by Neha Yazmin
No, she wouldn’t allow it.
It’s cheaper to study from home, she’d argued. Really, she just didn’t want me out of her sight.
“But you’re always fighting with me,” mum complained. “Why are you like this with me?”
“Why are you like this with me?” I asked in return. I suppose I sounded unreasonable to her.
“Oh, this is pointless!” She threw her hands in the air. “You say I’m always shouting at you, lecturing you, well I can’t get through to you any other way, can I?”
“Huh.” She didn’t get through to me with the shouting or lecturing.
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Her brown eyes narrowed. The same eyes I have. The brown hair colour I inherited from her too, but she’s been dying it blonde since before I was born. So it looks like… like her husband’s mane of golden hair.
“It means huh,” I told her in a smart-aleck voice. “It means you have no idea what’s going on in my head and you have no idea that you don’t get through to me on any level, in any way. And the shouting and lecturing, well, I just tune most of it out. Because it’s always the same thing.
“You’re trying to explain I have to grow up, but how can I, if you don’t let me? If you keep treating me like a child. How’ll I grow up and find my own path, when you’re always trying to control me?”
It all came out, everything I felt. Like it did every time we fought, but this time she seemed to be listening. She was quiet for a long moment anyway.
“I’m not trying to control you,” she said eventually. Her voice was shaky, her lips quivered.
“You are trying to control me,” I pressed while her guard was down. “You’re a control-freak and you want to turn me into one. You want to turn me into you.”
My mother’s eyes, wet and glistening with silent tears, looked up from her lap to my face instantly, as though I’d cussed her. I knew it the moment the words were out of my mouth that they’d hit a nerve and that I’d never said this before and why hadn’t I, because it was so true.
That’s it.
Why she was the way she was with me and not with Heather. Not yet, anyway.
Mum wanted to turn me into her.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” I said, jerking to my feet, furious. “That’s why you’re always in my face, my life. You say you want me to have the life you never got––thanks to getting pregnant with me and having to give up your hopes and dreams and marry and settle down. But what you really want is to live through me. Live vicariously.”
Every little thing she’d ever said to me, ever told me to do, or made me do, or wouldn’t let me do, every thing made sense in that moment.
“You’re wrong,” she argued, sniffling. I shook my head and she stood up, face red. “The last thing I want is for you to turn into me. And frankly, I don’t care if we become polar opposites, sometimes it feels like we are anyway, as long as you don’t make the same mistake––”
I know why she paused at that moment. Her brown eyes began to apologise before her vocal chords could find the words. My mind had already been thinking along those lines.
I just expected it to be me who made the accusation––accuse her of thinking I was a mistake.
I hadn’t anticipated a confession from her.
“Don’t worry, mum,” I reassured her sarcastically. “I’m not stupid enough to get pregnant by my best friend at 18. In fact, I don’t have a single male friend, thanks to you.”
She lectured and interfered most when it came to boys, so much so that it was easier to not make friends with guys and not accept dates just to get her off my back. And yeah, there wasn’t anyone that I really liked, but that’s not the point, and I wasn’t going to admit it to her either.
I remembered then that the main reason she was so opposed to the trip to London was her fear that I’d be seduced by some sleazy guy in a club. “I’m not desperate enough to fall for the first stranger that shows an interest in me either,” I snapped.
“I wasn’t desperate either,” she snapped back.
Then she paused.
And looked guilty.
I was a little confused. “Of course you weren’t desperate,” I said slowly. “You and… dad were a couple…”
They’d been friends and he’d been in love with her for ages. She eventually realised the feeling was mutual and then bang! They slept together. I was conceived. He offered to marry her and that was that.
“Yes, we were good friends,” she murmured, averting my gaze.
It got pretty messed up after that and suddenly she was confessing to not being in a relationship with anyone when I was conceived.
That I wasn’t a product of her and her husband Jake.
That it was someone else who’d fathered me.
“I’m not––he’s not––I’m not––he isn’t my––my real father?”
She was crying by then and just sniffled and shook her head.
I didn’t stutter when I said, “Tell me who is. Tell me everything about him.”
There wasn’t much to tell but I soaked up the information like a sponge.
“You’re not leaving home!” she screamed 20 minutes later in my bedroom as I stuffed as much clothes and belongings as I could in the largest of my rucksacks.
“I can’t stay in this house anymore,” I screamed back.
Not now that I knew I didn’t belong there.
Now that I knew why the man who I thought was my father had never really treated me like his eldest daughter.
“Come back,” called my mother from the doorstep.
Her husband had his arms around her, keeping her from running after me. I heard him say that she should let me calm down, stay with friends for a while, and that I’d come home when I was ready.
“Never,” I cried as I ran off into the night.
I’m never coming back.
CHAPTER 3: CHRISTIAN
Deep down, I was well aware mum would come looking for me the moment her husband let go of her, or when he fell asleep. My mum, be content with me staying over at a friend’s in the state I was in?
