Kissing Frogs
Tori Turnbull
Copyright 2018 Tori Turnbull
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.
For my family for their love, support and sense of humour.
Books by Tori Turnbull:
London Loving Series:
Kissing Frogs
The Meri Scott Show
Sexpiry
Rural Romps Series:
Coming Autumn 2020
Chapter 1
Damn, if being sexy was a crime, you’d be guilty as charged.
I usually hate being in the London Underground – too many tourists and delays – but today I was riding the euphoric wave of successful shoe sale shopping. I wove through the pre-rush-hour crowd – imagining I was on Dancing with the Stars flashing my new Prada shoes, people stepping back to clear my path in awed wonder as I Prada-pasodobled past – headed towards the escalator. In my mind, my gorgeous swishy skirt twirled up, exposing my perfect strappy heels as some hunky hottie spun me towards my destination.
In reality, an itchy “someone’s watching me” instinct shivered up my spine, raising the hair on the back of my neck
I glanced up, scanning the escalator up to the exit, then checked to the side and caught a double take followed with a strange look from a middle-aged couple on the down escalator. I gave them an awkward half-smile as I stepped onto the up escalator. I didn’t recognise them, but maybe they were friends of my mother or something. They turned, keeping me in sight as our escalators took us past each other. The woman mouthed something at me and gave a sympathetic wince.
I touched my mouth and my nose with a tentative finger, just in case I had something icky on my face (it’s happened before), but my hand came back clean. I glanced down, checking I wasn’t doing a Janet Jackson, but nothing had popped out of anywhere it shouldn’t; even my jeans were zipped.
It was fine.
Everything was fine.
So why were they star –
“Oh. My. God!” A movement from the digital advertising screens lining the escalator caught my eye. The advert on screen rotated from acne treatment to…
I stumbled back onto the step below.
Was that…?
It was.
It was hideous. My skin went clammy and horror blackened the edges of my vision.
It was me. In the London Underground. On what looked like fifty digital advertising posters, lined up along the walls beside both the up and down escalators.
A poster-sized image of me taken almost six months ago when I was helping my mother spring-clean ahead of her sixtieth birthday party. My hair was scraped back, slick and greasy, in the way only dark brown hair that hasn’t been washed in a week can be, and partially covered by a scarf. My face was half turned from the camera, orange toned cover-up failing to hide a Kilimanjaro-sized spot just to the left of my shiny nose. My grandma’s pearl choker was wrapped around my throat; Mum had found it whilst we were cleaning and given it to me. A shapeless gold-coloured jumper swamped my body. I had no idea what had possessed her to take the photo of me. I looked like the virgin wallflower from a BBC adaptation of some Victorian book.
I backed down another step as the escalator moved past my picture… The digital image rotated to the next advert: a cream to treat vaginal itching.
I’m usually pretty emotionally stable, but this… It was a mistake, or a nightmare… Who? Who hated me enough to do this, and why? Shock and confusion had tears welling and my bottom lip trembling.
Stepping back, again and again, I tried to keep pace with the screen, waiting for it to rotate back to my image. Just to be sure I wasn’t in the midst of some sort of hallucination.
My image rotated back in. I stared. Struggling to take it all in.
Wait!
There. Just above my high-necked top was… writing. How had I missed the writing? Black italics, a few centimetres high: Date My Daughter.
This. Could. Not. Be. Happening. To. Me.
It didn’t.
It couldn’t.
I peered closer. It did. In brackets, in a slightly larger font and italics, it begged (please).
Why would my mother do this? We aren’t a family that prank each other. It wasn’t April Fools’. It was… It was child abuse.
Someone pushed past from behind, sending me stumbling forward. The escalator kept taking me relentlessly up towards the exit. There were too many people behind me. I couldn’t get back to all the digital display units. There were so many of them. It was all so unexpected. I couldn’t take it in. My heart was hammering. My palms were sweating. I felt sick.
