I’d thought Ruth was the sanest person I’d ever met, until she told me this. “This is so typical of people like her. Typical. You’re angry, right? Somewhere inside you? She spat you out like dirt. You have to be mad at her? Why should she get away with it? They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.”
Ruth’s smile disappeared. “Calm down, Lily.”
“Let’s take her down, me and you. Let’s put her right about how she’s hurt you. Let’s make her pay!”
“Lily, you’re going to wake the neighbors.”
“Think about it. Let me do the hard work. I’m good at this. Let me do this for you.”
“Lily. It’s fine. I’m fine. Life is good, I promise.”
“This is…deluded! Don’t you see, this is exactly what their lot do? Use and abuse people like us? Their children. You can’t possibly feel completely good inside. She didn’t want you. She doesn’t want you. People like her only want people like us if we can do something for them. You’re damaged goods! Don’t you see, that’s why we’re like sisters. That’s why I’ll punish her for you!”
“I think…I’m going to bed now.”
She looked right at me with the same bright blue eyes you have. She didn’t flinch, she didn’t falter. She didn’t cry. Looking back, that’s the first time I really saw you. Your eyes. Your hardness.
In the morning, she left before I did. I crept into her room and found the picture of you with her. I wanted to look into your soul, get some kind of insight into the person able to abandon Ruth so easily. I still don’t understand how people like you operate. How you find it so easy to run away from the consequences of your choices, to walk away without another thought, to treat the children you make with such hate.
Ruth and I were always coming in and out of each other’s rooms. I didn’t think it would be a problem if she’d guessed I’d been looking at her things. It was.
“I’d rather you didn’t go in my room when I’m not here. Were you going through my pictures today?”
“I’m sorry, Ruth, it’s just what you said about your mother—”
“She’s not my mother, Lily. Please, let’s drop it.”
“I don’t want to, because I care about you. I’m mad as hell at her for you, Ruth.”
“Please, don’t be. You’re actually kind of freaking me out.”
“You’re not scared of me, are you?”
“No, I mean, not normally, but this, this is a bit weird, Lily. I think you need to chill out…I’m going out.”
She ran out of the house, just like that. I didn’t get to explain myself. It was like she couldn’t get away from me quickly enough. Because I’d brought you up. I wanted to tell her: Hey, I’m not the scary one here!
That day, she got a job at the café at The Tetley and started straightaway. She didn’t tell me her plans, or how long she’d be gone. She went to the cinema without me in the evening and didn’t come home until I’d gone to bed. I had to follow her the next day to find out about the job. She wasn’t at all happy to see me when I turned up at her table.
Biting down my sobs as I walked home, I began to see what I needed to do. After all our talks, everything I’d told her, her bringing you up seemed to have stirred something deep and darkly held inside her that she wasn’t strong enough to face. She didn’t even want to punish you. Digging you out from the corners of her mind had changed her. Now I was going to have to punish her for letting that happen and allowing you to tear us apart. I hated you already.
I thought it fair to give Ruth one last chance, after all, like me, it wasn’t her fault she’d been given up on and I knew how all we rejects need to come up with our own coping strategies. She’d chosen self-delusion. I texted her:
I’m sorry you’ve been so upset about your mother. When you’re ready, we can talk all about it. Diet coke and Doritos on me tonight? Xx.
But she didn’t come back that night, texting me late:
Going back home for the weekend.
I wasn’t about to let myself be rejected for what you’d done to her. So, when she got back from her parents, I’d be ready for her. No one gets to walk away from me.
Ruth’s weakness was her virtue. I planned to attack that. I’d done some research. The charity she said she donated to, the CEO was a serial harasser. The school she’d “built” in Kenya, before coming to Leeds, was falling down. The person who’d organized the last march she’d gone on had posted homophobic tweets. Most of our “recycling” went to landfill and the flights she took on no fewer than three annual foreign holidays with her parents undid any good she thought she was doing anyway. Of course, I wouldn’t tell her directly, I’d let her discover it all on her own. My role would be to make it as easy as possible for her to put the jigsaw of her own failings together.
When, and only when, I’d let her pull down all the walls of social earnestness she’d built around her persona, would I present the solution to put her together again. “Ruth, I love you. You need to look at why you feel the need to give your life over to these empty gestures. All this virtue-signaling that does more harm than good, do you not think you’re trying to hide something in you that’s broken? Something that won’t get fixed until you recognize the reason why you feel you have to put yourself in the right the whole time. It’s because you feel so wrong. But I can help you. I know how that feels and I know how to take control of this.”
I waited and waited for the key in the door on Sunday night.
Finally, I heard it. She was here. It was time.
“Hello? Lily?”
