‘You really know how to make a girl feel wanted,’ I say, holding my arms closer around me.
‘It’s not you,’ he reassures. ‘It’s just this is the first time you’ve . . . in twenty years. Twenty years. It’s like taking your virginity. I’ve never done that. And I don’t want to do it wrong.’
‘Shouldn’t I be worried about that?’ I ask.
‘Oh, Poppy. Poppy, Poppy, Poppy,’ he says, again rubbing his mouth. In the language of the body, something I did quite a lot of reading on, this behaviour suggests someone is lying to you. They are trying to rub away the stain of their lie with that action. Is Alain lying to me? Is he really feeling performance anxiety or has he just changed his mind?
‘I’ll be right back,’ he says then leaves the room, almost at a run. I hear the bathroom door shut and lock behind him. My parents are in London visiting my siblings again. We have the house to ourselves, and I hadn’t actually been expecting this to happen. When I started to play footsie with him, I thought it’d be something nice and gentle to do on our New York date. I didn’t expect it to so overwhelmingly turn him on, and I didn’t expect taking my top off to so completely turn him off.
What do I do now? Do I get dressed, do I get undressed? Do I gather his stuff up and throw it at him the second he comes out of the bathroom? Do I open the window and chuck his stuff out and tell him to go mess with someone else’s head? What do I do?
I pull back the covers and climb into bed. That’s probably the best thing to do. If he does come back and has changed his mind, at least I’ll be covered up; if he comes back hoping to pick up where we left off, I’ll be part-way there and won’t have to do the thing that so clearly put him off.
Time moves on and on, and nearly ten minutes pass before he returns to my bedroom. He shuts the door behind him, then leans heavily on it, his tall, wiry body like a book that has fallen against a bookend.
Something more than performance anxiety is wrong.
‘I think you should put your top back on,’ he says in a serious tone. ‘I need to tell you something.’
‘And I need to be dressed to hear it?’ I ask.
He nods, and I watch the guilt creep like climbing ivy across his face. ‘That would be for the best.’
poppy
‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ he says.
The dread starts to roll over me in waves, the knowledge that whatever he says will alter my life for ever. That scares me. I do not want to have this love destroyed. It has kept me going these past few weeks, I do not want to lose it.
‘What, you’re married?’ I say, trying to sound flip, trying to disguise that my heart is already crumbling. There’s a moment in any relationship when you know that it is over. For the most part you can ignore it and carry on but, in this instance, that is not going to happen. I know it. I know it like I know how to breathe. It’s simply a case of finding out why it’s over.
He does not laugh, and he does not flinch.
‘You’re married,’ I state. Serious this time.
‘No,’ he replies, still frowning, still serious. ‘No. I was, a long time ago. I got divorced five years ago. We got married and divorced quite young, it’s not a new story. Not that interesting, either. But that’s not what I’ve got to tell you.’
‘Is it important?’ I ask, trying to save this, save us.
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure? Because we all think things are important and ninety-nine per cent of the time they’re not. We could go our whole lives without knowing whatever it is. And I am not that curious.’
Alain is not playing, he is not interested in saving our relationship, he is hell-bent on destroying it. He continues to speak: ‘We didn’t meet by accident,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t Fate that brought us together.’
A cement truck dumps its load on my chest, crushing my lungs. ‘What are you saying?’ I manage through short bursts of breathing.
‘I’m a journalist,’ Alain says.
‘What? What are you talking about? You’re not a lecturer?’
‘No. Well, yes, but no.’
What is going on? What is he saying? ‘Is it yes or no? Are you a lecturer?’
‘I lecture – well, I used to – in basic journalism at a night school. My main job, my real job, is writing. Investigating. Being a journalist.’
I bite on my lower lip, knowing that there is more to this. He has more to confess, more to unburden from his soul. ‘What are you telling me?’
‘Like I said before, us meeting was not Fate. I engineered those encounters to meet you.’
