
The hinges creak as I unbolt one door and then push both orange doors wide open, letting in the light, illuminating the dark place into something bright and light and beautiful.
Fuck you, Mr Judge, look what I’ve got. His little speech, his damnation of me, was indeed too personal and too smoothly delivered within minutes of the verdict being announced so my stretch was reduced to eighteen years minimum. Apparently that was good. That was taking into consideration that it was a first offence, I’d had no other dealings with the police beforehand, and I was of good enough character to have stayed out of prison on house arrest until the trial. When my solicitor passed on the information and I nodded at him, I could tell he thought I was being ungrateful, that having seven years shaved off a life stretch was cause for celebration. ‘Only if you’re not innocent,’ I wanted to say to him, but kept quiet because I knew he wouldn’t understand.
My palace is dusty, the smell of rust and emptiness and the sea have become trapped in the grain of the wood inside and slowly diffuse into the air around me. This isn’t much smaller than most of the rooms I’ve lived in since 1989. It’s a hell of a lot more welcoming. I run my fingers over the rough, marine-treated wood, with its coats of stark white paint, and allow the smell, the history of the place to seep into me. I close my eyes and smile as I remember the picture I saw of Granny Morag and Grandpa Adam sitting outside here on their stripy deckchairs, metal cups in hand, proudly smiling at the camera.
On hooks behind the door are two deckchairs. One red, one blue. If any more than one person other than Granny Morag came down here, they’d have to sit on a blanket. It takes a little manoeuvring, trying to work from memory and against natural instincts, before I manage to put the red one up. Then I put up the blue one beside it on the tarmac. I sit on the blue one – the red one was Granny Morag’s. When I stayed for the weekend we’d come down here and I’d sit on the blue deckchair and she would sit on her red deckchair and we would stare at the sea, wave at people walking past and eat the picnic she brought. I thought life couldn’t get much better back then. Being with her here was the best thing on earth.
I look over at her seat, remember her as she was: the big curls of her grey-white hair framing her face; her soft features brightened even more by her smile; her large, friendly eyes; her small, perfect little mouth. She always wore small pearl earrings in her ears, and her engagement and wedding rings on her finger. Even though Grandpa Adam died a year after I was born, Granny Morag never married again. She was popular with the old fellas of Portslade, but she never went beyond a spot of companionship. ‘Why would I want to be messing with all that again, lassie?’ she’d say to me. ‘You know when you’ve met the man you’re meant to be with. I don’t see the bother of trying again.’
I close my eyes for a second, fancy that I can feel sun on my face, even though it’s an overcast day and there is a slight chill in the air. I prefer the outside when it’s like this. The sky does not look so scary and threatening and huge, but something to be ignored while I spend as much time in the fresh air as I can. It looks manageable again; only slightly bigger than the snatches of it I used to get.
I’m going to paint the inside of the hut an off-white. Maybe even a cream-white. Sew a new cover for the boxseat – I know how to do that now. Get myself a new kettle and a camping stove. A flask. Maybe even a picnic set. I’ll repaint the doors, keep it Granny Morag’s deep, dark orange but freshen it up. I may even get a rug for the floor, and a picnic blanket. And I’ll have to get myself a big woolly blanket so I can wrap up warm, drink tea and watch the sun go down.
I reach into my pocket and take out my cigarettes and lighter. I’ll need to get a job, of course, to be able to afford all that. That might take some doing, but I’ll have to find the money somehow. Granny Morag has given me this place and I want to make it my own and make her proud at the same time.
I inhale life into the cigarette, drawing in breath to make the tip take the flame and glow, while I look over at Granny Morag’s chair.
‘Thank you for this,’ I say to her. ‘Thank you. I’m going to make you proud. I’m going to look after this place. And I’m going to clear my name. I’ll make you proud of me again, you’ll see.’
I’ve found Serena. Three days in the library, going through old microfiche films of the publications from that time to find out where she went afterwards and then on the library’s Internet, looking for as many Serenas in the Leeds area who even vaguely matched her description. I looked and looked until I came across a photo on a social networking thingy website of a college reunion. She was trying to avoid being in the picture, but they still caught a partial of her – enough for me to recognise and enough for them to bother ‘tagging’ her with her new name.
