‘Oh, Sophie, not one? Not even home economics? It isn’t just cooking, I know that, there’s a lot of … but I had hoped … you seemed to be working so hard!’ Devina Markham, trailing draperies of Indian muslin, got up from the kitchen table and drifted over to where her daughter stood, at bay, by the back door. ‘I’m not reproaching you, darling, because I’m sure you did your best, but what on earth are we to do now?’
Sophie had pressed herself against the door jamb until she could feel it almost touching her backbone despite the intervening layers of fat. She had gone down to school quite early that morning to find out about the A levels, but had not felt the slightest urge to rush home and tell everyone. Not with three ungraded results. She had hung about until tea-time and then hunger and habit had brought her back to Glydon Grove. Now she hung her head and wished she could conjure up a few tears, but the delicious smell of Devina’s cooking brought only saliva to the mouth and not salt water to the eye. Besides, she had known all along that she would fail, so had her teachers and her sisters and so, presumably, had her mother. It was foolish of Devina to pretend that her third daughter might actually have done something right for once!
‘It doesn’t matter, Mum, we’ll work something out,’ she muttered now. Her mother tried to envelope her in her arms, which was like a tiny, vivid spider trying to get a bumble bee into its embrace. Sophie lurched to one side, Devina hugged space, and then the two of them, mutually embarrassed by the size of the other, turned with one accord and stared across at the oven. Sophie sniffed.
‘Is that apple cake in there? It smells delicious.’
Devina gave a little cry and hurried across the kitchen, tugging the oven door wide open.
‘Thank goodness, it’s not overcooked. Yes, it’s apple cake. Would you like a piece?’
There was the slightest of slight hesitations before the offer; Sophie had the grace to feel a trifle ashamed. Only yesterday she had started a new diet and when she was dieting she was not above snarling that her weight problem was entirely due to her mother’s cooking. That meant, of course, that she had to refuse food which she wanted and would later take and would, later still, deny touching. A vicious circle, another skirmish in the mean, sniping, mother-daughter war which the two of them so frequently fought. Now, looking down into her mother’s kohl-rimmed eyes, at the slight tremble of her over-painted lips, Sophie tried not to remember that this was the woman who had been at the root of her weight problem, not by her cooking or her own example, but by marriage to a man whose own mother, Sophie’s grandma, had died at fifty weighing twenty-five stone, whose sister Mabel was five foot tall and five foot wide, and who himself suffered embarrassing problems with his uniform, for fat postmen are few. But the apple cake smelt delicious, and besides, if she refused some now, her mother would put it down to surliness, and the result would be additional coldness and acidity over the wretched examinations.
‘Just a small piece, please, Mum.’
Devina turned the apple cake onto the wire tray she had placed in readiness. It came out cleanly, as perfect as all her cooking, the shiny, sugar encrusted top settling onto the wire grid with a crisp little crunch and a faint sigh of steam. Sophie swallowed. The bag of chips and the Mars Bar seemed a lifetime ago; she could have eaten the whole cake without pausing for breath.
The knife sank in, and Sophie watched as two pieces were cut, one noticeably larger than the other. Devina picked up the tray and took it over to the open window, where the cool, rain-drizzled August air would help to firm the cake. Casually, Sophie leaned over and took one of the slices. It was warm and moist in her hand. Comforting. Devina was making a pot of tea, talking about someone she had met in town that day. Sophie bit. The sweetness of the cake blended exquisitely with the sharpness of cooking apples. Devina, returning to the table with two cups of tea, took the remaining slice and tasted it. She made no comment on its size, probably never even realised that Sophie, quite without meaning to, had taken the larger piece.
They were eating in companionable silence when the back door opened. Sophie immediately tried to hide her slice of cake, then picked up her cup, relaxing against the wooden chair back once more. It was only her father. He would have finished work, picking up parcels from the small post offices and emptying letter boxes, would have left his little red van at the depot and walked home slowly, because his feet hurt him. Now, flushed and rain-spotted, he came across the kitchen, giving his wife a perfunctory peck on the brow and testing the teapot with one hand.
‘One for me in there? Well, you two celebrating, are you?’
Sophie felt her face grow hot. Trust Dad! He must have known that she would fail, no one who had hated school as much as she had could possibly have done well there – she had told him that once, and he had sympathised, said it didn’t matter, that she would shine in other spheres. Knowing that, why must he pretend as well? She mumbled her reply through the last of her cake.
‘Didn’t get any of ‘em.’
Benjamin Markham turned from pouring his tea. He looked surprised, a little red around the gills.