Hell would freeze over before she let that happen.
Unfortunately, she’d have her way too, because, apart from my friends, I didn’t have anywhere to go, and their parents were friends with mum and they’d all gang up on me and force me to come home.
Fleetingly, I wondered if that was why mummy dearest made such an effort to get to know my friends and their families. Had she foreseen this reaction of mine to the biggest revelation of my life?
Or was it because she just bloody loved to interfere?
And keep me on a tight leash.
Growing up, she’d always had her eyes on me. Watching my every move.
Shaking my head in annoyance, I strode forward, my heavy rucksack weighing me down.
I can’t believe it, I kept thinking as I walked in the obsolete light of the streetlights. It was May and though it was past 9pm, the sky was a beautiful jade, luminous and almost artificial-looking. I’d always loved walking outside at night, especially summer nights, maybe because I rarely got a chance to do it.
Mum never let me go out after 6.
Nowadays, with my improved eyesight, I can see all the colours of the night. Tones that the trees and grass and buildings bathe in after sunset are so rich and alluring. Deep. Like seeing it all from behind blue-tinted glasses. It looks so different and new. Unfamiliar.
How could this be? My whole life was a lie. I was a lie. A mistake, not just for two people––the two people who bred me; one who ran from me, the other that got lumbered with me––but also for the man who took on the responsibility of marrying my mother, looking after her illegitimate child. Giving me his name.
No wonder the guy didn’t love me, and stopped pretending to shortly after his own daughter was born. Did he still love my mother? Does she actually love him at all? Do they resent each other?
Resent me for ruining their lives?
At least they got to ruin mine in return!
Just as I made it to the corner of Lucy’s street, her house at the very end of a long line of terraced houses, I heard someone say, “Enjoying your walk, Ellie?”
I came to a stop immediately. My heart jumped into my throat and my stomach seemed to melt. I think I even stopped breathing for a few seconds.
He was right next to me, as though we’d been walking together all along. “Haha,” he said, amused by my shock.
“How d-do you do that?” I stuttered.
He always did that. Appeared out of nowhere and acted like he’d been part of the scene from the beginning. Completely oblivious as to how weird it is to the rest of us.
Having already asked this question on the previous occasion we’d met––which was the second occasion we actually met––I guessed he’d respond with the same words.
And he did. “Do what, Elisia?” I don’t know why he used my full name rather than the shortened version I’m generally known by.
“Oh, I’m not in the mood for this.”
“Not in the mood for what?” he asked smoothly, smiling.
I shook my head. Tried not to look at him as I started walking again.
He was very good-looking. Tall and slim, strong and firm-looking. His sleek black hair was short and had a few spikes pointing in random directions, making his light skin even chalkier.
His eyes were a strange dark purple.
When I first saw him, I remember thinking he must be at least 23 or 24, just because he seemed so much cooler and smarter and more mature than the boys from my classes.
But he said he was 20.
“So why’re you hanging outside a sixth form?” I’d asked him that first day, about a week ago. “Shouldn’t you be chasing Uni girls?”
“Do you think I’m chasing you?” he asked charmingly, raising one eyebrow.
He’d just joined me and a group of my friends as we were saying goodbye outside the college gates. Apparently, he was hoping to see Selma from my English class.
But he kept talking to me, even after I told him she wasn’t around. Lucky thing, she’d won this amazing scholarship to America and had flown to the States last week to check out her future residences. She’d be back in time for the exams though.
He seemed disappointed for not being able to catch up with her, but a little pleased about something else. I didn’t understand that part.
Anyway, the others started their own conversations and the two of us got left alone. I asked if he was wearing purple-coloured contacts over his eyes and he said yes.
“No,” I’d said shyly that day, “I don’t think you’re chasing me.”
“What if I was to chase you?” he asked curiously. “Would you run or let me catch you?”
This was flirting and I knew I shouldn’t flirt back.
I didn’t know how to flirt, anyway.
“I have to go home,” I said and made a run for it. I didn’t know if I would’ve flirted with him if I knew how. I didn’t know if I fancied him. Yes, I thought he was attractive, but did I like him? I didn’t know.
I still don’t know.
A few days later, there he was again, just making himself at home amongst my group of girlfriends during our lunch break. It was one of those days when we had a free period before the lunch hour so we took our time with our food in a nearby coffee shop.
The mysterious stranger was suddenly sitting at the empty table next to ours, acting like he was the extended part of our lunch crew.
When Carrie, my closest friend, got up to go to the toilet, he took her seat opposite me and we started chatting again.
Before I knew it, my friends had sort of left us alone, and it was just me and him.
“So you didn’t tell me the other day, Ellie,” he said, leaning closer over the table. “If I chased you, what would you do?”
“I’d run,” I said immediately. I’d prepared my answer.
Was I so confident we’d meet again, or that he’d remember and ask about the chasing thing? When had I become so presumptuous about me and boys?
