It could have happened anywhere, I remind myself. It could have happened with anyone, because I don’t know what Phoebe does in the time between leaving school grounds and walking into our house. At home, she’s always studying, with the good marks to show for it, or she’s sitting in the corner of the sofa in the living room, phone in hand, texting away or on Facebook and Twitter and all those things I haven’t really been paying attention to. She’s home so I’ve always assumed she is safe. All the bad things happen ‘out there’. As long as she’s where I can see her most of the time, she’s safe.
‘Phoebe has declined to tell us who the father is,’ The Mr Bromsgrove says. From the corner of my eye, I see her head turn a little as she looks at him. Is she annoyed and resentful that he’s telling me this, or is she incredulous that he’s saying that when he is somehow involved? I can’t know for certain because her face is hidden from me.
‘Mrs Mackleroy, I’m not sure what you want to do right now …’ The headteacher leaves his sentence open and expects me to fill it.
‘Are you going to tell social services?’ I say into the gap he has left for me.
The headteacher glances at The Mr Bromsgrove, and I wonder if either of them hears Phoebe’s almost inaudible gasp. Have they noticed she’s now holding her breath? Do they realise that we’re already on the social services radar and this sort of revelation would start the whole thing up again?
The Mr Bromsgrove stares at the headteacher, then at Phoebe, then back at the headteacher. He doesn’t include me in his assessment of the situation, in fact, he’s avoided looking directly at me since I walked in here. I saw him look me over when I entered, but his visual attention to me has been conspicuous in its absence. It’s OK, I’d love to say, I know I’m a bad mother, you don’t have to avoid looking at me in case your face shows your disgust. I’m disgusted enough with me for the both of us.
The headteacher finally focuses on me again. ‘I think we should play it by ear for now, don’t you? We think it would be best if you had a talk with Phoebe, see what you plan to do and then we’ll have another meeting to discuss our options.’ His face flames a deep crimson. ‘I mean, options in the school and education sense, of course. Ah-he-hem!’ He starts to desperately shuffle papers.
The cauldron of nausea at the centre of my being folds and stirs itself much faster.
16 years before That Day (September, 1995)
‘What would you like me to make you, pretty lady?’ Joel asked me. We’d been dating for two months, not including the time we met on the plane to Lisbon and then not seeing each other again for a month, and this was our first date that didn’t involve some kind of physical activity – bowling, hillwalking (disastrous), rollerblading, rock-climbing, dry-slope skiing, clubbing. Tonight, though, he’d insisted on a slower, more relaxed date with dinner and drinks at his shared flat in Hove.
‘Nothing. I don’t think I could eat a thing.’ I rubbed my stomach to emphasise my point. ‘I’ve been eating all day, I’m stuffed.’
‘Nonsense.’ As always, his rich tones moved deliciously like warmed maple syrup through me. ‘You can have anything you like from the rather extensive selection in my fridge.’
Joel opened the door to his tall white fridge, unlocking the gateway to a world of pleasure: fresh vegetables, fresh pasta, apples, blackberries, strawberries, blueberries, butter, cheese, ham, fresh chicken, salmon were all stacked neatly onto the three shelves with raw meat, poultry and fish together, fresh veg and fruit together, deli foods sitting side by side. No open cans with their lids half on, furring up with every passing second; no putrefying foodstuffs that were going to rot away leaving a slimy pool of decay in their wake; no crustylidded jars with stained, faded labels.
The rest of the kitchen was pristine, too. Around the room, quite large for a two-bedroom flat, was evidence of cooking, eating, living. The wall beside the cooker had two long shelves stacked with many different types of oils, some with suspended chilli peppers, garlic and herbs. The lower shelf had clear jars filled with different types of dried pasta, rice, beans and lentils. Below that stood a rack of dried herbs and spices. On one of the work surfaces there was a wooden knife block with six silver-handled knives – all of different sizes, I’d imagine – protruding from it. Along the sill of the large window that allowed light to pour into the kitchen, small pots of fresh herbs grew – I recognised three of them as lavender, basil and chives.