‘Of course, you took ‘em as well, course you did. I was thinking of Lavinia, actually – got all three, she said. I rang the corner shop earlier and …’ His wife’s glare finally penetrated. He let his voice trail away and brought his mug of tea over to the table. His small eyes shifted uneasily from one face to the other as he hooked out a chair and sat on it sideways, sipping the tea and grimacing at the heat of it.
‘Oh well, never mind, gal, I don’t suppose you expected …’ Devina’s voice overrode his and he subsided, gulping his tea too quickly, perspiration beading his brow and upper lip.
‘You’re early, Ben! I was planning quiche and a salad tonight, with a hot pudding to follow, but it’s a dreadful, rainy day; I daresay I could manage something more substantial if you’d prefer it.’
‘Me? No, quiche and salad will be fine. Unless you feel that Lavvy’s results call for a bit of a celeb …’ Devina kicked his ankle and he scowled at her, baffled. ‘Damn it, Devina, I’m bloody pleased the girl’s done well, and Soph didn’t expect to pass, she said so enough times. I’m damned if I see why we’ve all got to pretend!’
Sophie got up, pushing her chair back with a horribly loud squeal on the polished tiles. She headed for the door. Over her shoulder, casually, she made them a present of guiltlessness.
‘Of course I knew I’d fail; don’t worry about it, either of you. Lavvy always was the clever one, I’ve never envied her that.’ Only her slender figure, her pretty face, her ease with the opposite sex, that was all she envied Lavinia. She left the kitchen, shutting the door firmly behind her. She was still wearing her light jacket and in its pocket a chocolate wrapper and two crisp packets rubbed shoulders noisily. She took them out and stuffed them behind the hallstand, then began to mount the stairs. Her legs ached; she had walked a lot today, because it was easier to walk than to come home. Something inside her ached too, though she could not have said what it was. Her heart? Or was it merely her tummy, objecting to the doughy, indigestible apple cake?
At the top of the stairs she paused, wondering whether it was safe to go into her bedroom, or whether she would find Poppy up there, playing with friends. At twelve, Poppy led an active and varied social life amongst a group stigmatised by her elder sisters as nasty brats. But, even as she hesitated, Sophie heard Poppy’s voice downstairs, raised in shrill altercation. So that was all right, then. She went into her bedroom and locked the door, then flung herself heavily onto the bed. She was still wearing her jacket, but didn’t bother to remove it; instead, she made herself comfortable, lying on her back and contemplating the cracked and stained ceiling above her. For the first time, it struck her that she had left the school system for good, finally and at last. She had taken three years to fail those A levels; at nineteen, no one would expect or even allow her to remain at school.
Was this freedom? She experimented with the thought of an adult Sophia Markham, rolled it round her tongue so to speak, tried to imagine herself in adult situations. It proved difficult, not to say impossible. The trouble was, she had no point of reference, it was not as if she had ever had a Saturday job or gone baby-sitting or any of the other things that teenagers seemed to take for granted. She had tried, half-heartedly, to get a job in Tesco, but the manager had lied and told her that the position was filled the moment he saw her standing beside one of the cash points, dwarfing it with her bulk. His eyes had flickered from the till, with the swivel chair impossibly close, to the narrow doorway, and he had lied. She knew he had lied because two days later a girl in her class had applied for the same job, and got it.
She hated the place now, with its stupid, embarrassing turnstiles which were so difficult to squeeze through on the way in, and its narrow cash points, almost worse, which you had to pass to go out. She had vowed never to go in there again and she never had – well, only to buy chocolate and crisps, anyway. When she was rich, she would go to the independent shops, like Drapers, and give huge orders and make Tesco sorry. That would teach them!
Not that she was wild about Drapers, come to think of it. The girls who worked there were right little bitches, nudging each other and giggling if she bought chocolate – who were they to assume that the sweets were for herself, they might have been for some poor, elderly person who could not get out to do her own shopping. Sophie’s eyes almost filled with tears at the thought of those girls being so wrong, so needlessly cruel. But of course, she did not shop for an old age pensioner, though she did pop in from time to time with a list of her mother’s cooking requirements. It annoyed Devina that her daughter would no longer shop at Tesco, but Sophie did not intend to tell her why. Let her think what she would!
Remembering her mother’s shopping made her recall that she had another grudge against Drapers. The Christmas raisins had been bought there. That had been a nasty business, and who had got the blame for it? Sophie, of course, just because she was fat, just because when her mother had stormed back to the shop complaining that she had been given short weight the girl behind the counter, the one with eyes like needles and a beehive hairstyle, had said she had watched the small Sophie going up the road, eating raisins through a hole she had made in the bottom of the packet.
