This is why, she was saying. This is why. And there is no way around it or through it or under it and you will not ever make me love you. This is our truth, she was telling me. This is it, Darling, this is it.
I needed air, after that. What was going on with her?
Slate skies outside, with a wetness in the air that only Britain managed to do well, that sort of arsey, grudging rain. The wind powered around the garden, the best sort of mad weather, far superior to snowdrifts and torrential rain. The pathetic fallacy of the troubled mind, for me more honest than the sun.
My pulse was only now starting to slow. There had been more, in her room, too much: I had bent to gather an upturned cup and some clothes from under the bed and felt the brush of plastic on my fingertips. A minuscule bag, with traces of what I knew had to be cocaine in it. Or rather the residue of 98 per cent cutting agent if the prevailing wisdom was anything to go by – not even the vices were true any more.
On the windiest days, or nights, I looked into the wheeling sky and remembered who I was. But who exactly was my step-daughter?
No, I could not afford to doubt. Love had to always win. I would not tell Thomas about either the drugs or the little bundle of hate she had sent me to find; he would overreact, kick up an almighty fuss that would help no one, I knew it. The girl had no mother: I would simply have to give her more.
My mum used to give me treats, intimate delicacies that only she could know how much I would savour. The first swollen purple fig fresh from the garden, plucked out of that corner of Negril which flourished behind some garages in RG22. An expensive not-on-the-sofa pomegranate. The third pancake in, when pan and wrist were well warmed up and before the buttered oil burned, the lemon and sugar all ready to go. Fresh cockles, bursting bright with vinegar and peppered in two shakes, from the most crowded stall on Clacton holidays. Or best of all, while our Sunday guests and other family might hope for the succulent ‘oysters’ from our roast chicken, Mum and I would know that she had already sneaked me all the real treasure: the bony, gnawable chicken neck, the hot liver, dusted with a bit of bog-standard table salt. My tongue thrilled, my heart was too spoiled and sated to quicken at its own good fortune. Even in the most trying of times, always the chicken neck, the giblets.
It is only since I have had Stevie that I have realised how important the just-for-my-mouth things were. How much I was loved.
I could offer Lola some history to adopt: one of our best-loved family drinks. Not that Jamaican Christmas favourite, sorrel, I could not bear the smell, but pineapple punch. This I did not need a book for – I could still taste the tart simplicity from the barbecues of many White summers.
You blended pineapple juice with condensed milk, cinnamon and nutmeg. A little water, if you wanted, plus a dash of vanilla (the cheaper essence was my favourite, nothing too rich and fancy). You near-froze the pineapple juice first, really chilled it out, then served over ice. The true family secret was to add dark rum for all except the youngest children, one good splash to give it that punchy kick. I would pass on that though for Lola, so as not to upset Thomas.
It was those little private tastes of things – sweet fruit and salty insides – that knitted families together. Lola might feel angry at present, but I would take care of her.
After all, this family was my community now. Every other night on the news they would talk about ‘the Black Community’ as if we all – from Somalis plucked wet from the Med to third-generation Tobagonian barristers – hung out together in a warehouse made of breeze blocks somewhere off the North Circular. Sure, the collective mattered, more than ever. But without us Waites, I had no real family, no people. I had to make this family work.
Thomas didn’t notice things, though – couldn’t help with some things – and I had my hands full with Stevie, and sometimes I knew I was missing things. Not parties, or theatre trips, or coffee mornings: to hell with all that. I missed things around Littleton Lodge, at home. I would go off to watch Stevie walk through water for Sally and when I returned things would feel different, the air would have somehow changed. Things did not always add up.
I could hear her, that violent lowing as she threw up into the toilet bowl. Had to burn. I called out:
‘Are you ill?’
‘No!’
Then I saw it: her phone on her bedside table. Before I could think, it was in my hand, about to lock any second. I tapped, there it was: Find My iPhone. Before I could stop them, my fingers were doing the smart thing and in moments – fuckadoodled00 – thanks to Family Sharing, I was following her right back.
