True to her word, Francesca came back the next morning. I was ridiculously glad to see her—at least until she told me about the doctor’s appointment the police wanted to schedule in order to “gather physical evidence.”
Even that mannered phrase made my guts churn.
“Will they make me go?” I whispered.
Francesca shook her head. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, Lesley. Not anymore.”
My mouth almost fell open in amazement. I curled onto my side on the bed, pressing my cheek to its pitiful, lumpy excuse for a pillow, hugging myself. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“But it would help my case if I went.”
She nodded. “I’ll make certain you’ve a female doctor. And stay with you. If you’d like.”
Yes, yes, yes, please.
“Okay,” I said.
Pelvic exams aren’t fun even on a good day, but having my very first one under such crappy circumstances meant I was already shaking and blinking back tears before the gyno even got her gloves on.
“You can tell her to stop at any time,” Francesca said softly into my ear, from where she sat perched on a stool next to me.
I felt the doctor grasp the inside of my knee, gently but firmly.
“Go slowly,” Francesca said to her. “Please.”
I looked over at Francesca. “Can—can I hold your hand?”
It seemed like a weird thing to ask, seeing as how we barely knew each other, but I’d seen enough of her to know that her soft fingers wrapped round mine would help.
“Of course you can.” She leaned against the padded table. Clasped my hand in that same rallying fashion in which she’d taken my arm the night before. Her grip delicate yet solid.
When the metal slid into me, my shoulders tensed and my neck clenched and my head lifted off the crackly exam-room paper. Strangled whimpers leaked from my lips no matter how hard I tried to bite them closed.
“Take a deep breath,” the doctor said.
“Or take a break,” Francesca said, glancing at her.
“No,” I gasped, sinking back down onto the pillow. “Let’s get it over with. I’m good.”
For the rest of the exam, I longed to ditch that clinic in favor of the ceiling, but I also wanted to stay with Francesca, who was being so sweet, cheerleading about how well I was coping, reminding me over and over that I was the one in control.
“Do you have any idea how brave you are?” she murmured, as a particularly bad poke made my womb cramp. “I’d have called it quits back in the reception area.”
I couldn’t help smiling. “Yeah?”
“Mmm-hmm. But you, you’re a tough one.”
Rockstar. Don’t fucking cry.
She saw the moistness in my eyes, I knew, because she gave my hand a good long squeeze. And then I did retreat up to the ceiling for a while, ’cause it was just too hard to let her see me like that. But when it was over, as I was slowly sitting back up to the feel of all that cold jelly-glop between my thighs and the light, steady guidance of her hand on my back, I glanced over at her and said hoarsely, “Thank you.”
Her face went pink with pleasure, as if she weren’t used to hearing those words from a client. “You’re so very welcome,” she said.
• • •
Even harder than that exam, though, was the reunion with my mum. We’d got a court order saying that my dad couldn’t have contact with me at all, but she wanted to see me, and part of me wanted to see her. I say “part of me” because, honestly, given the way it’d all gone down so far, I knew my chances of having a real hugs-and-happiness reunion were zero. Hell, even a simple heartfelt “Oh, Lesley, I’m sorry I didn’t take this seriously before” was in the realm of minor miracle. So I had to be realistic, and not let my strength get sapped by sick-little-girl-supper-tray hopes. But the hopeful little girls inside you die hard, and so Francesca arranged a meeting in the same conference room where I’d given the police interview.
We made an awkward triangle, me and Francesca on one side of the table, Mum on the opposite. All we could do was cagily eye each other.
Mum looked so pretty. Wan, but put-together. Wearing a little flower pin I’d made for her in art class ages ago, and a cardigan with pearly buttons. The room was so cold—that business-office air-conditioning, always cranked too high—and I could see her hands quivering from nerves and chill. I wanted to hold them so badly. I wanted to rest my cheek against the cardie’s wisteria-hued cotton and stroke the nostalgic chipped glaze of the pin, and close my eyes just in time to feel the precise plant of her kiss atop my head. Oh, Lesley-lovely, she would say, like I was three again. I was so daft not to believe you. And now look at you, my brave bold girl. You must be knackered. Rest now, the car’s running, we’ll go back to Margate on holiday, just us. Leave him with nothing but divorce papers. Run along the seaside with the gulls, till we’re strong and tan! Sleep in till noon and have ice cream for lunch. How’s that sound, sweetness?
