Alice had wanted to drive herself to the nursing home in the morning but Mum wouldn’t have any of it.
“I’d like to see Phil first,” she’d said in that very clear precise voice of hers which had always over-ridden Alice’s and had done the same to her father when he’d been alive. “We don’t know how much longer the poor man has.”
Poor man? Alice’s knuckles clenched quietly in the passenger seat as they made the hour-long journey through leafy lanes and then on to the motorway towards Bristol. Mum had insisted on driving; as ever, needing to be in charge.
Sometimes, when Alice looked back at her childhood, she wondered how she had survived. Surely any decent mother would listen to a daughter making serious accusations? Yet even Dad hadn’t been certain in the end. She’d seen the doubt in his eyes grow after his talk with Phil and knew that his friend had persuaded him into believing that his daughter was just a silly girl who made things up.
Not surprisingly, her ‘daft imaginings’ had left a stain. When her mother insisted on inviting Phil and his wife to Alice and Daniel’s wedding, they conveniently had a ‘last-minute’ cruise booked. “It’s all your fault,” her mother had wailed. “You’ve made me lose our friends. They haven’t been the same since the incident.”
Later, when Marjorie with her cow-like eyes had died – around the time of Garth’s birth – Alice had reluctantly been persuaded to send flowers although she’d put her foot down about going to the funeral. “How could I see Phil again?” she had argued fiercely. “That man ruined my life.”
“Don’t be so ridiculous,” Mum had snapped. “If you don’t stop saying things like that, you’ll get yourself into real hot water. Not your made-up variety.”
Now as they drove to the nursing home with her mother all too frequently exceeding the speed limit, Alice’s mind went back to the day of her eighteenth birthday. The counsellor whom she’d seen later at university, had urged her not to dwell on what she called ‘your story’. It was better, apparently, to concentrate on the present and learn from the ‘experience’ of the past.
Yet the fact remained that all these years later, it seemed as real as if it had happened yesterday.
Alice had just passed her driving test! The first in her class to do so. Despite her nerves about impending A-levels (she’d always been a bit of a ‘worrier’), the driving-test triumph had really boosted her confidence. Alice was flying high, boosted by her father’s obvious pride. “Well done, my girl!”
He’d enveloped her in a big bear hug. “You obviously take after my side of the family, though don’t tell your mother that. You’ve got good spatial awareness and you’re sensible too. Make a good driver, you will.”
Her mother, who had only recently learned to drive herself (“in my day, Alice, it was different. We didn’t have the advantages of your generation.”) was less enthusiastic. “Just make sure you’re careful. It’s a big responsibility, you know. You’ve got other people’s lives in your hands.”
Then she’d shaken her head. “As for this car your father has bought you, I think it’s quite ridiculous. Talk about spoiling you …”
Alice had gasped. “Dad’s bought me a car?”
Her mother’s lips had tightened. “I’m not meant to have told you. It’s a surprise. So try to act like it when he tells you.”
Sometimes Alice wondered if her mother disliked her because her birth had apparently caused “problems”. It was, she gleaned over the years, why her parents had never had another child. The counsellor had said it seemed as though, despite working hard to gain her mother’s love, Alice was on a losing wicket. “Children without siblings can be so precious that their parents wrap them up in cotton wool,” she’d told her. “Sometimes, however, they unfairly take the brunt for their parents’ disappointments.”
It was pretty obvious that Alice had fallen into the last category.
Still, it was different with Dad. “Like it?” he’d said, after instructing her to close her eyes and then leading her to the garage where a sparkling brand new Fiesta sat waiting. She’d gasped. Even though Mum had (deliberately?) ruined the surprise, Alice’s breath was still taken away.
“It’s great, Dad. Really amazing.”
His eyes had shone with pleasure. “I bought it from Uncle Phil’s garage. He gave me a good deal. Tell you what.” He pressed the keys into her hand. “Why don’t you drive over and see him and Marjorie? Nothing like a solo drive to give you confidence, right at the beginning. The weekend traffic will give you a bit of practice too.”
Uncle Phil and Aunt Marjorie weren’t really her uncle and aunt although she had grown up, calling them that. Phil had worked with Dad once and met his wife at her parents’ wedding. (Marjorie had trained as a nurse with Mum.) They hadn’t had any children of their own which was, as Marjorie sometimes said while plying Alice with butterfly cakes, a “great sadness”. Alice had always liked Aunt Marjorie with her tight blonde curls that she had ‘done’ every Saturday, regular as clockwork. But there was something about Uncle Phil with his slick brown hair, combed neatly to one side and the way he would always give her a big strong hug that had almost winded her when she was little (and felt a bit odd now she was getting older), that she didn’t care for.