‘Why?’ I know the answer. It’s pretty obvious, but I need to hear it to believe it.
‘I wanted to meet you because I wanted to write a story on you. On The Ice Cream Girls and what really happened. I wanted to get close to you to find out the truth.’
‘No, no, no . . .’ I say, standing up and holding my head. ‘No, no, no. . .’
‘I’m not going to write the story any more,’ he says above my moans. ‘I can’t. I didn’t expect to fall for you. I didn’t even mean to be anything more than a friend. But how could I not fall for you? You’re nothing like the girl in picture and the girl in the stories. You’re . . .’
‘No!’ I say to him. ‘You don’t get to explain this away. Just stop talking, OK? Stop.’
He does as he’s told and stands still and silent against my door. I pace the room, my hand pressed over my mouth, my eyes wide.
‘Is that why you didn’t want to go further? In the sack, I mean? Is that why you kept stopping? Because none of it was real?’
‘It was real. It was very real. Which is why I’m not going to do the story.’
‘Just answer the question.’
He closes his eyes before he says, ‘Yes.’
‘So all along you’ve been grilling me to find out background for your story?’ I hold my hand up to him before starts to answer. ‘Just yes or no answers, no talking and trying to excuse yourself. Just yes or no. So all the concern and interest have been to get background?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you were using me all along to make a name for yourself?’
He moves in protest.
‘Just yes or no.’
‘Yes.’
Betrayal is such a dramatic word. It’s the sort of word I would find in the bonkbusters I read in the early nineties. ‘Betrayal’ always reminded me of women who were meek and mild and had ‘victim’ scrawled across their foreheads in an ink only the worst type of men could see.
I am that woman. First Marcus, now Alain. Will I never learn?
I take my hands away from my face and stand up straight, running my eyes over him. I thought I loved him. I thought I had been given a second chance, a fresh start. I’d even let Serena start to slide off the hook. I thought Alain was my ticket to the future, to a life I never had the chance to live. And he wasn’t. He isn’t. He is this.
‘Thank you,’ I say to him, meaning every letter of those words.
He stares at me, bemused and bewildered.
‘I . . . nope, that’s it, thank you.’
‘For?’
‘For reminding me that I can trust no one. I’d actually allowed myself to forget that for one sorry moment. Well, thank you for reminding me before I got really hurt. Now leave.’
‘Not like this. I have to explain. I have to . . . I . . .’
‘GET OUT!’ I scream at him. ‘GET OUT!’
He scrambles upright, then grabs his jacket and wallet and rubber Johnny from the floor beside him and opens the door. He pauses, then turns to me. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.
‘GET OUT!’ I scream again.
I’m not just screaming at him, of course – smirky, snidey Marcus is being shouted at too. I want him gone as well. I do not need to hear from him right now that I am stupid and gullible and basically useless; I do not need an ‘I told you so’ from the man I am using to haunt myself. I just need peace and quiet and solitude to clear my head
and do what needs to be done.
After ransacking the mirrored cabinet that hangs on the wall opposite the door in the bathroom, the only blade I can find is the last one in the pack. Dad is old school, thank God. Getting rid of the line of fuzz that sits around his chin every morning is still done using an old fashioned razor and shaving foam. I remember one Christmas when I was maybe fourteen, I used my saved-up pocket money to buy him an electric razor from Bella, Logan and me. He was so chuffed with it, gave us all a massive hug and thanked us profusely, but never used it. Not once.
I’m grateful now that he’s stuck in the dark ages, because I can do this. Now. And it has to be now. I haven’t needed to do this for such a long time that I’d feel stupid having to delay so I could go to the shop. It’s not ideal, though: the last razor in the pack. He might notice, he might wonder where it’s gone and quite rightly blame me, the only criminal in the house. But I have no choice, it has to be now. I watch my face in the mirror as the edge of the blade finds its spot on my forearm and sinks in, just below the skin. The blade knows, it knows where it should go, how deep it should sink before it stops, when it should start threading its path into my skin. My eyes roll back in my head as the pain gushes through me, and the release, the sweet, sweet release gushes down after it. The blade slips from my fingers into the sink and I grab on to the sink for support as the gush of pleasure born of physical pain, a cocktail you have to get just right to be effective, floods every sense in my head.
