by Lulu Taylor
When they arrived at Thornside or London or wherever, Daddy would be happy to see them at first but soon he would start becoming irritated, and before long his temper would ignite because once again they’d fallen short of his expectations, and then the raging would start. It made poor Sarah clumsy and frightened and prone to bursting into tears, provoking her father even more. His remarks to her could be cruel and cutting, but he seemed to take a particular pleasure in putting Will down, questioning his choices, dismissing his achievements and demanding ever higher standards.
Daisy saw the way her half-brother handed over a good report with a glow of pride, hoping for praise from his father, and the hurt and sadness that filled his eyes when Daddy ignored the good and focused on one low mark, working himself into a rage and tearing the report to pieces. It was worse when Will brought friends to the house. As everyone sat down to lunch, Daddy would set about criticising Will in front of the visitor, mocking him and making the poor guest join in the laughter directed at his son.
He would declare that Will was useless, that he hardly knew the boy was his son sometimes. Then he’d list Will’s failings and flatter the unfortunate friend: ‘I expect your parents are very proud of you, you seem a very well-rounded, diligent boy. You should teach Will not to be so lazy. He needs to push himself! I’d be proud if you were my son.’
Daisy wondered why Daddy couldn’t see that this had the opposite effect on Will to what was intended. The boy wasn’t motivated to try harder. He simply hardened his heart against his impossible-to-please father, and decided it wasn’t worth the effort trying to win his praise. And the pain of being found wanting, no matter how hard he tried, was obvious in his eyes.
Julia remained remote from her stepchildren, watching the way they were bullied with a distant look of sympathy in her eyes, though she never intervened. More and more these days, she looked beaten and broken, and no one blamed her for not wanting to draw Daddy’s fire.
Only Daisy escaped the rages. Only she rushed into his arms, beaming with delight. Only she said, ‘I love you, Daddy!’ with sincerity in her eyes.
As she grew older and her position as Daddy’s favourite more entrenched, Will and Sarah began to avoid her. Even her mother seemed to find it difficult to be with her sometimes, and certainly when Daisy and Daddy were together. It seemed that his love for her only increased the others’ hurt at his indifference to them.
Daisy didn’t know why it should be this way and there was nothing she could do anyway, so with childish logic she simply accepted it. Daddy wasn’t nice to the others. Perhaps they should try a little harder to please him, and then he might love them as much as he loved her.
Daisy was lounging around in her sitting room in the Belgravia house, watching afternoon telly before she had her supper. She thought that at thirteen she was too old to have a nanny, but Daddy wouldn’t hear of getting rid of Nanny Johnson, who was humming away in the next-door kitchen as she cooked for Daisy. When the house telephone rang, the light that denoted her father’s study flashing on the base, Daisy leaped over the sofa and whisked it up at once.
‘Yes, Daddy?’
‘Come down here, darling, right away.’
She hurried downstairs, skipping down them three at a time, lithe and energetic in her cropped jeans and ballet pumps, and burst into the study to find Daddy, standing before the fireplace, puffing away on his usual big cigar.
‘Princess!’ he said, beaming, as she came in and rushed over to kiss him. ‘How would you like a little treat tonight?’
‘Ooh, what?’
‘A trip to the opera.’ Her father’s face darkened. ‘Your mother was supposed to come. But she’s … unwell.’
Daisy knew what that meant. Her mother was frequently unwell these days, staggering and unfocused not long after lunchtime, her breath bitter and her eyes bloodshot. She wasn’t often seen in the evenings and, if she was, would always say that she felt ill and that her sleeping pills were making her drowsy. The pills were supposed to explain the way her mother’s head tilted and swung slowly, and the slurs and drawls in her speech, but Daisy wasn’t fooled. She knew that the drinks tray in the drawing room held an irresistible allure for her mother. There was one in each of the family homes: the Belgravia house, Thornside Manor, the villa in Tuscany, the estate in Thailand, the chalet in Gstaad – a little folding table tucked discreetly behind a sofa or beside a cabinet, laden down with bottles of spirits, little cans of mixers, a soda siphon, an ice bucket, a supply of crystal glasses and saucers of lemon slices put out freshly each day. Three or four visits to the tray would turn Julia from an articulate, sharp-witted woman into something else altogether.