Like the best plan ever. I leaned towards her, all my hope-caveats evaporating.
Soon as I did that, she began to cry. Ugly, sloppy tears, her face twisted with pain whose source I couldn’t place. Her gaze on me both liquid and hard.
“Mummy?” I said softly.
Snuffly gasps. “You know, I can understand why . . .”
She understands! I smiled at her, gently, as if to say, I understand, too. I know it’s been hard.
“Why . . .” More sucked-in sniffles.
Francesca slid a box of tissues across to her. “Here, Aurelia. Take your time.”
Mum straightened up. Slid her chair back, away from me. When she spoke now, her voice was crisp.
“I can understand why you mightn’t want to live at home, but leaving like that, without even a note, on our anniversary?”
There’d been eighteen roses, one for each year. Mum had buried her nose in them, giddy. “You’ve outdone yourself, Liam!”
When she said that, he made a big shameless show. Full-on kissed her in front of me, just minutes after he’d coiled his tongue around mine. And I stood there, regulation celebratory card in hand, knowing we all knew, knowing beyond a doubt that, bad timing or not, it was time.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” I said now.
“Then why are you pressing charges?” Furious eye-dab. “Please, Lesley. Don’t do this to us.”
To us? I wanted to lunge across the table and spit in her face. I could feel the saliva writhing in my mouth, all indignant slosh.
I looked over at poor Francesca, who was stuck playing neutral. She gave me a soft bon courage glance back.
I could tell Mum noticed, because she sighed and crossed her arms. “We work ourselves to death, your dad and I. Do you have any idea what this will do to us if—”
“What? He gets held responsible for what he did?”
Mum turned her head away, towards a poster that read You CAN Break the Cycle of Violence.
Did I? I wondered. Can I?
“Mum,” I said, “I’m still going to that school. I’ll make you proud.”
Her head whipped back. “After all this shame?”
“Mrs. Holloway,” Francesca said delicately, “many, many women struggle to come to grips with incest in the family. And I don’t mean to make light of your difficulties. But right now, your daughter is in great need of—” She glanced over at me again. “Well, why don’t you tell us just what it is you need, Lesley?”
My Bjőrk posters and my fluffy duvet and supper on a tray and Mummy and Me storytime.
Mum stared down into her lap. Picked at her lavender nail polish, as if it were a scab to be flaked off.
Two could play that game. I sat up. Crossed my arms. Looked away towards the Cycle of Violence. Blink-blink-blinked, so barely I knew only Francesca would see.
“I need for this to be over,” I said.
• • •
Back in Francesca’s car, I wanted nothing more than to cry while she held me, but instead I ranted and raged, imitating Mum. “ ‘How could you do this to us? Why must we bear this shaaame?’ ” And then, pounding my fist on the passenger-side door frame: “Fuck that fuck that fucking fuck that.”
Once the adrenaline wore off, I brought my hand down and glanced sheepishly at Francesca. “Sorry,” I said.
“It’s all right,” Francesca said.
No, it isn’t.
“You think she’ll ever come around?” I asked.
“She can’t even be proud of me,” I whispered.
Francesca reached across the gearshift and put her hand over mine.
“Maybe not,” she said, “but I certainly can.”
I swallowed. “Thanks.”
She gave my hand a little pat. “What do you say to some post-debrief ice cream?”
Yes, yes, yes, please.
We sat and ate it on “my” bench on Islington Green. She slid her tiny manicured feet out of her adorable ballet flats. Rolled up the sleeves of her fitted blouse whose silvery-gray print looked like tears turned to blossoms. “Bit better, at least?” she asked.
I nodded. Licked the cone so hard my teeth hurt. Willed myself not to lean my head on her shoulder.
• • •
The rest of that summer was a seedy, anxious blur. I took a job at a fish-and-chips shop, evenings and weekends, to supplement my meager allowance from social services. At night, I’d trudge greasily home, not to the foster family Francesca had hoped to procure for me but back to my shabby now-permanent hostel room, where I’d devour my employee ration of newsprint-wrapped cod while longing for one of Mum’s sit-down Sunday dinners.
