The Good Girl

by Fiona Neill

  To her relief, Rachel came back into the sitting room. Ailsa smiled until she saw her sister was holding a large glass of whisky and water without ice for Adam.

  ‘Go and take a look at the kitchen,’ said Rachel enthusiastically. ‘It’s gorgeous. There’s an amazing old sink that they found in a skip and the tiles are from Mexico. It’s rare to meet a man these days who can grout, Wolf.’

  ‘How do you know I can grout?’ asked Wolf.

  ‘I know a grouter when I see one,’ said Rachel, realizing she had almost given Ben away.

  Ailsa forced a half smile. Please don’t flirt with him, Rach. And yet she admired the way her sister could establish intimacy with men so quickly.

  ‘Did you always think about the repercussions of your actions when you were younger?’ Wolf asked, turning back to Ailsa.

  ‘Sorry?’ said Ailsa.

  ‘You were talking about responsibility,’ Wolf reminded her.

  ‘Probably not,’ said Ailsa, trying to focus.

  ‘So what was the worst thing that you did and was it really so disastrous?’ he asked. He stared at her longer than was comfortable through his watery blue eyes, and she wondered what he would think if she really told him.

  ‘Ailsa didn’t do anything bad,’ interjected Rachel. ‘I was the one who caused all the trouble. Still do actually.’ She slumped down in the sofa and Wolf sat between them in the middle, closer to Rachel than was necessary. Ailsa was relieved to be the object of his attention no longer. He shifted position until he was sitting cross-legged, his knee touching Rachel’s thigh.

  They were probably swingers. Ailsa looked around the room, searching for evidence, before concluding that swinging probably didn’t require accessories. Then she almost laughed out loud at her ridiculousness. She would tell Harry later. It would make him laugh. She used to be good at making him laugh.

  She checked her watch. It was after six o’clock.

  ‘It’s safe …’ said Romy.

  For a moment Ailsa worried that she had said something out loud.

  ‘To drink,’ Romy said with a frown. ‘It’s after six.’ She was trying to make a joke, Ailsa realized too late. She had missed the beat. Another opportunity for closeness that she had failed to exploit. Perhaps if she hadn’t worked so hard through Romy’s childhood she would feel closer to her now. If she had taken her shopping more then she might have had more influence over what she wore. Even as the thought crossed her mind she smiled at its absurdity. Of course Luke was right. They all dressed the same way. If you couldn’t wear a skirt like that at her age when could you?

  She watched Romy take her phone out of her pocket and scroll down through her messages. She had no idea whether she was on Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram or some new service that Ailsa had never heard of. Teenagers were so digitally promiscuous, restlessly moving from one technology to another the moment their parents knew how to use it.

  The Fairports’ younger son, Jay, who was the same age as Romy, came in the room, mumbled hello and then did the same thing with his phone. They stood beside each other, heads bowed, tapping keyboards, and then miraculously stopped at exactly the same time as though it were part of an elaborate introduction ritual dating back centuries.

  Jay’s dark hair was so long and wild that you couldn’t see his eyes, and when he finally looked up to suggest they all go outside for a snowball fight, Ailsa had to stop herself from commenting on their blueness. It would have betrayed the fact that even though Jay was a pupil at her school, she hadn’t addressed a word to him.

  Ailsa resolved to tell his parents at an appropriate point in the evening how well he had settled. She had no evidence for this beyond the fact that none of his teachers had brought him to her attention. His older brother, Marley, was a different matter.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Marley.

  ‘Sure.’ Luke shrugged. Romy followed them.

  ‘Did you know that the average teenager messages a hundred and fifty times a day?’ said Harry as they left the room. ‘It’s probably causing structural change to their brain.’

  ‘How so?’ asked Wolf.

  ‘The thumb area in their cerebral cortex gets bigger,’ he explained. ‘It’s like violinists. The part of the brain that directs the fingers of the left hand is five times bigger than in people who don’t play an instrument.’

  ‘That is so interesting,’ said Loveday.

  ‘Mum, I’m going outside with them. Mum, can you hear me?’ Ben was standing in front of Ailsa.