Daisy hated her mother’s inability to resist the lure of those bottles – not just because of the drawling, drowsy creature who then took her place but because she knew her father despised it too. Sometimes her mother didn’t become slow and slurry but hysterical, full of laughter and jokes, although the laughter and gaiety always turned eventually to screaming rows. Daisy knew them well, even though they usually took place when she was supposed to be asleep in bed. In London, the voices would bounce off the marble floors and soar up the main staircase, reverberating off the white-painted walls. The thick carpets of the corridors and their sturdy doors absorbed some of the noise, but Daisy would still know that three floors below her parents were screaming and yelling at each other. Sometimes she heard them clearly.
‘I don’t know why I ever let you take me away from him!’ her mother shouted once. ‘You only did it to satisfy your own fucking pride, not for me!’
Her father’s booming tones were harder to distinguish but she heard him say some dreadful words: ‘You crazy bitch!… Disgusting tramp … Why don’t you go and live on the Embankment with all the other winos? You’re mad, you should be locked away!’
In Surrey, her bedroom was far away in the east wing, but she still seemed to be particularly attuned to the frequencies that carried her parents’ voices. She always knew when another humdinger was underway, and would bury her head under her pillow, muttering ‘stop, stop, stop, stop …’ through gritted teeth, until she could at last shut it out and go to sleep.
They won’t be rowing tonight anyway, Daisy thought with a stab of relief. Not if Mummy has already gone to bed and Daddy’s going out.
‘Well, what do you say?’ asked her father, smiling. ‘Do you want to come?’
‘Yes, please!’ she said, excited. The opera! Staying up late! How exciting. ‘What should I wear?’
‘Tell Nanny you need a long dress,’ Daddy said, putting his cigar between his lips. ‘We’ll be leaving in half an hour, so you’d better hurry.’
Upstairs, Nanny tutted because the supper she’d cooked for Daisy was now not needed. ‘You’d better have a mouthful or two, though! Goodness knows if Mr Dangerfield will remember to feed you.’ But she said it without rancour as she liked life with the Dangerfields. Apart from looking after Daisy’s things, there wasn’t much for Nanny to do; she whiled away hours in front of the nursery television, enjoying the daytime game shows, ordering food from the kitchen and growing ever more plump.
Nanny went to the large walk-in wardrobe to find something suitable. Daisy was measured every six months and the measurements sent to a Parisian boutique; a few weeks later, a huge powder blue box would arrive, its insides thick with tissue paper that concealed beautifully made dresses, skirts, blouses, cashmere cardigans and pairs of soft kid shoes in white and pale pink. Daisy was beginning to scorn such babyish things, and had persuaded Daddy to let her go shopping with her friends instead once or twice. Nanny flicked through the rail of clothes. ‘You should wear your black velvet, I think. It’s not long, but long’s no good for a girl your age anyway. It’s below the knee and will look very nice.’
‘Can I wear my hair up?’ Daisy asked excitedly, pushing her fair hair on top of her head, blonde tendrils escaping through her fingers.
‘No,’ said Nanny firmly. ‘A nice brushing ou
t and hairclips will be best.’
Daisy descended the stairs twenty minutes later feeling tremendously dressed up. Her black velvet dress felt very sophisticated, and Nanny had been persuaded to let her wear the tiniest smear of cherry lip gloss on her lips, so she felt like a proper lady. She wished she was wearing something with a heel like Mummy’s spindly party shoes, but her ballet slippers had bows on them and looked a little like the shoes the older girls at school wore, so she was happy.
Daddy was downstairs waiting for her. He’d changed into his dinner jacket and black silk bow tie, a white silk scarf draped round his shoulders. Daisy always thought Daddy looked terribly impressive and handsome in his evening clothes – and tonight she was going out with him! She wanted to dance down the stairs, but walked as elegantly and carefully as she could instead.
