Every Good Girl

by Judy Astley

  Emily wished she’d taken her coat out of the flat with her, but then Lucy would have seen, would have asked loud questions and they’d have stopped her going out. The King’s Road was crammed with people, as if there was a big party going on just round the corner and everyone was invited except her. She kept looking into the faces of passing men. They were all smiling, all with arms round women, or holding their hands, leading them along like pets. She shrank back into a shop doorway, pretending to be looking at the swags of fabric in the window. There were too many people, too many men. Statistically, there must be some out there, right next to her even, who had done to other women something terrifying and violent, just as that man on the Common had done. Perhaps they’d done something worse, or perhaps they’d only thought about it. One of them might suddenly break out from the crowd and crush her against the doorway, hands fumbling for her breasts.

  Emily breathed hard and tried to control the need to scream. She looked again at the piece of paper in her hand. The address was only two streets away, it wasn’t that difficult, there weren’t any unlit alleys that she had to go down. ‘Come and see me, come any time. Soon as you like,’ he’d whispered as he left. Well he hadn’t whispered, not if she thought about it, not if she was honest, and she was only almost sure that when he’d said the soon as you like bit he’d meant now. It was just that only an hour on, she’d started doubting her own interpretation. In truth, Lucy had heard: she’d even thought he meant both of them. Catherine had probably heard. Both of them would laugh if she let them think he’d only meant her when he’d said it. She turned the last corner. Plenty of street lights, lights on all over the block where he lived. If she only knew just which one was his flat; it had just crossed her muddled mind that he might not have gone straight home. He might have gone on out somewhere, a club or a bar. He might have friends he was meeting and he might be laughing with them about this silly schoolgirl who he’d so easily made fall for him, just with a few soft words and a little touchpaper spark to the vulnerable back of her neck. They’d be laughing about her green pleated uniform skirt, her squealing with a boy that day outside the school.

  If Lucy woke up now she’d be worrying. She’d sit with the light on waiting for Emily to come back. Emily wouldn’t come back and Lucy would go to their little bathroom and rattle the door handle quietly, careful not to make Catherine come out to see what was happening. She’d know Emily was up to something and want to tell Dad but be too scared to in case they weren’t allowed to come to the flat again.

  Emily shivered outside the mansion block and looked up at the few lighted windows. It was nearly midnight. She checked the piece of paper, squinted at her reflection in the glass door and rang the bell marked 34.

  ‘I don’t expect you to come straight home and have sex with me, so please feel free to relax.’ Mick handed Nina a large freezing glass of vodka and tonic and smiled at her.

  ‘I’m relaxed enough. I give my own expectations priority over yours, so please don’t worry about me,’ Nina said primly.

  Mick laughed. ‘If I knew what the hell you were talking about, I’d probably say “OK yeah, fine”,’ he teased. ‘Either way, I guess I’m being put in my place, so I apologize for mentioning the “s” word. Can we start again?’

  Nina laughed, he looked so contrite. He also looked rather uncomfortable, squashed into a small frilled chintzy armchair with not enough room for his legs in front of the gilt and glass low table in the Athenaeum hotel bar. He reached across and picked up the dainty pink bowl of cashew nuts. ‘God that restaurant, not enough food to fill a cat. Are you still hungry? Do you fancy a sandwich?’ Mick looked around for the waiter, who handed him a menu of bar snacks. ‘How about a round of smoked salmon? I could murder it.’

  ‘Actually I ate loads. My first-course companion was the one who passed out, and believe it or not at that point he had plenty to say – I think I could, under hypnosis, even tell you the name of her lawyer and their children’s birthdays.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. It’s terrible how some people never get over it. Still at least the poor guy was trying, making an effort to get out. For every one like him there’s a hundred sitting lonely in a grotty bedsit eating beans out of the can and flicking through the wedding photos. Believe me, I’ve been there.’

  ‘I always thought men who were halfway presentable were snapped up by lone women the minute they’d assembled a laundry bag full of dirty underwear.’

