by Lisa Jewell
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, grasping her hand across the table, ‘I didn’t mean to…’
She shook her head. ‘It’s all right,’ she said, ‘it’s fine. It’s just that—you’re right. I should have told him what I was doing but I was in such a state, it was all so unexpected, I couldn’t think about anything else for two weeks and then I just took off. I just never thought it would happen to us, it didn’t seem possible, and I never wanted it, I really never wanted it and…’
‘Delilah!’ barked Dig. ‘Slow down, for God’s sake. I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Oh God—I’m pregnant, Dig! I’m pregnant for fuck’s sake. Can you believe it? We had sex three times last year and we used a diaphragm and I still managed to get pregnant!’
Dig clicked his hanging jaw closed. ‘A-ha,’ he said. That explains all that puking, he thought.
‘And I never wanted a baby. Never. What would I know about being a mother? Look at the example I had.’ She raised her eyebrows indignantly. ‘I’ve already given one away and I don’t want to do that again. But I can’t have a baby, Dig, I just can’t! I don’t want one and Alex would be so angry. He complained enough when I got the dog.’
Dig was panicking. More heavy stuff. Oh God. ‘Can’t you—you know,’ he stammered, ‘can’t you?’
‘Get rid of it? Oh God—I’ve thought about it. That was one of the reasons why I came down to London. I couldn’t have an—an—a termination at home. It would have been round Chester in seconds, and it’s no one’s business, is it?’ She eyed him angrily. ‘And ever since I found out I was pregnant I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Isab- about Sophie. She’s been haunting me. I suddenly felt like I couldn’t make any decisions about this’—she looked at her groin again and Dig realized what she’d been trying to say earlier on when she’d eyed her crotch so cryptically—‘until I’d put a full-stop on the Sophie chapter. The agency told me she’d gone to a good family, a nice family, but at the time I didn’t care. I just wanted her away from me—gone. I couldn’t bear to look at her or touch her. I didn’t care whether she went to live with the Queen or the fucking Yorkshire Ripper, just so long as I never had to see her again. Because, you see, she looks like me now, but when she was born she looked just like him—she really did.’
‘The father?’
She nodded, and her face hardened, and Dig sensed that they were approaching the crux of the matter.
He leaned back into the red velvet of the banquette and waited for Delilah to start talking.
Silver Toenails
The sun was shining the day after Delilah’s eighteenth birthday. She’d spent the previous night at Dig’s, as she did nearly every night. He’d taken her out for a birthday treat to a wine bar off Oxford Street and they’d shared a bottle of Mateus Rosé and felt like grown-ups. Her mother’s house was empty when Delilah let herself in at nine thirty. She’d left a birthday card outside her bedroom door. It was the first time her mother had remembered her birthday in ten years, and Delilah felt a curious surge of warmth rising in her chest.
In her bedroom, Delilah ripped open the envelope and pulled out an embossed and gilded card with a picture of a young girl riding a pony on the front.
Daughter Dearest, said the printed message inside the card,
Once you were a tiny thing, with toes and thumbs so small
And now you are a woman, strong and proud and tall
I’ve fed you and I’ve loved you, I’ve nurtured you through strife
But now it’s time to let you go and learn to live your life
I’m so proud of you, daughter dearest
Happy 18th Birthday
She’d signed it ‘All love, Mum’ and she’d even scribbled a couple of kisses underneath her name. Delilah felt choked with strange emotions. Despite the fact that a stranger had worded the message inside the card, it was her mother who had chosen it, who’d picked it up in a shop and paid for it, put a Biro to it, licked the envelope and left it outside Delilah’s room. It was the kindest, least selfish thing her mother had ever done. Delilah felt a wondrous sense of her life opening up: she and Dig were going to get engaged, he was going to get them a place to live, she could sign on at last and stop working at that shitty chemist, and now this—an unprecedented gesture of maternal love. The future looked brighter than it had ever done before.
She had a bath, washed her hair, slipped into her dressing-gown and enjoyed the rare peace and quiet in her usually chaotic home. On her bed, she stretched out a long, white leg, picked up a bottle of silver nail polish and began to paint her toenails.
