Flavour cannot be forced into food. Take a fig. A plain, miraculous, green-purple fig like any one of those my mother plucked for me from the back-of-the-garages wall. I know nothing of how to grow them, no mulchy tale to be dug up there, but when it comes to the eating, that I know. A fig. You can cut it, when entirely ripe, with a kitchen knife. You will, in a deft chop or two, get quarters or halves of green-cream-crimson fruit that are perfectly pleasant and ideal for eating. But. Take your next fig. Now dig your thumbs in deep and tear it slowly in two, urge it open. There: see it come at you, see it explode into a riot of fruitfulness, become more than it was, voluptuous.
Persuasion always tastes different. Better.
This is what I wanted, for Lola and me. Not a sharp, swift reckoning, but a ripe response to my gentle inducements, a burgeoning towards what we could and had to be. Now, was that too much to fucking ask?
‘So you see,’ I said to Lola, standing a few feet from her father. ‘I know his needs might seem to get in the way sometimes, but it is really important that Stevie feels valued and, well, listened to. We want him to feel as normal as possible, don’t we?’
‘Sure,’ she said, still texting.
‘Lola …’ began Thomas.
‘Yes.’ But she looked up, thumbs now still. ‘I like Stevie. He’s fine. Stevie is not the problem.’
She looked down again, eyes hard and glittering, thumbs jittering, feet joining in. Not a problem, was what we pretended to hear. We had all heard the truth, but not one of us said a word more.
The first Monday after half-term. I planned to give the house a good going over while the family were out. We still left Agata from up the road some cleaning, plus all the washing and ironing. She needed the money; we valued her taciturn efficiency. But I liked to make myself useful and it had been ages since I’d been given any work. The bank nurse managers for St Foillan’s had been dead keen for a while. I had been ‘popular’ they had said at one time, ‘a great asset’, even ‘one of the family’. Then I had moved a while back from paediatrics to geriatrics and the rest was silence. Radio silence, with a bit of static whispering about too many new foreign nurses, too few jobs. (‘But of course you know how it is, don’t you?’ Foreign as I intrinsically was, or had become.) Thomas’s view – generous, kind husband – was that I should kick back and enjoy looking after the family. Our family.
So, Monday: a day of deep-cleaning nooks, deep-filling a steak pie (Stevie, neither particularly Jamaican nor restrained that morning, had been vocal in his insistence), wiping up and wiping down, hoovering and plumping cushions. Then, on lifting up the pillow in the spare room, what should I find but another pair of knickers stuffed underneath, these screaming scarlet and stringy, a lairy net designed to pull in some thumping, jumping excitable catch.
I lifted them up: new, and worn.
I threw them down; yet another violation. Devil red and so scant they could only be Lola’s.
Lola?
Yuh nuh like dem? Yuh tink she force ripe?
Never mind her sartorial choices. What? Why? Under what good circumstances would she have needed to remove her knickers here? What the hell? What the holy hell had she been doing? What the hell was she thinking? What the hell did she need to come here for, into this rarely used third spare room? What the hell?
A cigarette, just one cigarette, which would light up like the face of an old friend, burned into my thoughts.
‘Bloody bloody no.’
I snatched up the hellish undies for the wash.
There it was again, the murky brouhaha of illness as Lola once more puked into the loo. I guessed that architectural ingenuity had not come so far as to prevent such noises being heard, rough and insistent and clear, on the other side of the bathroom door.
I was going to call her name and then I heard it: a cry so soft it was a whimper, a mewling. That shifting, just under my ribcage.
I needed to raise this, now, needed to set us on to a new path. As soon as I could, I cornered her in the conservatory.
‘Lola,’ I said. ‘I need to talk to you.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s … you,’ I said. ‘You’re not well. I’ve heard you—’
‘Heard me what?’
‘Being sick.’
‘Yeah, so?’
That hard glitter was back in her eye; that arrogant jaw. I recognised it from the nineties, from the sugar-dusted parties at a friend’s uni halls.
‘Your dad’s told me, of course. About your problems with this.’