Still, as Dad said, she owed it to him to say thank you for helping out with the car. And it would be nice to see Marjorie and tell her about the disco that Mum and Dad were allowing her to have tonight in the local hall, to celebrate her birthday. Alice felt a flutter of excitement at the thought of seeing Gordon from the Sixth Form Debating Society again. “’Course I’ll be there,” he had said when she’d given him the invitation. “Wild horses wouldn’t stop me.”
It wasn’t a long drive to her uncle and aunt’s but just enough to get the hang of the gears which were a little stiff. Dad had been right, she told herself, pulling up outside the neat chalet bungalow with its clipped lawns and windows that were always sparkling. “It’s not as though she’s got anything else to do,” Alice had overheard Mum say once.
Carefully reversing up their drive, following Dad’s instructions, she locked the door before stroking the bonnet. Her car! Her very own car! Dad had been right! The solo drive had given her more confidence. Flushed with excitement, she hurried along the gravel path, clutching the bottle of wine that Dad had given her to thank his old friend along with a thank you note that Mum had pressed into her hand.
It opened before she had a chance to ring the bell with its tinkly chime. As a child she had always loved to press it, time and time again; knowing as it did so that it sang of butterfly cakes and happy adult conversation which she would observe from a corner, happily ensconced in a book or – even better – making up stories.
“Alice!” Uncle Phil enveloped her in one of his bear hugs. When she stepped back, he beamed down at her. He was wearing – how clear it still was in her mind – a blue-and-white striped jacket as though he was going to the boat race; something that he, Marjorie, Mum, and Dad did every year.
“Phil went to Cambridge, you know,” Marjorie would say every now and then as if she hadn’t already said it hundreds of times before. Then her husband would wave a chubby hand away as if it wasn’t important although the conversation would inevitably turn to who was doing what from his year at university, which often made Dad go rather quiet.
On that particular Saturday, however, Phil was less interested in his own elite academic background than the shiny blue Fiesta in the drive. “Like it, do you?”
She nodded excitedly. “Thanks so much for helping Dad choose it.” Then she held out the bottle of wine and the note. “These are for you.”
Taking them, he opened the envelope, read it briefly, and then considered the label on the bottle. “How very thoughtful of you.” She was about to say that actually it was a present from Dad but he was already ushering her in, talking excitedly. “Excellent timing, I must say!” He rubbed his chin, a common gesture, Alice had noticed, when pleased about something. “Marjorie has made one of her special chocolate cakes – makes a change from those little butterfly jobs, don’t you think – and we can’t eat it on our own.”
Phil led her, not into the kitchen as usual, but into what Marjorie called the morning room. It had a lovely view over the golf course and a very thick carpet which your feet sank into. “Take a seat,” he said, indicating the huge sofa with billowing yellow roses that Marjorie had chosen from Harrods last month and was so proud of. Then he strode across to the drinks cabinet in the corner and opened a bottle of sherry. “We ought to celebrate your birthday.”
Alice shifted uneasily in her seat. “I don’t want to drink. Not before driving back.”
“Nonsense. Just one won’t hurt.”
He was handing her the glass and as he did so, his hand brushed hers. But instead of apologising, he beamed. Feeling it was right to do so, she beamed back.
“Isn’t Auntie Marjorie going to join us?” she asked, looking at the door and expecting her to come in any minute.
“At the hairdresser,” he announced, sitting down next to her. “Someone cancelled so she had to change her usual appointment time.”
His knees were pressing now against hers even though there was plenty of room on the huge sofa for him to sit further away. Indeed, there were several chairs too. Alice didn’t know what to do. If she got up to sit on one of them instead, it looked rude. Maybe he didn’t realise how close he was.
Edging away, she put her glass on the side table. He moved nearer, his right arm stretched along the back of the sofa. It almost felt as though he had it around her, in the way that Gordon had – unexpectedly – done after the last debating meeting on the way to the bus stop. The recollection made her tingle. Not long to her birthday party now! What would it be like when he kissed her?
Her spine tingled with anticipation. Angela from her Physics class had had her eye on him for ages and Alice still couldn’t believe that it was her whom Gordon was interested in. Apart from the debating club, opportunities for boyfriends were few and far between, partly because her parents were so strict about not going out at weekends. Time enough for dating when you go to university, her mother had said, tight-lipped. Her father, as always, had agreed.