Downstairs, the front door slammed shut, loudly enough to make Delilah jump. The brush slipped in her hand and left a smear of polish down the side of her toe.
‘Fuck.’
She got to her feet and peered down the stairwell, towards the front door ahead.
It was Michael, her stepfather.
He was leaning heavily against the door, his clothing awry, his face caked in dirt and bloody scabs.
‘What the fuck happened to you?’ she said, climbing down the stairs. Michael looked at her sheepishly. ‘Jesus Christ, look at your face.’
Delilah had known Michael since she was five years old. He was a quiet, repressed, almost terminally shy man who rarely spoke. Delilah suspected he had learning difficulties. He’d been teetotal when he’d met Delilah’s mother, just after her father died of cirrhosis, but thirteen years and five children later was a consummate drinker, his life punctuated by pub opening times and visits to the off-licence. He lived on beef-and-onion crisps, which he ate six packs at a time, and he had about him a permanent aroma of stale smoke and Monster Munch.
Michael let Delilah manoeuvre him into the front room and on to the threadbare sofa. He stank. She peeled his leather jacket from his obese frame and threw it over the arm of the sofa.
‘Where’ve you been, Michael? What’s happened?’ Delilah often found herself talking to Michael as though he were a child.
Michael shook his head distractedly.
‘Did someone hit you?’
He opened his mouth to speak and Delilah was almost knocked sideways by his vaporous breath. ‘Oh Jesus, Michael, you’re pissed. It’s bloody ten o’clock in the morning and you’re pissed.’
‘Your mother,’ he said, shaking his head slowly, ‘your mother.’
‘What did she do?’
‘She kicked me out, didn’t she? Kicked me out last night. Your mother. Hadn’t even finished eating my tea. And it was sausages and all.’
‘Why did she kick you out, Michael?’
He shrugged. ‘Hadn’t even finished my tea. Your fucking mother…’
Delilah raised her eyebrows. She wasn’t going to get any sense out of him, that much was obvious. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘I’ll go and put the kettle on, make us both a coffee, eh?’
‘Yes please, D’lilah—that would be nice.’
Delilah had always felt sorry for Michael. He’d gone straight from the home of his overbearing and abusive mother into the home of another overbearing and abusive woman, taken on her four children and given her another five. Despite the indubitable quality of his sperm, there was no respect in this household for Michael, and now that Delilah was escaping, could see a future beyond these four oppressive walls, she almost wanted to help him. He was more a victim of the Lillie curse than her, in a lot of ways. He was never going to escape. He dug himself further into this open grave with every pint he drank.
She walked back into the front room holding the two mugs of coffee. Michael looked pathetic—fat, unkempt, drunk and pointless.
‘There you go,’ she said, guiding the mug into his dirty fingers, making sure he’d got a firm grip on it, ‘that should make you feel a bit better.’
She stood over him while he took a first tentative sip. He looked up at her, over the rim of the mug, his eyes brown and nicotine-stained, full of disappointment. As he pulled the mug away from his lips, Del
ilah could see he was smiling.
‘Thank you, D’lilah,’ he said, ‘thank you.’
And for a moment Delilah felt warm and good.
‘Delightful…de-lovely…delicious…Delilah,’ said Michael. He laughed to himself under his breath. ‘Delightful…de-lovely…delicious…Delilah…delightful…de-lovely…delicious…Delilah.’ He was laughing loudly now and rocking back and forth as he repeated his strange mantra. Delilah began to back away—he was weirding her out—but suddenly the smile fell from his face and he began to cry. He stretched his vast arms upwards and grasped Delilah by the waist. He buried his face into her stomach and began muttering into the cotton of her dressing-gown. ‘Thank you, D’lilah, thank you, D’lilah.’
Delilah didn’t know what to do. His hair was greasy and smelled bad. His breath was hot against her flesh, his arms suffocating around her waist. She tried to peel his fingers apart and extricate herself from the foul embrace, but the more she tried to get away from him, the harder he held her. Beautiful Delilah, he kept saying, such a beautiful girl, such a nice girl…such a nice girl.