‘Oh what the—’
‘Come on, he couldn’t not, could he?’
She said nothing.
‘And I know you’re lying to me about the charlie.’
‘Charlie?’ Such acrid contempt.
‘Well, yes. You are doing it, aren’t you?’
‘I …’ she glared at the floor as if it had wronged her. ‘No.’
‘Look, Lola …’
‘No!’
‘OK. Listen, I know you’ve been going through a tough time, with your friends, and exam stress and the hot tub stu—’
Her head whipped up.
‘What do you know about the hot-tub thing?’
Heat surged to my face; could she tell? Stupid, unforgivable of me to forget: I was not supposed to know. Only her DONE LISTS had revealed to me Caro’s spectackular party trick.
‘Have you been in my room?’
My lie of a weary sigh.
‘Overheard you on the phone. I just want to help.’
It was unfortunate that she did not realise I could not see Thomas rounding the corner as I said:
‘All this being sick is not good for you, you know.’
Then her father was there between us and in poured an atmosphere of hot bile. The eyes flashed dark:
‘Maybe it was something I ate?’
My face grew hotter. Did she not know the efforts that I had made? Did she not know me at all?
Thomas, ever the man’s man, was busy seeing, hearing and speaking no evil; racing off to a quiet life down Three Wise Monkeys’ Lane.
‘So, ladies.’ Ladies? I was ready to combust: the fake cheer was itself a betrayal. ‘I was wondering what you fancied doing tonight.’
‘Out,’ said Lola.
‘Me? In,’ I said, spiking my words with a pinch of spite, ‘and cooking my husband something lovely.’
Lola walked off. Thomas hesitated, stayed. He hated the tensions that were building. Still, we all had our weaknesses; his foot tapped fast, seeking the accelerator. Stopped.
‘By the way,’ he said. ‘When you’ve got a minute, I’d love you to look at my longlist of sites. For the house.’
‘Which house?’
‘Our house, one day. It will be … stupendous.’
‘Wow, OK. Superb.’
‘Then it will be stuperbous. You’re my client, Darling,’ he said. ‘It has to be just how you want.’
I kissed him without meeting his eye and said:
‘It will be exactly how we all need it to be.’
Of course, I tried to remember that his greatest weakness, now, was me. My happiness was his journey, his fuel and his destination, and it was only the gear-shifts that were proving tricky.
But Lola was managing to knock all the joy out of me.
‘Dad, what time are we supposed to be going out?’
‘Dad, do you like my new dress?’
‘Dad, can I have thirty pounds?’
‘Dad …’
Dad, Dad. Every time she said it, shouted it, whispered it, it was an in-joke bellowed across my ears, a gobsmack of victory. Not you, it said, never you.
Worse, she tried to put herself in the middle of my son and me.
‘Mum, can I stay up?’ Stevie would ask. ‘Just until the news?’
‘No, baby. You need to—’
‘Oh, he’ll be OK, Darling,’ Lola would say. ‘I’ll keep an eye on him.’
‘Mummy,’ he would start up. ‘I don’t
like this yoghurt.’
‘But you—’
‘He prefers the raspberry ones,’ Lola would say, then in the next breath, ‘Dad, can we go to see Auntie Diane sometime? It’s been ages.’
Always shearing me off – swoosh – like some tatty old edge of silk. Always excluding me with a power so potent precisely because to all but me it was imperceptible. That invisible kapow! She was a superhero of bitchiness.
It was bewildering.
I came back from dropping Stevie at his dad’s to find no one home. I had only been gone for an hour. Wondering, I tidied downstairs, moved on upstairs.
Some instinct sent me straight to Spare Room No.3, which lay furthest from our bedroom. Empty. The duvet, though, was crumpled. Something was wrong with this picture. Very wrong indeed; as a nurse, I knew. I went to her bedroom, stopped, listened. Not a sound.
‘What has been done, Lola?’