I watch the spot-work pattern of red cover the blade, cover the smooth shiny surface of the white basin. The head rush continues: I’m hitching the ultimate ride without actually taking anything. I am high without narcotics.
My legs wobble slightly and I grab tighter on to the sink. Maybe I did too much, cut too deep, sliced too close because this is going on for longer than normal. This is just pain.
And that pattern in the sink reminds me of my sixteenth birthday.
May, 1987
He bought me a cake.
I couldn’t believe it. It was a huge one with white and pink icing and huge ‘one’ and ‘six’ candles. I sat at the table and waited for him to hand me my present. The big, shiny white box with a big pink shiny bow on top had been sitting on the living room telephone chair when I walked in. And now he left the room, grabbed it and brought it into the kitchen and handed it to me with a small smile on his face. I pulled open the ribbon and took care to fold it up so I wouldn’t leave a mess. Marcus hated messes. I didn’t want him to get cross on my birthday. I didn’t want to do anything to upset him ever, but especially not today. Excitedly I lifted the lid. I hadn’t expected a present from him: he’d said only a few days ago, and he was right of course, that being with him should be gift enough. He was risking everything to be with me, I should think myself lucky. And that every day I had him was a gift. But he’d just been joking, because now I had this.
Inside was a mound of bright pink tissue paper, folded around something. I pulled apart the folds, again carefully so as to not make a mess, and from it lifted up a red and white spotted halterneck dress. It was ruched and pleated in the smoothest, softest cotton. ‘It’s lovely,’ I said to him. I ignored the fact it would probably look better on Serena, against her dark skin and slender frame. On me it would probably look too bosomy, make me look a lot larger than I was. Red didn’t really suit me, either, but none of that mattered – it was a present and he had chosen it. And he hadn’t given it to Serena, he’d given it to me.
I looked up at him and crossing my toes and my fingers in my head, I clutched it close and said, ‘It’s really, really lovely. I love it.’
Marcus’s handsome face smiled with pride, which made me beam back at him. Sometimes, when he was like this, I forgot he was twice my age, because he seemed so eager to please and to make me happy – he was like a little schoolboy.
‘Put it on,’ he said, excitedly, still smiling. ‘I want to see what you look like in it.’
‘OK,’ I replied and leapt up. His excitement was starting to make me like the dress even more. I put the lid back on the box and placed the folded up ribbon neatly at its centre before I picked up the dress and moved towards the door.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘To change,’ I said.
‘Do it here.’
I hesitated. The kitchen windows didn’t have any coverings on them and it was broad daylight – any of his surrounding neighbours would see me without my clothes on if I did it here.
‘It won’t take me long to nip upstairs,’ I said.
‘Do it here, I want to see you,’ he insisted. An edge, the edge, had crept into his voice.
I heard the edge but I continued to hesitate because I still wasn’t used to him seeing me naked. We’d been sleeping together for many, many months, but I was always glad that the bit at the start, the bit with the lights on, didn’t last very long – the moment the light went out, I would relax a bit, not be so tense about what was coming next. Marcus had once jokingly said that he preferred it with the lights off because he could imagine me looking the way I was meant to look instead of the way I did look. But that was only one of his little jokes.
‘But . . .’
‘Now, Poppy. Don’t make me wait.’
