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I peered in the mirror, trying to read something more into the outline of my face than just that. An outline. What was it that Miranda could see?
‘We should go out one time,’ she said, ‘to the cinema or something.’
‘Or to the pub?’ I suggested.
‘I don’t think so,’ she laughed. ‘Nasty loud places. No, we’ll find a nice romantic comedy. Something jolly, that’s the ticket.’
Neither of us had boyfriends when we first met.
We would talk about men though, but always in that ‘oh aren’t they hopeless’ way other women did. I’d talk about Mr Roberts, but I didn’t tell Miranda everything. To make her laugh I’d ham it up about how he got me to go up the stepladder to fetch down boxes from the top shelf. Miranda and I grimaced at each other when I demonstrated the way he’d hold on to my legs when I was up there, and how he said he did it because he was scared I might topple over but we both knew he was fibbing.
‘I’m not surprised though,’ Miranda said. ‘Your calf muscles are perfect. You should insure your legs. I’ve never seen such romantic legs.’
‘Oh you,’ I cooed. This was something I’d learnt to do from Miranda. Cooing, and saying: ‘Oh you.’
When I got back to my room though, I couldn’t resist lifting up my skirts and having a quick look at my legs in the mirror. I turned this way and that, trying to see the romance Miranda must have read there. I flexed my legs, letting my fingers trail over where muscles should be. I shut my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see the dimples of fat. I couldn’t stop thinking about how Mr Roberts always said he liked a girl you could get hold of.
I sat on my bed later and watched the few passers-by in the street below as I ate my supper. I sipped my packet soup from my mug, pretending it was home-made and that I couldn’t taste the chemicals of the mix. The doughnuts I picked delicately one by one from their box, licking my lips to catch the sugar from round my mouth. The last one I had to force down but I didn’t want there to be any gaps in my body left unfilled.
It was so quiet. Blissfully, eerily quiet, in my little upstairs room. When it was time to sleep, I lay down and placed my hands in the form of a cross on my chest. The only sound was the occasional echo of footsteps which drifted up from the street. Some running, others dawdling. Everyone going home, I thought.
Chapter Two (#ulink_0263aa6d-c791-5a17-b34d-713fbdad2ced)
‘How did you meet?’ This was the first thing Miranda asked when I told her about Tim.
We were in the salon. Miranda was putting my hair up into a high pleat. I could feel her fingernails scrape against my scalp as she twisted strands into shape.
I couldn’t get the words out. All I’d told her so far was that I had a boyfriend called Tim, but now I kept giggling. I hid behind my hand as I tried to answer Miranda.
I’d had a hard time even just saying ‘boyfriend’. It didn’t feel right. Not next to Tim. Somehow Tim and Boyfriend weren’t two words that went naturally together. So by the time I’d finally managed to say it all in just the one sentence she was suspicious. That’s why her question wasn’t just throat-clearing. She really wanted to know.
I spun the back of the empty hairdressing chair next to me so I wouldn’t have to look at Miranda’s face in the mirror. In the background Miss Otis was busy regretting how she wasn’t going to be able, after all, to make lunch.
‘In the park,’ I said. Round and round the chair spun.
‘What are you reading?’ Tim had asked, and I showed him the second-hand romance I’d just picked up from the charity shop. I didn’t let him judge my reading habits from the pale pink cover though. I told him how I was getting through Proust but the books were too heavy to carry around. The novels I read outside were lighter. Not just in weight. They helped me keep my concentration keen for the main task. I was determined to get through the whole of French literature by the time I was thirty, I said. That gave me years, I added. I wanted to get that in quickly. Because of my size, and because I’m still wearing the clothes my father bought me, most people think I’m a lot older than I am. This has worked in my favour recently, but there was something nice about wanting to be young again. I felt a lightness inside.
‘The main task,’ Tim repeated. ‘You’re keeping your concentration keen for the main task.’ He nodded a lot as he said it so I could tell he liked that particular phrase. Maybe even that he liked me.
Tim didn’t say much, but he never stopped moving. He tapped his fingers on his jeans as if he was playing the piano, his feet twitched up and down too in a rhythm I tried to catch. He was wearing no socks. It was one of the first things I noticed about him.
