Did she smell nice? Was her breath fresh? It had been so long since anyone had passed a comment. He wasn’t going to kiss her, though. She just had to work out how to get up without making this look embarrassing.
I want him to kiss me, wailed a plaintive voice in her head. Kiss me!
Rory’s nose brushed hers and she realised he must have moved a fraction closer. Or maybe she had. But now their noses were definitely touching, their lips were open and she could feel his quick breath. He was breathing very hard, struggling to control himself.
And then Rory leaned forward the last, vital inch, and kissed her. Michelle couldn’t remember being kissed like this. His lips felt strange against hers, masculine but soft, and his skin’s scent was different but familiar at the same time, and she leaned into him as if she’d been waiting for it for a long time.
Rory’s hand cradled her face, barely touching her jaw, then slid into her hair. Michelle was kneeling by the sofa, and there were shells digging into her knees and probably breaking into the carpet, but those thoughts were only at the very back of her mind.
At the front of her mind, pushing everything else away, was Rory.
Michelle thought it was sad that in all the years she’d owned this sofa, she’d never realised how very comfortable it was to lie on. And how it could easily accommodate a six foot three man lying on it with you.
I should tell the manufacturers, she thought dreamily, as Rory’s hand continued to stroke the long curve of her waist, dipping hopefully into the gap between her skirt and her shirt. It could be a major selling point.
She trailed her hand along the scratchy slope of his jaw and stopped him. ‘No,’ she said.
They’d kissed for a long time, but whenever he’d tried to take it further, she’d firmly stopped him, grabbing his wrist again, keeping his hands away from any zips and buttons. After a while he’d stopped trying, concentrating instead on the parts of her body that were exposed, and that had been . . . well, amazing enough.
‘Michelle,’ he said, ‘don’t take this the wrong way. But why is someone who kisses like that in a house like this?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean. You don’t have an inner scatter cushion queen. And you said you weren’t always so tidy. It was just giving up your job that made you decorate.’
Michelle looked up at the ceiling, although her eyes didn’t see anything. She was seeing a different ceiling, the ceiling of her room at home, where she’d lain for a long summer, refusing to come out.
It was amazing that he’d listened to her. And remembered. At this point I could make something up, she thought. This could be the fresh start moment when I step into a new life.
She thought of Harvey. When are you going to tell him? When are you going to come clean about what sort of person you are?
If I tell Rory now, she thought, he’s got the option of not going any further. It made her feel sick, but Rory was a solicitor. He knew much worse people than her, surely? Even if he thought she was disgusting, she couldn’t be worse than some others he’d encountered.
Michelle’s stomach lurched as she hoisted herself off the sofa and went upstairs to her spare room. It was pristine, as she’d left it, with a sweetshop sprinkling of bonbon-coloured scatter cushions on the unused double bed.
With one hand she swept them off, then reached under the mattress for her diary. Her hands touched the fabric of the cover and very slowly, she withdrew it, the leather ties still tightly secured.
This is it, she thought, weighing it in her hands. The book that no one else but me has ever read. And the reason I wrote it was so that I wouldn’t have to explain it now – just as if a future me told the past me to do it.
But still, should she hand it over? Really, she barely knew Rory. But she had a feeling about him that she’d never had with anyone else, a feeling that whatever she told him wouldn’t affect his opinion of her. He might ask questions and probe more than she’d like, but underneath that was a steady hum of something positive, trustworthy.
More than that, she wanted to tell someone. She didn’t want her and Harvey to be the only people who knew any more.
30
‘The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ still makes me laugh. My teenage diary was just like that. Looking back, I edited shamelessly, even though I’d have died if anyone but me had seen them.’
Katie Parkinson
‘Here.’ She passed the diary to Rory. ‘Read this.’
‘Read what?’ He looked amused, then serious when he saw her expression. ‘What is this?’