Horrible, trouble-making woman! A confused memory of tears, protestations, her mother’s shame, jostled for top place in Sophie’s mind. It was not fair, she had only been ten, a child of ten could scarcely be blamed if there was a hole in the wretched packet through which the raisins had fallen. Indeed, it was the shop’s fault, bad packaging, every bit as blameworthy as short weight.
A thundering on the stairs, as Poppy and some friend rushed up them, caused Sophie to tense, then she relaxed again as the footsteps thundered straight past. Recently, because Dad had suggested it, Poppy had been moved from Sophie’s room to Lavinia’s, so that Sophie could get some peace and quiet. Until then, it had been Lavinia who needed peace and quiet to study in. Sophie had been studying too, of course, but it was fair enough, she had been allowed a bedroom to herself for the first year at sixth-form coll. And if she was honest, she had not done much studying in her room, anyway. So she had not minded all that much when Poppy had been moved in – but it was rather nice, now, to have the room to herself again.
Through the thin wall, Poppy’s shrill tones came to her sister’s ears.
‘So I said right, Alison, but now you know I know, and I’m surprised you can still look me in the eye, and she said it wasn’t knowing that mattered, it was what you know, and so I said, look, I’ve already broken friends with Paula because of it, and if you really were my friend, the way you say you are, you’d have broken friends with her too, so she said …’
The interminable wrangling of twelve-year-olds! Sophie felt all the weight of her nineteen years. Such childish squabbling, yet it seemed so important to Poppy that she had to relate every single word which had passed between her and the unfortunate Alison.
Sophie slid open the door of her small bedside cabinet. Had she eaten the last of the extra-strong peppermints? She only bought them because she didn’t much like the things, so they lasted longer. Her groping fingers found two more mints, a little dusty from their protracted stay in the cupboard, but perfectly edible.
She popped the first one into her mouth, then reached for her book. She opened it, and was immediately lost in the words she read. His hand moved from her shoulder to the front of her shirt, hesitated, then the warmth of it was on her trembling breast, she read. Good, she must be getting near the sexy bit which this particular author always inserted about halfway through her books. She just hoped that the peppermints would last out, she could not enjoy the sexy bits as they should be enjoyed if her mouth was empty. Sucking as slowly as she could, Sophie read on.
Perhaps because it had been such a miserable August, September was specially fine and dry. Lavinia was to start at the local teacher training college in October, but Sophie, who was doing a secretarial course at the tech, was back in class already, resenting the loss of freedom and the dullness of her lessons. Now, she was lying on her bed, pretending to study shorthand outlines but really reading a romance, though the shorthand book was laid out on the bed, ready for her attention should it ever be removed from the page before her.
‘Sophie?’
‘Lavinia’s head, with its short, curly fair hair which never looked untidy, appeared round the edge of the door. She smiled at her sister, but perfunctorily. She wanted something, Sophie could tell. Lavinia always used that particular smile when she intended to ask a favour or wanted to borrow something. Not that she borrowed much from Sophie, due to the size difference. Sophie had shoved her romance out of sight the moment her sister spoke, but now she lifted her eyes from her absent-minded perusal of the shorthand outlines and raised her brows.
‘What?’
‘I’m writing out the invitations for my eighteenth. I’ve asked all the usual crowd, I just wondered if there was anyone special you’d like to invite.’
‘What, from the tech?’ Sophie thought of her class, which seemed to consist largely of sixteen-year-old morons. Pretty, slim morons, what was worse. ‘No fear. Unless …’
‘Unless what? Surely there are some nice boys at the tech?’
Sophie snorted and pretended to return to studying her shorthand. She had thought that being at the tech would at least give her imagination a chance, allow her to pretend a bit about boys, tell Lavinia mysteriously that there was a certain someone … But that was denied her because Devina taught weaving there two mornings a week, and home economics three afternoons. If Sophie made mysterious remarks, Devina would get all excited and start to check up, and there was nothing worse than being made out a liar.
‘Come on, old darling, are there or aren’t there?’ Lavinia could be nice when she wanted to be. Now, she came across the room and sat on the end of the bed, peering at Sophie’s book. ‘Gracious, how you can understand all those squiggles is beyond me. Look, I saw you with a fellow the other morning, walking down from the bus stop. Who was he?’
With a good deal of effort, Sophie managed to remember his name. He had slowed down as he drew level with her and asked her whose class she was in; she could not remember his exact words. He had walked about six yards with her and then he had seen a friend in front and hurried off. He was a striking chap though, she knew that much, not at all the sort of boy to notice someone like her.