Feeling feeble and brave and angry and curious, I went straight to the bottom drawer. Scarves, only scarves; the cigarettes had vanished and only the faintest tobacco must lingered. The book was not there, however hard I looked. Her DONE LISTS had disappeared.
Moved, of course. I had practically foghorned my discovery into her face, chatting on about hot tubs. Besides, that brain of hers could have devised a decent booby-trap – some broken hair or dislodged speck may have grassed me up ages before. Where though, where would she hide it?
I went to the wardrobe, flung the doors wide open. The once-neat row of clothes was all out of order, mishmashed, all over the shop: yellow against scarlet against turquoise. The shoe boxes were still stacked, though each too small to stash an A4 notebook.
I pulled at the wall of boxes until they tottered and slid; nothing was slotted behind.
I stood, looked up to the shelf of day-bags and clutches, the magpie’s haul of trinkets and belts. I reached in, lifting and replacing each item, reaching right to the back—
‘Hi, Darling!’ Thomas shouted. ‘We’re back!’
We. She was with him, could be racing upstairs two steps at a time. I flew back from the wardrobe, pressed the doors shut and sped away from the room.
‘God, Dad. Cricket already?’
She was still downstairs and in a good mood. Girls were messy, girls were distracted; anything out of place would be mistaken for her own carelessness. But though I had not been caught, I had failed. No DONE LISTS found, no explanation found for the underwear I had unearthed in unused rooms.
My mind was becoming littered with the rogue scraps of nylon and silk and lace, clogged by them. They were giving me a headache, one which soon spread down to my neck. The stiff neck set my shoulders out of whack and when I tried to twist away, to pluck panties out of my dreams, a whole host of puckish undies would get away from me, hide in corners, the wicked things, until I was burning up, sweating with the chase. This fever was setting my sense of smell off-kilter; everything smelled of mouldy spice.
The next morning, I was infuriated and perspiring in light fog on Norton Road when I decided to give up, go home, lie down.
Lawd a massi, yuh head a tek wata.
I was back home by around noon and determined to hot-wash this grimy secret, whatever it might be. I would also talk Lola out of her rash new white habits, both of them – the cocaine and the politics. I was her step-mum, I had a duty of care.
I opened the kitchen door to discover two blonde girls I had never seen. They were laughing and cooking on my four-grand hob, bacon and eggs, and they were drinking the last of the orange juice. They looked a year or two older than Lola and were wearing nothing but the vaguest suggestion of cami-knickers and bra tops.
‘Hello?’ I asked, squinting. The kitchen looked too bright, too light.
‘Oh hi,’ they said in unison, as Lola wandered back in holding our wedding photo book. She did not introduce me:
‘Hi! Isla and Christie came over after you’d gone to bed. Thought I’d show them your lovely wedding photos …’
The voice was deadpan, and she lied with her choice of smile. She really thought I was that much of an idiot.
‘Oh, and we cleaned the fridge up a bit, if you can’t find some stuff. It was a bit … messy.’
Always; that presumption of dirt. ‘Thanks,’ I said, wiping my forehead.
She turned her back on me.
Get dressed, I wanted to say. All of you, get dressed. My husband could be back any minute. You are not twelve and you are not innocent. So get dressed, or get the fuck out of my kitchen.
What I said was:
‘Mind that you don’t get burned. By the fat. It sputters.’
Then I walked out of the kitchen and a moment later they were all laughing, louder than before.
The fever stayed, for a while.
‘Do you think you need to see a doctor?’ asked Thomas.
‘I’m not really sick,’ I said.
‘Then what’s wrong? You’re on edge at the moment, and you’re burning up. You seem …’
‘I’m OK.’
‘… not yourself. Darling?’
‘Honestly, I’m fine.’
The next time we made love, it felt like anything but. We had sex, because it felt too defining to say no, and I suffered, yes suffered, his brief shout of coming with a detachment that felt close to pain.
He slept and I did not – too hot. The least bearable thoughts kept me company all night.
All too soon, everything became clear.
I had been out, still feverish but playing it down, as you did when you had raised a boy to six by yourself. Sweating but not shaking, I went out to buy the Sunday papers and came back to find them both laughing. Her on the sofa, him standing, looking down at her.
