The Ice Cream Girls

by Dorothy Koomson

  Think about it? I ask myself, as I allow him to slip the thick material around my shoulders and pick up my fancy bag. What the fuck does that mean? ‘If you don’t want to come back to my place then say so,’ I tell him as he holds open the door for me, nodding goodnight to the bar staff as we leave. ‘I’m not desperate or anything. I thought we were getting on well, I didn’t want the night to end. I’m not saying we have to do anything. We just—’

  He stops walking up towards Westfield Road, the road that leads back to Hove and Portslade, and faces me. His hands are buried deep in his pockets and he is staring at the pavement. ‘I’m trying to be a good guy here, Poppy,’ he says.

  ‘By making me feel small and unattractive?’ I reply. We are standing close to each other, so close any other couple would be kissing right now. I would be in his arms, his mouth would be on mine, the world would melt away and we’d be falling into each other, falling into the kiss, becoming one in the easiest, smallest of ways.

  ‘I don’t want to take advantage of you,’ he says. ‘You’re incredibly vulnerable at the moment and it wouldn’t be right of me to do anything, to make a move on you when you’re this . . . fragile.’

  Fragile? Fragile? ‘You just don’t fancy me, do ya?’ I ask him. ‘It’s the prison thing. You thought you could get over it, but you can’t and now you’re feeding me all this shit to try to hide it.’

  ‘It’s not the prison thing,’ he said. ‘Not in the way you think. I mean, yes, it’s not great to think you were in prison, but that’s not it. You’ve just come out into a whole new world: you need time to assimilate being out, not have someone try to get you into bed.’

  ‘Why haven’t you asked if I did it?’

  ‘What?’ he asks, cautiously.

  ‘We’ve spent all this time together in the last fortnight and you’ve never asked if I did it. Why not?’

  He raises his shoulders to his ears, blows air out of his mouth in exasperation and confusion but he doesn’t say anything.

  ‘Ask me.’

  ‘What?’ he asks, alarm on his face. He’s drawn back from me, afraid all of a sudden.

  ‘Ask me.’

  ‘Poppy—’

  ‘Ask me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ask me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ask me.’

  ‘No. I’m not going to do it.’

  ‘Why, because you’re scared of the answer?’

  ‘Because if I’d wanted to know the answer, I would have asked. I’m not going to ask because you tell me to.’

  ‘What are you doing with me?’ I ask. ‘Why are you bothering with me? Is it because I was infamous a few years ago? Because no matter what you think, I am not that girl. I am not an Ice Cream Girl. I never was, I never will be.’

  ‘I like you, Poppy. It’s that simple. I like you and I want to get to know you.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re being completely honest with me.’

  ‘It might seem old fashioned to you, but I like to wait, before all that. If I didn’t like you as much as I’m starting to I’d, well, you’d have come back to mine before now and I probably wouldn’t be seeing you as much. I just like to wait. Is that so crazy?’

  Is it? I don’t know. When I wanted to wait with Marcus, it became a big thing . . . It became an impossible thing. I do not know if men wait. I do not know what men do. To be honest, I don’t know what women do. I only know that this one is saying the things I wanted to hear twenty-odd years ago; he’s talking the words that I wanted to come out of Marcus’s mouth.

  I am starting to think that maybe he is my do-over, my chance to reset the clock and start again with a man. Maybe I can try to have a relationship again, this time without the ex-girlfriend who isn’t an ex, and the other stuff. Maybe Alain is my chance to get it right. I would love to get it right. Even if it’s with someone I have just met.

  ‘Do you want to come back to my house and just have a drink?’ I ask him. ‘It’ll be the first time I’ve slept alone in a place for more than twenty years. I’m a bit—’

  ‘Scared?’ he supplies.

  ‘Yeah, that. I’m a bit that.’

  ‘OK, no problem. I’ll even sleep on the sofa, if you want.’

  ‘You will?’