‘Oh, you mean Peter Brewer. He’s nice, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, if you mean handsome. Does he like you?’
‘Oh, really, Lavvy, how on earth should I know? He isn’t in my class, lads don’t do shorthand and typing. What makes you ask, anyway?’
‘My dear woman, because he had no need to walk to school with you if he didn’t like you. Just ask him if he’d like to come to a party; you’d be surprised, he’ll probably jump at it.’
‘We-ell … I suppose there’s no harm in asking.’
It had occurred to her that if she brought a boy to Lavvy’s eighteenth, it would be an absolute triumph. She had stayed down at school and had been forced to mingle with Lavvy’s class in order to take her A levels, and it had been worse, somehow, more humiliating, to be left out and ignored by girls and boys a year younger than she, than it had been to be left out and ignored by her contemporaries. And now, as if to show her that she had not yet plumbed the depths, she found herself in a class of children younger still. She was so bad at it all, too, dreaming in the shorthand classes and forgetting to do her learning homework, typing slower than anyone else in the class and making more errors because the wretched chair was at the wrong distance from the typewriter when her bulk was in it and her arms, which were probably the normal length but which could not compete with the jut of her stomach, never quite allowed her to hit the keys in comfort.
‘It’s sensible to ask. If you don’t ask you never get.’ Lavinia’s voice was smug and for a second Sophie was puzzled, then dismissed it as irrelevant. It had been very kind of Lavvy to suggest that she brought a friend, and it really would do no harm to ask Peter Brewer. No one need know if she was turned down flat, and if they found out, she could always say loftily that it had been her sister’s invitation, really.
‘Okay, Lavvy, I’ll ask him first thing on Monday morning.’ Sophie waited for her sister to leave the room, then got ponderously off the bed and went over to her dressing-table. She peered at her reflection in the mirror. Was it possible that Peter whats is name really did like her? Could it be true, as Lavinia had implied, that he had only spoken to her because he wanted to get to know her better? Lavvy seemed to think it was so, and she was so much more experienced than Sophie that she might well be right. At eighteen, Lavvy had had a score of boyfriends; not like Sophie, nineteen and never been …
Sophie picked up her book again but, for once, the words on the page could not hold her attention. Peter Brewer. A nice name! Suppose, just suppose …
To think is to act, Sophie said firmly to herself on Monday morning, as she walked up the gravel drive towards the tech buildings. To think is to act. Only it was not so easy – she could scarcely walk up to a total stranger, or an almost total stranger, and ask him to her sister’s eighteenth birthday party! It would look more than odd, it would look desperate, as though she had no friends in the world, and that was the last thing she wanted him to think. It was only the recollection that she had never had a boyfriend, that unless she asked him she would walk into the party as she usually did, alone, that gave her the courage even to consider it.
She was so immersed in her thoughts that she did not hear his footsteps crunching on the gravel beside her, until his voice said in her ear, ‘Good morning, Sophia!’ and then she was so startled that she jumped visibly before turning towards him. Her heart was thumping so loudly that she was sure he could hear it, and she knew she was unbecomingly flushed. Beet rather than rose, she thought despairingly. But she could not just stare at him, scarlet and tongue-tied.
‘Oh! H-Hello!’
‘Do you come here often?’
Peter Brewer was walking beside her. He had come up to her without her having to say a word. And he was joking with her as naturally as though he had known her for years. Sophie tried to pull herself together and answer naturally, the way Lavvy would have done had she been present.
‘Yes, much too often. And you?’
‘Only in the mating season!’ He laughed, and she realised she should have said that, but it didn’t matter. He was still walking beside her, smiling down at her, assured, handsome, the sort of boy who absolutely never took the slightest notice of her!
‘Oh … Isn’t it a n-nice day?’
‘It ’ud be better if I didn’t have physics first period. You’re on a course here, but I don’t know what you do.’
‘Shorthand and t … I mean, I’m doing a secretarial course.’
His smile was genuinely amused.
‘Go on, shame the devil, say shorthand and typing if you want to. Or isn’t that grand enough for one of the Markham sisters?’
She was gratified to think that he had taken the trouble to find out about her, and it was nice to hear herself described as one of the Markham sisters, instead of being somehow singled out as the odd sister, the fat one, the unsuccessful one. It made it easier to reply.
‘I don’t mind what it’s called, I hate it anyway. But Miss Edwards gets very uptight if you say it’s just shorthand and typing. Her pupils are supposed to be above that sort of thing, we do French and bookkeeping as well!’
‘I see. There’s more to it than one would think.’