‘It will seriously only be twenty-five quid, Dad. Thirty at most.’
‘That’ll be forty, then.’
‘Dad!’ She was open and buttercup-bright as I walked through the door.
Her manner. She treated her dad not as I had treated mine, but … What? She forced him into the role of some close and over-attentive relative. An uncle. And how tanned she had got this summer, for an indoors girl. All brown leg and skirt. A rare smile, which faded as I walked in the door.
‘Hi, Darling!’ called Thomas.
‘Hi, hon.’
Did she know? Did any young woman get how lost these self-styled big-men-of-the-world could become when it came to our sex? Did she know?
‘Hi, Darling,’ she smiled.
Lola and I were enemies; I could no longer deny it.
‘Listen, love,’ he said. ‘I’m just popping to the cashpoint, then we can take it easy. Lola’s going out. Can I get you anything?’
‘No thanks.’
Lola had already risen, slipped out the other door.
‘Hurry back. We’ve been so busy lately …’
‘I know. Just us tonight, Lola won’t get in until late. Stevie’s sorted, yes?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
He went out of the door with a stroke of my waist and I sank into the sofa.
I was shivery, ham-thighed; the worst thoughts were having a fine old jump-up in my head. We needed an evening without her. We needed to talk. I sat, stretched hands clawed like a hacked-off cat, spreading to form a wide X, my fingertips now straining towards the corners of the ceiling. Then I relaxed, let everything slump. How could one’s eyelids pound? My arms slipped down the back of the sofa, and now my hand was digging, delving in behind the seats. Almost immediately my fingertips struck something cold and hard. A dropped earring? My splitting mind yawned open with the seat cushions as I pulled out the prize: a plastic diamond stuck to the waistband of a pair of terrible, flammable, white knickers.
Then I was shaking and the sweat …
Oh God.
Puppa Jesus.
The snipey attitude, the roaming underwear, the drugs, the head problems, the sickness, the secret conversations in the bedroom …
I rushed to the front door and grabbed the handle, my feet wanting to
run out after him and feel the pain of gravel. But I stopped.
I would not scream in the street for him. I had to face him down in our home.
I ran upstairs clutching Lola’s underwear and shut myself into our en suite. I ran the bath hot. I sat on the loo for an age. I raised the balled fist to my nose. Worn.
The front door went. Thomas. Footsteps coming up and closer. Lola somewhere near.
With no work now, I was prone to baths around the clock; he never thought anything of it. But I needed Lola to go out. I ran hot water into the bath. Sat on the loo seat in my clothes until the bath was near full. Let it fill until it started to slop on to the floor, creating a chain of doll’s house pools in the expensively dented tiles. Pretty. I turned it off.
Then I sat longer.
Much later, the door went again, a teenage shout. She had gone.
Staring into the dusk of our bathroom, my face bathed in sweat and steam but with no intention of undressing, I released the scrumple of pale polyester in my hand so that it fell to the floor, two hours too late.
‘Thomas.’
My throat was chilled, scratchy, the single cool dry part of me. He had turned me inside out.
The croak failed to penetrate the walls.
‘Thomas.’ I lifted my body, my voice. ‘Thomas! Thomas!’
A thudding as he ran to me.
‘What the? Are you OK in there, what is it?’
I unlocked the door. Left it closed.
‘God, open up. What is it, Darling?’
I did not cry. I ran a finger down the bathroom cabinet’s glass. Through the mirror’s steam a sliver of my face, shining; twisted metal. I opened the door.
‘You,’ I said.
‘What? I don’t—’
‘You,’ I said. ‘You do things. This.’
My hand flew out, pointing to this, the seamy underwear, his daughter’s, on the pock-marked tiles.
‘What?’
‘Whose are they?’ I asked.
He looked down at them.
‘Must be Lola’s?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well then … so?’ His voice was rising too, in pitch and volume. Something urgent was reaching arms around us, squeezing.
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