‘You look beautiful, my darling,’ he said, smiling as she came towards him. ‘Now come here.’
When she reached him, he leaned forward and pinned something to the front of her dress. When she looked down, a diamond brooch sparkled on her chest.
‘Oh!’ she gasped, hardly able to speak.
‘I was going to give that to your mother,’ Daddy said. ‘A little piece I picked up in Paris – it’s vintage Van Cleef and Arpels. Art Deco. Do you like it?’
‘Yes,’ Daisy breathed, hardly able to take her eyes off the delicate setting that curled around the glittering diamonds.
‘I think it suits you best,’ he said with a smile. ‘Now, come along. The traffic can be terrible at this time of night.’
She couldn’t stop looking at the sparkle of her diamond brooch all the way to the Royal Opera House.
6
THE GIRL RAN nimbly through the Peckham estate, racing along the well-known paths, her brown hair streaming out behind her as she went. She knew where to skip the broken paving stones, or when to leap over a flowerbed, and where she could cross the road most quickly, ignoring the lights as she dashed to the central island, then over the far lane between slow-moving cars. She wove in and out of the people in her way: mothers pushing buggies, small children dawdling in their wake, the strolling elderly.
She knew which places to avoid – the ones where kids hung out when they ought to be in school. Everyone knew. Whenever she reached the children’s playground – painted in bright brave yellow and red against the grey concrete and grime of the estate – she always speeded up. Today it was difficult to imagine how she could go any faster, but when she saw the boys there, she pushed herself as hard as she could, despite her thumping heart and the pain burning in her chest.
‘Hey, girly! We can see you!’ shouted the tallest. He must be sixteen at least – almost a man – a gangly black boy in a leather jacket and pristine white trainers, his trousers slung so low they were round his thighs. He laughed.
She felt her blood chill at the sound of his voice.
‘You can’t run fast enough,’ yelled his friend, a white boy with a close-shaven head and a skin dotted with red spots. ‘We’re gonna catch you one of these days, you better believe it.’ Then he laughed loudly. ‘Gonna do what you know you want.’
‘Your pussy ever been fucked?’ demanded another. ‘You wanna taste of my dick, huh?’
She tried not to shiver, but pulled in another burning breath and ran even faster. When she reached home, a small shabby terrace house, she pushed her key into the lock, rushed in and slammed the door behind her, shutting out the chill winter weather. It was almost Christmas and a string of limp fairy lights flashed around the hall mirror.
‘Chanelle! Chanelle! You back from school?’
It was the usual shriek, coming from upstairs. Still catching her breath, Chanelle cast her eyes in the direction of the noise.
‘Come up here, girl, I heard you come in!’
Chanelle sighed and climbed the stairs to her mother’s fusty, filthy bedroom. Opening the door, she saw Michelle sitting up in bed in a bedraggled nightie, her hair all over the place and her eyes bleary.
‘What is it?’ the girl asked, lolling against the doorframe, one skinny leg tucked behind the other.
‘Bring us a cuppa tea, will you? I’m bloody parched up here, and so’s Bill.’ Her mother gestured to a musky snoring lump next to her under the duvet.
Chanelle sighed. ‘All right.’
She pulled the door shut and went back downstairs, feeling angry. She was always angry these days, from the moment she woke up till she flung herself down on her thin mattress to go to sleep. It was hard to remember a time when she hadn’t been full of rage and spitting with fury at the horribleness of everything. Sometimes she was sure that life had once been different for her: she recalled warmth, sunlit days, and a comfortable feeling of love and security that had felt like being hugged. In her nightmares, she was being ripped away from a soothing presence. She would wake sobbing and more lonely than ever.