A man passed us as we sat there. ‘Nice day,’ he said, or something like that, and I smiled back. Tim’s feet stayed still then, I noticed. His ankles were white and bony above his unlaced trainers. A vein snaked its way round the bump like a twisting river of blood.
‘You’re not saying you picked someone up in the park!’
I came back to Miranda’s salon with a start.
‘Do you not know how dangerous that is? Do you not know that, Molly? There was this woman in one of my magazines who was captured by a man she met in the park. He kept her like a dog in a flat nearby, let her out for exercise and she was so frightened that she always came back to him when he called. Can you not imagine that?’ When Miranda got excited a Scottish under-current always came out, not just in the accent but in the sentence order too. The negativity of her Caledonian grammar made me more defensive than I knew I should have been.
‘I can look after myself,’ I said.
Miranda pulled a piece of my hair especially tight, ignoring my gasp. ‘Leave that chair alone,’ she said too, and I let go of it, but not before spinning it once more round for luck.
‘I was just sitting on the Seize the Day bench reading,’ I said. ‘He came to sit there too. Asked if I had any idea who Jessica was.’
‘Not local then.’
I shook my head. That had been one of the first things I’d thought too. All the locals knew about Jessica Carter. She was a teenage girl who had killed herself four years ago. It was just before she took her A levels and when she died, it started a big campaign about adolescent pressure at school and academic achievements and how girls were supposed to look like models as well as everything else.
Because that’s what she wrote in her suicide note: Maybe if I was prettier, then none of this would have mattered.
No one but me seemed to think it was funny how the newspapers used the story as an excuse to print photographs of Jessica looking pretty alongside the articles about how dangerous it was to worry so much about appearance. My mother had told me not to always be so difficult, but it was true. There were lots of photographs, not just of Jessica but of film stars, supermodels, musicians. Pages and pages of beautiful women.
‘Don’t go all dreamy on me, Molly,’ Miranda said. ‘You were telling me about the man.’
‘He’s different,’ I said. ‘Hard to explain.’
‘Could I meet him?’
‘I’ll ask but he’s not shy exactly. More private.’
She shrugged and twisted my chair so I was sitting straight, facing the mirror with her standing behind me. I normally liked seeing us like that, one on top of the other like two twists in one of those fancy bread sticks they sell in the Italian deli on the corner but there was something strange about our reflections tonight.
‘I thought we might go for a flick-out at the end of your hair next time,’ she said. ‘It’ll bring out the beautiful texture of your skin. You’ve been blessed with your skin. It makes me mad with jealousy.’
I put my hand up to my neck in the mirror, let my finger and thumb stretch across so I could be strangling myself, but then raised my hand up so it was just cupping my chin. Softly. ‘But your neck. . . ’ I said. Behind me, Miranda lifted her face up in the mirror to expose the arch of her neck.
Chapter Three (#ulink_f5b54e30-ba07-50c4-9883-2d8dc44967e1)
I was pleased Tim was late for our date that night.
It gave me more time with Jessica.
‘Jessica,’ I told her in my head, tracing the carved letters on the rough wood of the bench with my fingertips as if I was playing the piano. S.E.I.Z.E. T.H.E. D.A.Y. There’d been a collection for the bench at school, but it was the headmaster who had chosen the words. He’d wanted it to be a lesson to spur the rest of us into a new joy of life, but it hadn’t worked. Rather than the inspiration he’d hoped for, the Seize the Day bench had become a symbol for everything that could go wrong. I wondered whether that was why most people shied away from it. Most people, that is, apart from Tim and me. ‘This is how I met him. . . ’
And, although it all happened on her bench and she must have been aware of us, I told her everything Tim had said that first time I met him, and how when Tim asked whether we could meet again, I told him this bench could be our regular spot. ‘Maybe tomorrow. I’m often here. She was a friend,’ I’d lied to him.
After the first ripples of shock at Jessica’s death had gone round the school, there was a curious quietness everywhere for weeks. Every excuse for not being happy was suddenly flawed.
‘Maybe if I was prettier. . . ’ But if you were looking for one word to describe Jessica, it would have been pretty.
‘Maybe if I had more money. . . ’ But Jessica’s family took two holidays a year. Once, for her fourteenth birthday, they took the whole class to a theme park for her party. Jessica got all her clothes in London, not the local Topshop like the rest of us. She wasn’t the sort of girl who needed a Saturday job.