I gazed blindly at the array of digital posters ahead, each currently showing the same acne treatment advert, and then it rotated. Fifty images of me. In that picture. Staring back at me. Lining both sides of the escalators. In about thirty seconds I would rotate out, back to the vaginal itch cream. Only to reappear after The Phantom of the Opera and then acne treatment. On an endless nightmarish loop.
Something snapped (my sanity?). I couldn’t let her do this to me.
I wouldn’t!
I hit the emergency stop button on the escalator. The stairs juddered to a stop, people swore, someone screamed. It echoed. People tripped over each other, trying not to fall.
I launched myself across the escalator towards the nearest digital display unit.
* * * * *
“You’ve got a visitor.” Two hours and forty-five minutes later, the surly cop’s voice cut through the sea of confusion and misery that filled my thoughts. The metal clang of the lock echoed as he pushed my cell door open. “Maybe he can get you to apologise and go home,” he added.
I stared at the doorway. I wasn’t expecting anyone. I hadn’t made use of my one phone call, too consumed with humiliation and unable to think of who to call: my mother caused this predicament; my friends were the type to find it funny and tweet or snapchat the shit out of it; and I couldn’t afford to lose my job by letting a colleague know I’d been arrested for disturbing the peace and trying to vandalise (turn off) the digital posters in Pimlico Underground Station. So, I was hiding in my cell, even though the police said I could leave as soon as I accepted my warning.
“What kind of mess have you gotten yourself into now, KT?”
My heart sank. I recognised the voice, the hybrid English-American accent. It was Mark. My childhood nemesis. But the tall, solid, hot man standing in the doorway to my cell bore only a faint resemblance to the geeky boy I remembered.
I blinked rapidly, feeling like I’d fallen down the rabbit hole, Alice in Wonderland style. Hearing his voice when I was trapped in an enclosed space triggered a flashback to childhood trauma, and I shivered, remembering when he’d locked me in the tiny, cold downstairs bathroom at his parents’ house. Only to miraculously “find” me four hours later when I’d cried myself hoarse and our parents were about to launch search parties and call the police.
I honestly thought my day, my life, couldn’t get worse. I’d been pimped out by my mother, hideous digital posters of me (some now pixilated) blighted the London Underground system, and I’d been arrested. My throat ached from crying and my head hurt from dehydration, from the crying. Then he came.
I didn’t deserve this. The embarrassment of being publicly outed as desperate and dateless was bad enough, the arrest mortifying, but Mark turning up to collect me from jail… What was worse than mortifying…? I drew a mental blank… It was beyond mortifying.
He propped his shoulder against my cell door and settled in, six foot, three inches of stunning, well-built, brow
n-haired, blue-eyed masculine condescension. I didn’t need a mirror, or flashbacks to the Underground posters, to know I was not in his league looks-wise, not even on my best day.
This was not my best day.
The transport police had brought a swift end to my emotional breakdown and stuffed me into this cell nearly three hours ago. I’d panicked and cried. My hair hung in muddy brown ribbons around my pale face, blotched with tears and stress. I just didn’t have the energy left for this, for him. “What are you doing here?” I whisper-wailed, still hoarse from crying.
“I think that’s my line, not yours.” He glared at me. At least, I thought he did. I couldn’t tell for sure because I’d sunk back down onto my cot and turned my back on him. I needed to be at full strength, well rested, freshly made up and power-dressed to deal with Mark. He heaved a sigh. “I’m here for you, KT. Someone has to bail you out.”
My head thumped back against the wall. I winced. “How can one person be this unlucky?”
“And here I was thinking how lucky I am to get off a sixteen-hour flight just in time to be with your mother when her neighbour called to say they saw you being arrested.”
Oh, no. Oh, hell no. Tears choked my throat and pushed against my eyelids. Kill. Me. Please. I kept my eyes closed, trying to block out the patronising eyebrow raise I knew accompanied his words, and prayed for heavenly intervention. It had been the same when we were kids. You’d have thought a six-year age difference was the be all and end all. “Just leave me here to die.”