  He had taken a can of Coke and put another full one in his pocket. She could see it bulging out of a trouser pocket. He smiled, confident that she wouldn’t make a scene in front of people she didn’t know, and backed out of the door.

  ‘Coat!’ shouted Ailsa into thin air.

  ‘They learn that for themselves pretty quickly, don’t you think?’ said Loveday, stepping towards her with a plate of hot pitta bread and a brown sludge that she identified as aubergine dip. ‘I’m a great believer in children learning from experience. Without experiences, what is life?’

  ‘I guess it depends on the experience,’ said Ailsa quickly, biting into the pitta bread so that she couldn’t say what she really thought. Years as a teacher meant she was expert at summing up parents. She took in the whitened teeth and perfectly nail-varnished hands. Manicured hippy. Lots of effort in looking effortless. She would have spent at least half an hour smudging those kohl-smeared eyes and finding the right shade of lipstick. Their children would be allowed to run wild and when they got into trouble the parents would tell Ailsa that they believed in encouraging creativity and freedom of spirit. ‘You don’t want to learn the hard way that you need to look left and right before you cross the road.’

  It was meant to be a joke but it came out slant.

  ‘If you don’t suffer, you don’t grow,’ said Loveday, who asked questions without waiting for the answers. As she spoke, Loveday swayed from side to side to the music, making Ailsa feel vaguely seasick.

  ‘Stress can stunt growth,’ said Ailsa.

  ‘I mean grow as a human being, spiritual growth,’ said Loveday. ‘You’re very literal. Are you a Virgo?’

  ‘I am,’ said Ailsa, irritated that she had guessed correctly.

  ‘I can plot your astrological chart if you like,’ Loveday offered.

  ‘Er, thanks,’ said Ailsa, unsure how else to respond.

  ‘What beautiful material,’ said Rachel, leaning forward from the sofa to touch the heavily embroidered fabric of Lovejoy’s skirt. ‘How daring to put all these colours together.’

  ‘It’s a Seminole Indian skirt from the 1940s,’ explained Loveday. ‘Wolf and I spent six months living on a Lakota reservation years ago to study tribal medicine, and it was a leaving present.’

  ‘Gosh, that must have been really fascinating,’ said Rachel.

  ‘So, after all your travels how have you ended up moving to this neck of the woods?’ Harry addressed Wolf.

  ‘We’d been living in Ibiza for a while, then sold our business and decided to have an adventure. We did some research and discovered that Luckmore was an ancient medieval site with special spiritual significance.’

  ‘There’s a very auspicious ley line running through the village,’ said Loveday when no one spoke.

  ‘You mean the south-east railway route,’ said Harry, who clearly thought they were joking. ‘The village is littered with the corpses of people who have died waiting for that train to come.’

  Everyone laughed apart from Wolf and Loveday.

  ‘It’s very important for Wolf and me to have a spiritual connection with the place where we live for our work,’ she explained. ‘Especially in this new phase of our life. Luckmore has magical qualities.’

  ‘It’s not exactly bloody Stonehenge though, is it?’ interrupted Adam.

  ‘Physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, we feel close to Mother Earth here,’ said Loveday seriously. ‘This is a place where we can give, share, cleanse and nurtu
re in peace and harmony.’

  ‘So what line of business are you in?’ asked Adam.

  ‘We’re in the healing business,’ said Loveday, resting her hand on Adam’s forearm.

  ‘Doctors?’

  ‘Therapists,’ said Wolf.

  ‘Do you have any particular area of expertise?’ asked Adam.

  ‘We do,’ said Loveday. ‘Sexual healing. Are you aware that human beings are the only species on earth who have sex primarily for pleasure rather than procreation?’

  ‘I hadn’t really thought about it,’ said Adam.

  ‘So what exactly is it that you do?’ asked Rachel.

  ‘Wolf and I try and help couples achieve prolonged multiple intercourse with the same partner,’ explained Loveday. ‘We believe in mutual respect between men and women and reverence for the sexual act. We try and help distinguish between healthy and unhealthy habits.’

  ‘What kind of unhealthy habits?’ asked Rachel when no one else spoke.

  ‘Lack of foreplay, the destructive nature of pornography, the dangers of over-ejaculation for men,’ replied Loveday.

