Also…. Here Immy went all soft. She just adored Lily and Jack. She loved those twins to bits, and didn’t mind admitting that to anyone who cared to ask. They were cool kids, and she’d never try to make herself look more cool by saying that no, they weren’t, they were just a pair of snotty-nosed babies, a right nuisance, because she adored them. That was one thing in her life she’d never lie about. Lily and Jack were more like her little brother and sister than just friends’ kids. Sometimes she wished they were related; she’d quite like to keep them, really, although Ana could be a pain, couldn’t she, so maybe it was better not to be related, and just borrow them when she wanted to. Then at least you could give them back if they did start to annoy you. Unlike Ana, who was just there. Not always annoying, but always there.
Immy hoped that one day, if she ever had kids – yukky thought for now, yuk, yuk, yuk – that she’d quite like some like them. And they loved her too. Little Lily with her soft hair and her big eyes and all those adoring gazes she gave Immy, like she wanted to be her. She supposed she should be flattered really, she was a role model to that little girl. And Jack, well, he was just such a little monkey, he was brilliant. He was always up to something, or saying something he shouldn’t. She was having a lot of fun with the pair of them.
And of course, there was Pascal, who was the icing on the cake on this holiday. Gasp, gasp, be still my beating heart! Immy couldn’t believe her luck the other day when he’d just appeared over the fence. Boys like that didn’t just materialise from thin air into your garden, did they, even though that was exactly what this one seemed to do. Her dad went mental, of course, threatened to blow a gasket or something. She reckoned he was just jealous, wished he was all young and gorgeous like that again (if he ever was, of course. He was her dad, so she didn’t like to dwell on thoughts like that too much). Pascal could be her holiday romance, couldn’t he? Her first real boyfriend? Although she’d need to move pretty quickly now, as most of the holiday was already behind them. But how cool, to have a French Boyfriend. She toyed with the idea of him as a Facebook friend, when they went back home. Pascal something-or-other French and exotic-sounding, whatever his name was, as her Facebook friend. That would impress her friends back home.
She thought she might let him kiss her. Not that he’d get much opportunity to try if she couldn’t get into town with him. Nothing else, though. He probably was a bit old for her, and probably had loads more experience than her (which wasn’t difficult, she thought). Despite the hassle she gave her mum, and the shocking things she sometimes said, she wasn’t ready to do THAT with a boy yet, no way. Oh no. Some of her friends at school boasted about what they’d done with boys. Immy didn’t care whether it was true or not, she just knew she wasn’t ready, and that was all that mattered. There was no point in putting pressure on yourself to do something you weren’t comfortable with, was there? It was her body to decide what to do with, not public property. And that was the way it would stay for now. Sometimes she shocked herself at just how sensible she could be. It was her best-kept secret.
June 2014
Her dad was out yet again, and her mum was downstairs in the living room, staring at some rubbish on the TV. Immy knew she wasn’t really watching it; she kept doing that weird gazing out into the garden thing. But there was nothing to see out there, it was dark, for goodness sake. What did she think was going to happen, Dad was going to come galloping through the patio doors on a white horse and tell her everything was OK? He’d never see that woman again, he loved his wife and daughters, don’t worry, don’t worry…
Immy did worry. Things had never been like this in their house before and she was worried. What if her parents broke up? Who would she have to live with? She sent up lots of silent prayers these days:
‘Please God, if you actually exist, that is, don’t make me go and live with Dad – strike me down for thinking that, but I can’t help it. And please God, keep me and Ana together, whatever I’ve said about her in the past. She can be a pain, but she’s still my little sis and I can’t imagine not being with her. Mum can be a pain too, but if I had to choose… I suppose I would come down on the side of the fact that at least she was once a girl – a long time ago – and she understands us a bit better than Dad. Dad just asks us how much homework we’ve got and what our grades are going to be. Mum’s cool really, she tries to discuss boys and things with us and she still makes cakes with us, although now I know it’s usually because she wants to talk to us about something. But when it comes down to it, I’d rather not have to choose between them. Parents are meant to be together, not apart. Please mend them, God. Help them put their marriage back together. For us, for me and Ana.’