‘Maybe if I was cleverer. . . ’ But Jessica was a top A student.
But now, when no one else but me seemed to bother to visit the bench any more, things seemed more equal. ‘We could have been friends,’ I told Jessica. ‘I used to be so unhappy as well.’ D.A.Y. My index finger traced the scars in the wood made by the letters.
So perhaps that was why, even before Tim arrived, I was feeling as if I might have a bit of potential too. I put my face down and brushed my hair back over my shoulder with the side of my hand like Jessica used to do. After Jessica died, I used to do it at home so often that my father banned hair-touching at table. I couldn’t have risked it at school either. It was definitely an in-crowd gesture, and might have drawn attention to me in a way my father wouldn’t have liked.
I must have been too busy doing the hair thing to hear Tim come. When I looked up, he was already sitting down on the other end of the bench, his head between his knees.
‘Are you OK?’ I asked.
‘Quick,’ he said. ‘Put your head down too. NOW!’
I copied him.
‘Don’t look up,’ he warned. ‘Shut your eyes if possible.’
I couldn’t. I looked at the ground instead. There were bits of chewing gum stuck under the bench. Cigarette butts, even a beer bottle. I made up my mind to tidy up sometime. For Jessica’s sake.
‘Wha. . . ’
‘Be quiet,’ Tim said. He put his arm round my shoulders to draw me closer to him. I could feel the heat of his body through his jumper. The outline of his fingers across my back burnt into me like infrared. He smelt of fabric conditioner and warm apples. I’d never been so close to a boy before. I tried hard to stop my body from tensing up, to relax more and enjoy the embrace.
‘We’re going to have to make a run for it,’ Tim said. He stood up and held out his hand, and I took it, clutching at his fingers as he pulled me into the bushes that lined the edge of the park. Just when I was thinking I couldn’t run any more, he stopped and we hid behind a tree for him to keep a watch out. He pulled the sleeves of his jumper down to cover my hands, holding on to my wrists so tightly. I did the same to him. It was as if we were grafting ourselves on to each other.
‘I know who it is,’ I said. ‘It’s my father. He’s found me.’
Tim hushed me. ‘It’s not,’ he replied. ‘I’ll keep you safe.’
I didn’t ask how he could be so certain. My heart was beating hard against his chest and the echo travelled up to my head. I wondered if Tim could hear the same noises as I could. The scuffle of leaves as a squirrel hunted for nuts, a dog barking in a garden somewhere near, the distant sound of a train announcement from the station. No one walking past us would be able to see us in our nest of leaves. I wasn’t sure how long we could stay there, not moving, but every time I tried to ask Tim what was happening, he put his lips down, hushing through my hair, his breath hot against my scalp.
We were so close, I smelt a flowery sweetness on his breath I couldn’t identify. It was the first time anyone had held me like that since my mother stopped touching me. Since the biology teacher business. I tried not to cry, but just rested my weight against his chest, my head lying on the soft pad of his shoulder.
We didn’t say anything. There didn’t seem the need.
Eventually, he let go of my wrists and we walked out on to the path together. Across the far side there were a few houses with their top lights still on, but apart from that there was no sign of life.
‘Will you?’ I asked.
‘What?’
‘Keep me safe?’
Tim nodded. ‘Tomorrow?’ he asked.
I smiled. He put one hand on my head, stroked my hair gently and then without saying another word, he turned. I watched him leave the park. He walked quicker than other people. He knew where he was going. When I couldn’t see him any more I sat back on the Seize the Day bench.
I wanted my heart to settle down before going back to Mr Roberts’s shop.
Chapter Four (#ulink_472702bb-a823-58b2-b530-d50c5815cd4b)
This is how I met Mr Roberts.
He caught me crying at one of the café tables they put up outside the Church on the High Street during spring and summer.
Despite the cold, I’d been sitting there for one hour, forty-two minutes refusing all offers of refreshments, even though I could see the volunteers pointing me out and tut-tutting amongst each other. Then a plump peachy woman came out wearing a white blouse and flowery skirt with one of those elasticated waists women her age wear for comfort although they’re always having to hoist the skirt back down from where it’s risen up under their tits. She told me I wasn’t to sit there any more. That the café tables were for proper customers only.
