by AJ Taft
“I know why you’re pleased she’s not such a daddy’s girl anymore.”
Stuart’s cheeks flush as he takes a mouthful of wine. “We’ve been seeing each other for over a year. Although ‘seeing each other’ is a bit misleading; her dad rarely lets her out of his sight anyway.”
Lily holds up her hands. “It’s none of my business. Sorry I shouldn’t have said…”
“We probably shouldn’t have done it.” Stuart stands up and takes his hardly touched meal over to the sink. He leans his back against the worktop and runs both his hands through his hair. “I know it was only two days ago, but a lot’s changed since then.”
“It’s obvious she has no regrets, so you shouldn’t have either. I wish my first time had been like that.” Lily tries to laugh. “I’m surprised I ever had sex again.”
Stuart looks at her, waiting for her to say more.
She takes another mouthful from her wine glass. “I don’t want to talk about it. Can I have more?”
Stuart’s brow crinkles into a frown.
“Wine,” she shrieks. Stuart smiles and fills her glass. Lily takes another gulp of wine. God she’s shit at this conversation stuff. Lily forces a forkful of lasagne into her mouth, trying to push the food around her plate to make it look like she has eaten more than she has. “Wow, that was delicious. Shall I wash up?”
“No, let’s go and sit down for a bit.” He ushers her through to the front room and lights a few more candles, while Lily flops onto the settee, undoing the button on her tight black trousers.
“So,” he says coming to sit beside her, bringing with him her glass of wine, “you’re a woman of substance now. What will you do with the money?”
Lily sighs. “I don’t know. I guess this is my inheritance. My mum didn’t leave me anything, so I should be a bit sensible. I might go on holiday. What would you do with seventy-five thousand pounds?”
“Oh something boring, probably. I’d use it as a deposit to buy a house. Stop me having to hand over all my hard earned cash to a money grabbing landlord, who does nothing in return.”
Lily’s struck by the decisions that lay before her. Where would she buy a house? She has no ties to anywhere really. Will she go back to Leeds and carry on where she left off? Accrington is hardly appealing. She realises how alone she is, and her throat tightens.
Stuart puts his arm around her shoulders. “Hey, don’t get sad. It must be so weird not having family, even though all mine do is drive me crazy. Don’t think about it now. There’s too much to take in. You can stay here as long as you want you know. I was wondering what I’d do for Christmas, it’s only a week away.”
“What about your parents? Don’t you have to go and see them?”
“They’ve gone to stay with my sister in Mexico. She emigrated about eight years ago, and now she’s married to a Mexican guy. They had a baby girl this year. My mum and dad are over the moon about their first grandchild. There’s no way they’d miss her first Christmas. They’ve gone about three times over the baggage allowance with toys. God knows what Mexican customs will make of them.”
“So you’ve got no one to spend Christmas with either?”
He shakes his head. “Graham, that’s my eldest brother, is skiing and George, my other brother, is backpacking in Thailand.”
“Blimey. You’re all well travelled.”
“Well, my dad’s a journalist, so we were dragged all over the place when we were younger, and I guess it becomes a habit. But before your heart breaks, don’t feel too sorry for me. There’s an invitation from my Aunt Dorothy, to go round to theirs for turkey and the trimmings. But my cousins are probably the most boring kids you’re ever likely to meet. Tom plays the viola. Have you ever met anyone who plays the viola?” He shakes his head. Then a thought occurs to him. “You could come with me if you like though. It might be fun if you were there.”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“Or, we could just stay here. Maybe persuade Fiona and Jo to join us after they’ve done their family bit. Just don’t leave.” The words fall out of his mouth too quickly. He takes a deep breath. “I mean, I don’t want you to go yet. I’ve been preparing myself for a lonely few weeks, and then you three arrived and now I don’t want to go back to being lonely again.”
Lily looks up at him and something happens in her stomach. She may be about to be sick. “Shit.”
Stuart stares at her for a long time and then he leans forwards and kisses her, on the mouth. It’s more of a brush with his lips than a kiss at first, but Lily is so scared of what will happen when it stops, that she starts kissing him back. They kiss for a long time, Lily’s eyes tightly closed.
