The Good Girl

by Fiona Neill

  Ailsa remained in her office for an hour after the staff meeting so that teachers could speak privately to her about anything that was bothering them. She checked her messages and saw one from Romy asking when she was coming home. Ailsa texted back to say it depended on how many teachers came to her with problems and how big the problems were. The unknown unknowns, Romy texted back, deliberately mimicking her. Precisely, Ailsa texted back, adding a smiley emoticon. She looked out of her window and saw two teachers waiting outside. The first was the head of Drama, who wanted to see whether Ailsa could secure a proper theatre in Norwich to perform the end-of-year play. It took Lucy Drummond at least twenty minutes to explain her idea.

  ‘Brilliant idea,’ Ailsa responded within seconds. She suggested a couple of companies in the city who might agree to sponsor programmes.

  The second teacher, who marked books as he waited, was Matt Harvey. He came into the room holding out his hand ready for Ailsa to shake and at the last minute opted for a less formal wave, which left Ailsa’s arm floundering in mid-air.

  ‘How’s everything going?’ Ailsa asked, trying to be as informal as possible while retaining professional distance. She could remember her first year as a teacher and knew how important it was that younger members of staff felt they could express their worries. She wanted to tell him how impressed she was, with not just his qualities as a teacher, but the way he ran Year 12. He was seen as someone approachable and fair without being a walkover. She had almost stopped being annoyed with him over Rachel, even suggesting to her sister that he should come over the next time she was in Norfolk.

  ‘I’ve been doing a very interesting project with my Biology A-level students,’ he said, pulling his chair towards her before she had even asked him to sit down. He cracked the knuckles on his left hand one by one. Ailsa winced. ‘Sorry,’ he said. Moments later the bone-crunching started up again.

  She distracted herself from the noise by glancing at the final floor plan for the first ever careers fair to be held at the school in the last week of term. It was meant to be choreographed so that the twenty-six companies which Ailsa had personally persuaded to participate sat alphabetically in the assembly hall.

  She suddenly noticed that Brewin Dolphin had been located after Goldfinch Chambers and while no one else might notice this mistake it would bother her.

  ‘It’s an impressive achievement,’ Matt said, ‘getting all these companies to agree to come. You must be very persuasive.’ He was tilting his chair like Luke at the breakfast table, and she had to quell the urge to shove the legs back to the ground.

  ‘Thanks. It’s about creating aspirations,’ she said. ‘And forging links with local employers. I’m hoping that some might agree to provide work experience and a few might even end up sponsoring students through university.’

  He crunched the last knuckle on his right hand and Ailsa knew from previous experience in meetings that he would now stop.

  ‘It’s amazing how much you get done when you have three children and all the complications of family life to sort out.’

  Ailsa frowned, wondering whether Rachel had said something to him. Honesty ranked higher than loyalty for her sister.

  ‘They say that if you want something done you should give it to a busy person,’ she said breezily. He was being kind but she wanted him to get to the point. ‘I’m impressed with the dynamism that you’ve introduced into the Biology Department. Your reputation must have spread because we’ve got more students than ever before signing up for your A-level course. Romy speaks very highly of you. She’s really taking her research project seriously.’

  ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,’ he said, sounding relieved that Ailsa had provided a conversational opening.

  ‘Harry has given her some help. He pulled out a few papers for her on adolescence and addiction; I hope they’re not distracting too much from her coursework.’

  Matt looked puzzled and his chair finally came to a halt.

  ‘Our project is related to the genetics component of the coursework. I’ve been doing some extension work on blood groups with students in the top set. It’s got nothing to do with teenagers and addiction.’

  ‘So why is Romy doing this project?’ asked Ailsa.

  ‘I’ve really got no idea. It’s not work that I’ve set. Maybe she has a personal interest in the subject? I chose blood groups because they’re a brilliant example of discontinuous variation, which is one of the topics on the A-level Biology syllabus. It’s part of the genetics component. One of the companies coming to the career fair specializes in that area, and I thought they’d be impressed if the kids had some off-curriculum knowledge. Did Romy do the pinprick test on your finger?’