‘My diary.’ Michelle spoke slowly, choosing her words very carefully. ‘I told you I was expelled. Well, it was a big scandal at the time. It was in the papers. And it wasn’t just for drinking, like they reported. It was . . . worse than that. I tried to forget a lot of what happened. I was in shock for a long time, and when I came out of that, my mum made it pretty clear that she didn’t want to hear any of the sordid details, as she called them, and warned me that if I wanted my dad to carry on loving me, I should put it behind me and never mention it again.’
‘But you wrote it down?’
‘I wrote everything down in those days,’ she said. ‘That saying about if no one hears a falling tree – that was me, when I was a teenager. If I didn’t write it down, it never happened.’
‘So you were a closet writer?’ he said, intrigued. ‘And a reader?’
Michelle nodded. It felt like talking about an old friend, not herself. ‘Read all the time. I stopped because . . .’ She tried to pin down a slippery thought that she’d never quite been able to articulate. ‘Because when I came to read my diary again, right from the start, that girl wasn’t me any more. The experiences were mine, but I wasn’t the same person. I couldn’t believe the words. And I’d been through such a nightmare – and it was a nightmare in the real sense of the word, it felt like it was happening to someone else – that reading about anyone else’s stupid broken heart or misunderstanding felt pointless. Books felt like a cheat.’
Rory was silent. He looked at the book in his hands. ‘You’re sure you want me to read this?’
She nodded. ‘I want you to know . . .’ Michelle’s lips had gone very dry and her tongue felt as if it was sticking to the roof of her mouth. ‘Why. Why I had to start again, and control everything exactly the way I wanted it. I know I’m a control freak. But it’s the only way I could cope.’
‘Have you read this recently?’
She shook her head, repulsed by the thought of seeing those facts in her girlish handwriting again. ‘Not since the day I wrote it. Well, I flicked through the early stuff, but I stopped. I don’t want to read about the party. I know what happened.’
The party. It sounded so innocuous. It was only a word, a word she’d used a million times since, but now she was having a conversation about the party, for the first time in thirteen years, it stuck in her throat.
Michelle licked her lips.
Rory undid the ties and opened the book, then stopped.
He handed it back to her. ‘I think you need to read this more than me,’ he said. ‘I don’t need the details. I just need to hear what you want to tell me. Here.’
Her hands were shaking as she took it back off him, but she made herself start at the beginning of the Easter term.
It started off well enough, with Michelle getting good results in her mocks, and Ed Pryce taking the seat next to her in their weekly General Studies classes, causing her to spend all of Tuesday lunchtime doing and redoing her make-up in preparation.
There was a blip around February, when her three Valentine’s cards turned out not to be from Ed, but from her dad, Owen, and some strange boy in the lower sixth who always had inky fingers, but things had picked up again as plans for Will Taylor’s eighteenth birthday party started to thicken.
As usual Michelle noted that she’d skipped any reference to major world events of the time, but recorded in meticulous detail the po
litical machinations of day boys (with access to parental drinks cabinets and venues) versus boarders (the popular, party-starting ringleaders). Ed, being head of house, was a boarder, but not the most popular boy in the set – something she seemed to find reassuring at the time, since the other girls had their sights set on the first rugby team.
3 April
Ate two Crunchies during last revision period. Hate myself, will never get thin. Ed asked me if I’d done something different with my hair when he walked me over to the dining hall, but Katherine said I’d just washed it with her shampoo, which I guess was funny at the time but it meant I only had about three minutes to talk to Ed properly before we went into lunch, so didn’t manage to drop any hints about the party.
Daniel says his parents will be away on the Party Weekend, so we could go to their house and have a barbecue in their garden. Anthony keeps going on about us having the party down on the beach, though. He reckons it’ll be closer to the school for getting back, so we can stay later, plus he can hide some booze down there beforehand. I like the beach idea. It’s romantic. Katherine says the sand dunes are OK, but you need to take a blanket down if you don’t want to be shaking sand out of your parts for the next two days. Was a bit shocked by that, to be honest – didn’t think she’d done that but she says she has, with Anthony. She swore me to secrecy – he’s on a warning already for smoking, and if he gets another suspension, he’ll be expelled. Anyway, beach will be absolutely freezing probably so no chance of sand getting anywhere!