My time at Hawthorn Hill, the posh school, was a blur at first, too. Mainly because I was so bloody tired from all that work: proving I’d deserved my scholarship, frying fish, avoiding middle-aged men in the hostel corridor, taking a middle-aged man to court. So much for jauntily gliding down steps (I took them two at a time to catch the bus to the tube to the hostel) or making new friends (I could barely stay awake, much less endear myself to girls whose biggest problem was deciding whether to go to Mallorca or Ibiza for winter holiday). But I kept soldiering on, all sleepwalky day long, because come the afternoon, best saved for last, there it was, the hour that made it all worthwhile: literature class with Mrs. Kremsky.
A lot of the other girls didn’t care for Miss, but I thought she was brilliant. For one thing, she looked like a slightly more schoolteachery version of PJ Harvey, her dark hair rustling round her shoulders, her pale, starkly striking face framed by silvery earrings whose angular shapes made them look like mini-sculptures.
She was fierce, too. Whenever the class ringleaders, Gemma and Bettina, gave her shit, she’d give it right back. Like the time they mocked her American accent, never mind that it was nowhere near a twangy sitcom one, and subtle enough to show she’d lived here a long time and knew how to walk the map-edges of a lot of different worlds. Maybe that threatened those girls, or maybe they did just think it was funny.
Either way, Miss wasn’t having any of it. She spun right round from the chalkboard, and did the most perfect imitation of the bastardized Cockney they liked to put on: “Better to be a born-and-bred Yank than pretend I grew up in Shoreditch to boost my street cred, innit?” Just enough to call them out, but not so much as to be truly mean. Flipping fabulous. I about fell over.
Another time we were supposed to be working on our essays, and the girls in the back were whispering and giggling about their debauched weekends instead, thinking nobody could hear, but I knew that Miss’s finely honed bullshit radar was about to detect.
Sure enough, she glanced up from her desk, casually graceful, her Tate Modern earrings going swingity-swing, and said, in her sharpest I’m so not messing around voice, “Ladies, last time I checked, tallies of who boffed whom weren’t part of the National Curriculum.” And then, just before the girls could get all squawky and miffed, she flashed them a sly little smile to let them know that, yes, she was vexed, but she also remembered what it was like to be sixteen and had no doubt had some debauched weekends of her own.
She was clever like that, Miss, but also challenging as a teacher. Some of the other instructors at the Hill were known for going a bit easy, especially on the girls whose parents had donated to the school’s endowment, but Miss wasn’t having any of that, either. I mean, talk about rigorous, she had us reading Ulysses in Lower Sixth. Everyone else moaned about it, but for me it was a nightly ritual: get home round about ten after closing the chip shop, huddle under my ratty blanket, put my Screaming Women on, crack open that dusty, hulking monster of a book, and crawl right into Leopold Bloom’s head.
I’ll be honest, most evenings I did a skim, but when I got to the part at the end, with his wife, Molly, going on about being a flower of the mountain and the hillside and the seedcake, my jaw went slack with amazement. The thought of an actual question, heavy as fruit with desire, hanging in the air (May I? Will you? Will we?), the very idea that you could be asked, be worthy and cherished enough for someone to ask, not just take—God, that was heady enough. But then, to think that you—that I—would want to say yes, and not just say it but murmur it, whisper it, moan it? I couldn’t even imagine.
Well, all right, sometimes I imagined, but I only got about thirty seconds in before the blackness closed over my head and I became closet Lesley, of the shoved spine and musty hatboxes and uninvited knuckles and forcibly twined tongue, and that part of me didn’t want a damn thing to do with yes. The fingers of her hand went right up in a paparazzi block, curved straight into a preemptive punch; they never slid down anywhere warm, or opened any blouse ribbons for an eager suitor. The only leaning she—no, say it right, I—did was away, pushed up against the wall I’d built for myself, repeating: No. No. No.
I wouldn’t reach yes until Clare. But there in my room, underneath a dog-eared book by a dead one-eyed Irishman, a little catwalk between no and yes started to take shape, to scaffold.
And it freaked me the hell out. As did going to school and watching honey-haired girls move their lithe, buttery-limbed bodies through space like they deserved every good thing the world had to offer.
