“Yeah, yeah,” she said. “Go on!”
“OK,” I said, still holding down the “doors open” button. Beth grinned at me.
“Bye, Mum!” She said pressing the down arrow again.
I took my fingers off the button and the doors slid to a close. I felt the lift begin to move down.
Without Beth I don’t think I would have got into the lift.
She is always the one making me take a step further, keeping me going and making me live.
I used to try and imagine, just after Adam had left, what my life would have been like if I hadn’t had her so young, but I couldn’t. Since the first moment I held her, she had been my heartbeat.
It’s funny to think that if things hadn’t happened the way they did, if I had just kept my head down at school and taken my exams like I was supposed to, then I never would have met Adam. I never would have got pregnant just before I turned sixteen.
But I didn’t keep my head down and do my exams.
I fell in love with Luke Goddard instead.
Ten
I was so in love with Luke Goddard. There was something about him that made my insides bubble when I looked at him, he was so confident and dishy. Yes, “dishy” was the word we used back then. Luke Goddard was a dish.
But I wasn’t the only one in love with him. All the girls at school fancied him, and he knew it.
I knew I’d be the last one he’d look at. It didn’t stop me dreaming, though. I daydreamed about it so often that I was so shocked the day he asked me out I had to pinch myself hard.
“Me?” I’d asked him, looking over my shoulder for someone else.
“Yeah,” he said, smiling at me. “You’re really pretty. Meet me down the park after school. We’ll go for a walk. But don’t tell anyone yet, OK? Let’s keep it to ourselves for now.”
And I didn’t tell anyone I was meeting Luke Goddard, not even Joy, because I was sure that if I went to meet him it was probably just a set-up. I’d turn up at the park and it would be empty or, worse, full of his mates jeering and laughing. And Joy would think that, too, so I didn’t tell her because I wanted it to go well.
Looking back, I think I must have read too many of those photo-story comics, the ones where the plain Jane always ends up with the dishy guy at the disco. I kidded myself that happy endings like that happened in real life, too.
When I got to the park and saw that he was sitting on the swings waiting for me, I remember feeling scared by how happy I felt.
“All right?” he said.
“Yeah,” I said.
He stood up.
“Do you want to be my girlfriend?” he said.
“OK,” I said. It wasn’t how it went in my magazines, but it was still the most exciting thing anybody had ever said to me.
“Come on, then,” he said. He took my hand and led me toward the back of the park where there was a little bit of woodland. When we got there I saw that he’d laid out a blanket on top of the dried leaves. I just looked at it.
“What’s that for?” I said.
“Come on,” he said. And he kissed me.
Luke Goddard was a good kisser. I’d never been kissed before and I didn’t know what it would be like. But the way he kissed me was lovely. It was a warm evening. I felt the heat of the setting sun on my cheeks. We kissed for a long time before anything else happened.
“I’ve always liked you,” Luke Goddard said, resting the palm of his hand on my chest. “Can I . . .?” he asked me.
I let him because he was gentle and tender and because I wanted him to. His hands shook as he unbuttoned my shirt, and when I took off my bra the look on his face made me feel beautiful.
He asked me if I’d let him do other things and I did because I was happy. Happy to have Luke Goddard kissing and touching as we lay on the blanket in the warmth of the setting sun. He asked me if I really was his girlfriend. He sounded worried that I might change my mind.
“I am, I am,” I whispered. He said he wanted to “do it” with me and I knew what he meant. He said he’d be really careful and I wouldn’t have to worry because no one gets pregnant the first time they do it. He said that he loved me.
I don’t think even then I really believed it was true, but I didn’t care because I loved him and I loved that moment we were sharing, with the sun on our skin and our arms around each other. I wanted it to happen.
So I said yes.
The sex part was over almost before it started, and I don’t remember much about it, except that there was a plastic bottle top sticking into the small of my back and every time Luke moved his head the glare of the sun made me close my eyes. But it didn’t matter because the sex wasn’t important to me. What was so special and what I don’t think I have ever felt since, not even when I was happy with Adam, was feeling truly cherished.
Afterwards he rolled off me and pulled me into his arms so that my head was on his chest. I listened to the beat of his heart. I find I sometimes still dream about him in the last few moments before I open my eyes in the morning—Luke on top of me breathing into my hair. And I remember feeling so happy and cared for. It was that feeling that made everything that happened afterwards so hard to bear.
“Fantastic,” Luke spoke first. We lay like that for a long time until the sun lost its warmth and the sky began to get dark and Luke Goddard helped me pull my clothes back on and walked me home.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, expecting him to kiss me.
“I do really like you, Sam,” he said instead and he went home.
I lay awake all night feeling excited and happy. I really thought that from that moment everything would change because my photo-story had come true. I’d be Luke Goddard’s girlfriend and everyone would like me again.
But the next day the fact that I’d slept with Luke Goddard was all round the school.
“Luke Goddard says you fuck for a pound,” Matthew Green said. “I’ve got fifty pence—will you do me a blow job?”
“Shut up,” I shouted at him. “That’s not what . . . shut up!” I saw Luke walking toward us.