I replaced the phone. ‘Lola?’
‘No, you can go, I’m …’ The predictable pause. ‘Fine.’
‘Lola, open up, please.’
A much longer pause. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’
It would soon be time to confirm to Thomas that his daughter had a more serious problem than even we had realised.
It was a Wednesday. I wanted to hop into Mercy and drive to a cobbled market half an hour away, get Thomas the most unusual French cheese I could lay my hands on, a proper nutty stinker, and perhaps a round of that artisan bread we hadn’t eaten for a while. I needed cash: we were talking seriously out in the sticks and no one ever wanted to be the Nubian nube who thought the world should bend to their metropolitan plastic. A twenty had been tucked away in my purse. I stared at the empty leather, bemused. Dropped? Spent and forgotten? Or had it been stolen?
Would she, though? Thomas was always dishing out money to Lola. What was all that about? Sure, I gave Stevie play money, a £2 coin to go up to the nice lady and buy the balloons, but Lola, these young girls. They sucked money up with no shame.
Only 7 a.m. It was hard to stomp quietly but I did it anyway. I tramped without a sound into Spare Room No.1, which I sometimes used as a dressing room to hide unseductive wriggles into some newlywed whim of lace constriction. Might I have been …? No. Bollocks. I was sure – in my bones, in my blood – that Lola had taken my money.
A purple double-take: on the pillow was a belladonna-dark wisp of bra. Not mine. Lola’s over-here-boys little purple bra, her colours from the ‘Will day’ joust, poking out from under the duvet. I strode over and snatched it up. Real silk. The girl meant business. I had worn efficient, roomy, stretch-cotton triangles at her age. Working bras to promote well-behaved bosoms, not wanton scraps of fancy. Proper brassieres. Büstenhalters, as we girls had once joked in deep hausfrau voices. What was wrong with them all, these girls today?
No £20 of mine though, on the bed or anywhere.
Yuh nuh water yah money plant today? No? Go find a likkle baby spider.
I did not mind the money, I had given her more without hesitation; but I minded the taking, the lie.
The following day I found a puff of candyfloss panties floating around in Spare Room No.2, next door. She was spreading her goddamn underwear all over our home, and for what?
‘Thomas!’
‘What?’ He had shuffled through, perusing some plans.
‘This. Is. Not. Acceptable …’
I held the pink spun-sugar knickers high on one deeply unhappy finger.
‘Well? Well?’ I demanded his outrage.
‘Are they Lola’s? I’ll ask her to—’
‘Don’t ask her anything! Tell her! No more knickers everywhere!’
‘OK, Darling, but—’
‘And tell your messy-messy daughter to stay out of my purse while she’s at it!’
‘Darling!’
But it was too late. I flung the fairground attraction undies so that they crumpled beside the laundry basket and stalked downstairs, in time to see Lola step inside the front door. She was dressed in another tuft of breezy nonsense, this with some battered velvet blazer thrown over it, looking up to where we had been standing as if waiting for Act II to begin. Her millpond expression told me our words had all been absorbed.
Words like acid, burning my tongue. I wanted to spit it all free, feeling not one
year older than her in that moment, wanting to ask if she’d thought to get dressed that day, if she’d mugged a tramp for his jacket, and if so could she please use his cash to buy herself a big old can of none of your goddamn business? But her look, that odd placid look, cooled my mouth.
My feet would not move, so I let her pass me on the stairs – yuh know that’s bad luck, gyal. I was not sure about all of my mother’s superstitions. But even I could feel it in my water, read it on our upheld palms: Thomas and I had seriously different parenting styles and that could only spell trouble.
I confronted her; I had to.
‘Lola,’ I said. ‘I found some Bright New Britain material in your room. How long have you supported them?’
‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘A friend of a friend was here, left it here or something. Don’t get stressy.’