Not her voice. An older man. Her adoptive father. He was there to remove me, serve me notice, require I leave before the start of term. I wouldn’t get to live with Ruth again, I wouldn’t get to put things in their right place with her.
It was made clear there would be consequences if I tried to contact her.
It hurt. It hit me so hard. I had lost control of the situation. I lived in Gem’s Norfolk house for the rest of the summer and found a new place to live in my second year. I had no friends, but you, Katherine Ross, became my hobby.
My earliest investigations confirmed my suspicions. A life without a stain, or so it would seem to those who didn’t know what you’d done to Ruth and what you’d caused her to do to me. An entitled, unblemished life: You had a great job, a partner who looked like he adored you and not one, but two London flats. I knew you wouldn’t have given Ruth another thought. You didn’t deserve any of the things you had.
If I hadn’t been let down by her, because of you, I wouldn’t have thrown myself into the college newspaper and I know you know how that went.
I spent the time after my sentencing trying to make sense of it all. But it was obvious: The minute you were introduced into my life, things went wrong. I committed to take you down for me, for Ruth, but also for every Asif and “Snowflake” you’ve ever wiped your hands on. Ruth had taught me something: that it’s possible to do things that make you feel better and do some good for the world.
I dyed my hair red and fine-tuned the version of me it would take to unravel you. But I didn’t bank on meeting my match in you. I had no idea it would get to where it got to with Iain. His death, the baby, I could never have planned or wanted these things. But you know better than anyone that children, and death, happened when you didn’t think you were ready.
So, no, I’m not your daughter, but you’d have liked it if I had been, wouldn’t you? That would have been neat. Neat and small. My actions a response to one misdemeanor, not thousands committed against people like me by people like you. We’re the ones you should take care of, but instead you spend your energy criticizing us. You make us work for nothing, rent your properties, but then you look to us for sex, for the future. You despise us when we challenge the way things are; the suboptimal way you’ve made the world. Think of me as your Millennial Av
enging Angel. Now that I’ve carried out our revenge, backed you right into the corners of a life you didn’t realize was blessed, it’s time for you to start living differently. Go find your real daughter. Tell her you’re sorry. Get down on your knees for giving up on her, for giving her away. Apologize to all of us you’ve treated appallingly, when we can only dream of the luck you’ve had. Pay your interns. Stop sleeping with them. Learn from your crimes and maybe you can find a way to get back on your feet again.
Would you believe me if I said I hope you do?
Because although I took you to rock bottom, I’ve always felt sorry for you, Katherine. And I like how you fight back, just like me. Now our lives are going to be bound forever by your partner’s baby. I have a piece of him and I know you’ll want a part of that. I think I need someone like you in my life. Someone who gets me. I think you know you need me too. Now that you know the truth of your existence, perhaps you can see that you and I aren’t so different, because I don’t love myself enough either and I’ve always needed a mother more like me.
So. Now what?
In my twenties, going for a jog involved a process of mental preparation. Like so many women, I had to ready myself for those men who would call or beep from cars and vans and the male passersby who would comment on my appearance or performance. Was I feeling strong enough to tell them where to go, or would I settle for simply ignoring them that day? That sense of every bit of me being assessed and graded as I tried to exercise sometimes meant I couldn’t face running at all. As a younger woman, I hated the way the male gaze inhibited my freedom to move about the world how I wanted to.
Then, one day, I realized the catcallers had fallen silent. I was approaching forty and it felt like my body no longer registered. Even though I didn’t want the attention of my youth, not having it disturbed me somehow. How had my self-worth been coaxed into such a warped shape? I balked at the idea of being molded by any sense of “missing” comments by men in white vans as I aged, but I remained fascinated by the confusion and contradictions I’d experienced. I began to imagine a woman living her middle years with the absolute sense of losses accumulating, including her desirability to wider society. How would she relate to a younger woman, one at the height of her visibility and promise? The story of the novel began to grow.
Generation gaps are not new, but the current chasm between unfairly maligned millennials, of all genders, and resentful mid-lifers, represents something uniquely unnerving.
Forty-somethings like me—who enjoyed free university education, cheap housing, and the luxury of establishing our identities in boom times—are widely making our lot even better by exploiting the generation directly underneath us, all the while actively belittling their efforts to shape a world that’s fairer, more inclusive, and sober (in all senses of the word).
At the sharp end of the housing crisis, Generation Rent provides extra income for their elders while they themselves remain mired deep in debt. Their working lives are often spent propping up diverse sectors through unpaid internships or exploitative contracts, but this doesn’t stop their near-daily pillorying in the mainstream media as thin-skinned, avocado-munching, precious “Snowflakes.” Yesterday’s ravers mock today’s young adults for being “woke,” for their “triggers,” “safe spaces,” and sobriety. As for Generation X, we somehow feel as hard-done-by as millennials. We’re not rich enough, not successful enough, not sexy enough for our liking. And although we still feel it inside, we are, in fact, no longer young. Little wonder we drink even more now than we did in our twenties.