  ‘Yeah, course. That’s what mates do for each other, isn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Come on,’ he says with that trademark grin of his. He reaches out and circles me with his arm, pulls me closer.

  I snuggle into him as we start to walk back towards my parents’ place. ‘I didn’t think much of the second act denouement, did you?’ I say, affecting the posh accent I had to work hard to stamp out in prison.

  ‘No, I didn’t, so clichéd and obvious.’

  ‘I know, who on earth do they get to write these things?’

  poppy

  Dear Tina, (I write in my head)

  It’s not that I’ve forgotten about Serena, or that I don’t want to clear my name, it’s just that life has kind of got in the way.

  Mrs Raines, the woman I clean for three times a week, recommended me to some of her friends, and they all called Raymond and asked for me by name. He was actually nice to me when he called and asked what days I wanted to do. So now I work all day Monday and Wednesday, and until lunchtime on Friday. Which means I have money. Not stacks, but money. I have bought new clothes from the markets and from second-hand stores: I no longer look like a cross-dresser or someone stuck in a time-warp.

  And I have Alain. I have a boyfriend. Things have progressed between us to kissing and the occasional fumble, but nothing more. He still wants to wait and I adore that about him. I adore that he respects me and doesn’t want to rush things. I’m scared sometimes that I’ve fallen for him too quickly, that I don’t know him but I feel so close to him I hate to be away from him. And I get scared that this is all going to go horribly wrong and I’ll mess up at work and get sacked. But I’m trying to do what you taught me: focus on the now, focus on the things I can do and can change and do them well.

  How are you? I miss you. I can’t wait for you to come out and for us to get together. I’m putting money away in a ‘Tina fund’ so that I can come up to Yorkshire when you get out, and visit. I wish you’d let me visit you now, though. It won’t be weird for me going back into a prison, I promise it won’t.

  I have to go now, but take care of you.

  Love,

  Poppy xxxx

  part four

  poppy

  I’m assuming most couples shag when they’re alone together, that they cram their private hours with as much physical intimacy as is possible, leaving the soft moulds of another’s body on theirs. Alain and I usually lie on top of the covers, kissing and cuddling. More cuddling than anything else.

  Occasionally we go a bit further – ‘second base’ they call it in the American TV shows – where he slides his hand up my top and I have a fumble down below, but nothing more. He doesn’t seem so keen sometimes. Something stops him – he physically wants to, but he can’t seem to get over the hurdle of actually taking it further. It’s probably better this way, and when he’s ready – and if I’m ready at the same time – then we’ll go all the way. I sometimes think I’m ready, then a shudder of Marcus will run through my body – chilling and nauseating – and I’ll be grateful Alain was wise enough to make us wait.

  ‘I always thought you were pretty fabulous, actually,’ Alain says out of the blue.

  We have been laying side by side, our bodies barely touching, and staring at my bedroom ceiling, not speaking as we listen to classical music on the radio. My parents are out until late tonight, Mum told me in a note, so I had to find my own dinner.

  ‘Erm, what are we talking about? Have you had one of those conversations in your head that you’ve only let me in on at the end?’

  ‘Kind of. I was just thinking about the other week, in the pub, when you said you think your siblings listened to all the crap about you.’r />
  ‘Yeah, what of it?’

  ‘I listened to it, I had no choice because I didn’t know you personally, and I thought you were pretty fabulous.’

  ‘Fabulous? Me?’

  ‘Yeah, you. You . . . you as one of the, you know . . .’

  ‘One of The Ice Cream Girls?’ I say, filling in his blanks.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Fabulous?’

  ‘Yes, fabulous. What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Nothing, I suppose, it’s just very Sex and The City of you.’ I turn my head to him as he has done to me. ‘I’d expect a man like you to use words like “sexy” or “fit”, not “fabulous”. That’s something you’d hear someone say on Sex and The City.’