On top of that, I had to give a deposition, which is an interview, carried out by the opposing side’s legal team, that’s designed to make you feel so intimidated that you either screw up your story or cave from the pressure of the interrogation. And when I say “interrogation,” I’m not at all exaggerating, because that torture dragged on for six hours. Six bloody hours of a microphone clipped to my blouse, of wires plugging me into their dirty machinery, of a court transcriptionist’s keyboard clack-clack, of a video camera’s voyeur lens recording my every lash-blink as my dad’s solicitor asked crap like, “How many sexual partners have you had?” (Just your client, and it wasn’t exactly a partnership.) Or, my favorite: “Any chance you wanted to get back at your father for something?” (Umm, other than the fact that he couldn’t keep his privates private?) Fishing around for every last crumb of stale bread that could point a trail back to Lesley’s a skank, Lesley’s a liar.
I wanted to pound the table, give them a “Fuck that fuck that fucking fuck that,” shout back every cheeky answer that popped into my head. But I’d been told by my own solicitor to “refrain from engaging” with their attempts to wind me up.
“Don’t worry,” I told him. “I’m a disengagement pro.”
And indeed I was. Ceiling to the rescue. Not a single sniffle. Which of course Dad’s solicitors jumped on: “In all candor, Miss Holloway, you don’t look the least bit traumatized.”
I bit my lip. Felt the ceiling cave.
Can we stop, please? I scribbled to Francesca on her notepad.
She read my query, then raised her hand. “Pardon me, gentlemen, but I believe your time is up.”
And just like that, it stopped. She took me down the hall to her office, with its orchid plant on the desk and its corkboard with postcards from Venice and its little dishful of candies, which she let me unwrap, one by one by one, so my hands would have something to do other than uncontrollably shake.
“Sorry,” I kept saying. “I’ll refill it.”
“Don’t waste a second worrying.” Francesca reached for a toffee. Popped it into her mouth. Worked its chewy center down to nothing with impressive demureness, then leaned forward towards me, so close I could glimpse the red glints she’d recently got put in her hair, tingeing its brunette ordinariness with sparks of spitfire.
“This will be over soon,” she said.
And then it’ll get better, I thought. The girls at school will stop calling me “Scholarship Suck-up,” and I’ll buy new turquoise knickers and string some lights round the windows in my room at the hostel, and my dreams will stop being freak-show mash-ups where I feel his fingers yank my hair and watch my own fingers stroke shiny tresses until the wires cross and the blackness closes over my head and I wake up and thud my fist, slam slam slam, into my pitiful pillow.
But the dreams weren’t through with me yet. That night, when I startled out of their familiar terror, I got up and went down the kitchen, grabbed a pair of shears, and hacked off every inch of my own shoulder-length mousy blond hair.
All that earned me was an earful of snickers from Bettina and Co. the next morning, but I didn’t care, imagining myself as . . . well, not butch, so much (I hadn’t an awareness of what that meant yet), but definitely blunt-cut indie cool.
At least until lunch, when I went into the girls’ toilets and stared in the mirror at myself and conceded that yeah, I really did look like shit. The rough yet flyaway fuzz atop my head, the harsh angles of my cheekbones, the recent resurgence of acne spots angrily dotting my face all made it clear: I was nothing but a scruffy waif. I reached out a finger, jabbed it at my reflection. In my head, backed by demented carnival music, Kate Bush was singing “That girl in the mirror, between you and me, she-don’t-stand-a-chance-at-getting-anywhere-at-all,” her words precise yet slurry. I was suspended between a sob and a snarl.
Just then Mrs. Kremsky came out of a stall and noticed me standing by the sinks. “Hey, Lesley,” she said, all chillaxed, as she rinsed her hands under the tap.
Indie cool, Les, indie cool, I told myself. “Hi, Miss.”
She glanced over, still matter-of-fact, but I could sense a tautness to the way she looked at me. Like she’d figured it all out: me, feeling like utter crap, but also thoroughly invested in my game face.
“Short hair really suits you,” she said.
I swiped at a smudge on the mirror. “Oh. Thanks. Reckon my stylist went a bit overboard, though.”