  ‘And will you be continuing that same line of work now you’ve moved here?’ asked Harry as if they had just told them they were accountants.

  ‘We will continue to see our regular clients,’ said Wolf. ‘And we’re hoping to set up a healing centre.’

  ‘Well, that’s great,’ said Rachel. ‘Really lovely. It’s not easy making a living somewhere like this.’

  ‘We fell for the house too,’ said Wolf quickly. ‘All the early-morning light flooding through those huge glass windows. I can’t imagine ever living anywhere else now.’

  ‘I think everyone has a dream house in their head,’ said Rachel. ‘When I wake up at four o’clock in the morning and can’t get back to sleep I imagine where I would really like to live and build it in my imagination. I see myself sitting in a really big apartment somewhere in southern France. It’s got a huge sitting room with two sets of long double doors that open out onto a balcony with black wrought-iron railings that runs the whole way along the front of the house. It overlooks a lake and I have a small rowing boat moored by a jetty. When I get back to sleep I always have the same dream. There’s a small table with a white lace tablecloth beside one of the open windows and a meal for two waiting on the table and someone waiting for me to sit down.’

  ‘Who is it?’ asked Ailsa, grateful for Rachel’s efforts to get the conversation back on track.

  ‘I don’t know, I never see his face,’ said Rachel. ‘Only the back of him.’

  ‘So what brought you folks here?’ asked Wolf.

  ‘Ailsa’s job really. I’m stepping back for a while to write a book based on my research and do the domestic stuff until she gets on top of it all,’ said Harry. He walked behind the sofa and put a hand on Ailsa’s shoulder. Ailsa stayed still.

  ‘How generous to put your wife’s career before your own,’ said Loveday. It had been said many times before but Harry never tired of the mostly female adulation. ‘It requires real confidence for a man to do that.’

  ‘Women do it all the time,’ said Ailsa, instantly regretting the comment because it made her sound ungrateful and faintly defensive.

  ‘Also Ailsa’s parents live close by,’ Harry continued. ‘Lived, I should say. Adam still does. Her mother died shortly before we arrived in the summer. Completely unexpected. Sealed the decision to move. We’re hoping it was the storm before the calm.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear about your loss,’ said Wolf to Ailsa and Adam. His straightforward approach to death marked him out as an American more than his accent, which lurched between English vowel sounds and diphthongs from the Deep South.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Ailsa. ‘It’s been a tough year.’ Her voice faltered. ‘We were living in central London and we thought Luckmore would be a safer environment for our teenagers to push the boundaries.’

  ‘We were beginning to have a few problems with Luke,’ added Harry. ‘And it’s a better school. Especially with such a safe pair of hands at the helm.’

  ‘So what do you do, Harry?’ asked Loveday.

  ‘I’m a cognitive neuroscientist,’ he replied.

  ‘What does that involve?’

  ‘I study how the brain affects behaviour.’

  ‘Wow. I’m impressed,’ said Loveday. ‘That must be very interesting.’

  ‘Mostly it involves spending hours in airless basements with no natural daylight repeating the same experiment over and over again,’ joked Harry.

  ‘So what’s the upside?’ asked Wolf.

  ‘It gives you a fascinating insight into the neural mechanisms underlying cognition. The way the mind and the brain work. Helps us all understand each other a little bit more or at least understand why we do the things we do.’

  ‘What’s the book about?’ asked Loveday.

  ‘I’ve spent the past decade researching the development of the teenage brain. I’m trying to make the science real for a wider audience so that it helps us understand what kids are going through during puberty.’

  ‘And what have you discovered?’ asked Loveday, arching one of her eyebrows. Somehow she made even the most innocuous question sound flirtatious.

  ‘We used to think that the teenage brain was simply a version of the adult brain. But we’ve discovered that the frontal lobes that control impulsive behaviour and inhibit inappropriate behaviour get pruned through adolescence while the thrill-seeking part goes into overdrive. This has a big effect on behaviour. Teenagers basically have Ferrari engines and Fiat brakes because the rational pre-frontal cortex ends up playing second fiddle to the risk-taking ventral striatum. The front of your brain isn’t fully developed until your late twenties.’