“Luke,” I said. “Tell them!”
“Oooh, Luke!” Matt Green and his mates chanted.
“Tell them I’m your girlfriend!” I pleaded. Luke didn’t look at me but kept on walking.
“Luke!” I said, feeling my stomach clench. “Tell them I’m your girlfriend!”
Luke turned around and grinned at me.
“Nice body,” he said. “Shame about the face.”
It was as if he had slapped me, and in a way I wished he had. Because for the rest of that day and the next and all the days left until I turned sixteen and could finally walk out of school, anything would have been better than the lies and rumors that Luke Goddard spread about me. Anything would have been better than having to read what I was supposed to have done with him written on the toilet wall.
What made it even more painful was that I was still in love with Luke. Part of me thought that after what had happened between us he must feel the same way about me. He just couldn’t say it, so it wasn’t really his fault.
So I carried a torch for Luke for the longest time.
In fact, I was still in love with him on the day I met Adam.
Eleven
I stopped outside the bar.
Despite the cold air, my face felt hot. I stood for a moment beside the door that led into the pub.
I stuffed my fingers into my pockets against the cold and felt a folded piece of paper there. I smiled, took it out, and unfolded it, holding it up against the light that shone through the frosted glass door.
Why did the woman who walked into the bar have to go to hospital?
It was an iron bar!
I tried to smile, but I couldn’t. I shivered and felt like—as my mum would say—someone had just walked over m
y grave.
I pulled down the hem of my skirt and flicked my hair back off my shoulders.
I walked into the bar.
The first person I saw was Brendan standing behind the bar and chatting to the woman he was serving. Smiling and joking with her exactly the way he did with me.
“And a vodka orange for you, of course,” he said to her with a wink. He looked up and saw me.
“Hi, Sam,” he called. But before I could reply I felt an arm slip through mine.
“Hi!” Marie looked excited. She pulled me away from the pub door to the quiet end by the ladies’. Joy was standing there, one leg straight, one leg bent, so that the curve of her hip jutted out at an angle as she leant against the bar. When she saw me she smiled.
“You’re looking good, babe,” she said, pushing my jacket off my shoulders and twirling me round. As I turned I saw Brendan, clipping the lids off bottles of Bud before setting them in a line on the bar.
Brendan was working. I wasn’t meeting Brendan.
I had begun to believe it so much that it was taking a second for my brain to catch up with my sinking heart.
“So,” I said, feeling suddenly tired and old. “Let’s get on with it.”
“In a minute,” Joy said. She looked at Marie. Marie bit her lip. “Now listen, you know this man. You haven’t seen him for a long time. For a really, really long . . .”
I opened my mouth.
“It’s not Adam,” Joy said firmly. “Anyway, I saw this bloke the other day on the bus. His car had broken down. He never normally takes the bus! When he asked after you, I thought it must be like fate, right? It must be meant to be. He said he wanted to see you again. And I want you to know I thought about it for a long time, Sam. Me and Marie talked about it. We thought you should meet. I thought you should meet.”
“Meet who?” I said, starting to lose my temper.
Joy put her hand on my shoulder and guided me round the bar to where I could see a man in a suit, his dark head bent over his mobile phone as he sent a text.
“Luke Goddard!” she said.
I felt as if the breath had been sucked out of my lungs. I felt fifteen again with my heart thundering in my chest as I looked at him, sitting on the swings waiting for me.
I should have seen this coming. It was obvious, really. But I hadn’t thought of it, so I hadn’t stopped it.
All I knew was that I didn’t want to see Luke Goddard, because the moment I realized that that man was him, all I could feel was the cold, hard slap of those insults and lies hitting me in the face again. All I could see was the look of contempt and disgust Luke had given me when I asked him to help me. Everything I thought I had put behind me for good was being raked up again.
I felt angry, humiliated, and scared.
And I hadn’t felt like that since the night I broke up with Adam.
The One Who Broke My Nose and Three Ribs
He walked in from the bar.
“Dinner’s ready,” I said, keeping my eyes down. I knew better than to look at him until I could tell what kind of mood he was in. Sometimes he’d slip his arms around my waist and kiss my ear and I’d know that he was in a good mood.
And when he was happy, he was the Adam I was in love with. Kind and loving. Funny and sweet. I knew that Adam would be gentle with me. He would hold me like I was made of glass. He would make Beth laugh and laugh before reading her a bedtime story. That was the Adam I’d fallen in love with, the Adam I couldn’t leave.
But sometimes Adam wasn’t like that. Sometimes he got angry, really angry. And the last few times he’d got that angry, he’d hit me.
It went like this. Sometimes he kissed me. Sometimes he would bring me flowers. Sometimes he would do the washing up. And sometimes he’d hit me. But I still loved him and so did Beth. She was three then, and she was a proper little daddy’s girl.