They reached the front hall and Sophie hesitated, not knowing what she should do. Should she move away without saying anything more, just smile and go, or should she say goodbye, or pretend to see a friend, mention a class, faint … the alternatives were suddenly endless.
Peter Brewer solved the dilemma.
‘Got to rush, must get a decent bench, but look, are you doing anything at lunch time?’
Dazed, she shook her head.
‘Right. Meet me here, at half twelve, and we’ll get ourselves some lunch.’
With a lift of the hand he was gone, without waiting for her reply, taking it for granted that she would meet him. How right he was! She stood just where he had left her, dizzy with an accomplishment which had cost her nothing, not even effort. He must like her!
She got through the morning somehow. Happiness was a physical thing, so that when she made mistakes and got told off, she could afford to smile gently. Poor Miss Ryder, struggling to teach typing, shouting at Sophie from behind her eye-shrinking glasses – she did not know what happiness was. When half past twelve came she was almost afraid to go down into the front hall in case it had all been her imagination or his idea of a joke, in case she waited and waited and he did not come and she lost even the consolation of her lunch.
He came. He was in a hurry, taking her arm and steering her out of the building and across the road to a small milk bar where the older students congregated. He ordered two pizzas and two glasses of milk without consulting her; she thought such masterfulness was wonderful and sat meekly at a table with a shiny blue plastic top agreeing with everything he said. At that moment, had he suggested that they make a pact to climb the Eiger, Sophie would have agreed unhesitatingly, and she had no head for heights. When he leaned over the table in the course of their conversation and touched her hand, she thought it quite possible that she might die of love, for what she felt must be love! Her heart beat suffocatingly in her throat, she saw him ringed with a halo of light, she was so amazed by her own good fortune that she almost forgot to ask him to the party.
But she remembered. Just as they were entering the front hall once more, it came to her.
‘Oh, Peter.’ He had been turning away from her, but at her words he turned back, one eyebrow raised. Her heart did a huge hop and her stomach churned with slow, excruciating pleasure.
‘Yes, lovely?’
‘I suppose … it’s my sister’s eighteenth birthday party in three’ days, and she said I could invite … I suppose you wouldn’t like to come?’
‘Great, thanks very much. Is this a formal invitation, or do I have to give you my address and wait for the postman to call?’
‘I-It’s formal, but I’ll send an invitation if you like.’
He grinned at her. He was looking extraordinarily pleased.
‘Tell you what, bring it to school tomorrow, save postage. I’ll meet you here, same time.’
Sophie walked into her class still on cloud seven. She smiled when Annabel Roxy, who was pert and pretty and popular, muttered ‘Silly cow’ because she had knocked her shorthand notebook off the desk. Picking it up, she said ‘Sorry, Annabel’ with real conviction, and Annabel had the grace to look a little ashamed.
Sitting down in her own place, she just could not prevent herself from smiling. Life was wonderful, and he was coming to the party. How on earth was she to get through the next three days?
‘Sophie dear, just put the individual trifles, very carefully, onto the trays, would you? Then Daddy and Uncle Cyril will take them over to the hall. And do slip on an overall, we don’t want to see your pretty dress ruined.’
Devina’s cheeks were flushed from long hours of baking, her voice was high with excitement. A party for a hundred guests is no sinecure and she had been busy for days, but now at last the night had arrived, the cake with its burden of marzipan and pink and white icing, its eighteen candles, its bouquet of miniature roses, was at the hall, on the top table. All that now remained was to take over the various sweets that she had concocted, the trifles, the orange and lemon soufflés, the gâteaux, the meringues and the delectable, gleaming jellies.
Sophie was dressed and ready. After deep consultation with Devina, who seemed for once to understand perfectly what an important occasion this was, though Sophie had not mentioned Peter Brewer’s name to her, they had bought a blue dress. She had wanted to wear white, but had finally been persuaded into the blue. With its deeply scooped neckline and waistless, flowing lines, it was certainly pretty, and far more expensive than any other garment she possessed. She was a little doubtful about it, dreading that she might look either pregnant or like Hattie Jacques, but it was useless to deny that her figure was difficult, and at least the dress was plenty big enough, and swirled in a satisfying fashion when she turned. Perhaps it had been a mistake to let Lavvy do her make-up, for heavy make-up was fashionable with Lavvy’s set and, though thick mascara, a sprinkling of gold tinsel on the cheekbones and lipstick paler than health demanded might suit some people, Sophie felt that it did not suit her. Furtively, she scrubbed the lipstick off whilst arranging the trifles, and felt a little better. Peter, after all, was the one who mattered, and he knew she had nice eyes and long, dark lashes of her own. Now he would discover that she was light on her feet and could dance just as well as Lavvy. He might even notice she was thinner – she had eaten nothing for three days, because she wanted so badly to look her best.