10 April – Party!!
Underneath that, in pencil, she’d written something in a hand so different it almost looked like someone else’s writing. It shook and distorted on the page, smeared in places and angrily crossed out in others.
Writing this down, so I can get it out of my head, and seal up this diary and destroy it.
Went down to the beach with Katherine, Sophie and Marlene. We drank a bottle of wine in the study before we left. When we got there, Anthony had built a bonfire and half the lads were already pretty pissed. They’d been drinking on the bus back from the Austin Friars game, and kept chucking beer onto the fire.
There was a big cheer when we arrived, and I felt really popular (ha!). Ed was there, wearing the black shirt that I really fancy him in, and his faded Diesel jeans. He looked so fit I couldn’t believe he was even looking at me, let alone talking to me and smiling and being all attentive. God, I am so stupid.
Daniel had got a crate of beer from his dad, and nicked another one from their garage, so we started drinking straight away and eating marshmallows off the bonfire (my idea). It was getting dark, and cold, and we were all sitting close together, and I’d managed to get myself next to Ed. I was snuggled right up to him, and he put his arm round me.
I don’t know if someone was putting something in the beer, but I don’t remember the bit between starting to drink and being really drunk. I was basically lying in the sand feeling all blissed out and thinking what a lovely bunch of friends I had. Anthony was holding my hand on one side, Ed on the other. Then I remember feeling dizzy but horny, and thinking that maybe I should just grab Ed and kiss him, like in Riders. As I turned to do that, I realised his arm wasn’t round me any more. And he was turned away. He was snogging Katherine next to him. I hadn’t even realised she was there. It was dark by now, and I couldn’t make out a lot of what was going on, but I think pretty much everyone was snogging by then, and people kept getting up together and going into the dunes. Someone had a CD player and they were playing ‘A Girl Like You’ by Edwyn Collins. I can’t stop hearing it.
I thought I was going to be sick. My head was spinning, I needed a wee, and I was really, really cold in my stupid impress-Ed shirt. I managed to go off into the dunes, far enough away so no one would see me, and I had my jeans round my ankles when I heard a voice behind me, laughing and calling me a bad girl. Then someone pushed me onto my knees. I got seagrass in my face and in my nose, and I yelled that I was going to throw up, but the voice just said, you’ll be fine, and then I felt something being shoved between my legs. I screamed because the sand was scratching inside me but Anthony wouldn’t stop. He kept pushing and pushing, gripping me round the waist so I wouldn’t move, and I did throw up and I tried to think about that, rather than what was going on between my legs, because that wasn’t happening to me.
And then it was all over, and I lay in the sand, listening to the sea coming in and out, in and out, and I wanted to lift out of my body and float away on the tide. Anthony was lying next to me. He had his arm over me and it was really heavy. It felt like that was the only thing stopping me floating up to the stars.
I remember Katherine finding me and pulling my jeans back on. I remember laughing and crying at the same time because the sand scratched me and I told her she’d been right and she said I was weird. I remember Ed carrying me up to the cars, and me thinking it was ironic this was the only time I’d ever get him to do that, and I remember being sick again in my coat rather than on Mrs Nichols’ back seat.
I don’t remember anything else. And as of now, I don’t remember this either.
Michelle closed the notebook. Her face was wet and the words blurred in front of her.
‘What happened?’ asked Rory gently.