I blow out a long plume of smoke, feeling for a moment like the villain in a black-and-white movie with a long cigarette holder and nefarious cackle.
Fate is on my side. Fate knows I’m innocent because I’ve found Serena and she lives less than two miles from here. With her so close, virtually a heartbeat away, it’s only a matter of time before I get my life back.
serena
‘I’m incredibly proud of you, Verity,’ I say to my daughter. ‘You’re the cleverest girl in the world and you’re a lovely person.’
Evan and I have just swapped children for the goodnight portion of the evening.
‘Thanks, Mum,’ she mumbles, embarrassed. Today, three days after I found that book, we had a note from her form tutor saying that in all her subjects to date Verity was doing outstandingly well, and if they were still conducting Key Stage 3 exams, she’d be expected to achieve an ‘Exceptional’ in all her subjects. All of them! In other words, my daughter was a big girly swot.
‘Well, she’s always been talented like that,’ Evan had said to me as he re-read and re-read the note, almost bursting with pride. ‘We’ve worked hard to encourage her studies.’ He’d obviously forgotten that it was me who taught her to read before she went to nursery, and that it is me who checks over her homework every night. In fact, Evan seemed to have forgotten that when she was going through her ‘why?’ stage it was me who ended up, more often than not, pulling out encyclo paedias and dictionaries to get the answers so she would stop. He did everything but slap his hands over his ears and run away screaming ‘Lalalalalalalalalala, can’t hear you,’ until she ended the question onslaught.
‘Yes, we have,’ I’d said, pointedly, but it was completely lost on him. He’d refolded the note and slipped it gently into his inside breast pocket, patting the pocket afterwards like it was a precious item and it was safe there, beside his heart, keeping him warm.
Verity unhooks her iPod from around her neck and carefully winds the earphones around its slim, silver body before placing it gently on the bedside table.
‘I always knew you were clever, but it does well for the school to realise it, too.’
‘Dad said I get it from you,’ she says. ‘He said you had the book smarts and he was good at reading the streets.’
I roll my eyes at her father. Once, on an episode of Starsky and Hutch, one of them had said that in police work it was always important to ‘read the streets’ to fight crime. Starsky or Hutch meant that on a blazing hot day, he’d seen a man in a big overcoat going towards a liquor store, as they call them in the US. And, sure enough, it turned out that the man was going to rob the store with a shotgun stashed under his coat. Ever since he saw that episode, Evan has been going on about ‘reading the streets’. If he’s trying to find a parking spot, he ‘reads the streets’; if he’s trying to find the shortest line in the supermarket, he ‘reads the streets’; if he’s trying to find the quickest route to anywhere he ‘reads the streets’. I’ve said more than once that if he’s not careful, he’s going to read the streets right into the spare room.
r /> ‘He said since you’d already passed the book smarts on to me, he was going to teach me and Con how to read the streets,’ she adds.
‘I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,’ I say. ‘I’m going to pretend your father doesn’t have some really annoying sayings.’
I lean forwards and kiss her forehead. Her skin is soft and warm. I remember how soft and warm she was when she was a baby. I used to love to cuddle her, and would leave her to sleep for hours on her feeding cushion on my lap, just to be near her. Simply to hold my baby. I sometimes want to hold her now, but it would cause a major incident if I did. She didn’t seem to be a baby for long enough. One day she was lying still, her eyes following me wherever I went as I tried to spruce up the place before Evan got home, the next she was walking and then talking and then she was a teenager who had died a million deaths when I sat her down to talk to her about the birds and the bees and periods. It all seemed to rush so quickly by, I sometimes feel like I missed it. I want to go back and do it again. I wouldn’t change any of it, I would simply pay more attention. Remember what it was like when she was light enough to lift with one hand. Remember how it felt to see her roll over in her cot for the first time and stare at me. Remember the look on her face when she realised that she could get from here to there by moving her feet.
‘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; t
he 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.