“Your mother suggested the same thing, but as I told her, I don’t think it’s possible to die of embarrassment.” Mark was my mum’s best friend’s son. He’d hung around like a bad smell when we were kids – right up until his mother ran off to California with my father, taking him with them and abandoning eight-year-old me with my emotionally and mentally devastated mother. There followed a three-year dark period in my life where I had to grow up fast and take care of my mother and myself, before my father ran off with someone else’s wife and my mother and Mark’s mother reunited. At this point I rebounded and became the archetypal wild child. At least by then Mark had gone to university in the U.S., so I rarely had to see him.
He sighed. “I thought you might have grown out of acting impulsively, KT. But I’ve got to hand it to you, you’ve excelled this time – it’s your first arrest, isn’t it?”
My whole body tensed as I struggled not to prove him right by acting impulsively and slapping the smug smile off his face in the middle of a police station. He knew I hated that nickname. He’d thought he was so clever making a play on my initials, Kate Turner, when we were kids, and I’d refused to answer to the name Katie (I wasn’t being picky. It’s not my name). “Go away,” I snapped.
“Fine.” He shrugged. “If you want to stay here, I’ll go back and tell Muriel.” He turned to leave, pausing to deliver his departing shot Columbo style. I hate Columbo. “Of course, then I’ll have to drive her back here to bail you out. But I’m sure Muriel will understand why you’d rather have your mother with you at a time like this… offering the kind of support only your mother can.” The sarcastic bastard. He knew it wouldn’t be support my mother offered after having to collect her only child from a police station.
“No!” God no. “I guess you’re here now.” Plus, I’d just finished series two of Orange Is the New Black, and The Shawshank Redemption is one of my all-time favourite movies. And I’d rather rot in prison, sharing a shower with a butch lesbian and befriending a little bird for company, than have my mother come and pick me up from the police station. The shame would drive her into the emotional breakdown to end all emotional breakdowns: tears, tantrums, wailing… It wouldn’t be support she offered, not after a call from the neighbours telling her I’d been arrested and her first ever trip to a police station. I had to go into a police station, like a common criminal, Kate! To pick up my daughter! The shame!
* * * * *
An hour later, I stood in my mother’s living room, listening to her rant and rail as if she had been the one publicly humiliated, and tried to keep my already worn patience in check. Mark leant against the wall beside me, hovering like a dark cloud, totally failing to pick up on (or ignoring) my get lost vibe.
“I never thought I’d live to see the day when my daughter would go to jail. And when next door called…” My mother’s blue eyes fluttered closed. Her stylish blond bob framed her face, drawing attention to her pursed lips. She sat straight-backed in her chair, her pleasantly curved body covered in stylish cream slacks and a pale blue sweater set. She gasped and clutched her chest. It sounds cliched, but she does it for impact.
Years of experience had me ignoring the melodrama, even with my heart pounding a combination of an ingrained need to protect my emotionally fragile mother and temper (this was all her fault) that I couldn’t quite quash. “Why would you do this to me?” I was honestly bewildered.
“You say that like I committed a crime.” My mother’s voice became shrill, a precursor to tears. “I’m not the one who broke the law. All I’m guilty of is loving my daughter and wanting her to meet a nice man and get married, maybe have a few children.” She shook her head. I wasn’t clear whether this was her mourning the loss of her prospective grandchildren or the fact that she’d raised a “criminal” for a daughter “You’re not getting any younger, you know?”
That was a low blow.
“Nearly five million passengers a day use the London Underground,” she continued. “Even if only half are male, think about how many potential husbands that could be.”
“Mum! I just don’t get it.” What? Wait. Hang on a second, how many people would see the picture? Five million…? Oh God. I reached out a hand, grabbing the back of the sofa to steady myself as dizzy blackness swamped me. Mum continued talking, but I couldn’t hear for the ringing in my ears. All those men, and now they’d see the digital posters… That picture. I’d never get a sane date again. I’d never get a date at all. I wailed. “You have hundreds of pictures of me, thousands. Nice ones. Why did you have to use that one?”