  Mick pulled a face and chuckled. ‘You’ve got to be joking. If a man even looks as if he doesn’t know one end of an ironing board from another these days, most self-respecting women run a mile. They’ve usually just escaped from all that.’ The waiter brought a vast silver platter piled with smoked salmon sandwiches. Mick picked up one in each hand, clearly as starving as he’d claimed to be.

  ‘I’ve got a brother who’s never so much as plugged in an iron,’ Nina told him. She picked up a piece of watercress and chewed on it, savouring the hard metallic taste.

  Mick guffawed, ‘What? Well in that case he’s either sending laundry out or he’s still living with his doting mum. Which is it? Can’t be the mum though, not really.’

  ‘It is, actually. They seem to like it that way. She looks after him in exactly the same way she has since he was a small boy, and he lives there still sleeping in his childhood room, going to the pub now and then and still having plane-spotting for a hobby.’ She felt disloyal suddenly, and wished she hadn’t said any of this. It was private, it wasn’t even any of her business, let alone his. Mick was a stranger though, never likely to be seen again, so as in a confessional it felt safe to say it all. What Paul had said about criminal psychological profiles still rankled in her mind. I’m just testing, she concluded, picking up a sandwich that she didn’t really want, just probing at more and more of this stuff to see if Mick will come out with something like Paul’s opinion.

  ‘I bet she wouldn’t have let you stay home and be pampered like that,’ he commented. ‘I expect you were brought up to go out and do all that for some husband.’ He looked at her admiringly. ‘Lucky old him, if you don’t mind me saying, you don’t get many wives like that to the pound these days. Where is he now? How did he let you get away?’

  Nina’s laugh sounded brittle even to her own ears. ‘He’s worshipping at the feet of some young blond gorgeous thing who thinks the only place for a kitchen is at the back of a restaurant. No seriously, I never did go in for the cossetting and skivvying that Mum does for Graham. I think I had some kind of allergic reaction to it. If I ever lived with the kind of man who actually asked “Have I got a clean shirt?” I’d probably strangle him.’

  Mick sighed, ‘The first woman I married wouldn’t even let me into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Hand and foot she waited on me till I felt like a helpless baby. Then one day she got radical and went off to live with another plumber. A female one this time. You can’t believe how liberating it was for someone like me, filling my own fridge.’ He hesitated for a moment then added, ‘Lonely though. All those meals are always for one.’

  ‘Whichever way you look at it, it seems none of us can get it quite right,’ Nina sympathized.

  ‘Too right,’ Mick agreed. He raised his glass: ‘Here’s to muddling through!’

  ‘I’ve got to be home by midnight. There’s a friend of Mother’s from the bridge club in babysitting,’ Graham told Jennifer. He couldn’t be late, he’d said he was going owl-watching again and Mother had given him a look. Jennifer glanced at her watch and pursed her lips, calculating. ‘Doesn’t give us much time, not if you don’t want to turn into a pumpkin. Perhaps we should make a move – it’s nearly closing time anyway.’ She was already out of her seat, collecting her handbag from under the table.

  The pub was full of raucous groups of men who seemed to be celebrating a late season football win. Graham, this year, couldn’t even remember who was going to be in the Cup Final, hadn’t felt involved in reality enough to take any notice, not since Mother�
��s accident and Jennifer. For all he knew, Accrington Stanley could be back in the league and up for transfer to the premier division. He picked up his jacket from the back of the chair and put it on, carefully holding onto his shirt cuff so it didn’t get rucked up inside his sleeve. ‘Where are we off to then?’ he asked Jennifer. ‘Do you want me to run you straight home or do you fancy a stroll by the river?’

  She was giving him a very odd look. When Mother looked at him like that he had to spend a good few minutes working out what he’d done wrong. Usually she told him before he’d decided.

  Jennifer didn’t say anything, but took his arm and walked him out into the cool night air.