‘Someone raped me at a party,’ whispered Michelle. ‘I didn’t tell anyone about it because that would have made it real. And no one would have believed me anyway, because other people were doing it. A bunch of us got caught and it was pretty clear that there’d been sex going on, as well as drinking and some drugs. The papers called it a public school orgy but obviously they couldn’t name names. I didn’t tell my parents because being expelled was bad enough, as well as being caught drunk. I wasn’t the kind of girl who did that. Let alone anything else. I wanted to forget all about it.’ She swallowed. ‘Because I didn’t want to let one night define the rest of my life. I wanted a new life. A fresh one.’
‘But you could have got counselling!’
‘I did. For a bit. But I found it easier to pretend it hadn’t happened.’
‘What about the boy, though?’ Rory seemed angry, a reaction Michelle hadn’t expected for some reason. ‘He should have been prosecuted!’
She shook her head.
‘He should!’
‘He was a boy. A stupid teenage boy who I’d kissed earlier. One of the popular ones. What was I going to say? That I was a geeky girl who felt flattered by the attention, right up to the point where I decided not to have sex?’
She hadn’t written that down, Michelle noted. Editing even then. She’d missed out kissing Anthony, and also Daniel. Overwhelmed with the attention. Unreliable narrator.
‘I didn’t want to be that girl,’ said Michelle. ‘But I couldn’t be the college student I was going to be either. So I went home and I was Daddy’s star salesgirl for a bit. Then I was set up with Harvey and he must have realised he could make me into anything he wanted, and I let him. But he never stopped reminding me that I was the sort of tease who got drunk and led boys on. That I couldn’t be trusted. Underneath it all.’
Rory said nothing, but he took the book off her, did the ties up tight, and threw it across the room. Then he put his arms around her and held Michelle while she cried into his shoulder, until her perfect eyeliner smeared all down her face.
He didn’t kiss her. He held her in his arms, and he listened to her shame spilling out after so many years, and when he told her, in his soft Scottish voice, that things were going to be all right, that she was brave and clever and beautiful and everything a good woman was, she could almost believe him.
31
‘Matilda is very very smart, but her parents are very stupid and don’t know she has magic powers, and her teacher is so mean! A good book 10/10.’
Lily McQueen
As November turned darker and damper, and the Christmas lights appeared between the street lamps, Anna noticed that the nightly march of bedlinen into the bookshop seemed to have stopped. She di
dn’t take it up with Michelle, assuming this was the last reprieve before the new year, when everything would be swept out – and in any case, she didn’t want to ask. Escaping to the bookshop each morning was the only thing she looked forward to any more.
Sarah’s due date was approaching, and the incessant Skype calls between Becca and Sarah, as they compared bumps and stretch marks, were unbearable, despite the smile Anna plastered on for the camera. There was nowhere in the house where she couldn’t hear the laughs and screeches from downstairs, and her worst fear was that Sarah would take the laptop into the home birthing pool with her and they’d all have to sit round it and watch.
Anna knew she was tormenting herself, but she couldn’t get the thought out of her head – that she’d let Becca down. To have the shaming evidence of her parenting failure on one side of the screen while the real mother paraded her fecundity on the other felt like a particularly mean punishment.
Anna longed to make it up to Becca somehow, but she couldn’t, because Becca wasn’t even there any more. Owen had asked her to move into the flat above Home Sweet Home at the beginning of November, and she’d gone, with all her books and her guitar and her dry sense of humour that kept Anna sane. Anna had offered to take her to her scans and midwife appointments, but Becca had insisted, kindly, that Owen would go with her.
‘I know Dad’s just waiting for him to do a bunk,’ she explained. ‘He can hardly think that if he’s the one learning breathing exercises with me. And anyway, we can’t both leave the bookshop, can we?’
Michelle had given Becca a full-time job between the bookshop and Home Sweet Home, fulfilling the Christmas internet orders and taking charge of restocking. Anna was grateful for the practical way Michelle was helping, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to have a proper conversation with her about it, not with those angry words still hanging between them. Once upon a time, the idea of the pair of them hovering over a cradle like hopelessly unqualified fairy godmothers would have made them both roar with laughter – how bad could they be? – but now they were polite, and that was about it.