“I don’t think you could outrun me,” he told me.
I don’t doubt that for a second.
Back then though, I thought he was being presumptuous, arrogant. But instead of saying something witty and clever to show him up, I just got up saying, “I’ve lost my appetite,” and walked out of the café.
And I was running from him again on our third encounter. Well, I was running towards Lucy’s. Hopefully, mum would’ve already called all my close friends and given them the low-down, and as annoying as it would be to have them all know my business, it was better than me talking about it.
I wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.
“Slumber party, Elle?” the charming stranger enquired beside me. This time he was calling me Elle, something my friends called me only sporadically, just to mix it up. “Am I invited?”
I didn’t respond. I did slow my walk though. Why? To prolong my time with him? “You most certainly are not invited!” I told him sternly.
He chuckled. “Worth a try.” He shrugged. I frowned. “Dear, dear Elisia,” he said indulgently. “How obvious must I be to make you see how much I crave your company? Do you honestly not like me, even a little bit?”
I’d slowed down a lot by the time he finished speaking, to the point of actually not walking anymore.
“I don’t know,” I answered very truthfully. “I think I could like you.”
I wish I’d stopped with the honesty before I said that and did my usual running thing.
“But I’m not ready for… for anything. My life’s pretty messed up right now.”
“I clean up as well as, and as fast as, I run,” he teased. “Maybe a night out with me is exactly what you need right now.”
Yeah right. Out drinking and clubbing and hanging out with a total stranger––whose name, by the way, I still didn’t know because I hadn’t asked and he hadn’t said––was the last thing I needed.
Mum would go berserk for a start.
Then I realised that’s exactly what I wanted. Make her go absolutely, stark-raving mental.
She’d just turned my whole life inside out and upside down, this is the least she deserves. One night of me doing the one thing she didn’t want me to do, was going to be payback. For all the lies and truths. The interference. The control-freak-ness. The always-being-in-my-business-ness.
For everything going on in my crazy head that night.
Everything that made me say, “I don’t want a night out with you.”
“How about a night in, then?” he said half-joking, half-expecting me to turn and start running, really, literally, running.
Well, it didn’t look like he expected me to say, “I thought you’d never ask.”
He smiled in triumph and it was very beautiful. For a split second, I thought I saw his eyes change colour, felt a cool, cool breeze brush past my face. It must’ve been the reflection of some car’s headlights, I reasoned.
His eyes couldn’t have looked deep scarlet for the tiniest moment and then purple again.
Shaking away the thought, I started walking again, this time in the opposite direction, following him.
He said his flat was in the other side of town. I didn’t bother asking what he was doing all the way over here––and that his motorbike was parked a few minutes away.
He claimed the bike wasn’t as fast as him. I don’t doubt that for a second, but while we made our way to said transportation, I thought he was just being his charmingly smug self.
Before I sat down on the seat behind him, my heart thumping nervously and excitedly at the thought of being on a bike for the first time in my 17 years, I realised what I was about to do.
I was about to go to this stranger’s flat, and I hadn’t asked his name yet.
“Don’t call me anything other than Ellie,” I told him.
“Okay,” he chuckled. “I shall only call you Ellie for the rest of you
r life.”
There was a promise in his tone. Strange, I’d thought.
“And what shall I call you?” I asked.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
“Well?” I demanded.
“Call me by my name,” he said, pulling me onto his lap. He adjusted my legs so I was facing him. I should’ve been sitting like that, only behind him and facing the opposite direction.
He revved the engine.
“I can’t sit like this,” I complained. It was no use, we were already speeding off.
It was fun, exhilarating and scary at the same time. I hugged myself to him. Somehow, no one seemed to notice us. Were we moving that fast?
Or was there just something about the two of us together that made people look the other way?
After a few minutes, I was enjoying myself.
Then I remembered. “Call me by my name,” I repeated what he’d said earlier. “I would, if you told me.”
Then he told me his name.
Christian.
CHAPTER 4: AT LEAST I DIDN’T DIE A VIRGIN
Christian’s flat was the basement of a converted terraced house on a quiet street. It seemed deserted. The night had deepened by the time we arrived, so I didn’t really see much of the nearby houses, their lights off.
How late was it? Was everyone asleep? The first prick of uneasiness trickled down my spine at the unusually silent, eerie street.
Then we entered his home and I was suddenly comfortable. He was 20, so he must be in his second year of Uni, renting this small flat by himself. People didn’t typically stay on in the University halls of residence after the first year.
From his manners and mannerisms, his clothes and accessories, I’d already guessed at wealthy roots, but his home was confirmation.
Being a studio apartment, it was one rectangular open-plan room comprising bedroom, lounge and kitchen, with the bathroom/toilet sectioned off at one end.
Small though it was, the flat was furnished to look like it was taken out of a magazine. White walls, light wood floors, stainless-steel fittings in the kitchen. Classy. I loved it.