A lot of her friends had parents who were divorced or separated, and she had seen what it had done to them; she didn’t want that for herself and Anastasia.
No one had actually told the girls that their parents were having problems, but teenagers were pretty perceptive creatures – when they were awake, at least. Immy had noticed her mum’s general levels of distraction, forgetting things, not signing school letters, leaving the phone ringing, all that sort of stuff. She was the most organised person on the planet most of the time, and was usually on top of everything, so it came as something of a shock. And she’d noticed that her dad was around less, too. He had always been away a lot, it was just the nature of his work, he had to socialise with people. Reeling clients in, he called it. She understood all that. But there were definitely more overnight stays lately, just the odd single night here and there, where previously he’d be gone for a few days, and she thought that was odd. She couldn’t bear the thought of him holed up in some hotel somewhere, with another woman. It was all so very, very wrong. He was her father, and he needed to start behaving like her father again. Or she would end up hating him, and she didn’t want that.
‘Mum, are you OK? Mum?’
Immy needed a break from her homework, but more importantly she needed to see if her mum was alright. Curses to her father for doing this to them now. Didn’t he realise she had GCSEs to work for? She didn’t need the added hassle of having parents on the verge of splitting up when she was supposed to be learning formulae and vocabulary and set texts, for goodness sake! There was no way she could concentrate properly if she had so much to worry about.
‘Oh, hi Immy, how’s the revision going?’ her mother asked. Immy thought she looked as though she’d been crying. She probably had; she’d done a lot of that lately.
‘Is everything OK, Mum?’ Imogen sat down beside her. ‘You can tell me, you know, I’m old enough to understand. I know Dad’s having an affair. He’s disgusting, Mum. How could he do that to us?’ It felt the wrong way round, Evie thought, the perceptive teenage daughter counselling the mother, checking she was alright. That was Evie’s job as a parent, not Immy’s.
Her mother looked awful. But she could see her visibly trying to pull herself together for her daughter’s sake, and loved her – and felt for her – all the more for it.
‘Oh, Immy, if only I could wrap you up in cotton wool, darling, and protect you from all this, then I would. It’s not fair to put you through it. But don’t worry darling, it’s all going to be OK, you’ll see. Mummy and Daddy will sort something out. Daddy loves us.’ Immy knew they were in trouble when her mother started calling herself Mummy again, not Mum. It meant she was trying to baby her, protect her from all the bad stuff that was going on in the big, scary world.
Well, she didn’t need protecting. She needed to know details – well, OK, maybe not quite all the details, like Dad doing that with someone else, that was disgusting. But yes, she needed to know. She was nearly an adult, she could handle it.
‘You can tell me, Mum. I think you have to tell me now.’ Immy could feel the fury bubbling to the surface. ‘I fucking hate him for doing this to us, Mum.’
‘Immy, do NOT speak about your father like that, and do NOT swear.’ How could she defend him like that? Immy wondered.
‘He’
s not my father anymore, Mum. Not if he can do something like that. I just told you, I hate him.’
August 2015
‘Imogen, you are the most beautiful girl,’ Pascal purred, as he put his arm around Immy. She loved the way he said her name, with a soft ‘g’. Im-o-shen. The sound of it made her insides go all wobbly. Mum would go mad if she could see the pair of them now. Not that they were doing anything bad, of course. All they were doing was sitting on the side of the pool, it was perfectly innocent.
Her parents would see otherwise, of course. They had gone into town for lunch, along with Grace and Tom, and had taken the twins, too. Apparently they were meeting some prospective client of her dad’s, someone he was trying to court for business, who also happened to be holidaying in the Dordogne with his family. They’d asked the teens to come too, but Immy and Ana had decided they’d like to stay at the chateau and swim, if that was OK with their parents. James and Evie didn’t push it – neither felt that the presence of a couple of sullen adolescents would help swing the deal, whereas the cuteness of the twins might play into their hands – or at least act as a distraction if the conversation started to flag. Ana was upstairs with her headphones on. She wouldn’t surface for ages yet, so Immy was poolside on her own, with Pascal.