  ‘We’ll go back to mine,’ she told him. ‘We’ve got nearly an hour. That should be enough.’ She was smiling, her eyes looking as if there was a secret. Graham blushed, thinking of her breasts again bursting though her uniform overall. He hadn’t had a lot to do with sex, but that didn’t mean he spent less time than anyone else thinking about it. Lads at work would be winking and nudging now if they could see the look in Jennifer’s eye. They’d be leering and yelling that he was in there, was on a promise. They made it feel like a dirty thing, but then that was the strange thing about sex: it was no fun if it wasn’t.

  Graham fumbled with the car keys and they clambered into the Fiesta. It smelt of Murraymints. His hands were clammy on the steering wheel and he looked at Jennifer’s legs as she arranged herself on the seat beside him. Stretched inside their shiny black tights her knees were round and soft and gleaming pale through the nylon. Most men took this for granted, had wives and girlfriends they could feel like this with whenever they wanted. He wondered, for the first time, what it would be like to have a woman who was not his mother to come home to every day, to share a home and feel comfortable and snug with. Would there still be the thrill of the sinful about sex, of something that was not allowed? Or would it become just another thing you did, a hobby like plane-spotting or something dull and day to day like eating or even going to the bog?

  Jennifer lived on the second floor of a block of flats on Nina’s side of the Common but in a street where the shops were battened down under metal awnings after closing. No-one was around, just a skinny dark cat running across the road and sliding under a broken garage door and the sound of a large dog barking nearby.

  ‘No lift I’m afraid. Let’s just hope the stairs don’t wear us out,’ Jennifer said, unlocking the main door. Inside, the stairs smelt of disinfectant as if someone at least made an effort. ‘It’s a bit small but it’s all my own, which is nice,’ Jennifer told him. ‘Though I wouldn’t mind moving on if I got the chance. Round here you need three locks on the door.’

  Graham wondered what he was supposed to say. He sympathized about the need for security. He and Mother had window locks; he assumed everyone had. At least Jennifer wasn’t on the ground floor where prowlers could look in through her bedroom window while she dressed, or worse, watch her sleeping and she’d never know. He sat awkwardly on the small grey corduroy sofa, watching Jennifer fussing over coffee through the kitchen door. He wondered what she looked like asleep, wondered if he’d ever have the chance to be there in the morning when she woke instead of what he could tell he was going to be doing tonight, dressing in the dark while she dozed, creeping home, and sneaking back to his own room to take his clothes off all over again.

  ‘You could come for tea. Meet Mother,’ he found himself saying.

  Jennifer appeared at the kitchen door, two mugs of coffee steaming in her hands. Her face was split by a beaming smile. It was just as if he’d given her a present.

  ‘I’d like that,’ she said. ‘I could bring a cake, that is if your mother wouldn’t feel affronted. Some people do, in their own homes.’

  ‘I’m sure she wouldn’t. Not if it was a chocolate and walnut one anyway.’

  Jennifer hesitated with the coffee, looking at a door beside the bookshelves. ‘We’ll take this through there then, shall we?’ she said, a small nod indicating that Graham should open the door. He stood up. He didn’t know if it was the cake, or the invitation or what was going to happen on the other side of the door, but he felt that something important was settled.

  ‘You’re freezing! What are you doing out on the streets at this time?’

  Did he need to ask, Emily thought angrily. Did he want her to spell it out?

  ‘Have you had a row with Catherine and stormed out?’ Simon grinned at her, leading her through a large curved doorway into his room. The walls were painted deep pink – Vulva Pink, she found herself thinking. A giggle burbled in her throat as she thought of it on one of her mother’s hand-made top of the range bloody fancy paint charts, labelled exactly that. It could be darker than Foreskin and lighter than Nipple.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Simon asked. ‘She hasn’t thrown you out has she?’

  ‘No. Anyway how could she? It’s Dad’s flat, not hers,’ Emily said, resorting to stroppiness to cover embarrassment. What was she doing there? Or at least what was she doing there that might sound convincing. She’d assumed it would all be extremely easy, that he’d know the script. Also, according to Chapter 6 of Man-Date, she was doing this all wrong. She shouldn’t be throwing herself at him, but waiting for him to throw himself at her. She should be tantalizing him with cool distance – carefully being the first one to end phone calls, refusing dates that didn’t involve vast cash outlay. Unreal.

