I was completely besotted with the Parker family, and naturally they began to feature prominently in my diary. In retrospect, I put in far more detail than was necessary.
One night, Mr Parker did put his hand on my thigh in the car on the way home. He did it casually, in a friendly sort of way, so I really wasn’t sure if he meant anything by it. I didn’t react, but I couldn’t hear anything he was saying, all I could feel were those strong, warm fingers gripping my leg. He stopped the Range-Rover a little way up from my house and said, ‘How about a kiss?’
It wasn’t like kissing Georgie. It was a grown-up, gentle, accomplished kiss which turned me on like nothing I’d ever experienced before and at the same time he was brushing my nipples really gently with the back of his hand. I made a little noise, a groan, and he moved away and laughed and said, ‘Hot to trot, aren’t you?’
I honestly didn’t know what he meant.
It went on from there. I recorded it all dutifully in my diary. I hid the diary beneath my mattress. It never occurred to me for a second that anybody else would ever look at it. Let alone my mother.
twenty-nine
‘Liv? It’s me.’
‘Marc … ?’
‘Sorry to wake you.’
‘What’s wrong? Is something wrong?’
‘Not really. I just …’
I dropped my head back on to the pillow. ‘Marc …’
The phone transmitted the clicking of a disposable lighter as, twelve miles to the east, Marc struggled to light a cigarette.
‘I couldn’t sleep.’
‘No.’
‘I had this dream.’
‘Of Luca?’
‘We were kids again.’
‘Was it a good dream?’
‘Oh yes. We were playing football on the rec. Luca was bossing everyone around …’
‘As he did.’
‘Yeah. He was an arrogant fucker sometimes.’ Marc took a long drag on the cigarette. ‘And in the dream I told him I thought he had died but he was there and he just laughed and told me not to be so stupid, and everything was OK, everything was normal. So I felt this relief. I thought the dying bit was the dream and then …’
‘You woke up?’
‘Yeah. And I tried to wake Nathalie to get her to talk but she just …’
There was a long sigh, and a pause, in which I imagined the sleepy-eyed Nathalie turning her unfriendly, bulky back on Marc and his tears and how lonely that must have felt for him. My heart went out to him, but I said, ‘It’s not her fault, Marc.’
‘But I need to talk about him.’
‘It’s my fault,’ I said, feeling my eyes burning.
‘No, it’s not your fault. We should be together. If we were together now, everything would be better.’
He exhaled again, and his breath was shaky. ‘I heard you were in Portiston today.’
‘We were taking pictures for the professor’s book.’
‘Why didn’t you come into Marinella’s?’
‘You know why.’
‘I would have seen you. At least that would have been something.’
I rubbed my eyes, exhausted.
‘Next weekend,’ he said, and I imagined his face wreathed in smoke, his dark, shadowed eyes and the stubble on his jaw, ‘I’m supposed to be going to Ireland for a stag party. If it’s OK with you, I’d like us to go away together.’
‘The whole weekend?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know, Marc. What if—’
‘Please. Please say you’ll come with me. For my sake. For Luca.’
‘All right,’ I said.
We talked for a while longer. Marc said he felt calmer. We said our good-nights, we whispered endearments. It was so late that there was already the faintest whiff of light in the sky beyond my curtainless window. I reached under my bed for the bottle of gin, poured an inch or so into my glass and swigged it down. I knew I would suffer at work in the morning, but I wanted something to take the edge off my guilt so that I could go back to sleep wrapped in the arms of the promise of a whole weekend without loneliness.
thirty
It was the start of the first term of my last year at school. The day my suspicious mother found my diary and read the detailed, descriptive and highly romanticized account of my affair with William Parker, Anneli and I, together with the rest of the sixth form, were meeting the local authority’s careers-information officer. Anneli planned to go to university to study medicine. She wanted to go and work in Africa for Médecins sans Frontières or some other such charity. Nobody believed my grades would be good enough to get me into university, but that didn’t matter because, inspired by Mr Parker’s glamorous anecdotes about the entertainment industry, I’d set my heart on a career as an actress.