Miss turned towards me, her arms loosely crossed, her head lowered with that crooked been there myself smile. For a moment, I pictured her as a teenager in a shadowy kitchen, her black-fingernailed hand poised for glinty-bladed attack.
“You know,” she said, “I could try to even that out for you, if you wanted.”
Of course I wanted. The idea of Miss smartening up my botched fury sounded like the best serendipitous gift since finding the Children’s Services Team’s phone number.
She nipped out to the supply closet and came back with a pair of scissors more delicate than the ones I’d used, but still substantial. “Wet the front for me?”
I dipped my hand beneath the faucet. Ran my dampened fingers through what little front I had left. Stood still as I could as she stepped up behind me, near enough to reach the tufts at the back of my neck, but not so close that we jostled each other. She was way taller than me, and I felt more than a little awed. “I didn’t realize you did hair, Miss.”
“Oh, I was a Manic Panic fan in a former life,” she said, snipping at the bits by my ears. “Don’t mind a modified Chelsea cut, do you?”
Ha, so she had been punk.
“Not at all,” I said, closing my eyes so she could trim nearby.
When I opened them again, she tilted her head to appraise me. Made a contemplative hrm hrm hrm noise. “Little more, I’m thinking.” Two decisive snips, and then she gestured for me to turn back around. “There. Have a look.”
I looked. Raised my hands to my mouth in amazement. My sharp face and its bothersome bumps were still there, but she’d transformed my ragged cowlicks into something cropped and smooth enough to befit an edgy pixie.
“Holy shit,” I said.
Bless her, Miss didn’t bat an eyelash. “You might have to spike it into submission in the mornings,” she said, “but other than that, totally low-maintenance.”
I couldn’t help grinning. “Loads better. Thank you.”
“No problem.” She turned to leave. “Exam on Eliot this afternoon. You ready?”
“Studied like mad.”
Quick glance over her shoulder at me, along with a grin back. “Good, because I outdid myself on the essay questions this time.”
• • •
A few hours later, I strode into lit class with both a newfound swagger (Say good-bye to “Scholarship Suck-up,” Mallorca twats!) and an insatiable need for a nap. Between the final reckoning of the till at the shop the night before and all that Waste Land reviewing, I’d not got to bed till two in the morning. As Mrs. Kremsky passed out our exams, I felt a yawn coming on and hurried to hide it with my palm.
“Ahh, no falling asleep on the dawn of modernism, now.” Miss said it teasingly, but my face still burned.
While I scrawled out answers, I propped my head up on my left hand. Paused to drum my pencil atop the page, in the hope that its rhythm might keep me awake.
At the desk in front of mine, Gemma turned round in petulant whisper. “Some of us are trying to work here, if you’ve not noticed.”
“All the more reason to save your grievances for the after-party,” Miss said from the lectern.
My delight at that smackdown kept me going for another paragraph or so, but then my chin commenced slumping and my eyelids began to flutter.
Next I knew, I was lolling my head back up like a shit-faced turtle, just in time to see the others file out of the empty classroom and find Miss crouched down on her heels beside me.
“Ohmygod,” I mumbled, rubbing my fingers over the bridge of my nose and my eyes. “I’m so sor—”
No, it wasn’t. Not with a big blob of drool on my unfinished exam, and wisps of my freshly cut hair scattered all over the desk.
Miss reached over and put her hand on my arm. For a minute or so, we just stared at each other, silent. A welcome change from my weekly meetings with Francesca, whose cheery kindnesses filled up every spare space, whose staccato bursts of questions (not that I could fault them; she had to ask) came rapid-fire: “Do you feel safe at the hostel? Are you keeping up at school? Do you need me to liaise with your solicitor? With your mum?” (Please. No. Just sit here, and be with me.)
Around Miss, I felt I didn’t have to talk. Which, strangely enough, made me want to.
“I work,” I said. “Eats up all my evening. And the trip out here on the tube, it’s an hour and a half, easy.”
“Where are you commuting in from?”
“Islington.”
Her mouth turned down in a grimace. “No rest for the weary on that Northern Line, is there?”
I shook my head.
“Listen,” she said. “I can give you a ride here and back.”
I bit my lip. Stared down at my half-finished exam.
“And I won’t be offended if you think that’s too weird.”