  He picked up a pen from her desk and started twiddling it between his thumb and index finger so that it rotated like the arms of a windmill. Ailsa leaned over to remove it from his hand.

  ‘I’d forgotten about it,’ said Ailsa apologetically. ‘It was a while ago.’

  ‘Well, it takes a while to get the results back,’ he said. ‘And some of them took a while to get it all done. Sorry.’

  ‘I wasn’t questioning your efficiency,’ said Ailsa. She put down the pen and he immediately picked it up again and began drawing a Venn diagram.

  He outlined the three main blood groups, A, B and O. Blood types are inherited, he explained. A and B are dominant and O is recessive. Ailsa began to drift off as he muttered about genotypes and phenotypes, although she enjoyed the sound of all the unfamiliar words and his enthusiasm for the subject.

  She knew from managerial courses that she had attended that it was important to hear people out. Listening was hugely undervalued in a culture where it was all about who shouted loudest. She wondered whether there was a part of the brain responsible for narcissism and whether social media encouraged it. She would ask Harry. She nodded as Matt explained how all the children had been given pinprick kits to take home so that they could test different members of their family. These were sent off and the results had just come back. She was getting used to the way that he liked to paint the background of an issue, like a miniaturist. His tone, however, struck her as odd because it was somewhere between defensive and apologetic.

  ‘So if the parents belong to blood groups A and AB it is impossible for their children to be O,’ he said finally. ‘I’ve checked and double-checked.’

  ‘So how is this relevant?’ asked Ailsa, wondering if she had missed something. ‘I’m not sure that I completely understand your dilemma. Remember I’m not a scientist.’

  ‘I have a family where the blood types don’t add up.’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t understand.’

  ‘The mother is AB, the father is A but one of the children is O.’

  ‘So what does this mean?’

  ‘The child’s blood group should be A, B or AB. It’s impossible for it to be O.’

  ‘I’m not sure where this is going,’ said Ailsa.

  ‘There’s a paternity issue.’ He paused again. ‘I now realize this was a pretty stupid idea. I was just trying to encourage the kids to see how scientific theory can be applied to everyday life. At least half the class have step-siblings or half-brothers and -sisters and a couple are adopted so the results have been fascinating in highlighting the whole issue of genetic inheritance. But I hadn’t really thought through the consequences of the results. I want to make sure that I don’t create a problem for anyone. Perhaps this is something that is already known to the family concerned.’

  Ailsa stared at the pen revolving between his fingers. This was one of the things she liked about being a head teacher. The range of problems. The ability to make a difference in delicate situations. No two days were ever the same.

  ‘There’s a statistic of course,’ he continued. ‘Around 4 per cent of children are brought up by a father who is genetically unrelated to them. But there’s biological truth and there’s emotional truth, isn’t there? Your father is the person who brings you up.’ />
  In the seconds before she understood why he was telling her this Ailsa thought about everything she had to do. Put up a blind in Romy’s room, buy cat food, make a list of the furniture her father could take to the sheltered accommodation in Cromer if he agreed to stay, book Luke’s driving test.

  ‘So who is the child?’ Ailsa asked, because the conversation needed to be continued and Matt was clearly at a loss for words. But of course she knew already.

  ‘Luke,’ he said. ‘But if Luke is O, one of his parents has to be O too. And since it’s not you or Harry it would have to be another man. There could be a mistake. His blood sample could have been muddled up with someone else’s …’ He drifted off.

  Ailsa sat completely still. Too many emotions were betrayed through gestures.

  ‘You’re right, there must be a mistake,’ said Ailsa.

  ‘I’ll mark Luke down as AB, shall I?’ he asked, nodding furiously, relieved that the problem had been resolved so swiftly.