“So,” said Uncle Phil, grinning; bringing her back to the immediate present. He’d always had slightly grey teeth but today they seemed whiter. They smelt of mint as though he’d just cleaned them but there was also a whiff of sherry, suggesting he’d had one before she’d arrived. “Got a boyfriend, have you?”
Gordon promptly swam into her mind; as if he had ever been out of it. Tall, blond, slightly gangly, but who was pleasingly shy and reserved like her. “Not exactly but there is someone I like.” Shifting, she tried to move a bit further away but she’d come to the end of the sofa. Don’t be silly, she told herself. This is Uncle Phil.
“Done much with him, then?”
He was grinning even more now.
“No. I mean, I wouldn’t.”
Overcome with embarrassment, Alice made to get up but Uncle Phil placed a large hand on her shoulder. “Don’t go, dear. I want to talk.” His eyes travelled down to her breasts unashamedly. “You’ve grown up into a beautiful young lady, haven’t you?”
Alice flushed. She was feeling really uncomfortable now but it was difficult to move with the way that he was sitting. “You know, your Auntie Marjorie and I haven’t been, shall we say, close for a very long time.”
This wasn’t right. She could see that now. “I have to go,” said Alice, trying to get to her feet.
“Not so fast.”
Oh my God. His hand was actually cupping her right breast. His mouth, smelling of sherry and toothpaste was coming down on hers. “No,” she said, struggling to get away. “No.”
“Come on.” Phil’s hand was going further down. “You know you want it. I’ve seen the way you look at me.”
“I don’t. It’s not true. Stop. Please. STOP.”
It was all over so fast that she could hardly believe it had happened. There was no blood, the way everyone at school said there was. Just a horrible throbbing between her legs. Weeping, she stumbled for the door, her pants still half down.
“If you tell anyone,” slurred Phil from the sofa, “I’ll say you made it up. I’ll tell your parents that you had a drink even though I told you not to and that it made you imagine all this. You’ve always told stories, haven’t you? Ever since you were little.”
Almost hysterical, she ran to the car, turned on the engine, stalled it, and then drove home, her eyes blinded with tears. Crunching to a halt, she sat there for a minute before going in. “Mum! Dad!” she called out.
No answer. Just a note on the kitchen table to say that they had gone shopping for her party. Falling over the stairs in her distress, Alice ran herself a long hot bath. By the time her parents got back, she had made herself a strong sweet cup of tea but was still shaking.
“I knew it,” said her mother, taking in her distressed appearance. “You crashed the car, didn’t you?”
“No.” Alice burst into tears.
“What’s wrong, love?” asked Dad.
“It was Uncle Phil.” She began to shake. Huge convulsive sobs that washed through her body. “He … he tried to do something.”
She was right, thought Alice grimly as her mother swung into the grounds of the nursing home. They hadn’t believed her. At least Mum hadn’t. “How could you make something up like that?” she’d lashed out. “It’s wicked. Pure evil.”
Dad said nothing but his eyes had shown that he was finding it hard to accept what she’d said. “Let me sort this out,” he said.
“Don’t you dare!” Her mother had clutched his arm. “I’ll never be able to look Marjorie in the face again. We’ll lose them as friends, all because of our daughter’s silly head.”
Later, after the party was cancelled (Alice refused to go and her mother was left with the ‘humiliating’ task of ringing everyone, not to mention the ‘terrible unnecessary expense’), Dad had taken her to one side. “Are you sure this all happened?”
She’d nodded.
He’d gone out the next day ‘for a drive’ or so he said. But when he returned, his face was set. “Did he admit it?” asked Alice.
Dad had shaken his head. “He said you tried to … to get familiar but that he’d had to push you away.”
“That’s not true.”
Looking at her sadly, Dad had patted her on the shoulder and then walked away. The following month, Gordon – fed up no doubt by her failure to return his calls – started dating Angela.
Somehow, she got through her A-levels; spurred only by the thought of getting away. During her first year at uni, her mother’s letters occasionally referred to joint jaunts with Uncle Phil and Auntie Marjorie. The very look of his name in her mother’s writing made her feel sick and Alice made sure that she was never around if they came to the house during the holidays. Eventually, the strain grew too much. At her tutor’s suggestion, she left after her first year to have a break and never came back. Far easier to rent a room in London, join an employment agency, and carry on running.
If only she’d run away from Phil before anything had happened.
My fault. My fault.
“This way, please.” The cool but pleasant enough nurse who met them at the door was now leading them down a corridor. Alice glanced at her mother. She was looking as elegant as always; after Dad had died, she had blossomed rather than wilted. Now, as she clicked along in her kitten heels and tailored dress, she might pass for sixty rather than seventy-odd.