Watersford Girls’ Grammar was an institution that was justifiably proud of its academic achievements, and its ongoing campaign to achieve equality in the workplace for women, encouraging its students to go out into the commercial world and break down glass ceilings, explore new avenues and prove that anything our male counterparts could do, we could do better. Nobody was particularly impressed when I, who had never shown the slightest interest in staying behind after school to support the activities of the drama club, announced that I wanted to be a star of stage, screen and TV (but not necessarily in that order). It was an ambition that was regarded as letting the side down somewhat.
While Mum was sitting on my unmade bed, reading about exactly what Mr Parker had done with his tongue, I was sitting in a dusty, high-windowed office with Miss Keane. She was trying to persuade me that the entertainment industry was a ruthless and cruel place, and one that was extremely difficult to break into if you didn’t know the right people.
‘There’s no course you can take that’ll get you a job on Neighbours, Olivia,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to try and find a way in at the bottom and work your way up.’
‘OK,’ I said.
‘And only the most talented people ever make it to the top,’ said Miss Keane. The intimation, which wasn’t wasted on me, was that I wasn’t one of those people.
‘I don’t want to discourage you, Olivia, but you’re going to find it difficult. Why don’t you take a secretarial course, and then you could always go into the BBC via that route?’
Mum was always telling me I should do a secretarial course. I ignored her too.
I had absolutely no idea that anything was wrong as Anneli and I left school that day. We stopped at the baker’s and bought an iced doughnut each, and a can of Coke to drink on the bus on the way home, and then idled towards the bus stop, looking in shop windows, talking about this and that. Anneli had had a more constructive careers interview than I had. Miss Keane had given her the names and addresses of several major international medical charities. There was a possibility of her even being sponsored through university. I was glad that she was so happy. I was proud of her.
We sat downstairs on the bus. In the sixth form we were allowed to wear our own clothes, and we didn’t like to be associated with the younger kids, especially not the raucous, ebullient Portiston gang who monopolized the upper deck of the bus and the back seat and who bounced and chattered and squealed as they ate their post-school crisps and apples. That bus was like a mobile canteen. I pity whoever had to clean it.
We got off in Portiston as normal, and parted at the junction by the newsagents’ with a little hug. Then I headed for home.
I didn’t even realize anything was wrong when I went through the door.
‘Hello-o, I’m back!’ I called, dropping my bag by the front door, kicking off my shoes and hanging up my jacket.
I wandered through the hall and into the kitchen in my socks, and then stopped. Mum was sitting at the kitchen table, a cup of tea in front of her. Her face was haggard, the skin stretched tightly across her bones. Her lips were pursed and tight at the corners. Beside her was Mrs Parker, hugely pregnant and white as a sheet. There were dark mascara smudges on her ch
eeks and a menthol cigarette was burning in the ashtray beside her. Mr Hensley stood at the window with his back to me but I could tell by the set of his shoulders and the angle of his horrid little head that something terrible had happened.
For a moment I thought somebody had died, but if that was the case, why was Mrs Parker sitting in our kitchen? I looked from Mum’s face to Mrs Parker’s. She was staring at the cup between her palms, resolutely not looking at me. I hadn’t done anything wrong, had I? I racked my brains and then I saw the diary on the table and the shock hit me like a slap across the face.
‘You haven’t been reading my diary, have you?’ I yelled at Mum, simultaneously horrified and furious. ‘That’s private! You have no right!’
Of course I can see now that that was completely the wrong thing to say.
My mother slowly raised herself to her feet. She was trembling with anger. I had never seen her in such a state.
‘How could you, Olivia? How could you behave like that? Setting your sights on a married man! I am so ashamed of you.’
‘Oh no,’ I cried, making involuntary rubbing-out gestures with my hands. ‘No, no, I didn’t!’
At this Mrs Parker let out a sob and put her head down in her arms. Shudders ran along her shoulders. She was making a thin, wailing sound. Mum put one hand down and stroked Mrs Parker along the curled vertebrae of her spine.