“No, no,” I said, looking up. “I just hate to make you go out of your way for—”
“It’s not out of my way. I live a few blocks from Angel station.” She gave my arm a squeeze, then let go. “Think about it, okay?”
I didn’t have to think long. Come the next Monday, I was standing outside the hostel with my schoolbag on my shoulder, watching Mrs. Kremsky’s dark-gray Volkswagen pull up to the front door.
“Nice, very nice,” she said from the driver’s seat, with a nod towards my spiked hair. “Have you had breakfast yet?”
I shook my head.
“Well, then.” She reached over and plucked a paper bag from atop the dashboard. “Take your pick.”
I peered inside to find a pair of scones. Cranberry-orange and chocolate chip.
“Aww, bless,” I said. “You didn’t have to.”
“Yes, I did,” she said, smiling. “No way I’m braving the congestion zone without a Costa Coffee run.”
She gestured towards one of the plastic-lidded cups nestled near the gearshift. “I hope hazelnut with copious amounts of cream works.”
A real flipping latte. I lifted it in both hands, inhaling.
“Oh,” I said after the first sip, my voice unfurling in a satiated sigh. “It so does.”
She glanced over at me. Smiled again. “Good.”
We drove the rest of the way in silence, sipping at our drinks, brushing crumbs from our laps. I’m not one to go in for thoughts about the afterlife, but let me tell you, that trip was heaven, from the roomy leather seat with the internal heat that kept my spine toasty to the warm flaky sugar that dissolved on my tongue.
Next day, it was the same thing: hello, coffee, pastries, conversation-less inch northbound. You had to hand it to Miss for being down with that level of awkward reticence. I mean, she very well may have had an inner Francesca popping up like an overeager student, waving her hand, going, “Ooh! Ask Lesley about her tragic situation! Educate her about literary theory! Make small talk about weather, or traffic, or school!,” but if so, she did an excellent job of keeping her quiet.
Which isn’t to say that we didn’t communicate at all, because we did plenty. Mainly through Miss’s CD collection, which was a remarkably ecumenical glovebox stash ranging from punk to classical. She’d take a sloshy swallow of her coffee, glance over. “What’ll it be today, Les?”
“Vivaldi,” I’d say, if I wanted to lean my head against the window and doze. “The Clash,” I’d suggest, if I had an exam that morning and needed to get pumped up.
One day I brought “Best of the Screaming Women” along in my bag, just for the hell of it. When I handed it over to her to play on the drive home, Miss took one look at the marker-drawn label and gave me a thumbs-up.
“Oh my God,” she said, chuckling, when the first Kate Bush track came on. “Last time I heard this, Maggie Thatcher was still in office and I was holed up in Bloomsbury, writing a thesis on my boy James.”
“You moved here for university?” I asked.
She paused for a moment, chewing her lip as if debating whether to say more, then nodded. “Nineteen years, this country’s been stuck with me.”
“Well, it ought to be grateful.”
Her chuckle bloomed into a full-on laugh. “Campaigning for a shorter book assignment for next month, are we?”
She reached over like she was about to give my arm a squeeze again, but then her mobile rang, and she scurried to turn down the music and answer.
“Hey, you.” I could tell from her tone—breezy but alert—that it was her year-older-than-me son phoning. “Mmm. And whom are you going with? . . . No, it’s fine, I just wanted to know. . . . And you’ve got money for dinner? . . . All right. Have fun, darlin’.”
She finished with him and turned the CD back up just as the song about the evil house-invading spirit came on, all bellows and wails. I drummed my stuttery fingers along the armrest on the passenger side, in time to the door-slammy percussion. Felt myself leave myself.
By the time I came back down, Miss had already turned onto Liverpool Road. “Still with me, Les?” There was an endearing smudge of lipstick on her front tooth, from her pensive what-to-divulge gnawing.
“Yes,” I said.
• • •
You’d think that those casual-but-warm hours spent in Miss’s car would have given me a glimmer of hope, a bright spot, same as my nascent Ulysses catwalk, but they didn’t. Every time her son rang, I felt a prickly skin-crawl of envy, a different flavor of desire: to be called “darlin’,” to be offered dinner money that wasn’t dispensed out a government envelope, to have someone “just want to know” for reasons other than a Children’s Services file update.