But at last they were at the hall, all of them, standing in a sort of reception line. Poppy looked sweet in a scarlet mini-skirt with a brightly embroidered, peasant-style blouse, Lavinia was in white with a sequined bodice and the two older girls, Elsa in brown and Janine in emerald green, looked elegant. Sophie, squeezed between Elsa’s husband, John, and Poppy, could hardly drag her eyes away from the guests. Soon he would be here, and everyone would know that she, Sophie, was just like the other Markham sisters – she, too, could find a boyfriend!
When she spotted Peter, in the line wending its way towards them, her heart skipped a beat, then gave a couple of quick extra ones by way of making up. He looked marvellous, he was easily the best looking man present, and he was wearing a dark blue velvet jacket. He looked like the heroes of all Sophie’s favourite romances rolled into one – and he was her date for the evening, he liked her best.
He smiled down at Lavvy with easy assurance, indicated Sophie, laughed, then bent and kissed her hand. Lavvy was actually blushing – Lavvy, the sophisticated, the one who knew it all. She was actually going red over something that Sophie’s friend had said! Sophie shifted impatiently and nudged Poppy.
‘Here he comes, Poppy, the guy I asked to the party – my Peter!’
He was in front of her, staring in open admiration, smiling at little Poppy, then transferring his attention back to Sophie.
‘I say! You look lovely, Lovely!’
They laughed together over his small joke. He calls me Lovely, Sophie heard herself telling her classmates next day. Just a nickname, he doesn’t mean anything by it, but it’s rather nice, don’t you think?
Together, they strolled across the dance floor, to where small tables and groups of chairs had been set out.
‘Shall we make it a family party?’ Peter was saying, his hand warm and possessive on her bare elbow. ‘Sit with your sisters and their fellows, I mean?’
‘That would be lovely,’ Sophie breathed. Everything he said was lovely, he was lovely. To sit with her sisters, knowing that she was with the best looking man in the room – that would be loveliest of all.
An hour later, she had run away. With her eyes tear-filled, biting her lip to try to prevent its trembling, she ran across the little park which separated Glydon Grove from the hall where the party was being held. She was rolling uncomfortably in her high heels, and when she caught her dress on a rose bush she never even noticed. A toe stubbed on uneven paving, a wrist banged against an unseen wall, a garden bed mown down by her heedless, heavy feet, all went unregarded. A man, skulking in the shadows, saw her and called out but she ignored him. What was the use? It had all been a cruel joke and now, back in the hall, Peter Brewer and Lavvy were dancing together with eyes for no one but each other, not caring if she were dead.
She reached the house, and of course it was all locked up. Front and back. There was a low, sloping roof to the utility room; the other girls had been known to climb in and out of their rooms by that path when they didn’t want their parents to know they were out.
Sophie couldn’t do it, couldn’t heave her weight from the ground as they did, with their strong young muscles. She hung for a moment by her hands, struggling fruitlessly, then collapsed against the wall and wished she were dead.
When Peter Brewer came round the corner she could scarcely believe it. He looked at her in embarrassment, and she knew that he had never really seen her as a person. All that charm, all that gentle teasing, had been for one purpose and one purpose only; to meet Lavvy.
Now, pressed against the brick wall, she felt absolutely desperate. She knew she must look a sight, knew her face was still tear-blubbered, and, glancing down at her dress, she saw the rip, saw her lovely shoes mud-caked, her tights dirt-splattered. But she could see no repugnance in his face, only embarrassment. For a moment hope bloomed. Could she have misunderstood the words she had overheard? Could she have made a dreadful mistake?
‘Your mother sent me with the key, she thinks you’ve just come back for a few minutes to … to do something or other.’ Hope died. ‘Look, I’m awfully sorry … you heard, I suppose?’
She nodded, teeth clenched to control the shudders which threatened to overwhelm her.
‘Don’t think too badly of me, Sophie, I really do like you, you’re a gr …’ He looked down at her, swallowed, and changed it to ‘a wonderful girl. But I caught a glimpse of Lavvy trotting along beside you, looking … oh, I don’t know, I just felt I’d got to meet her. Then someone said she was your sister and … well, it went on from there.’
‘I see.’ She held out her hand for the key, but he shook his head.
‘No. You’re still upset, I can see. I’ll come in and make you a cup of tea.’ He unlocked the door, stepped inside and put the light on. Sophie passed him and crossed the kitchen to the sink, taking the kettle off the draining board and holding it under the gushing tap. When she turned to take it to the cooker, Peter had lit the gas for her. She smiled at him.