She pulls away. “Fuck, what are we doing? Stop.”
“I absolutely love you.” He stares unwavering into her eyes. “I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help myself. I’ve never been moved by anyone, the way I am with you. The first time I saw you on the front street, the way you walk…”
Lily’s eyes are itching; no one’s ever told her they love her before. She curls into a ball. Stuart pours her another glass of wine. “What about Fiona? You’re her boyfriend.” She sits up to accuse him. Men, they’re all the same. Always want what they haven’t got.
“I know.” He closes his eyes, head tilted to the ceiling. He sighs. “I think she’s great. She’s spirited and energetic and ready to take on the world. She’s had everything you haven’t, Lily. And before I met you, I thought I loved her. I do love her, but it’s not like I love you.”
“Stop saying that.” She pulls a cushion over her head.
“I love you, Lily.”
“You don’t know me,” is Lily’s muffled response.
“I didn’t choose to feel like this.” Stuart stands up. “It would be much easier for me if I didn’t feel the way I do about you, but I do. I can’t help it. I’ve tried hard to ignore it, but it’s hopeless. And I don’t think Fiona’s going to be broken-hearted, I truly don’t. She’s only fifteen. It was never going to be forever.”
“You’re not going to tell her.” Lily jumps up from the settee. “You can’t tell her.”
“Of course I’m going to tell her.” Stuart puts his arm out to her. “I don’t have to tell her about this, but I do have to tell her it’s not there between us. She’ll know anyway.”
Lily wishes she lived in olden times. She would just faint right now. It’s all too much, sensory overload, system malfunction. She needs to shut down.
Chapter 28
Lily’s tongue is stuck to the roof of her mouth and her head hurts. She opens one eye and sees the back of Jo’s dark head on the pillow next to her. Lily lifts her head a little higher on the pillow, hoping the headache will subside if she sits up. A wave of nausea runs through her body. She looks to the side table for her bottle of water. It isn’t there. Neither is the bedside lamp; it’s been replaced by a radio alarm clock she doesn’t recognise. Lily turns to Jo, and as she turns her head, a thought strikes her. Jo’s hair isn’t dark, it’s bright peroxide white, and anyway, Jo is in Liverpool. A sound, somewhere between a yell and scream fills the room, and it takes Lily a moment to realise it came from within her own body.
“What?” Stuart sits up, bare-chested, looking for the cause of Lily’s scream.
“Oh fuck,” says Lily, pulling the sheet up and being briefly reassured to see she’s still wearing her T-shirt.
“Don’t worry. You fell asleep on the sofa, I carried you in here. I didn’t want you to wake up alone.”
Lily swings her legs out of bed. They are bare. She shakes her head.
“Ok, I didn’t want to wake up alone. So I carried you here. Nothing happened.”
The sound of the telephone breaks the silence. Lily flings herself out of bed, momentarily embarrassed to be seen in her knickers, and kicking out of her head the thought that she should have shaved her legs. She runs out of the door, forgetting to take into account the fact that Stuart’s bedroom door is much closer to the stairs than her
own. She meets the stairs much faster than she imagined she would. Half-falling, half-jumping down the stairs, she slams into the wall at the bottom and grabs the telephone from the hall table.
“I’m at the train station in Skipton,” says Fiona, not waiting to hear who has picked up the phone. “Will you come and collect me?”
“Hi,” Lily shrieks. ‘Too much, tone it down’ she thinks. Her cheeks flush. She tries to remember how her voice really sounds. “What happened? Is everything alright?”
“Will you come and get me please?”
“I can’t, Jo’s not here. She went back to Liverpool, but I think she’s coming back today. Hang on, let me ring her and see what’s she’s up to. Are you ok?”
“I’m ok.” Fiona says in a voice that implies someone else isn’t. “I’ll tell you all about it when I see you. I can’t wait here for two hours.” She sighs heavily. “I’ll have to get the train. I think there’s one in twenty minutes. I’m coming to stay for a few days.”
“Right!” Lily tries to stop her voice sounding like a screech. She takes a breath. “I’ll meet you at the station.”