‘Have you no shame?’ asked Mr Hensley. ‘You evil little harlot!’
‘Oh no,’ I cried again. ‘No, I’m not, I’m not!’
‘How can you stand there and deny it?’ he continued. ‘It’s all here, you’ve recorded your own salacious confession.’
‘No!’ I clasped my hands now and shook my head. I was desperate for a way out of the situation. I wasn’t thinking about myself, I was thinking about Mr Parker, about what he’d say when he found out what had happened. ‘I made it up,’ I cried. ‘It’s not true, none of it, it’s all fantasy!’
‘I knew you’d say that,’ said Mum. ‘But it’s not made up, is it? Because you have every detail correct.’
Mrs Parker raised her head, tear-smudges all across her cheeks, and said: ‘I knew he was seeing someone, I just knew it. But I trusted you, Olivia. I was kind to you.’
‘Oh Mrs Parker, I would never do anything to hurt you!’ I cried. ‘Honestly I wouldn’t!’
‘You’re just like your father,’ said Mum. ‘You disgust me.’
I was crying now. I was desperate. ‘I made it all up! Mr Parker never touched me. Never.’
Mrs Parker opened her handbag and pulled out a handkerchief. She wiped her face, still gulping. I looked frantically from her to my mother.
‘You have to believe me! You can’t tell Mr Parker. He never did anything!’
‘The thing is, Olivia,’ said Mrs Parker, becoming more composed, ‘that my husband has something of a track record with silly little girls like you. You’re not the first and you won’t be the last.’
‘Oh God!’ cried my mother, turning her head away.
I was beside myself. A hideous shame at the thought of these two women and Mr Hensley reading the more purple extracts from my diary was now paling into insignificance beside the thought of what would happen if Mr Parker were to discover some of the words I’d used to describe him.
‘It happened last time I was pregnant,’ said Mrs Parker sadly. ‘Then it was some young slut at the office. It’s just unbearable that this time it’s somebody I know and trusted and liked.’
I really wanted to apologize. I would have done anything to make things better, but I still thought it would be best if I could convince the woman that it was all made up. ‘Mrs Parker, please,’ I begged her with my voice and my eyes, ‘please believe me. None of this is true.’
Mrs Parker just shook her head sadly and blew her nose. My mother stretched out a hand and placed it gently on her forearm.
‘I’d heard rumours about you and that ferry boy. I heard you slept around, but I didn’t believe them,’ said Mrs Parker.
‘I haven’t slept around,’ I said miserably. ‘I haven’t slept with anyone.’
‘May God forgive you,’ said Mr Hensley.
‘I never will,’ said Mrs Parker.
‘Go to your room, Olivia,’ said Mum, her voice icy. ‘I don’t want to breathe the same air as you right now.’
My fate was sealed. And so was my reputation.
thirty-one
The plan was this. I was to make my own way to the airport. One of the family would be dropping Marc off. We would meet in Pret A Manger on Friday evening, and we would both catch the flight to Shannon. We would find a bed-and-breakfast and spend Friday night and most of Saturday together. On Saturday evening Marc would go to the stag night, as arranged. He had to go because Nathalie would be at the wedding and the event would almost certainly be discussed. He would ‘lose’ the rest of the party as soon as they were drunk enough not to notice his absence and come back to me. We would have all Sunday to ourselves until the flight back in the evening. I would have to hang around the luggage carousel until Marc had left the arrivals gate in case anybody was waiting to meet him off the plane. After a reasonable amount of time had elapsed, I too would be free to leave and find my own way back to the flat. The fact that there would be nobody to meet me was almost enough to stop me going in the first place. The thought of coming out of the gate on my own, walking past the expectant faces of the people waiting for their loved ones, and then working out which was the appropriate bus to catch, felt as desirable as the prospect of driving the Clio at 80 mph into a solid brick wall. A car crash of loneliness was how I imagined it.