  That look reveals itself on his face. Tina told me about this look a while back. Since she’d been in prison the first time, when she was out, if she ever mentioned something that was of the moment, modern, people would look at her funny. Wondering how she knows something that they know, wondering just how easy she had life on the inside to be able to quote episodes of a TV show. Alain wears that look: a slight frown wants to break through his expression, a pursing of the lips as they twitch, wanting to ask me a million questions about how truly difficult my life inside must have been for me to know about Sex and The City.

  ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ I ask.

  ‘You know Sex and The City?’

  ‘What, someone like me isn’t meant to know about Sex and The City?’

  ‘No, it’s not that, it’s just . . .’

  ‘I was in prison, not on the moon. We do have this thing called “television”. I believe it was invented before I went away.’

  ‘No, it’s just . . .’

  ‘You’re not sure how you feel about me being able to do normal things like watch television? Well, let me assure you, television and reading were probably the only two “normal” things about my life. Everything else was . . . the hell people want it to be. Well, for me it was. Because for me, not having my freedom was punishment enough. Being banged up sometimes twenty hours a day with nothing to do but stare at the walls or read a book that I’ve read a hundred times was another layer of torture. The food, the noise, the hygiene, the not knowing who your friends are, the having to beg to see a doctor if you’re ill were another deep layer of torture. Having no visitors except the odd solicitor or my uni tutor until they cut funding so I had to give up my Open University course that they suggested I do – the final layer. Not being able to go to my gran’s funeral – the icing on the cake. So, you know, I reckon being able to watch television and even watch programmes that the rest of the free world watches and enjoy them is a small thing in prison. But then, I would say that, I was a prisoner. Maybe I’d feel differently if someone had hurt me or mine and they’d been put away. Maybe I’d advocate making conditions even worse.’ Maybe I’d want Serena to suffer more than I did because she’s had twenty years of freedom, and normal living. Maybe I’d want Serena to live through hell every second of every minute of every day.

  He licks those lips that were minutes ago twitching to ask me questions. He probably would have been more subtle, more delicate and discreet, would certainly never have said that upfront, but he’d have been trying to say that. I have no time for subtlety any more. Like so many different parts of my personality that were eroded over the time I was ‘away’, I cannot remember when I stopped being subtle, when I started to ask people outright what they meant, as well as stating what I saw and thought and felt. I cannot remember what I was like before, nor when the change happened. And I cannot remember if I prefer the new, less subtle me or the old one. It’s hard sometimes to think that I do not know who I was and that I may never remember. I have memories, but not experiences. That’s what ‘life’ means. That part of me has been removed. A life for a life. What, though, if you don’t deserve that punishment? What if you don’t deserve to have your life taken because you didn’t take the life you are being punished for?

  ‘I was actually going to ask why you thought my word was a “chick” word.’

  We both know that wasn’t what he was going to ask, but I decide not to call him on it. I don’t want to ruin this moment. They are so rare because Mum and Dad don’t go out at the same time very often, and I’ve never been to his place. I roll towards him, trying to get close to him, to make my body a part of his and his mine. That is the best part of cuddling, the lingering closeness you create. ‘I told you,’ I say to him, ‘I expect a bloke like you, one who says “chick” without a hint of irony, to say something like “sexy” or “shaggable” not “fabulous”.’

  ‘Sexy and shaggable or fit don’t really sum it up,’ he replies. ‘It was more than about looks. Me and my mates, we used to talk about it. That picture, it just said everything about you. You were sexy, yes, but there was this dangerous side to you both. The way you’re grinning at the camera, it’s like you’re both saying “Come hither . . . but you’re taking your balls in your hands if you do.” You were the ultimate poster girls. I had that picture up of you both in my room for ages. My mum hated it. She couldn’t beli . . .’ His voice fades away while a look of extreme discomfort descends upon his face, infecting his body. ‘She couldn’t believe her son had a picture of a couple of cold-blooded killers on his wall when there were so many other nice girls out there,’ I finish for him in my head.