He moved his hand further down her back towards her bottom.
‘Non, Pascal,’ she said, pushing his hand back up to her shoulder. She thought Pascal must have an excellent inbuilt radar to detect the absence of parents – either that or he spent the entire day watching the gate and the comings and goings of cars. He had a real habit of appearing from nowhere the moment the adults disappeared, and once again he had popped up over the fence, his smiling face guaranteeing him immediate entry. She had to admire his bravado.
‘Pourquoi pas, Immy, tu m’aimes, n’est-ce-pas?’ Yes, she did like him, she replied, but that didn’t mean she was going to let him do anything she wasn’t comfortable with, despite what she might have thought about letting him kiss her. That certainly wouldn’t be on the cards for this afternoon, not now.
‘I’m sorry, Imogen,’ Pascal said. ‘I no mean to make you undercomfortable.’ Imogen found it wildly sexy when he got an English word wrong. Either way, his English was still heaps better than her French, even though she was trying hard. She smiled to herself, confident of the effect she was having on this boy, man, whatever he was, but knowing that she still had the upper hand, and could just say ‘Non’ whenever she wanted to. That was real power, and it made her light-headed with excitement. And slightly scared too.
Pascal was so different from the boys back home, who thought that if they bought you a drink, then they had paid good money for a fumble. The boys she knew could be so immature sometimes; Pascal was definitely a man compared to them, she thought. But even so, she was aware that she needed to be careful. For all she knew, Pascal could be like this every week with whichever young and reasonably attractive female happened to be staying in the chateau. His attentions didn’t necessarily make her special, she was wise enough to realise that, despite the emotions they stirred up in her.
There was a rush of gravel which signified the return of the parents.
‘You’d better go, Pascal. Dad will kill me if he knows I’ve been here on my own with you.’
‘Oui, peut-être que tu as raison,’ said Pascal, agreeing with her. He’d seen the thunderous look on Mr Brookes’ face on previous occasions, and although he knew he could take the guy on no problem, he wouldn’t want to risk his own father getting into trouble with Henri, for something that his son had done. Being able to come here and use the pool – and meet beautiful young English girls like Imogen – was a perk he didn’t care to lose, least of all have his father lose his job over.
‘Bonjour maman, papa,’ Immy said, greeting her parents with a huge smile on her face. She hoped the deep flush of excitement had left her face and they wouldn’t guess that the object of her teenage fantasies had been here, attempting to seduce her in the absence of parental supervision. She thought she’d better not stay cheerful for too long, as her parents were bound to be suspicious if she wasn’t in normal sulky teen mode. Or actually, she thought, would it be better to be honest and tell them that Pascal had been there? Hmmm, tricky one.
As Evie headed off upstairs to change, Immy decided to tell her father. Or at least an abridged version of events, anyway. He was proving the hardest to win round when it came to Pascal, protective as he was of his darling daughter’s virtue. A little honesty now might just pay off in the future, she thought.
‘Dad, I hope you don’t mind, but Pascal popped round earlier. You’d be proud of me, though, I sent him away as you weren’t here.’ Not entirely true, but close enough, she thought, smiling sweetly at James. If her father believed her, then this would make her look so mature and sensible, and she could do with racking up a few points in both departments. You never knew when you might need to cash them in.
‘Oh Immy, I’m so proud of you, well done,’ James replied, a genuine look of pride – and some relief – on his face. Maybe his daughter was coming through her rebellious streak. ‘That was the right thing to do. I’m not saying you’re not safe with a boy like him, but, well,’ James was struggling to find the words, ‘I mean, he’s much older than you, isn’t he and, well, you’re very pretty and you wouldn’t want to give him the wrong idea, would you?’