As soon as she puts the phone down, Lily picks it up again and rings Jo.
“Hi, Lily love,” says Jo’s mum. “She’s still in bed.”
“Would you mind waking her up? It’s kind of important.”
“What are you girls up to? I get the feeling there’s some big secret.”
“Nothing.” Lily sits down on the floor and puts her head between her knees. A couple of minutes later Jo comes to the phone.
“Fiona’s coming back.”
“What happened?”
“She didn’t say. Just that she’s coming back.”
“Does her dad know…”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”
“Does she need a lift?”
“No, she’s going to get the train. I just thought… you should know. She’s coming back. When are you coming back?”
“I’ll set off in about half an hour,” says Jo.
Lily puts the phone down and stands frozen for a moment. Then she turns and runs back up the stairs, two at a time. Stuart is in the bathroom. Lily can hear the sounds of the shower spitting out water. She fights the urge to throw open the door, and sits instead on the edge of the bed, picking at a loose flap of skin round her thumbnail. It starts to bleed.
She practises sentences in her head, but they all sound like clichés from soap operas. “Last night was a mistake.” Or, “It can never happen again.” Or for top marks, “I can’t lose my sister when I’ve only just found her.”
In the end Stuart saves her the trouble. He emerges from the bathroom, his dark hair damp. “I’ve got to run. I’m on earlies again. I’ll be back about four.” He puts his hand on the top of her arm, and stares into her eyes.
“Fiona and Jo are on their way back. They’ll be here by lunchtime.”
“We’ll sort this out, Lily. Don’t worry.”
She’s aware she wants to kiss him again. He doesn’t give her the chance.
“I’ve got to run.” And he’s gone. Two minutes later the emptiness hits her. She wanders around the flat, marvelling at her own triteness. After all the events of the past few days, her mind chooses to focus on a kiss, replaying it over and over in her mind, until her insides are tied in knots.
At the train station, Lily tries out various poses as she waits for the train from Skipton to arrive, trying to remember how she would normally stand. Hands in pockets or on hips? A minute after, the train pulls in, Fiona runs over to Lily and almost knocks her off her feet. Lily closes her eyes as she hugs her sister back.
Fiona looks exhausted; her eyes are puffed up and red. After spending the week of the kidnap wearing a mixture of Jo, Stuart and Lily’s clothes, or the new clothes she bought in Lancaster, she looks odd wearing her own clothes; an olive green leather jacket that Lily hasn’t seen before, and a pair of blue jeans. Her hair has been cut short and styled, making her look elfish.
“So, how was it?” Lily pulls back from Fiona.
Fiona shakes her head. “I’ll tell you when we get home. Can we get a pasty? I’m starving.”
Jo is pulling up in the mini when they reach the flat. “So go on then, don’t keep us in suspenders, tell us what happened.” says Jo, as they sit down in the front room with a tea tray. Jo starts to roll a spliff.
“It was awful.” Fiona flops down on the settee, the back of her hand against her forehead.
“Well, go on then,” says Lily.
Fiona raises herself a little in the seat. “First he was really pleased to see me, obviously. Mum was out. I was like ‘what do you mean she’s out?’ and she’s in London for the week because she’s got some big case on. Court of Appeal, apparently. Anyway, then Dad told me he’d told her we’d had a row, and I’d gone to stay at Caroline’s for a few days.” Fiona glances at Lily, and then Jo, and then back to Lily again. “I was kidnapped for six days and my mother doesn’t even know.”
“Oh,” says Lily, aware Fiona is waiting for a response.
“When I asked him why he’d told her that, he looked really shifty and said it was because he didn’t want her to worry. So I said, ‘well, are you going to tell her the truth now?’ And he said he’d rather we didn’t. And then I said didn’t he think that I’d want to tell my own mother about the torture I’ve suffered at the hands of these evil people? And he said ‘Fiona, they didn’t torture you’ and I said how did he know. And then he said ‘well, did they?’ and I said no, actually I’d been quite well looked after. Then he turned and opened the fridge, and without looking at me, he said did I find out anything about the kidnappers? And he was just so scared, not that I’d been tortured, or whatever, but that I might have found out.”