I said, ‘I don’t get stressy. Do you agree with it?’
Just like that, straight out.
‘No way. No,’ she said.
‘What about the white powder?’
‘What?’
‘There was a bag with what looked like … Are you doing cocaine, Lola?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Probably from sweets, or make-up or something.’
‘It was cocaine.’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘What if Stevie had found it?’
‘God, all right,’ she said. ‘But it was all someone else’s, so please don’t bother mentioning it to Dad. Not that, or the leaflet thing. Please, I’m begging you. I’m begging you.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘I won’t.’
And, although I knew better, this cold girl had begged until I had melted, so that was that. For now.
‘Lovely day for it!’
The marathon was to be a homespun slapdash extravaganza. All nineteen girls rocked up at our door, in the black, white and pink T-shirts that they had designed themselves: ‘Stevie’s Wonders – Defying Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy’ on their fronts (they were educated girls) and ‘26 Miles Signed, Sealed, Delivered’ (they were retro-funky girls) on the back. Thomas and I had rigged up a sort of finishing line with a wide baby-blue ribbon from the local department store. Better still, Guy and Allie had rallied a number of the other neighbours to congregate alongside the photographer from the Gazette for the 1.30 p.m. ETA.
At 1.23 p.m. they rounded the corner like the unstoppable force they were – young women on a mission. Bucket in hand, they managed to smile and shake down strangers for cash while striding forth at well over my personal top speed of 3 mph. Amazons of compassion they were, strong and slender and hyperactively kind. They came nearer and closer until, with Stevie waiting by the chocolate-box ribbon, they let their well-oxygenated lungs explode into a song about how lovely he was.
Stevie, my baby, was beaming, unsteady with excitement and singing along at immodest volume. I thought about patting his shoulder but the Gazette man was already taking potshots at our merry band, so I merely looked on, fond and proud for posterity. Stevie’s favourite SW, Aoife – a minxy little redhead with socially conscious and welcoming bosoms – was singing right at him as they crunched into the gravel and – la! – broke through the tape on to our doorstep.
‘Woo! Hi there, little one …’
Glasses of iced water knocked together in congratulation; there were selfies with Stevie; there was cereal bar scoffing and loud laughter all round. These girls. These hearty, generous girls. They really did seem to love my boy; perhaps it was the dimples. They had smashed their £5k target and as they left to clamber into someone’s boyfriend’s minibus, they rattled their bucket and swung still lively haunches while waving goodbye to their cause and mascot, trailing a faint salt-and-urea air.
We fizzed for a good hour after they had gone. When would the paper come out and hadn’t they walked for a long way and wasn’t that a lot of money raised in Stevie’s name and hadn’t all the neighbours got ever so excited?
An mi, Darling. Mi suh proud.
The whole day I stayed happy, and stomach-sick. All of us in the papers: our faces, our names, our house. I had wanted to pull this event off for Stevie, but who else might I have brought to our door along with those delightful supporters? My son, though, always my son: I had pushed down the fear and strangled the worry and roared those young ladies over the finish line louder than anyone. In the end, Lola’s reaction made it worth the trouble twice over. She was shining, on this unusual day. She was enjoying my son more than ever. To watch them together now, at least from a distance, you could only see an age-distanced brother and sister.
Shame she still hated my guts.
She was just so rude to him. My mum would have given me a look that shut me up for a week if I had dared to be as feisty to my father. As ever, it was Mum’s voice in my ears when Lola roared and slammed her door:
‘I’m not doing it!’
An him workin’ all de hours God send to keep her in her highty-tighty ways. Chupid chile. Nuh ha no manners.
I tried to be the bigger person. Even, steady and unfrightening, I tried to give Thomas full emotional support in my role as secondary parent, the same as he did for me with Stevie.
But they tested it, she was testing it!
There they went, off once more into their exclusive little huddles. I overheard them in her bedroom after the door had been slammed shut, in operatic fashion. There was that spoiled mezzo soprano:
‘I’m not doing it, Dad!’