She could feel a damp patch on her stomach where his snot and tears were seeping through the cotton. Her heart began to race as a feeling of being trapped overcame her. And then suddenly she was on her back. Suddenly Michael had her by the wrists and was pinning her to the sofa. But you’re not a girl, he was saying, his face inches from hers, you’re not a girl, not any more, you’re a woman now, aren’t you, you’re eighteen, and you’re a woman, and you can do whatever you like, and I can do whatever I like because we’re both adults, isn’t that right, isn’t it, and his breath, his breath smelt like raw meat, and his tongue, when it forced its way through her clenched lips, tasted of stale vomit.
Delilah heard a song in her head while it was happening. It was a song she’d heard on the radio at Dig’s that morning. It played over and over in her head in rhythm with Michael’s laboured thrusting. As she listened to the song in her head, she stared at her feet, her eyes focusing on the smudge of silver nail polish left on her toe, a reminder of the last thing she’d done before this had happened, the last thing she’d done while she was still happy. Because, even as it was happening, Delilah knew for sure that she was never going to be happy again.
He lay on top of her afterwards, breathing heavily and sweating on to her skin. Delilah felt her breath escaping her as his bulk crushed her diaphragm. And then the front door went. Delilah heard her brothers shouting and careering around, and her mother’s harsh Golden Virginia voice telling them to shut up. Thank God, she thought, thank God, Mum’s home, she’ll look after me.
‘Mum, ’ she wheezed, trying to lever Michael’s frame off hers, ‘Mum. In here.’
She should have known better. All those years of disinterest and she’d let herself be sucked in by one flimsy birthday card, let herself believe that her mother cared.
‘You filthy little fucking slapper!’ Delilah felt herself being dragged from the sofa by her elbow and thrown to the floor. ‘You whore!’ She felt the toe of her mother’s shoe connecting with her stomach. ‘You disgusting whore!
‘Can’t you get your own man, is that it?’ she said. ‘What’s wrong with that eyebrow-on-legs you’re always hanging around with? Isn’t he giving you enough?’
And then she slapped Delilah around the face, there, in the living room, her husband with his stinking knob still hanging out of his trousers, her daughter with her husband’s cum running down the insides of her legs, and her children clinging to her legs, watching everything.
She didn’t give Delilah a chance to wash herself, or pack more than a few essentials. ‘Get out of my house and never come back! As far as I am concerned, I don’t have a daughter any more.’
She’d slammed the door behind her, opening it again two seconds later to throw Delilah’s jacket out after her, on to the pathway.
Delilah picked it up, dusted it off and began to walk. As she walked, she turned briefly to look behind her at a house where she’d known no joy, and she knew for a fact that she would never see it again.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Dig gulped. ‘Why didn’t you come to me, Delilah? That day. Why didn’t you come to me?’
Delilah had been looking at the ceiling, but now she dropped her head, and the tears that had been suspended in her eyes tumbled down her cheeks. She rubbed her face with her pink napkin and looked into Dig’s eyes for the first time since she’d started talking. She looked so vulnerable and so young and Dig wanted to absorb her slight frame into his own.
‘I didn’t want to be with anyone, Dig. I was ruined. Michael ruined me that day. You have to understand that. You were good and pure and kind. You were love to me, Dig, and after that day, for a long, long time, I was a tiny shrivelled-up lump of dog-shit. I couldn’t even think about being anywhere near you and your lovely mum and your neat little house and your clean, clean lives. And when you found me that day, at the DSS, I just wanted to disappear. I was standing there with you in the rain and you were so concerned about where I’d been, there was so much love in your eyes—and all I wanted was for the rain to turn to acid and dissolve me, there and then, dissolve me into a pile of mush and wash me away down a drain.
‘I tried to make it work with you, for your sake, not for mine. But every time I touched something in your house, every time I got into bed with you I felt like I was contaminating things, dirtying your bedsheets. Every time you touched me I wanted to tell you not to, almost like you’d tell a child not to put their finger in an electric socket. Your mum would bring me a cup of tea in every morning and I used to wash the mug in the bathroom sink before I gave it back to her. I was totally fucked up, Dig, the most fucked up I’ve ever been, and when my period was late I just lost it. Packed up my stuff and went back to Marina’s.