‘Look, it doesn’t matter, Peter. Just let’s forget it, shall we?’
‘It matters, but if we can both forget it …’ He held out a hand. ‘Can we still be friends?’
She tried to smile. Of all the fatuous remarks! But he wasn’t to know how much store she had set by his friendship.
He took her hand, then bent over, lightly kissing her cheek. She winced, unable to ignore the look in his eye. It reminded her of a line from a television programme. To bravely go where no man has gone before; it would be funny, if only it wasn’t so sad.
‘All right, Peter, we’ve both said our say, now you might as well go back to the others. I’ll watch telly for a bit and then go to bed. I’m tired, we’ve all worked very hard to get this party off the ground, I could do with an early night.’
‘You won’t come back?’ He stared at her doubtfully; she could see he was half relieved at the idea of her absence. ‘But what will people think? They haven’t even started eating, yet.’
‘Tell them I’m feeling bilious.’ She wished she could have thought of an ailment which at least had some dignity, but nothing sprang to mind. ‘Tell them I just want to be left alone.’
‘All right, if that’s what you want.’ He waited, but she said nothing more. He sighed. She had her back to him, she was watching the kettle as it began to hiss, but she heard him open the back door, slip throught it, shut it behind him. He had gone.
At once, the need to behave without decorum or dignity seized her. She gave a sob and headed for the stairs. She flung the door of her room open violently, then slumped on the bed. Even in her deep unhappiness her observer self was seeing her, rather romantically, as The Spurned Woman, but a glance in the mirror killed all that. She sat up on the bed and stared, mouth dropping open. She looked plain bloody terrible! Her make-up had run, mascara streaked her plump pink cheeks, and her hair looked as though birds habitually nested in it. There was dirt on her chin and her lipstick was badly smudged. She gazed bitterly at her reflection. How loathsome she was! Even with her heart broken clean in two her cheeks were pink. She turned away from the mirror, then got up and dragged the once admired dress over her head, dropping it on the floor, kicking off the mud-caked shoes and dirty tights. She saw then that her legs were mud-streaked too. Very well, she would have a bath, then get herself something to eat and go to bed. The worst of it was, she was sharing with Lavvy tonight because both the older girls were home, so she could not even guarantee how long she could be miserable in peace, but a glance at her watch showed that it was barely ten o’clock. It would be more like one or two in the morning before they had said goodbye to all their guests and cleaned up the hall, she was safe for a while, at any rate.
She had run the bath and was shedding her final garments when she heard a noise downstairs. She wrapped herself in a bath towel, and was half-way down again when she remembered what it must be. The kettle! She arrived at a flurried gallop just in time to stop the bottom burning out of it and then, since she was downstairs anyway, she decided to get her snack now, even if she ate it after her bath.
The fridge yielded cold turkey, some tomatoes, a bowl of leftover filling for the salmon vol-au-vents, a plastic pot of cream and some raspberries. The pantry provided a thick slice of chocolate cake, a stick of celery and a pile of cheese straws. On the cold slab she found an individual trifle and a lemon mousse, and when she had piled everything onto her tray she realised that she needed a drink – everyone at the party would be having a drink soon. She made her way into the dining room and picked up the almost full bottle of brandy with which her father and her brother-in-law had been giving themselves Dutch courage earlier in the evening. She hated the stuff, but took a good swig, then put the bottle on the tray. It wasn’t that bad, it warmed her stomach and made her feel less helpless.
She carried her provender rather unsteadily upstairs and climbed into the bath. The water was gloriously hot and she lay there a long time, eating steadily. She also had several more pulls from the brandy bottle. It was horrible, of course, but it did make things easier to bear.
At length even the brandy could not cloud her mind to the fact that the water was getting steadily colder and that her hands and feet were beginning to take on an ancient, wrinkled look, like white crêpe paper. She got out, wrapped herself in the biggest towel she could find, and returned to her bedroom. Lavvy’s little radio was already beside the spare bed and she switched it on as she passed it, though it wasn’t easy with the brandy bottle in one hand and the remains of her feast in the other. Music jarred, made her wince a bit, but she needed it to enhance her image of a with-it teenager. She looked at her naked body in the mirror, and hastily took another swig of brandy; yes, now her white and whale-like figure definitely looked less repulsive. She lay down on her stomach on the bed, the with-it teenager again, only it was so terribly uncomfortable when you had a stomach like hers. She seemed to balance on it, like a rocking horse, with her legs up in the air one end and her head up in the air the other, and all her weight on her huge, curved belly. She held the pose for an uncomfortable thirty seconds then, with a sigh, rolled onto her back. That was better.