As well as transitioning from hyper-visibility to invisibility, many middle-aged women find themselves being sidelined at work and often paid significantly less than male counterparts. Such symptoms can make female midlife feel like a condition in need of a cure. In this context, it can prove too easy to assume another woman has it easier than you, particularly if that woman is deemed at the height of her appeal. Men block women’s paths to career progression and self-worth, but women can stand in each other’s way too. We aspire to taking better care of each other, but too often we experience the distance to go: from pulling the ladder up behind us if we reach seniority at work, to “flaming” posters on parenting forums, to bile-filled weekly columns by female writers about other women. Pretending that women always default to gentleness toward each other won’t plug these damaging empathy gaps.
In the world of the novel, two women of adjacent cohorts think and do the very worst to each other, believing the other party deserves it. I’d like their story to contribute to a conversation about women across generations more readily finding our common ground and targets, instead of dividing the world along enemy lines.
FOR DANNY, MOHINDER, AND ZORA
Thank you to Hellie Ogden at Janklow & Nesbit UK for loving the manuscript from the off and interrupting your family holiday to tell me so. You squeezed the best out of the first draft with forensically brilliant editorial ideas, then got it to my equally talented editors, Emily Kitchin at HQ in the UK and Clio Seraphim at Penguin Random House in the US, who have worked so collaboratively to make the book what it is. Emily, you are completely supportive and completely brutal where it counts. Clio, you have expertly plunged me even deeper into my characters’ minds. I am very lucky to be working with you both.
Thanks also to Allison Hunter at Janklow & Nesbit Associates in New York who got this to the perfect US editor in Clio and to all the Janklow & Nesbit teams, particularly Zoe Nelson and Ellis Hazelgrove for securing the translations of Precious You by enthusiastic editors in many territories, to whom I am also extremely grateful.
The early readers of Precious You, in particular Rachel Stevenson, Frances Corrin, Elizabeth Corrin, Emma Guise, Victoria Lane, and my sister Bernardette Monks-Brown, you are all busy, brilliant women who gave me your time and then your invaluable steers on everything from what Iain should be called to the many places where I should up the stakes, turn the screws, or amplify a voice. Thank you all.
Particular thanks to Rachel, who told me so emphatically this manuscript would get published. I believed her and kept going. Massive thanks also to my excellent friend and www.northernsoul.me.uk editor Helen Nugent. Helen, you’ve supported my writing career since pretty much the night our eyes met over a castrated cat in Kensal Green back in ’97 and continue to do so to this day. Thank you.
Very special thanks to my twin sister, Ruth Thorpe, for lending me all those books once I’d decided I was going to write a thriller and giving me the shock of my life when you told me you thought my attempt was “excellent.” I am sorry I chose my husband and children for the dedication of my debut novel, but hope naming Katherine’s daughter after you goes some way to compensate. Did you ever know that you’re my hero?
Thank you to all my brothers and sisters: Joanne Johnson, Michael Gilfillan, Christopher Gilfillan, Caroline Mitchell, as well as Dette and Ruth. I could say why you all matter so much and shape what I do, but I’m crying trying to do that right, so I’m going to stop. Please fill in the gaps. I hope we generally do. We miss you, Michael.
Thanks to my second family, especially my mother- and father-in-law Gurpal Takhar and Gurmail Takhar. Mum and Dad, you have been so supportive since the start and helped us out in so many ways.
To my own mum, thank you for being proud of me. Thank you for everything.
Thank you, Dad. You first gave me the idea it was possible for anyone to get up one day and start writing. I’m so sorry you’re not here to see me published (and take all the credit for it!).
Mohinder and Zora, thank you for putting up with a mum who was half-woman half-laptop while I was trying to get published and for more generally making me feel like a balloon about to burst, mostly in the very best way.
To my husband, Danny Takhar, thank you for a thousand things, from being the best in-house story editor anyone could have, for all those 4 A.M. starts together, for making
me see that Katherine and Iain were not married and for telling me after that first sleepless night I met Katherine Ross in my insomnia, “That’s your next manuscript.” For the other 995 things, I will thank you in person.
HELEN MONKS TAKHAR has been working as a journalist, copywriter, and magazine editor since 1999, having graduated from Cambridge. She began her career in financial trade newspapers before writing for national newspapers including The Times and The Daily Telegraph. Originally from Southport, Merseyside, she lives in London with her husband and two young children. Precious You is her first novel.
helenmonkstakhar.co.uk
Twitter: @HelenMTakhar
What’s next on
your reading list?
Discover your next
great read!
Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.
Sign up now.
Precious You Page 31