The bass murmur, hard to make out.
A top E, or F, that made the windows quake:
‘How many times do I have to say it? No!’
I tried to creep closer, get a front-row seat, but then Stevie came up, tugging at my hand and asking me when we were going to the doctor’s.
Lola, a handshake away from some connoisseur of racist literature – but then weren’t we all? – surely had to be starting to need me soon. She never needed me. Any tiny chick of hope I had nursed, thinking I might have made some progress, had long been drowned in the shallows.
Just the thought drove me out of the house; I had to get some air.
I was off to the shops, alone. Stevie could stay with Lola for a while; the two of them were gabbing so much that they did not look up as I called goodbye.
I shopped. Pattie’s chicken, Gloucestershire Old Spot chops, cheese-stuffed peppadews in their oily tub, pomegranates from a Lebanese stall. It was busy; High Desford on a Saturday was always buzzing with some unexpected entertainment. This time a man on stilts, in a yellow T-shirt and super-length striped trousers, was bending, with no little skill, to throw his employer’s brand of sugar-free sweets into a ripple of waving primary school kids. Stevie. I should have brought Stevie after all.
I made my way through the throng, pausing to snatch a sweet from the air as it flew towards my face. Strawberry, his favourite, with a grinning red-maned unicorn on the wrapper. I turned to go back home.
Nipping left, I cut through an alleyway that would save me five minutes of elbowing crowds. I had reached almost halfway down when the way ahead darkened. Men. Three of them, standing abreast, blocking my path.
I looked behind me. Nothing, no one. I edged on. With the sun behind them, the men stood in shadow. I could not make out faces but the middle one was him. The man from the supermarket. Darren Hodson. I knew it now. All three were coming towards me, marching on me as one. Dry mouth, acceleration of heart, dilation of pupils, constriction of blood vessels, of throat. Fuck, help me. The men barrelled towards me and I froze.
Help.
A rustling of muscled polyester, I was elbow-hit, turned hard, my shoulder my hip my shin my chest my side, tumbled in an angry whirlwind of men. A last ankle-shove and they had pushed past, leaving me slumped and shaking, facing back the way I had come. Hands on knees, panting, I watched the three walk away, now in single file, taking strides towards the old white lady coming towards them. Still frozen, I watched them flatten themselves against the wall to let her pass. I looked down. My handbag
had dropped, but I still had my purse. The sweet, Stevie’s red unicorn sweet, had been crushed into the mud. Tears started before I could turn away.
When I got back I was still rushing, still flooded with hormones from my shocked brain, shaking as I turned the key in our lock. Relief, and loud music, lifted me as soon as I walked into our home. Too brilliant, that embracing sound: Stevie Wonder himself, ‘For Once in My Life’. It took the tremor from my shouted hello.
Nothing back. On the floor there was post. Junk, pizza flyers, white envelopes. One dark red-pink and orange envelope. I bent down: Ms Lola Waite.
Leaving it on the floor, I stalked through the hall until I could see into the artfully ramshackle snug where I had left them. There I saw her dancing, with Stevie, my artless boy, standing there looking up at her.
‘This is you!’
I did not burst in. I hovered unseen, needing – despite that garish envelope; because of it – to spy on this rarest of moments. I very much needed to see her being kind.
Be nice! Poor mawga likkle girl got no mommy.
Stevie was kicking out his KAFOed legs, laughing so much he could barely stand. Now Lola changed: she jerked, convulsed her limbs, converted her carefree shimmy into a rocking, straight-legged lollop.
‘This is you, this is!’
Then she leaned in low to him, face up close to his. The music played on, deafening – I could not quite hear what I am sure I heard, but I swear I felt her say:
‘This is you, isn’t it? Is this you, Stevie the wonderspaz?’
I marched in.
‘What are you doing?’
Darling Page 11