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Ailsa, her voice taut. She wasn’t good at accepting kindness. ‘And if you could keep this to yourself I would obviously be very grateful. My sister doesn’t need to know.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ he said, getting up. ‘Absolutely.’

  12

  Things I have never done to impress a boy. Lesbian-kissed a girl. Sent a naked selfie. Worn a push-up bra. For the record, I have also never got so drunk that I was sick, or taken a legal high – or an illegal one for that matter. I say this because there has been a lot of speculation about my character, mostly by people who have never met me. I wasn’t trying to reinvent myself. Nor was I an unhappy, insecure attention-seeker. I didn’t see myself as a skank or a slut, although it seems a lot of other people do. I understand that people want to find reasons for what happened because they don’t want to think it could happen to their own child. I get that. It’s human nature.

  ‘I’m so relieved Marnie’s so sensible and talks to me about everything,’ her mother told Mum a couple of months after the scandal, when she finally decided I wasn’t a corrupting influence and allowed Marnie to come to my house again. ‘Without communication there is nothing.’ Sometimes Marnie’s mum reminded me of Aunt Rachel. She said exactly what was on her mind at all times. Emotional honesty was her religion. But no one dared say what they really thought to her. Marnie rolled her eyes apologetically.

  Afterwards I told Mum that Marnie most definitely hadn’t told her mum that a) she had taken the morning-after pill after sleeping with Stuart Tovey, b) that he had dumped her when she thought she was pregnant, and c) she had given him a blow job to persuade him to go out with her again.

  I read my therapist’s notes. She left them on the desk when she went to close a blind and I took issue with the fact that I was ‘a female victim of the ever-pervasive male porn industry that permeates contemporary culture’, because if I was a victim then so was Jay. My real mistake was to believe in the possibility of change, which makes me nothing more reckless than an optimist. And optimism isn’t a gender issue, it’s a brain issue. Marnie and Becca agreed with me that the only issue open to gender analysis was perhaps the more female desire to save someone.

  I’m not saying it wasn’t a total mistake. A big error of judgement. A catastrophic series of events that will, as so many people said to me, probably hang over me like a dark cloud for the rest of my life (there were a lot of clichés flung around). But it was done with love and in good faith. And it was my idea. That was one of the things that everyone found hardest to accept. Especially Mum.

  Anyway, a few days after I discovered the phone in Dad’s office, I distracted myself by poring over the pages on addiction that he had photocopied from textbooks and a research paper that he had dug out, ‘Is there a common molecular pathway for addiction?’ Unfortunately I didn’t get to the end of this one so I didn’t read the paragraph about how moderation is impossible for addicts and their only hope of recovery is total abstinence.

  One afternoon not long after school had started, when Mum was still at work, I sat with Dad at the kitchen table and he asked me to run through any questions that I had for him. He was anxious to help and patient with my queries. I don’t know if this was because he had found the mutilated SIM card in his briefcase and was trying to forge some kind of messed-up alliance with me so that I wouldn’t say anything to Mum. Or if it reminded him of the good old days when we used to play Operation together.

  It gave me the opportunity to observe without him feeling my scrutiny. I stared into his dark eyes and decided they weren’t the windows of the soul because his were empty. I considered how his eyes were also my eyes and whether this meant that I had no soul either.

  I thought about asking him how he could have betrayed Mum like that. But instead I heard myself ask whether all addictions are the same. He started explaining how addiction studies show reduced cellular activity in the orbitofrontal cortex, a brain area responsible for judgement and control. He got very excited about research into cocaine addiction and overeating that showed the volume of that part of the brain actually shrank.

  ‘Addiction causes anatomical changes to the brain. It hijacks the normal pleasure reward pathways by blunting the brain’s response to dopamine.’

  I wondered if he had applied this theory to himself. There were thousands of text messages on that phone.