I started to cry, and suddenly this old man came up and told the waitress it was all right. That I was with him.
It was Mr Roberts, although of course I didn’t know that then. I was just relieved that everybody was now staring at him instead of me. He said nothing at first. Just bought me a cup of tea, pushed it over and sat there in silence until I raised my head.
‘What do they mean about being proper?’ I asked.
‘I suppose they want people who’ll pay,’ he said. ‘Although the Bible does have something to say about merchants in the temple.’
‘I might not want anything to drink,’ I said, ‘but that doesn’t mean I’m not proper. They should be more careful about what words they use. Words matter.’
‘I know that, pet,’ he replied. ‘You don’t want to worry about Church people. They’ve no taste. They can’t see how special you are.’
This made me cry even harder. Mr Roberts didn’t say anything, just got up so I thought he was leaving me too but he came back with a handful of paper napkins and handed them to me.
‘Dry yourself,’ he said. ‘And then we’ll sort you out.’
I wiped the tears away and looked up at him nervously, but he shook his head. ‘Not yet,’ he said, and pulled out a sheet of newspaper he had neatly folded away in the pocket of his tweed jacket. It was the racing pages and he started studying form closely.
He was right too. As soon as I realised his attention had wandered away from me, I started crying again, loud, gasping sobs. When he didn’t seem to mind, I ignored the sour looks I was getting from the Church woman and let it all come out. The pile of napkins was sodden by the time I was finished and his racing columns were full of little biroed marks and comments. He must have been about sixty, with steely grey hair cut forward over a bulging forehead. It was his mouth I noticed most. It was prim and womanly with perfectly shaped teeth he kept tapping his pen against. It wasn’t the first time I’d noticed that the older men get, the more feminine their mouths and chins become. It’s the opposite of women, who start to sprout bristles and Winston Churchill jowls. In fact, most long-term married couples look as if they’ve swapped faces from the nose down. Morphing into each other’s mother or father.
I coughed and he looked up. Then he looked again but slower, up and down my body. He even tilted his head to one side so he could get a gawp at my legs.
‘Well, you’re a big girl,’ he said. ‘What sort of weight would you say you were then?’
It wasn’t funny, but I was so shocked by him coming out with a statement like that, I just exploded into giggles. Since I’d put on all this weight, everybody pussy-footed around the subject. Fat-ism. But although I laughed I couldn’t help it when, just as quickly, the tears started to well up again. Mr Roberts creased his eyes in annoyance so I tried to stop both the laughing and the crying.
‘It’s glandular,’ I explained. ‘I eat nothing really, but I can’t help putting weight on. Mum says it runs in the family, although my father used to—’ I stopped.
‘Used to what?’ He stared at me as if he was weighing me himself. ‘So there’s a mother and a father in the background. Been mean to you, have they, or is it boyfriend trouble?’
I shook my head. Since that afternoon in the biology room, I’d found that the hurricane of feelings continually raging inside me was impossible to put into words for anyone, let alone a stranger. That’s why I’d come here, to get away from it all. I thought of the counsellor they made me see at my new school. The red chair I used to sit on for my weekly sessions with her, the box of ever-ready tissues like the ones I was clutching now.
‘There are times when nothing goes right,’ I told Mr Roberts, catching myself before I copied the counsellor’s long vowels too strongly. ‘This is just one of these times. I just need to sit it out, wait patiently and my turn to shine will come. Life is a wheel and sometimes we’re on an upwards circle and sometimes we’re heading down. It’s all natural. Part of living. You can’t fight it.’
He stared at me. ‘Got a job?’ he asked.
I shook my head. I was longing to pinch myself. It was one of my ways of coping when a conversation got out of hand. Normally this was fine because most of the conversations I’d had recently were just in my head but I knew pinching wasn’t OK in public. Particularly not in a church. I contented myself with squeezing my fingernails hard against my palm instead. I tried not to wince with the pain.
‘You’re not at school, are you?’
I looked down at the table. I was longing to look at my palms and see the marks from my nails but couldn’t risk it so I let my hands rest on my knees. ‘Not any more,’ I mumbled.
‘Too much time. That’s your trouble.’
I shrugged.
‘Drugs? Alcohol?’
‘No.’