She lay on the bed for what seemed like a long time, eating the rest of her supplies and drinking steadily. Dimly, she saw that Peter had been her one chance and, somehow, she had failed to take it. She had let Peter slip through her fingers. The fact that he had never been her Peter, that hers had not been the fingers he had been caught by, seemed immaterial. When all the food had been eaten and all the brandy drunk, she turned on her side and went to sleep.
She awoke, much later, to pitch darkness. She felt terribly, unbelievably awful. Her head was splitting and she had such a thirst that her mouth felt like a desert. She sat up and found that she was cold, ill, trembling. She could remember nothing of what had gone before, save that she must be quiet, because Lavinia was in the other bed, and that she must have a drink or die.
There was water in the bathroom, but water was not what she needed. A cup of tea! That was it, lovely hot, strong tea. She swung her feet onto the floor, groped for her slippers, failed to find them and so padded to the door barefoot. She noticed a faint glow coming from Lavvy’s radio and fainter music, and thoughtfully turned it off. The daft cow must have forgotten it and gone to sleep with it on.
The journey to the kitchen was not difficult. Across the moonlit quiet of the upper landing, down the stairs, avoiding the one which creaked, up the hall and over to the kitchen door. She knew the way so well that she could have done it blindfold and certainly did not need to turn on any lights. Ever since she could remember she had walked this way by night, wooed by cakes or biscuits, by a night-time memory of a dish of jelly in the fridge, by the sticky sweetness of a honeycomb, or a dish of succulent strawberries, or that last, solitary ham and pickle sandwich, left on the plate because none of the girls would take it and risk being an old maid.
She opened the kitchen door and stood for a moment, framed against the darkness of the hall, caught and dazzled by the brilliance of the light as a night-time moth is dazzled.
The room was crowded! Vaguely, she saw her parents, her sisters, their friends. And Peter. All silent, all staring. She sensed conversations cut off, jokes untold, because of her sudden appearance. She was rubbing her eyes, opening her mouth to speak, when Lavvy began to shout at her. Lavvy’s voice was strident, her cheeks scarlet. But … but wasn’t Lavvy upstairs, asleep in bed? Was this all some horrible nightmare?
‘Mum, Dad, It’s disgusting, it’s horrible … in front of my friends … she’s done it on purpose …’
It had no meaning, the sudden tirade, but she knew that she must reach the sink. A great bubble of something hot and acid and beastly was rising up in her throat. She was ill, they must realise she was …
She got half-way across the room when Lavvy stepped forward to bar her path – and it was too late, by then, for anything but a gasped apology as she vomited violently onto Lavvy’s white dress. She was weeping, still trying to blunder her way to the sink, when she felt her mother’s thin little arms go round her waist, felt Devina start to guide her to the door. The silence was broken, she could hear voices, an uncle saying it happened to all of us, her father’s voice, deep as the buzz of a bee, comforting Lavinia.
Then she was in the bathroom, leaning over the sink whilst her mother got her a drink of water, listening to Devina’s reproaches without understanding them, until she felt the coldness of the handbasin pressing against her skin and looked down at herself.
Streaked with vomit, shuddering with cold, she was mother-naked.
She did not remember how she stumbled back to bed, but only that she was there, staring at the ceiling, sick with self-contempt. She waited for Lavinia to come to bed, but her sister must have decided to sleep in the living room on the couch rather than share a room with the drunken party-pooper.
She left whilst the stars were still bright, tiptoeing down the stairs and pausing in the hall only long enough to ascertain that all the lights were off. She glided into the kitchen, sure that no one, no matter how desperate for a bed, would be kipping down on the wooden table or on the upright, wheel-backed chairs. Also, on the mantelpiece there was a tin where Devina kept spare cash.
She fumbled for it and discovered, quite by accident, that the mantelpiece had been used by Elsa to keep her return ticket to London Euston safe. Thus are great decisions made. Sophie fled to London because she had a ticket to get there, not because she particularly fancied the city. She had three pounds in her pocket, half a loaf of bread and some cheese in her handbag, and a great, aching void where her heart should have been. But it never occurred to her for one moment to stay. She could not stay in the place where all her friends – and enemies – would soon be talking about her abandoned behaviour. She could not face Lavinia’s scorn and derision. Pretty Lavinia. Peter owning Lavinia. She told herself, as she trudged to the station, that, at nineteen, it was high time she left home and found some independence. She never even considered that she had nowhere to stay in London, or that she knew no one in that city. Nothing mattered but her escape from an intolerable situation.