‘Of course, it was the last place I should have gone. Once it was confirmed that I was pregnant there was never any question of an abortion, it didn’t even come into the equation. Marina’s such a devout Catholic. It was unthinkable. And I was too much of a vegetable to do anything about it. I just sat in my room, staring at the walls, feeling this thing growing inside me, day by day totally resigned to my fate, totally resigned to bringing this thing into the world, to giving it life. I felt like a vessel, not a human being. I wasn’t Delilah Lillie any more. I didn’t wear make–up any more, stopped dying my hair, didn’t watch telly, listen to music, anything.
‘But that was when I met Alex—he was studying on Primrose Hill. I was nine months pregnant and I tripped and fell. He took me to the hospital and they had to induce the baby because I was bleeding internally and there was a chance that it might have gone into trauma from the fall. So Alex was there when Sophie was born. I told him everything, about Michael. He was so acceptant—he didn’t even flinch. He made me feel so calm. Clean, almost. I don’t suppose there are many twenty-two-year-old men who would have had the maturity to deal with a situation like that, are there? I knew he was special.
‘He kept in touch after that day, took me out every now and then. And then—well—you already know the rest, don’t you? Alex always understood, about the sex thing, about me not wanting it. He didn’t have a problem with it. I’ve been seeing someone about it—a shrink—trying to get better, trying to be a sexual person again. It’s a very slow process. Every now and then I burst over with love for Alex and I want to give him something. He never asks me for it. I offer it, when I feel strong, when I feel clean. And, if I’m really honest, when I get scared that he’s going to find it somewhere else. And I offered it to him six weeks ago and now I’m pregnant, and I thought that coming back to London, finding Sophie, would help me decide what to do. And it just hasn’t, Dig. It hasn’t at all.’
She started crying then, not loud sobbing, but silent tears. ‘What do you think, Dig? Do you think I should have it? Do you think I’d make a good mother? I wouldn’t be like my mother, would I? Do you think?’ Her expression changed abruptly. ‘Sorry. Sorry. That’s n
ot fair. I shouldn’t have asked you that. You haven’t asked for any of this. Oh God. Oh God. Just when you’re starting to think that maybe life’s quite simple really, it turns around and asks you to divide a hundred and twenty-eight by nineteen.’ She smiled, unexpectedly. ‘That’s something Alex always says,’ she said. She put her elbows on the table and ran her fingers through her hair.
Jesus, thought Dig. We might be the same age, but Delilah Lillie is centuries older than I’ll ever be. Thirty, to me, just means being a slightly-older-than-I’d-like-to-be teenager. Thirty to Delilah means a lifetime of growing and surviving and really living. I’m just a child, he thought, compared to Delilah, an overgrown child. I’ve done nothing. I’m still living in Kentish Town, still in the same job, hanging out with the same people in the same places—I’m even wearing the same jeans. My parents adore me and everything I do. They adore each other. Nothing bad’s ever happened to me. I’ve never known what it’s like to be broke. I’ve never had to make sacrifices or life-and-death decisions. I’ve never had to keep secrets or face the truth. I’ve never even been mugged. I’ve had it so easy, he thought, so fucking easy.
‘So,’ Delilah was saying, ‘that’s the story. That’s Sophie’s heritage. She’d be so proud, I’m sure, to know where she came from.’
‘Fuck, Delilah,’ sighed Dig, eloquently, ‘what a fucking nightmare.’ He shook his head slowly and exhaled loudly and hated himself for being so ill-equipped to deal with this sort of situation, especially as it was him who’d been so desperate for Delilah to open up and talk about things in the first place. He exhaled again and felt his brain scrambling with the effort of finding something, anything substantial or helpful to say.
And then, through the fug of thoughts, it came to him, the one thing he could say that he knew was true, that he meant wholeheartedly and that might actually help Delilah.
He took hold of her hands and looked her in the eye. ‘You’ll be a wonderful mother,’ he said, ‘I know you will. You shouldn’t worry about that.’