In the kitchen she turned on the radio. Music flooded out. It was one of her favourite pop songs and she started to relax as she put the kettle on and washed up a couple of mugs, pouring away the dregs with their sour flotilla of cigarette butts. Her mum and Bill had been up till the early hours, drinking and smoking, which explained why they were still in bed at close on four o’clock. They’d kept her awake until after midnight and then she’d overslept and almost been late for school. She couldn’t afford to get another late card. Her teacher had said that the council officers had reviewed the register and noted her punctuality problems. Then there were all the unauthorised absences. They didn’t understand that Michelle could decide on a whim that her daughter wasn’t going to school that day – that she wanted to take her shopping, or else had errands to be done. And Michelle didn’t care if the truancy officers came calling or not. Nothing seemed to bother her – she didn’t take them seriously when they said that they could take her to court if Chanelle’s attendance didn’t improve. They said she could be fined or even put in prison if she didn’t make sure her daughter got to school on time every day.
A small part of Chanelle hoped her mother would be put in prison, and then she herself would be taken back to that lovely sunny place she recalled from her earliest memories, but she knew that would never happen. Michelle was very good at playing the game. She sensed just when things were getting dicey, and then she would work hard at making a good impression. When the social workers came to visit, Michelle knew exactly how to play the flawed but loving mother who was only trying to do her best for her little girl and striving to manage her life as well as she could. Once the social workers were satisfied and out the door, then it was business as usual.
Chanelle moved in time to the music and sang along as she made the tea: one bag dunked into two stained mugs until the water turned dark, some milk sloshed in and a spoonful of sugar. She carried the mugs upstairs to her mother’s darkened bedroom, where the only light came from the gaps where the curtains were hanging off the rail. Her mother’s boyfriend was still asleep. Michelle, sitting up, took the mug Chanelle held out to her.
‘Thanks, love. What’s that bloody racket down there? You’re always listening to that stuff too loud.’
Chanelle shrugged, thinking it was kind of rich when her mum had music blaring into the early hours with no thought for her daughter trying to get to sleep upstairs, let alone the neighbours.
Michelle took a sip and put the mug down. ‘That’s the business. Just what I needed.’ She reached over to her cigarette packet, took one out and lit it. As she blew out her first lungful of smoke, she said, ‘Nice day at school?’
‘Mum …’ Chanelle began tentatively, sitting down on the bed and plucking nervously at the duvet cover.
‘Yeah?’
‘I was wondering about … about the dancing class.’
Michelle frowned. ‘Not this again, Chanelle.’
‘Please, Mum,’ she begged. ‘I really want to do it, and Mrs Ford says it’s only twenty-five pounds for the half-term—’
‘Twenty-five pounds!’ Michelle t
ook an indignant drag of her cigarette, looking scandalised. ‘Fucking cheek, that’s a fortune! I’ve told you, I can’t afford it. It’s not just the classes … you’ll need dancing shoes and Christ only knows what else. I’m sorry, Chanelle. No.’
There was a silence as Chanelle contemplated the dark disappointment that was settling on her. Then she said in a small voice, ‘But Mrs Ford says I should do the classes … She says I’m talented. She says I have a natural gift for it.’
‘Mrs Ford can shove it up her fucking arse!’ snapped Michelle. ‘How can you be so selfish, Chanelle, when you know what I’m going through?’ Her eyes filled with tears and the corners of her mouth turned down.
Chanelle stared back guiltily. Her mum had been worse than ever lately, drinking and taking drugs and generally losing it. It was because they’d come and taken another baby away – the third that had been born and taken away before it had even come home. This latest was Zara, a little red, scrunch-faced thing that Chanelle had glimpsed only for a moment in the hospital, just after she’d been born. Social Services said that Michelle couldn’t provide a proper environment for a baby, that her lifestyle was too chaotic, and they’d taken little Zara off to be fostered, just like they’d taken Sonny and Jacob, the boys who’d arrived last year and the year before that.
Each disappearance had led to weeks of tears and depression for Michelle and endless drinking, when everything at home would have broken down altogether if it had not been for Chanelle. And there was no talk of taking her away any more. People seemed to have forgotten she was only thirteen. They treated her more like the mother than the child these days, and that was what it felt like sometimes, as she cleaned up the house and tried her best to cook meals and keep her mother functioning.