‘So, you and your mate Fynn live here all on your own?’ I said to him.
‘Yeah, have done since we got proper jobs after uni.’
‘And you’re both into cooking?’
‘No, that’s my thing. Fynn’s more into cars. And women. But mostly cars.’
‘How did two such different people manage to become such good friends?’
‘We’re not that different. Like I told you, we met at an open day for Cambridge. Kind of gravitated towards each other when we realised within ten minutes or so that we were both there to make our parents happy.’
‘Rather be a disappointment, huh?’
‘No, rather have a life. I wasn’t passionate about going there and it wouldn’t have been fair to take a place away from someone whose whole life was about going there. Same with Fynn. We met again at the interviews and exchanged numbers. After A-levels we decided to run away and live by the sea to escape the sound of our parents’ hearts breaking. We literally did nothing but work and party for a year before we both started college in Brighton.’
Closing the fridge door, I took his hand and stood staring at him for a few seconds. Just staring at him. He was easily the best-looking man I’d been ‘involved’ with. Easily. He was six foot or so, solidly built, with long, lean muscles that I kept eyeing up whenever he wore short-sleeved shirts. I hadn’t seen the rest of him in the flesh, as it were, but I was hoping to change that. I was always trying to get lost in his eyes because they were like twin whirlpools of melted mahogany fringed with pitch-black lashes. His face could have been carved from a piece of walnut wood it was so smooth and dark, and begging to have my fingers stroke it. And his mouth – it was always smiling at me. Whenever I caught him looking at me, he was always either grinning or seemed to be on the verge of doing so.
‘Didn’t see anything in the fridge you fancied, no?’ he asked and reached for the silver handle again.
‘Not exactly,’ I said. To distract and get him to focus on me, I led him out of the kitchen and into their spacious living room, where I encouraged him to sit so I could drop onto the sofa beside him. ‘I’d much rather hear more about what you got up to in that year of work and partying.’
‘Really that interested?’ he asked and his smile lit up his twenty-six-year-old face again. I was instantly jelly-like inside. He reached out and slipped his arm around my waist as I’d been longing for him to do, before he leant back onto the sofa and pulled me towards his body.
‘Oh, yes, I’m very, very interested.’
*
We’re at the bus stop near the school. I’d been too shaky after the call to come to St Allison to even contemplate driving and spent all the spare cash I had on a taxi to get here. I had enough to get home on the bus and Phoebe had her pass.
We are propped two widths of a normal-size person apart on the moulded plastic bench under the shelter. It’s April and I, like everyone else, am still waiting for the faintest hint of spring to join us but the weather is not cooperating. The air around us is cool but not hostile. I wish it was warmer, though, waiting for a bus would be far more pleasant if the cool air wasn’t seeping in under my jacket and playing across my skin.
‘You’re going to have to talk to me at some point,’ I say to Phoebe. The first thing I’ve said to her since, ‘We’re going to have to get a bus’ as she stood waiting to see which direction I’d go to get to the car.
In response to this, she turns her head even further away from me, not in the direction the bus will be coming from, but towards home and back towards the scho
ol.
I stop watching her, she’s not going to look at me. I focus myself instead towards where the bus will come from and I wonder: Is she wishing herself at home, is she wishing herself back in the safety of school, or is she wishing she was anywhere but near me right now?
III
There’s an area of faded purple on the white tiled floor of our kitchen. It’s an irregular-shaped patch that I’ve tried to remove over the last fifteen months but it’s still there. No one else can see it, apparently, or maybe no one else is bothered by it – I’m the only one I’ve noticed who stares at it. I’ve tried white vinegar, bleach, cream cleansers, everything I know to get a stain out, but nothing has worked. It’s still there, splashed across six tiles, reminding me of the time I dropped a bowl of blackberries and didn’t have the presence of mind to clear it up before the black, viscous juice leached into the surface of the white tiles and left a permanent dark bruise in our home.
Every time I walk into the kitchen I look at it first. I glance at it and fleetingly remember the numbness that overtook my body with frightening speed; the phut, phut, phut of blackberries exploding on the tiles; the sound of the bowl, already chipped and scratched with age, smashing as it hit the floor; the sensation of all the air leaving my body in one go.