‘Wrong idea about what?’ Immy asked, all wide-eyed and innocent. She thought she might have some fun with her father over this, but seeing the look of horror on his face, quickly changed her mind. The poor man clearly thought he might have to get into a lengthy discussion about the birds and the bees and all that goes with it. That would be so mean, and anyway would probably make her squirm as much as him.
She and her dad just didn’t talk about the whole boys and sex thing. Like any father of girls, she thought he’d probably like to imagine she would stay a virgin until her wedding night. For Immy, anything like that was a long way off yet, but she knew he would be horrified to hear how some of her friends had casually given away their virginity to the first boyfriend to come along. Immy thought they were pretty stupid, but the thought of discussing it all with him made her come out in a cold sweat. She hoped he wasn’t about to embark on a lecture, and he was hoping she wasn’t planning to share too many intimate details with him. Each was treading carefully around the other.
‘Would you like a drink, sweetheart?’ James asked, giving him an opportunity to turn his back on her for a few moments in the hopes that his hot cheeks would calm down. ‘Sit down and have a drink with your dear old dad, will you?’
Embarrassed though he was, he didn’t want her running off just yet. He hadn’t spent much time alone with his eldest daughter lately. He knew she had taken things incredibly hard last year, and of the two girls had been the last to put it behind her and move on. He wasn’t even sure she had moved on properly yet. Until quite recently, she would avoid being alone with him whenever possible, so the fact that she hadn’t bolted as soon as Evie left the room just now was huge progress.
‘Yeah, am I allowed some wine, Dad?’ she dared to ask.
‘Course. Just a little drop, though. Come on, sit down and talk to me.’
And so when Evie passed through the kitchen again half an hour later, that was where she found them, Immy stretched out full-length on the squashy kitchen sofa, her feet in her father’s lap. Both, to Evie’s immediate horror, were clutching half-drunk glasses of wine. Evie made to pull a face at her husband about giving their daughter alcohol, but seeing the look of sheer happiness he bore, decided against it. Clearly the two of them had had a good chat and melted some of the ice that had remained between them since last summer. Evie was glad for them both. Teenage girls needed their fathers to be properly there for them. A good, solid male influence in their lives. She decided the best thing was to leave them to it and she headed outside.
In the shower later that evening, James mulled over the events of t
he afternoon. He still had a warm, fuzzy glow from the conversation he had had with Immy. His daughter was maturing into a fine young woman, with a good, sensible head on her shoulders, despite the occasional teen misdemeanour, but that was only to be expected, it was all part of growing up.
He had been surprised at how easy it was to talk to her. They’d chatted about all and sundry: school, grades, all the usual stuff to start with, then she’d told him about her friends, how immature she thought they could be in their attitude to boys. The ones who were already in serious relationships, and how stupid she thought it was to start something physical with someone, when you didn’t even know if they were ‘The One’. That had really surprised him; they had always brought the girls up to respect their own bodies – or at least Evie had told him she often talked to the girls along those lines – but there was no accounting for what teen hormones might lead them to do in the heat of the moment. Again he had been surprised just how easily she told him all this, as in the past such discussions had been solely Evie’s preserve, and he felt very privileged that she should open up to him. She was growing up, his little girl. What a wonderful young woman she was turning into, and how lovely it was that she felt she could talk to him like this. It was a new development in their relationship.
They fell into companionable silence, Immy curled up beside her father. Then out of the blue she said: ‘Dad, why did you do it?’ He didn’t need to ask what she meant.
‘Actually, Immy, I don’t really know. I suppose it was some kind of mid-life crisis. But it was the most stupid, the most selfish thing I’ve ever done. If I could go back and do last year all over again, then I would, and boy, would I do it differently. I was so stupid, Immy. And I’m so sorry I hurt you so much.’
Hand On Heart: Sequel to Head Over Heels Page 20