It had started out as slaps. Slaps became shoves. And then, about a year before that night, he had punched me hard in the stomach. Knocked the wind right out of me. I had bent over double on the kitchen floor and had waited for another breath to come. He had stood in the doorway and watched me. He didn’t cry that time. He didn’t say he was sorry and that he didn’t mean it. He wasn’t sweet or loving. He didn’t hold me and stroke my hair. He just went out and didn’t come back until two days later. That was the first time he punched me, but it wasn’t the last.
When I tried to tell Joy how it was, she didn’t understand.
“He hit you,” she said. “A guy lays a finger on me and I’m outta there!”
“But that’s not really him,” I said. “Most of the time things are really good.”
“You don’t have to put up with a beating to get a few good times, Sam,” Joy had told me. “If he really loved you he wouldn’t touch you. You’ve got to get out of there. What about Beth?”
“He’s a great dad,” I said. “He loves me.”
“He loves you and he’s done that to you?” Joy winced as she looked at me. “Get your stuff and come to my place till we sort something out.” But I hadn’t listened. I still loved him.
It hadn’t always been love. But the first moment I saw him unloading bricks off the back of a lorry for our neighbor’s extension I knew that I wanted him. I’d been out of school for less than a month and I was on the way back from the shops with a loaf of bread. It was hot. He had no shirt on. I’d never felt anything like that before. It wasn’t love, it was lust. Suddenly I wanted to know what it would be like to press my skin against his. Adam was older than me, nearly twenty-five, so I thought my parents would hate him. But Adam could charm the birds from the trees when he wanted to. They loved him before I did. I knew the exact moment I fell in love with him. It was when I told him I was pregnant. He put his hand on my belly and told me he’d look after me and never leave me. That was the moment I started loving him.
Nothing in my life had ever been as good as those first few years in that flat with Adam and Beth. I felt like a real person at last with my own family. I felt happy and safe. I couldn’t let that go without trying to get it back. So when he came in from the pub I kept my head down and hoped for the best.
“Where’s Beth?” he asked, his voice short and dark. Every part of me tensed.
“In bed,” I said keeping my voice light. “Has been for hours! Your tea’s ready. Do you want a lager with it?”
“Why are you having a go at me?” he shouted. Just like that. He exploded, knocking the dishes I had set out on the table onto the floor. “Nag, nag, nag! That’s all you ever do!”
He was right up in my face then. His angry mouth stretched into a snarl, the stink of stale beer on his breath. I leant back away from him and I could feel the edge of the worktop bite into my spine.
“I’m not,” I said, even though I knew saying anything was the wrong thing to do. Part of me still hoped that the other Adam, the Adam I loved, might hear my voice and remember he loved me. “I just said your tea was ready.”
I smiled at him.
He slammed the back of his fist into the right side of my head. I went down. He kicked me hard in the ribs twice with his boots, making me cough the air out of my lungs. I remember I could see under the fridge. I remember thinking it really needed cleaning. I could hear Beth’s thin cry rise above the whir and rattle of the washing machine.
I wasn’t going to do anything else then. I was just going to wait for it to be over, wait for Adam to finish and go to bed so that I could go to Beth and get her back off to sleep like I had done before.
But then Adam did something different.
He crouched down beside me.
“Can’t you hear your kid crying? Someone like you shouldn’t be allowed to have kids,” he said, his voice quiet, almost a whisper. “Someone like you isn’t fit to be a mother. I should never have touched you, you dumb fucking whore. You tricked me into ge
tting you pregnant.” He spat the words in my face. “Someone’s got to bring that kid up right. Someone’s got to bring her into line so she doesn’t grow up into a useless bitch like you.” He stood up and looked down the hallway.
“I’ll show her,” he said, and he walked out of the kitchen.
I don’t know how but I was on my feet. Every breath I took felt like fire was spreading over my chest and I could taste my blood in my mouth. I knew whatever happened, whatever he did to me, he wasn’t going to lay a finger on Beth.
That was the moment when I stopped loving him.
“No!” I managed to scream. He had opened her door and she was sitting up in bed, holding her teddy to her chest. She had stopped crying. The tears stood in her bright eyes. I could feel her fear.
I lunged at him. I jumped on his back and pulled him off balance. He slammed me into the hall wall. I felt something crack.
He turned around and looked at me. There was nothing left in his eyes of the Adam I had still loved right up until the moment he threatened my daughter. There was nothing left in his face at all except hate.
A loud knock rattled the glass in the front door.
“What’s going on in there?” It was Mr. Radcliff, the old man from next door. “I’m warning you, I’m calling the police!” His voice was shaking. He was afraid but he kept knocking on the front door.
I looked at Adam and waited as he drew back his fist.
The next punch broke my nose.
I expected him to go for me again. But instead he headed for the front door and flung it open. Mr. Radcliff wasn’t there, but I could hear sirens growing louder. Adam looked at me one last time and walked out.
I never saw him again. I didn’t even press charges, although the police really wanted me to. I couldn’t face it. I moved back home with Mum and Dad, and he hung around for a while trying to get back into my life but I didn’t see him. I didn’t go out at all, and there was always someone at home with me. After a couple of months, my brother and three of his mates met him one night as he was leaving the pub. They persuaded him he should move on. I heard he went to London.
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