Fiona’s eyes fill with tears and her voice shakes as she continues, “And he just looked so pathetic, so old and so pathetic, and I found myself thinking, you’re not my dad. You’re not the dad I left behind. You don’t even look like him. And then the phone rang and he said, ‘that’ll be your mother. She wants to talk to you.’ And he answered the phone and told Mum I was in the bath, while I was stood there, right in front of him, and he told her I’d ring her back in ten minutes. And then he begged me to tell her I’d just been staying at Caroline’s for six days, even though I have never stayed at Caroline’s for more than one night in all my life. And so, I didn’t know what to do, so I rang her and she asked if we’d made up and I said ‘I guess’. And then she started going on about this bloke in the court case who’s doing everything he can to avoid paying maintenance for his kid, even though he’s a top lawyer. And I thought, ‘my mother doesn’t know anything about me.’ I was like, ‘Mum, I’ve just been kidnapped by my own sister.’
“Did you?” says Jo.
“No, I went to bed.”
“So what happened yesterday? Why didn’t you ring?” asks Lily.
“Well, Dad had taken the day off work and we went to Gargrave, to this pub we sometimes go to. And then we, well, we went shopping, and I got my hair cut and he bought me some new clothes, including that leather jacket.” She nods to the armchair, where the olive green jacket she was wearing at the train station, now lies draped. “I’ve wanted that for ages. And then he suggested we watch Dirty Dancing, which I love and he hates.”
“Ok, now I’m feeling sorry for him,” says Jo. “Joke, kind of,” she adds as Fiona frowns at her.
“And then this morning he was being all jolly, like he knew he’d got away with it all. And he said, ‘Don’t forget your mother’s coming back today. I’m sure she’ll want to know what you and Caroline got up to.” And then he asked me if I wanted cereal or toast. And I just said to him, “Dad, I know you know who kidnapped me.”
Fiona pauses. Lily is sitting on the edge of the settee, “And?”
“And he dropped the carton of juice he was holding, and it splashed all up his trousers. It looked like he’d wet himself.”
Fiona reaches
for a cigarette from Jo’s packet.
“Then what?” asks Lily.
Fiona lights the cigarette and exhales a plume of smoke. “I asked him if Mum knew about Lily and he said no. So, I said, ‘I want you to tell Mum, or I will.’”
“Shit.”
“And then I told him I was going to stay with my sister, who’s lovely. And I said, ‘if you want to speak to me, you’ll have to speak to her, because we come as a pair from now on.’” Fiona smiles at Lily. “And that was pretty much it.”
Lily lies back on the sofa and closes her eyes. “Oh my God.”
“Oh, and I told him we’re staying here.”
Lily springs back upright. “What?”
“What can he do? I’m sixteen in three weeks. If he does contact the police, they’re not really going to do anything, and anyway he’s not going to contact the police, because what’s he going to tell them? I was kidnapped and he didn’t tell anyone, not even his own wife, for fear that I may have been kidnapped by his other secret daughter and he didn’t want to look bad?”
“But he might come.” Jo dashes over to the window, looking down on the street below.
Fiona’s cheeks redden. “I might have been being tortured by evil paedophiles and he didn’t do anything, because he was too scared people might find out he told a lie.”
“Fuck, Fiona,” Lily says. “He might come here at any time?”
“I can’t believe he didn’t tell my mum I’d been kidnapped,” Fiona’s voice has a whiney quality to it.
“He knew it was me, that’s why,” Lily snaps at Fiona. “He knew from the beginning. I said he would and now he might just turn up wanting his seventy-five grand back. Sorry, eighty-five grand. Oh, God.”
Jo sits down on the settee next to Lily. She reaches for Lily’s hand. No one speaks. The sound of the front door opening makes them all lean closer to each other. They hear footsteps on the stairs. Lily puts her head into the front of Jo’s jumper. The front room door opens and Stuart appears. The sound of his voice makes the blood rush to Lily’s face and she’s glad no one can see her. She keeps her head buried in Jo’s lap. “It was a quiet day, so I begged for the day off. The suspense was killing me. What’s happening?”