I watch the grey-sock-covered heels of my daughter walk across the patch as if it’s not there. She plonks herself at the table, in the seat nearest the sink, where she always sits, and immediately takes her phone out of her jacket pocket. She shouldn’t be wearing her jacket in the house, but in the grand scheme of things, I don’t think it matters.
‘Zane’s staying at Imogen’s house tonight. He and Ernest have got a new game to try out,’ I explain to her. I talk to her as normal even though she hasn’t even acknowledged my existence since the headteacher’s office. Or was it before that? Did I stop existing for Phoebe all that time ago, when I did what she wanted and agreed not to go to the police? Did getting her own way make her lose all respect for me?
Zane, Phoebe’s ten-year-old brother, is with Ernest, his best friend since reception. Ernest’s mother, Imogen, has been sweet, and kind, especially in the last eighteen months, but I haven’t told her what has happened today. I can’t even begin to find the words to explain it to myself, let alone someone who has brought up three children – two of whom have made it past teenage-hood without this kind of scandal.
14 years before That Day (June, 1997)
I ran through our Hove flat, my heart sounding like stampeding buffalo in my ears after I threw aside the cloth I was using to clean the kitchen surfaces, and answered Joel’s urgent cries from the other side of our flat. We were renting a beautiful art deco place right on the Hove seafront and I was bordering on obsessive with keeping it clean.
‘What, what, what’s the matter?’ I asked him. He stood in the bathroom, naked apart from his white underpants that were so tight, so moulded to his body, I was surprised they didn’t cut off circulation between his torso and his legs.
‘Ffrony, I think it’s time. I need you to shave my back for me.’
‘That’s what you were calling me like that for? I thought it was an emergency. Or at least important.’
Like a blanket of short, black wool, his chest hair lined the sink in front of him, and his chest was smooth and hairless. Each of the well-defined areas of his six-pack was emphasised now it wasn’t covered in hair.
‘It is important,’ Joel replied. He frowned at me in the mirror, his beautiful face knitting together in mock horror that I didn’t realise this. ‘It’s extremely important. I need you to shave my back.’
‘Erm, I think we can pretty much say that’s a no,’ I replied. Even though I wasn’t going to shave anything, I perched on the roll-top edge of the white bath with its brass claw and ball feet, and took the opportunity to watch my boyfriend. I loved to examine, whenever I could, the way his body contracted and expanded, how many tiny, seemingly inconsequential expressions flitted across his face without being manifested as words or actions. I adored watching him.
‘Excuse me, Babes, I think you’ll find it’s part of the whole “for better and worse” deal,’ he cajoled. ‘Come on, it won’t take long – a few strokes and we’re done.’
‘How many times have you said that?’ I laughed.
With a grin on his face, he spun towards me, tugged me to my feet, then pressed the electric shaver into my hand.
‘Why do you need to shave your back, anyway? I wouldn’t mind you being hairy.’
‘Yes, but it’s unbelievably uncomfortable having a hairy back, especially when it’s hot.’
I examined the shaver in front of me; the prongs seemed vicious and dangerous, like they’d slice off chunks of flesh instead of efficiently and effectively snipping off hair. ‘Hang on, we’ve been together two years, lived together three months, how come this is the first time you’ve asked?’ The answer, of course, was immediately obvious. ‘Fynn does it, doesn’t he? Still? Still? Do you do his as well?’
‘That’s between me and him, Ffrony, there are some things you can’t know.’
‘I swear, you two … I don’t know whether to be jealous or impressed sometimes. You’re way too close.’
‘No such thing. Come on now, Babes, sort me out here.’
I pushed the large rubbery on button and the buzzer jumped to life, vibrating violently in my hand.
‘This is a very important moment in our life together, Ffrony. Not just anyone gets to do my back, you’re the first woman I’ve ever asked to do this. You are about to be initiated into the Great Hall of Joel.’