“Don’t upset him,” she hissed. “He’s an old man. And he still hasn’t forgotten those silly accusations that you made.”
Gritting her teeth – what was the point of arguing back now when her mother had never believed her before? – Alice followed the nurse into a small side room. Stunned, she stopped.
There, in the bed, lay an old man. His skin was grey and there was a network of tubes leading from his arm to the drip at the side. His eyelids were closed and there was a heavy rasping. Was this really the spectre who had spoiled her life? She could surely knock him down like a feather if she so chose.
“Phil,” said the nurse softly. “You’ve got the visitor you’ve been asking for.”
Almost immediately, the eyes snapped open. It was all Alice could do not to gasp. The outside body might have changed but those brown eyes with flecks of green were still the same ones from her nightmares, bearing down on her. Those thin hands on the bed had once been strong enough to pin her down. Was it possible that this was a joke? That any minute now, those hands might try to do the same again?
For a minute, she thought she was going to be sick. “Take a seat, dear,” said the nurse, seeing her falter. Then she whispered. “I know it’s distressing seeing loved ones like this.”
Phil was waving a hand. “Go away,” he seemed to say.
Did he want her to leave immediately? Alice felt cheated. There was so much she needed to say to him. But then she realised he was waving his hand at her mother. He wanted her to go.
“We’ll give you and your uncle some time together, shall we?” whispered the nurse.
Alice swallowed. Yes. No. Maybe. He was here. Face to face. Finally she could tell him all the things she’d been storing up in her head. Things that the counsellor had said she ought to list in a letter to “let it all out”.
But how could she? He was an old man. Frail. On his deathbed with yellow skin. Ugh! A wrinkled hand was creeping out towards hers. He was trying to say something. “I’m sorry.” At first she didn’t think she’d heard him properly. In disgust, she leaned towards him, noting his thin maroon lips. “I’m sorry.”
There was no doubt now.
“You ruined my life,” she whispered back.
“Forgive me.” The eyes held hers. “Please.”
What else could she do? He was dying. Terror was in his eyes. This old man was facing the ultimate. The thing that they were all secretly scared of. It would be wicked not to give him her forgiveness.
Silently she nodded, hating herself for doing so. “I … forgive … you.”
Each word had to squeezed out of her mouth through sheer internal effort.
Then she got up and ran out of the room, past her mother, waiting by the door with mistrustful eyes. “You didn’t upset him, did you?”
“Fuck off,” she threw back, appalled with herself and by the look on the nurse’s face. “Just fuck off.”
The two of them drove back in silence, her mother refusing to speak to her after what she described as the most embarrassing scene of her life. In front of the nurse too. Whatever would she think? What was wrong with Alice? Why couldn’t she be normal like other daughters?
As her mother drove through the mid-morning traffic, they went through a small village on the outskirts of Plymouth. For a moment, Alice fancied she saw the girl from the park running, her unruly pale auburn locks cascading over her shoulders; rucksack on her back.
She shook her head. Her imagination again. Both a curse and a blessing. With longing, Alice thought of the china piece at home, waiting to be restored. It was a small vase, broken by the owner’s sister which needed mending before the damage was discovered. The project might distract her. Soothe her. Take away the injustice of having been denied her final say. Give her time to reflect, on her own, exactly what had happened.
But to her irritation, Daniel met her at the door.
“What happened?” he asked, taking in her face, frowning as he tried to read it. Then he observed her mother driving off. “Doesn’t she want to come in?”
Alice shook her head. “It’s a long story.”
He tried to hold her but she broke away. His touch revolted her. Reminded her of the old man with the blue-veined hands and maroon lips who had forced her, once more, to do something she hadn’t wanted.
It felt like verbal rape.
“Please Daniel, not now.”
Hurt, he turned away. Alice tried to find a voice to explain; giving up, she put on the kettle and turned on the radio. Normal Radio 4. Merrily chattering away as though nothing had happened. Sweet tea. The vase waiting to be mended. A game of tennis maybe, at the club tomorrow.
Routine.
It was the only way forward.
“This is the news at one. There have been a series of earthquakes in south America …”
Appalled, she dropped the spoonful of tea she’d been about to put in the teapot. Daniel, halfway out of the kitchen, shot round.
“Several casualties have been reported …”
Oh my God. “It’s all right,” she expected her husband to say. “Stop worrying all the time. South America is a big place.”
“Peru is said to be badly affected …”
Peru? “But that’s where Garth is,” she whispered, half-waiting for her husband to correct her.
But instead, he was scribbling down the emergency number on the kitchen notepad before grabbing the phone.