  She perched neatly on a saggy purple sofa and scuffed her feet on the stained maroon carpet. A previous owner must have had a leaky dog, she thought, looking at the series of smudgy stains. Or maybe Simon just had lots of wild parties.

  ‘You said I could come. Soon as I like, you said,’ she told him, her voice full of accusation, looking up at him and trying to seem bold and sure of herself. It seemed a better option than looking demure and vulnerable (as per Chapter 1). He sat sprawled in a cane armchair inspecting her. He looked amused, as if she was a funny little flown-in creature that he didn’t quite know what to do with.

  ‘Perhaps I’d better go.’ She stood up and shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans. ‘It wasn’t a good idea.’

  ‘Oh I don’t know,’ Simon said quietly. He offered her a cigarette. She took it and sat down again, looking at it carefully before putting it to her lips, not trusting herself to put the right end into her mouth. He leaned across with his lighter and put his hand to her hair as he came close with the flame. She felt the pressure of his hand on her ear. It was just a hand, she told herself, just a male hand no different from Nick’s except Nick’s would be inside her bra by now. His mouth was now beside his hand, close to her neck and breathing gently on her skin.

  ‘Come to bed,’ he said, then he sat back and smiled at her. ‘After all, it’s late.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘Is Nina coming today? What time is she coming?’

  Monica sat at the kitchen table turning the pages of her newspaper too quickly to be able to read anything properly. Graham put the shoe-cleaning box back in the cupboard under the sink and looked up at her. She’d asked two questions. The second one implied that she already knew the answer to the first one. But if so, why did she ask it? He wondered if she was losing her mind a bit. How much, was the big question, and how quickly. Perhaps she wasn’t losing it at all, but was just too impatient to listen properly. That would be like her. He hoped, deeply hoped it was that. She’d never been patient, never seen the point of waiting for the green man to show at traffic lights before crossing the road.

  ‘Look at that,’ she’d say, watching some careful soul obediently hovering on the pavement edge, staring at empty streets, just because the pedestrian light hadn’t changed from red. ‘You’d think people could use their own common sense at a road junction.’ He’d always liked her busy spirit. She was a woman who got things done. Got things done for him, of course, come to think of it. Got his food cooked, his laundry done, his life smoothed out. That couldn’t be denied.

  ‘
I wanted her to take me to Sainsbury’s,’ Monica said. There was a small, new whine to her voice, as if she more than half expected Nina and the whole world to let her down. The note had been there ever since she came out of the hospital, the tone of a woman who assumes she’ll be disappointed.

  ‘I’m sure she will take you, if you ask her. It’s her day off, the gallery’s closed on Mondays. Perhaps she’ll take you out for lunch as well. You’d like an outing, wouldn’t you?’ Graham didn’t like the sound of what he’d just said. It felt as if he was talking to one of the patients in that soft soothing way that all hospital people did. Sometimes there were sharp ones who glared when he did this, and said something about not being in their dotage yet, but even they didn’t seem to mind when their pain got worse.

  Monica didn’t reply. She was now absorbed in reading her horoscope as content and passive as if the conversation had never begun. Graham opened his mouth to speak and then thought better of it. If he spoke, this might be the dreadful moment when her mind really did blank off all they’d been saying and he was forced to face an awful truth.

  He was ready to leave for work and didn’t want to face anything but the pre-rush peace of the A & E department before Outpatients opened. It was still only 7.30. His mother didn’t need to be up yet and at first, when she’d come out of hospital, he’d expected her to be exactly as she was before, full of ‘Don’t Fuss’ and ‘I’m Perfectly All Right’, quite content to carry on being argued with about her insistence on getting up in time to cook his breakfast, then going back up to bed with the paper and a cup of coffee for an hour. Now she was fully dressed, bathed and ready for the long day downstairs.