  ‘Do you think it’s possible for someone to become addicted to watching Internet porn?’ I asked. To his credit, he didn’t look startled by the question.

  ‘Actually the American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has just added hypersexual disorder to its list, and that includes compulsive pornography use. But it will be addictive for some but not everyone. You have to take into account environmental stressors, personality, age of onset, genetic inheritance. If it blunts the response to normal sexual stimuli and affects someone’s normal hierarchy of sexual needs then it’s a problem and will affect pair bonding.’ He had gone into lecture mode.

  He started explaining how all addicts compulsively seek out their addiction despite the negative consequences, so they need higher and higher levels of stimulation to feel satisfied. ‘If they can’t consummate the addictive act, they suffer from withdrawal.’

  He talked about the recent discovery of a protein over-expressed in the brain of all addicts from compulsive eaters to alcoholics, druggies and long-distance runners. And how teenage addicts produce higher quantities of it and this is what makes adolescents more vulnerable to addictions. ‘Delta FosB, Romy. Doesn’t it sound like a character from Dr Who?’ He was so excited. He was never happier than when talking about his work. And I admit I longed for that time just three days earlier when I was just as happy discussing it with him.

  More than anything, I wondered how it was possible to live alongside someone like Dad for so many years without ever really knowing him. I wondered whether he had been so immersed in researching adolescence that he had regressed and become a teenager again. Like that Benjamin Button film, where the Brad Pitt character gets younger and younger instead of older. I was still shocked by the language Dad had used in his texts to the woman. It sounds incredible but I had never heard him really swear. He recently took away Luke’s mobile phone for a week when Mr Harvey overheard him call someone a wanker. His hypocrisy about everything disgusted me. When he touched me on the arm to check I was still listening, I shrank back. He looked hurt but didn’t say anything.

  ‘This will all really help with your application to medical school.’ He smiled. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. It wasn’t original but there was conviction in my feelings. ‘They love it when you can show off a personal interest in something esoteric.’ Then I hated him even more for not noticing there was anything wrong with me.

  ‘I’ve decided not to apply. Didn’t Mum tell you?’ I responded, knowing that this was the most hurtful thing I could say to him. The most hurtful thing I could do to him occurred to me later. I watched his face and took pleasure in
the way it crumpled.

  ‘Why? You seemed so certain. You’ve worked so hard to get this far.’

  ‘Change of heart.’ I shrugged.

  ‘So what are you going to do instead?’ His tone was almost pleading. He bowed his head and took a deep breath. I could see his bald patch, and what he’d done seemed even more pathetic.

  ‘Take a year out. Go travelling. Maybe move to Ibiza with Jay for a while so I can work things out.’ For a science student I was proving surprisingly imaginative.

  ‘So things are serious between you two, are they?’ he asked without losing his cool.

  ‘Very. He’s great. A good person.’

  ‘What does he want to do with his life? Because I don’t sense much drive there. I know we live in the age of gender equality but you don’t want to end up carrying the weight of someone else’s inadequacy. It never works.’

  ‘He’s really good at music,’ I said defensively. ‘And he’s a really good person. He’d never do anything to hurt another human being. Especially someone he loves. He’s honest and trustworthy. There’s a lot to be said for that.’

  ‘Another thing I should tell you about adolescent boys, Romy: they think about sex ninety times a day and almost every time it’s with a different woman. They are literally drowning in testosterone.’

  I almost laughed. At the peak of Jay’s porn affliction, as I preferred to call it, he estimated that he had seen more than 500 vaginas before he even got out of bed in the morning. Because the browsing part of the endeavour took longer and longer as he tried to find something new. Dad knew nothing. He was nothing.

  ‘Romy, I understand you don’t want to take advice from me, but one thing I’ve learned is that if the wind is blowing in your direction you should always take advantage. It’s very competitive to get into medical school and they’re looking for 100 per cent commitment.’

  ‘And mine is running at about 60 per cent,’ I told him.