  I used to get letters in prison that said virtually the same thing about that photo. I never knew how they found me, but I would get letters from ‘fans’ – a lot from haters, but far more from ‘fans’. Almost all of them male. Almost all of them asking me to send them something personal, something intimate, sometimes even worn underwear. Every one of those poison-pen letters went in the bin and over time their numbers dwindled to virtually nothing. This confession of his is surprising in lots of different ways. I did not think he was like that. And I did not think he had remembered me that clearly, but then he didn’t. Like everyone else, anything he felt – good, bad or disgusting – was about the girl in the picture, the smiling killer the papers wrote about. Not me. I am not her. I never was.

  ‘You want to hear something ironic?’ I say, just to shatter any illusions he might have. ‘We never got to eat those ice creams. We were branded these killer vixens because we allegedly did nothing but eat ice cream and look good and Marcus died, but we never got to eat those ice creams. Marcus wouldn’t let us.’

  ‘Wouldn’t let you?’ His voice is sceptical, wondering how anyone could stop a woman from eating ice cream.

  ‘It’s hard to explain if you weren’t there, but he wouldn’t let us do lots of things. He just had this way of making you decide not to do something he didn’t want you to do. Like the ice creams – he said we should both get one for the photo, he thought we’d look good in our swimsuits, all dolled up with an ice cream. After he took the photo, he said, in this really sweet voice, to think about the damage us eating the ice creams would do to his arteries.’

  ‘His arteries?’

  ‘Yes, his arteries. “It’ll break my heart, girls, if you both got too big to look pretty any more. Poppy, sweetheart, you’re on the edge, and Serena, my love, you know how you balloon at the drop of a hat.” That’s all he had to say to get the doubts going in our minds.’

  ‘I’m only saying it because you both mean so much to me. I wouldn’t bother, otherwise. And if I don’t say it, who else will? But, hey, don’t let me stop you. If you really want that ice cream you eat it, as long as you know what you’re doing as you eat it,’ Marcus adds in my head. He had that look in his eye, the one that told me I could eat it but I would pay for it. Not just with him not loving me any more, in other ways. In other, more painful ways.

  ‘What did you do?’ Alain asks.

  I used to love ice cream. When I was younger I used to sneak an extra one in – my own special ice cream – when I went down the road to buy them. I wanted that ice cream. I didn’t want to not eat it, but I didn’t want Marcus to st
op loving me or to be angry with me. Because that was what he was saying. If I ate the ice cream, I would get fat and he would stop loving me. As it was he was already thinking that I was on the cusp of losing what beauty he saw in me; this would push him the other way. Away. Out of love. I wouldn’t have been able to bear that. I know I loved him that intensely I was willing to share him and willing to put up with the other stuff. If I couldn’t bear to give him up to another woman, why on earth would I give him up to a load of lard on a biscuit?

  ‘I’d love to tell you that I argued, or even took a tiny defiant lick, but I just accepted he was right and binned it. I spent the whole afternoon thinking about the ice cream, disintegrating in that bin. Serena tried to disguise that she was doing what he wanted by pretending to trip and dropping her ice cream so she couldn’t eat it . . . So, do you still think I was fabulous? Or, as is much closer to the truth, a pathetic little schoolgirl?’

  ‘Fabulous. Always, always fabulous.’ He draws me closer and kisses my forehead. ‘Always fabulous.’

  I didn’t tell Alain what happened afterwards. That part of that day, the part I could talk about, was bad enough, but everything to do with Marcus had parts that I could not repeat, parts that had to stay hidden. And what happened at the end of the ice cream day was one of them.

  August, 1987

  When it was time to leave the beach, Marcus went to get the car while we got dressed. I waited until the last possible second, trying to soak up as much of the sun’s rays as I could – it didn’t seem to shine the same way in London, didn’t make me feel as relaxed and warm and content. Eventually I reached for my clothes, sitting in a neat, folded pile beside me on top of my bag. They had to be like that, everything had to be like that. Always. Neat, orderly, tidy. If anything was ever out of place . . . it wasn’t worth thinking about the consequences. It was easier, simpler if things were always neat and tidy.