But then, I reasoned, a weekend with Marc would fill me up with enough positive emotion to make the ending irrelevant. Like the poem that says that death is the price we all have to pay for the privilege of being alive. So all week I looked forward to Friday, sometimes forgetting to lose myself in the professor’s terrible, spidery handwriting, sometimes even missing a footnote or an amendment.
On Thursday the professor, who was nowhere near as self-absorbed as his reputation would have you believe, asked me if anything was wrong.
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, nothing’s wrong.’
‘Only you seem a little out of sorts.’ He turned to smile at me over the top of his glasses.
‘It’s just, I’m just – I’m going away for the weekend.’
‘Is that a bad thing?’
‘No, no. Only I’m, I mean we’re going to Ireland and I don’t like flying.’
‘Oh,’ said the professor. ‘I see.’
Two minutes later I knocked one of the files of loose notes off my desk. The sheets of paper fluttered and slid over one another until they settled on the dusty carpet like flat, dead fish on the seabed.
‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Worse things happen at sea,’ said the professor.
I bent down and began to gather the paper together, tucking my hair behind my ears, conscious of the red rash of embarrassment that was creeping up my neck like a bloodstain.
‘I can’t believe I did that,’ I said.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘It’s just paper.’
‘But it’s all in a mess.’
‘There’s no harm done,’ said the professor, who was crouching down to help me. ‘They weren’t in any particular order. It doesn’t matter how we pick them up, they won’t be any more random than they were before.’
‘I’m not usually that clumsy,’ I said. ‘I must be more nervous than I thought.’
‘That often happens before one does something one isn’t sure about,’ he said.
I glanced at him. He wasn’t looking at me.
‘After Elaine, my wife … after she was gone, I used to worry about things that never worried me before,’ he said.
I hoped he wasn’t going to become emotional and tell me everything. I was curious about his missing wife, but in a detached way. I did not want to become the professor’s confidante.
Still he kept going.
‘It was completely unexpected, you know. She gave no indication that she was unhappy with me. I didn’t know, for some time, where she had gone. I didn’t know if she was alive or dead.’
‘How awful.’
‘I was so adrift. I wanted to drift away from everyone. But that was wrong. People need people, especially when their ties have been cut. It’s easy to feel that the pressure of their concern is unbearable when in fact it is the only thing holding you together.’
I nodded.
‘If you ever need anyone to talk to …’ he said.
‘Thanks, but I’m fine,’ I said.
The professor pushed his glasses back up his nose and there was an awkward silence.
Then he cleared his throat and passed me several pieces of paper, and our fingers touched. I didn’t mean to but I flinched. I pretended nothing had happened but sat back on my heels and turned my face away from him to gather the papers behind me.
The professor stood up and put his hands in his pockets, jingling his loose change.
‘Perhaps I’ll go and ask Jenny to put the kettle on,’ he said.
Oh God, I thought, I can’t go on like this.
It was all right though. He didn’t try to break through my defences again. By the time he returned with a lukewarm mug of tea for me that was so milky it was undrinkable, I had almost succeeded in losing myself in the life of Marian Rutherford, who on one sheet was a young woman exploring the town of Portiston and getting to know its inhabitants whose friendliness she found ‘intoxicating’ and on the next was in late middle age and working on her last book.
thirty-two
It didn’t take long for the story of my affair with the married Mr Parker to get round Portiston. It took a little longer for me to work out why conversations stopped when I walked into a shop and people suddenly became very interested in displays of envelopes or sink unblocker.
Mr Hensley told me, as we sat around the kitchen table eating our Sunday lunch in an atmosphere so strained and unhappy we could have been on Death Row, that prayers had been said for me at church. I was too humiliated to ask if I had been referred to by name. Even if the priest had been kind enough to spare me that particular punishment, everybody would have known whom he meant. Mum, who was building up to her own great confession, made it clear (although not in so many words) that she wished I’d never been born. My life was a straitjacket of shame and I could see no way out of it.
The Love of My Life Page 14