Carefully, I laid the dress over the back of the chair I had been sitting in and pulled my batwing top over my head. With folded arms and his head on one side, his eyes piercing spotlights, Marcus stood and stared at me. I could feel a million eyes from all his neighbours staring too, burning into my white, veiny skin, the lingering rolls of puppy fat – Dad called them that when I complained about being a bit on the large side – around my middle, the white strapless bra I was squeezed into. Marcus insisted I wear strapless bras when I was with him, even though they weren’t that comfortable for someone of my bra size. But he said it made things sexier for him. And all I ever wanted was to please him. I pulled down my black leggings and could feel the eyes staring at them, too.
‘Take off your knickers,’ Marcus said throatily as I reached for the dress.
Oh God, no. Not that.
‘Take your knickers off,’ he repeated.
Inhaling deeply, gathering all my strength, I did as I was told.
‘That’s it, good girl,’ he said, his voice deep and rich with lust. ‘Now put on the dress.’
Gratefully, I pulled it on and tugged up the zip at the side. He’d got my size just right, and the dress fit perfectly. I would not look good, but it fit.
‘You look good,’ he said. ‘You look beautiful, Poppy.’ His smile was genuine. ‘I remember why I fell for you now. You’re beautiful.’
‘Am I?’ I replied.
‘Yes, yes, you are. God, I’m a lucky man.’ He was smiling that smile I’d first seen in the park, when I was eating ice cream and he spoke to me. My stomach flipped and I fell in love with him all over again. He held out his hand and I went to him.
He took both my hands in his and stared down at me, our eyes never straying from each other. He smiled again, his gorgeous lips spreading across his face. ‘I don’t know what I would do without you,’ he whispered and then lowered his head to kiss me. His lips pressed gently on mine as he raised his hand and stroked his thumb across my cheek while his tongue gently slipped into my mouth.
He broke away and moved only a few inches away. ‘You make everything worthwhile. I love you, you know that, don’t you?’
I nodded in reply. Except I didn’t really. I’d feel better, I’d believe it more, if he finished with Serena, but I didn’t say that. It must have taken a lot for him to say that. From what I heard from the girls at school, men rarely said they loved you first. You had to trick it out of them, or say it to them over and over again until they got drunk and said it back.
He kissed me again, longer this time, running his long fingers through the loose curls of my black hair. As always, I melted against him. I loved kissing. I loved kissing him. I wasn’t so excited by the rest of it, but I co
uld do kissing for ever if I had to kiss Marcus.
The doorbell interrupted us and, reluctantly, he pulled away, rested his forehead on mine as he sighed.
‘Be a treasure and see who that is while I light the candles on your cake.’
‘OK,’ I replied happily.
I almost skipped to the door, wondering how this day could get any more perfect. I was smiling – grinning, actually – as I opened the door, so it was the smile that froze on my face.
Serena.
What she was doing here, I didn’t know. The smile on her face froze as well when her eyes alighted on me. Not just because I was opening the door at his house, something neither of us were usually allowed to do, but because she was wearing the exact same white-with-red-spots halterneck dress as me.
It did look better on her.
We said nothing to each other, just stared and stared, then I turned away first and walked towards the kitchen.
‘Ah, Serena, right on time as usual,’ Marcus said and kissed her on the cheek as she followed me into the kitchen. ‘I think I forgot to tell you it was Poppy’s birthday,’ he said. ‘But it’s good you’re here because Poppy was just about to blow out her candles, weren’t you, baby?’
I did not want my cake any more. I did not want this dress. I did not want to be here if she was here. My birthday had gone from perfect to hellish, in under five minutes, and that was all her fault. If only she’d disappear, if she’d leave him alone and stop being a burden on him, he and I could be together properly. He and I could be happy. Numb, I stepped towards the cake to do as I was told. Did he buy the dress for me after seeing it on her, or did he buy it for her? I risked a sly glance at her, and from the expression tugging at her eyes, I knew deep inside he bought it for her, too. Maybe for her birthday, too. Whether he’d bought it or not, he’d obviously told her to wear it today. Maybe it was another of his little jokes.
‘Don’t forget to make a wish,’ Marcus said as I leaned towards the flames.