  ‘It’s a book based on science but hopefully with wide appeal to parents up and down the land,’ Ailsa explained.

  ‘Most mental health problems start in adolescence, and the neural pathways laid down then run very deep,’ Harry added.

  ‘So what you’re saying is that parents have to function as a temporary pre-frontal cortex to their teenage children?’ said Wolf.

  ‘I couldn’t have put it any better myself,’ said Harry.

  ‘Harry is very big on impulse control,’ said Rachel, a hint of alcohol-fuelled menace in her tone. ‘But there’s a big difference between theory and practice, isn’t there, Harry?’

  ‘So why are teenagers so impulsive?’ asked Loveday.

  ‘In a nutshell,’ Harry began, ‘during adolescence there’s an increase in the activity of neural circuits using dopamine, a neurotransmitter central in creating our drive for reward. Increased dopamine means adolescents are drawn to thrilling and exhilarating sensations. Their baseline level of dopamine is low but its release in response to experience is higher, which is why they say they are bored a lot and very impulsive. They are focused on the positive rewards from experiences but can’t value the risks and downside. All addictive behaviours and substances involve the release of dopamine. Addictive pathways get laid down and so it’s more difficult for teenagers to change addictive habits.’

  ‘You blow my mind, Harry,’ said Loveday. ‘That’s wild.’

  ‘It’s just science,’ said Harry enthusiastically.

  The front door banged and the children returned. Luke and Marley came back into the sitting room and leaned against the bookshelf, feigning nonchalance, but Ailsa could see from the red glow of their cheeks and the easy banter that the sullen teenage posturing was just that. Luke was taller than anyone else in the room, Ailsa noted, as his shoulder nudged the bookshelf and one of the Ukrainian eggs rolled alarmingly close to the edge. Ben shuffled in last. His fringe was frozen with snow like an Exmoor pony’s. His teeth were chattering and his bare feet had turned a gentle shade of blue.

  ‘Why does the hair on your arm stand up when you’re cold, Dad?’ Ben asked.

  ‘It’s a reflex inherited from our much hairier ancestors to try and keep warm,’ Harry explained.
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br />   ‘Come, stand by the fire, Ben,’ said Loveday, dragging a beanbag seat over to the hearth. ‘We’ll thaw you out.’

  The conversation stalled and atomized. Ailsa listened to fragments of other people’s talk like a dog chasing different scents. Deodorant. Could be a killer. Reading Festival. Luke had come back to find someone had done a shit inside his tent. Rapeseed oil. The new wonder food. Could also be used as fuel. The price of fuel. Fracking. Rachel confessed to Loveday that she was dating someone much younger. Loveday approved of the match by pointing out that their sex drives would be perfectly matched. Ailsa heard Rachel whisper that they hadn’t had sex yet. That surprised her. Rachel questioned Loveday about depilation. How much was enough? What would the average twenty-seven-year-old man expect?

  ‘It depends how he’s been conditioned,’ said Loveday.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Rachel.

  ‘If he’s twenty-seven that means he was fourteen when the Internet hit the mainstream so I would say less is definitely more. There’s a chance he might never have seen a fully grown muff. They’re practically endangered.’

  ‘That’s so true,’ agreed Rachel. ‘A teacher at Ailsa’s school told me that when he showed a film on childbirth several of the boys asked what the women had between their legs because they had never seen pubic hair. One of them who’s doing Shakespeare for A-level English thought it was a merkin.’

  It suddenly occurred to Ailsa that this was something Matt Harvey, her recently recruited head of Biology, must have told her sister. Rachel and Matt had met for five minutes in her office three months earlier when Rachel had come to meet Ailsa for lunch. She had left them alone for all of thirty seconds while she had a brief discussion with her assistant about the agenda for a governors’ meeting. When she came back he was asking Rachel about where she had spent her summer holiday. They couldn’t have talked about his Sex Ed class then. They must have seen each other again. Ailsa frowned as an idea took shape.

  ‘What’s a merkin?’ questioned Loveday.

  ‘A pubic wig,’ Rachel elaborated. ‘The teacher blamed Internet porn. That’s where they learn about sex, and all the women are completely bald.’