She paused, head tipping in confusion, then frowned. “I like that picture. You look nice.” There it was: definitive proof that a mother’s love is blind. “Besides, I lost my phone and it was the only recent picture I had of you in digital format. Plus, the man at the advertising agency cut me a deal, half price, but it was a one-day-only deal and just for Pimlico Station, so I had to send him everything straight away.”
Now we’d gotten to the heart of the matter: a discount. “Great, so you humiliated me on the cheap. I’m not even worth full-price humiliation.” Seriously, between my mother and my father, it was a wonder I had any self-esteem at all. Clearly my dignity was not priceless. “I look like… like… Ah.” My mind blanked. I couldn’t think of anything hideous enough for comparison.
“You always wanted to be a model when you were a little girl, KT. Just think of the millions of people who’ll see your picture every day. One of them could be a talent scout.” Mark pushed forward from his position propped against the living room wall, crowding my space even further. His face was suspiciously blank. He may not be a geek anymore, but the left corner of his lip still twitched when he was silently laughing at me. Like right now.
I turned on him. “Keep out of it. This is none of your business.” The last thing I needed was him hanging around and gathering more ammunition for future humiliations. “In fact, why are you still here? Go away.”
“Kate Turner! Don’t be rude. If it wasn’t for Mark, I don’t know what I would have done. And you!” Mum’s voice rose shrilly, heralding emotional meltdown. “You would still be in prison.”
“If it wasn’t for the adverts, I wouldn’t have gotten arrested in the first place,” I replied.
“I was trying to help. You seem incapable of getting a date for yourself.”
Ouch! I flinched, the verbal hit penetrating the fragile shell of shock icing my emotions. If I had an emotionally stable mothe
r, this was the point I would have walked out. But I’d learnt the hard way that leaving my mum to her own devices when she was this close to the edge only led to disaster, which I then had to clean up.
Taking a calming breath, I tried to bring this hell to an end. “Perhaps I like being single.” Okay, it was weak, but screaming at her to back off and sort out her own life before she started on mine would not end well, and there was little I wanted more than this day to end. Right. Now.
“No one likes being single,” Mum scoffed.
“Not all women have to be in a relationship to feel happy and fulfilled, Mum.” So, maybe deep, deep down I had the same happy-ever-after dream for myself as my mother; I wasn’t going to admit it and fuel the fire.
She snorted dismissively. “I don’t want you left on the shelf.”
“I’m only twenty-nine. I’ve got lots of time.”
“That’s what your cousin said when she was twenty-nine, and look at her now. She’s thirty-six and the only person who’s asked her out this millennium is the transvestite who works in Co-op.” Mums voice was rising as she spoke. Mark had edged closer to me and was lapping up every word. “And that’s only because he wants to share her clothes.”
True.
Silence stretched as I imagined the future as laid out by my mother: me, left on the shelf, whilst my fertility clock wound down, then desperately scraping the bottom of the barrel for a stray transvestite who might be willing to date me for a crack at my sale-price Prada sandals.
“KT.” Mark’s voice rumbled from beside me. I cast a death glare in his direction, and his hand halted in mid-air, reaching towards me. A tear slipped down my cheek, snapping me from the waking nightmare. I twisted, putting my back to him and swiping at the betraying tear as I struggled for words.
I just wanted to escape downstairs to the safety and comfort of my basement flat and comfort-eat away the horror of my mother begging strangers to date me in hideous desperate and dateless posters, which even now would be rotating in Pimlico Station, the shame of having to apologise and promise to be a good girl, whilst accepting a caution for disturbing the peace from the police, followed by the mortifying realisation that Mark had front-row seats to my pathetic life.
Kissing Frogs Page 1