And then I’d get out of the toasty car with my gone-cold coffee, wave good-bye to Miss like she was merely my colleague, and take that longing with me, wrapped round my shoulders like a moth-eaten cloak while I swept up the chip shop or sat at my desk-slash-dresser eating my dinner of instant noodles, fighting the urge to . . . what? Cry? Stomp about? March into the hall and fling myself at the first Pervy McPerv I saw, in a desperate, misguided attempt at procuring some affection?
The conventional wisdom, dispensed via countless young adult novels, goes something like this: Our fragile-yet-fierce heroine, in a desperate, misguided attempt to procure some dulling of her pain, stompmarched down the kitchen, dodging a phalanx of Pervy McPervs, and reached, not for kitchen shears this time, but for a knife with which (tears rolling down her cheeks all the while) she numbed her unspeakable agony with one deftly executed forearm slash.
To which I say: Complete and utter bollocks.
• • •
My even having the knife was an accident. We were working on paper projects in art class, wending our fine blades along dark pages to craft shapes and symbols, leaves and faces. The teacher called mine “winsome and affecting,” and was keen to chat with me about putting them in the school magazine, but I had to politely edge past, because I had English next, and I’d be damned if I was showing up late for that. “Dead flattered, really,” I said, scooping up my books, inadvertently stuffing the capped blade in my cardigan pocket. “Have to dash.”
To be honest, I wasn’t just brushing her off for Mrs. Kremsky; I was also dodging doling out the information I had to give all my teachers, based on what Francesca had told me the last time we’d met for lunch at Pret.
Miss, I reckoned, would be the perfect person to test the explanation waters on, so I ran like mad to get to her classroom. Could have talked about it in the car that morning, sure, but I didn’t want a brief FYI to turn into a Serious Conversation, even with her.
“London Marathon’s not till April,” she said, laughing a little, as I came barreling in.
“So, umm,” I said, pausing to gasp, “I need to let you know that I’ll not be in class three weeks from Thursday.”
“No?” Attendance was a big deal at Hawthorn Hill. There were allowances made for the Mallorca/Ibiza crowd, of course, but overall the headmistress was pretty obsessed with racking up stellar statistics to present to her funders at their annual gala.
I shook my head. “No. It’s an excused absence, though.”
“Everything all right?”
“Yeah, I just . . .” Seeing the ringleaders sashay in, I leaned in a little closer, lowering my voice. “I have to testify in court. For—”
“Mrs. Kremsky,” Bettina announced, slamming her Mulberry purse down on her desk, “that piece you had us read for today was rubbish.”
“Spoken like a true Times Literary Supplement reviewer,” Miss called to her before turning back to me and touching my shoulder. “It’s fine, Lesley.”
• • •
When we got in the car that afternoon, Miss didn’t start the engine or load a CD for the drive, but instead sat there for a moment, her right elbow propped against the window as she ran her fingers nervously over her chin.
“Listen,” she said. “Whatever’s going on with you and this court case—”
“Don’t worry. It’s not my trial.”
She looked over at me. “You,” she said, shaking her head, “are the last person I would suspect of criminal behavior.”
Who you putting your money on, then? Bettina? I wanted to shoot back, but all I could do was pose a shy question. “How . . . how much did Headmistress Fallon tell you?”
“Just that you live on your own, and that your social worker is your emergency contact.”
I let my breath out slowly.
“Oh, good,” I said. “I keep thinking she’s sent around a memo, telling the faculty—”
“All your business? No, and I’d have had a concerned chat with her if she had.”
Whew. Miss was still on my side.
“Now, having said that,” she said, “if you ever do want to talk, I’m more than willing.”
I rubbed a loose thread on my skirt, twirling it.
“Totally your call. I know from experience that sometimes you need to tell, and other times you need people to stop asking.”
Shut up, I thought. Shut up before I lean my head into your lap and bawl.
“I’m good,” I said. “But thanks.”
• • •
On the way home, Miss put in a classical disc, one I’d never heard before. All cello solos, so gorgeous I could feel them resonate in my chest.
“God, that’s ace,” I said.
“Isn’t it? I think it has something to do with the fact that cellos are the closest instrument to the human voice.”