‘The Great Hall of Joel. Riiigggghhhttt.’ I sounded confident, but I was trembling, shaking with anxiety. I didn’t want to hurt him, not ever. My hand quivered as I pushed it against the hairy area over his right shoulder blade.
‘Don’t worry about hurting me,’ he said seriously. His whirlpool eyes held my gaze steadily in the mirror. ‘I know you’d never do that.’
I steadied my hand, willed myself to stop quaking. He was right, I wouldn’t hurt him and I could do this. ‘OK.’
‘You can’t anyway, it’s got a safety guard,’ he added before laughing so much it was a full five minutes before he was still enough for me to try again.
*
‘I was going to make chicken pesto with mash and veg for dinner,’ I say to my first-born child. Joel and I tried for her for what seemed like for ever. Every month my period started I would feel such extreme disappointment, and the second the two lines turned blue on the test the dread and panic that bolted through me was like nothing I’d ever experienced. ‘I’ve made the pesto already, so how about we have it with gnocchi instead, it’ll be quicker?’ Her head is lowered and her right thumb is flying over her phone’s keyboard as she types away. For Phoebe, it seems, everything is normal, nothing has changed.
She lifts her head, looks briefly at me and then shrugs a ‘Suppose’ before returning to her phone, to her important, real life. My tongue hurts from how hard I clamp down with my teeth, reining in the scream that has flared up in my chest. With the scream still bubbling at the back of my throat, I quickly rotate to the chrome kettle and take it to the sink. All the while: I will not scream, I will not scream, I will not scream pirouettes like a clockwork ballerina through my mind.
13 years before That Day (August, 1998)
‘What do you want the baby to be?’ Joel asked, resting his hand on the ever-so-slight swell of my three-month-pregnant stomach. ‘I know we’ll be happy whatever we get, but what, ideally, would you like the baby to be?’
‘Human?’ I replied. I placed both my hands over his, pressing him closer to our child and holding onto him at the same time.
‘Human? As opposed to … ?’ he questioned.
‘Klingon?’
He used his free hand to tug me closer as we reclined on our sofa together, then he snuggled his face into the curve of my neck, where he was always pressing his cold lips, which made me giggle and shudder
at the same time. ‘Now, what have you got against Klingons?’ he asked, mid-nuzzle.
‘Nothing. I’m going to marry you, aren’t I, Mr Ridge Face?’
He immediately touched his forehead, as if he needed to check, as if I wasn’t always calling him that. ‘I do not have a big forehead.’
‘No, course you don’t,’ I giggled.
‘Don’t listen to her, baby,’ he laughed. ‘Your dad doesn’t have a big forehead.’
‘He doesn’t,’ I conceded, ‘it’s huge!’
‘I know what you’re doing, Ffrony,’ he said, suddenly setting aside his laugh, ‘and it’s not going to work. Stop avoiding the question.’
‘Sorry.’ I closed my eyes and thought of the future; thought of him and me and a bundle of a baby. Immediately the white-hot fear of uncertainty started to close in around the edges of my thoughts and set off the tumble of worry, about what would come next, what could go wrong, how I could fail, that was always precariously balanced like a stack of fragile teacups inside me. I couldn’t pin down the thoughts, the needs, the wish list of what I wanted for our future, because that might jinx it, that might make it a real thing that could be taken away from me. ‘I don’t know what I want, Joel, I really don’t.’
‘Don’t be scared,’ he said. He knew what I was thinking, how I was worrying and wrapped both his arms around me instead of just around the baby. ‘It’s all going to be fine.’
‘You can’t know that.’
‘I can, and I do.’
‘What do you want, then?’ I didn’t want my anxieties to spoil this for him. This was his time, too. Even if I couldn’t completely relax, the least I could do was give him that opportunity.
‘A girl, I think. I’ll be as happy with a boy, don’t get me wrong, but I’d love a girl.’
‘Why?’
‘Don’t know, really. I …’ He stopped talking and then glided into one of his now familiar and comforting silences as he considered my question from all angles. ‘I don’t know, I guess it’s one of those things you think you want and you have no real reason for wanting it.’