“So it’s like it’s singing to you?”
“Yeah. Of course, it could also be because it’s my mother playing.”
“On here? No way.”
“Mmm-hmm.” She handed me the case, whose graceful, curving letters read Darkness/Brightness: Selections by Caroline Merchant. Beneath the title was a photo of a classy older woman sporting frosted-blond hair and a string of pearls, her cello tucked demurely between her long-skirted knees.
“Wow, she looks nothing like you,” I said.
Miss laughed. “She’s not much like me, either.” That very well could have come off like a dig, but the way she said it was tender, as if their differences were a long-standing source of affectionate amusement for them both.
As we reentered the congestion zone, a light rain began to spatter on the windows. I huddled tight inside my coat, feeling relieved when the CD’s final poignant note drifted into silence.
When Miss pulled up outside the hostel, I made no effort to move. Didn’t even unfasten my seat belt. Just sat there, watching the moistness sluice down the glass.
“Okay, so,” I said. “The trial’s about my dad. He’s the reason I ran away. And my mum’s standing by him, even though she knows everything he . . .” I couldn’t finish.
Miss turned to face me, her gray-eyed gaze intense.
“You’re not the only one,” she said softly. “I’m an escape artist, too.”
“What do you—”
“College wasn’t the only reason I left America.” Her voice was strong, her head held high; nothing in her shook or quavered, but I could tell she was taking a huge risk, opening up to me like that, and knew it.
“Your dad,” I said.
She nodded. “I couldn’t take it anymore. All those hungry glances.”
“And your mum?”
“Checked out. In denial. Dreaming of a symphony chair.”
“Did you press charges?”
She shook her head. “There . . . there weren’t official grounds to—”
“So he didn’t actually fuck you.”
“Excuse me?” Her voice was hard now.
“No offense,” I said, “but if he didn’t sneak into your room at night and yank off your knickers, you’ve no right acting like you understand.”
She put up one hand. “Okay, look, you’re absolutely correct that emotional incest isn’t the same thing, but—”
“What?” I said, undoing my seat belt with a snap. “You want me to sit here and say, ‘Oh, thank you for sharing, Miss, I’m so glad we’re kindred spirits’?”
She shifted back so that she faced her window. “No,” she said, sighing. “I just wanted to—”
“Don’t bother.” I wrenched the passenger door handle, jumping up and deserting her with a slam.
• • •
Upstairs, back in my room, I tore off my jacket and paced round the room, fuming—not at Mrs. Kremsky, but at myself. Never mind her right to say those things; I’d had no right to mouth off at her like that. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I sat down on the bed and flipped open my geometry book, trying to distract myself with hard angles and precise measurements, but it didn’t work. Minutes later, I was up again, stride, turn, stride over the linoleum, my fingers raking the gelled spikes of my hair.
You idiot, I told myself. She was the closest thing you had to a mentor, nearest thing you had to a friend.
My right hand reached down into the pocket of my cardigan. Found the X-Acto knife. At first, my thumb merely toyed with its cap, but then my skin did a little dance, worming under the plastic, playing along the edge of the blade, anxious little tic, fiddle, fiddle, fiddle, while I paced. I thought of Miss’s elegant, poised face, her carefully chosen words, her gift of her younger self’s vulnerability, offered up to me as solace.
I sat down on the bed again. Slipped the knife from my pocket. Wrenched the cap off. Shoved my left sleeve up. Poked the metal tip into my wrist. Prick prick prick, delicate and precise as pointillism. Little punitive droplets, like the ping of rain. Take that, and that, and that.
Didn’t make me feel better, but it at least calmed me down enough that I could prop up on my pillow and have another go at geometry. In the morning, I woke shaky and nauseated, mentally replaying every pointed word and bitter shout of my argument with Miss. The thought of facing her in class made my stomach churn even worse than when Francesca told me about the gyno appointment.
I had to make it out of bed somehow, so I reached down and grabbed the recapped knife from where I’d been using it as a placeholder in my textbook. Didn’t take more than a minute of poke-poke-poke to get my feet swung over the mattress and onto the floor.
When I was finished, I tucked the blade inside my bag’s side pocket. Promised myself I’d return it to the art workshop closet at lunch, but I never did.