The Good Girl

by Fiona Neill

  When she proposed to Rachel earlier in the week that Matt should join them for a drink the evening before their father began his week-long trial at Prince’s Court, Ailsa wasn’t acting entirely altruistically. It was a judgement call. Meeting Matt would take Adam’s mind off the real reason for the get-together. The presence of an outsider would make them all behave better. And there would be enough people that any residual awkwardness between Ailsa and Matt over his relationship with her sister would be tempered.

  The theory had been good. But this was before Matt had lobbed his hand grenade with his bloody blood group project. So Ailsa was glad Loveday and Wolf were coming to dilute the evening further. There were never any awkward silences when they were around and they owed them from New Year. Harry was mildly surprised by this softening of Ailsa’s line on their next-door neighbours and promised to make quesadillas that they could all snack on around the coffee table in the sitting room. It would be more relaxed than sitting at the dinner table. Making food had become Harry’s way of proving his loyalty to Ailsa. She offered to grate cheese. It was a subliminal acknowledgement of her guilt, she decided.

  Loveday hadn’t disappointed. Almost before she had sat down between Rachel and Matt on the sofa, she had launched into a diatribe about how many of the world’s current ills could be explained by the uncoupling of male and female sexual energy. There was a fundamental imbalance that could explain anything from the culture of gang rape in India to the decapitation of Western hostages by ISIL.

  ‘So what you’re saying is that if these men had a way of expressing their yang energy through intercourse, this wouldn’t happen?’ Harry incredulously asked her from the armchair opposite. He was always blown away by Loveday’s lack of empirical evidence and the way she totally rejected his. Her belief in instinct and self-expression was absolute. But he had stopped jumping out of his chair to adjust the lighting in the room every five minutes, which was good because Ailsa couldn’t cope with anyone else’s jangly nerves.

  ‘Won’t be much chance to rebalance my chakras in Prince’s Court,’ Adam observed. He didn’t want anyone to forget the real reason for the get-together. He made a weak joke about the assisted bathing facility and how he didn’t know the rules of bingo.

  ‘Maybe you can teach everyone how to play poker,’ Rachel suggested, putting her arm around him. ‘Always good to bring something to the party other than a bottle of red wine.’ There was no trace of recrimination in her tone.

  Rachel sparkled. The changes to her script had gone down well. An idea she had generated about a zombie version of Northanger Abbey had created a buzz. She was creating a niche for herself. Less niche and more coffin, Adam had joked. Everyone laughed longer and harder than the joke deserved.

  ‘That’s vampires, Grandpa,’ Romy giggled before going back upstairs to finish her project. Romy had been appalled that her Biology teacher was coming to her house and had announced in advance that they couldn’t really expect her to participate in any meaningful way.

  Wolf and Loveday outlined the preparations for Marley’s eighteenth-birthday party. There would be vegetarian curry, the trees would be alive with thousands of tiny lights, and Loveday would devise a unique cocktail to mark the occasion. They would be there the entire evening, Loveday reassured Ailsa several times in a way that made Ailsa feel as though she was being judged for being neurotic. Except then Loveday added reproachfully, ‘I’m not such an irresponsible parent.’

  When Matt had arrived, an hour ago, Ailsa had searched for his gaze across the room, exchanged a quick polite smile and, as soon as she had got over that hurdle, looked quickly away. Half a glass of wine later Ailsa glanced over at him again. He hadn’t spoken much and looked stiff and uncomfortable in the suit he wore for parent evenings at school. Ailsa felt a stab of pity. It wasn’t his fault that he had become embroiled in her mess.

  She noticed he was examining the wedding photograph sitting on the chest of drawers beside the sofa and wished she had moved it. It had been taken just as Harry and Ailsa left the church at Salthouse, when the tension of the service had been replaced by euphoria that they were actually married. They looked like teenagers, thought Ailsa. She checked Matt again and realized that he was probably doing the calculations and wondering if Ailsa married Harry because she discovered she was pregnant.

  Luke came in and accepted Harry’s offer of a beer. Wolf asked how Luke’s driving lessons were going, and Luke said Harry had combined them with a thorough survey of local pubs. Matt stood up abruptly and shook Luke’s hand and muttered something about driving lessons being a good father–son bonding exercise. Mercifully Ben followed close behind. He threw his arms around Rachel and told her about his bad luck with the film of the sweat lodge.

  ‘It has to be a place which brings people together rather than pushing them apart,’ Wolf told him. ‘I’m sure the person who objected to it will find it in her heart to reconsider when she realizes its power to transform lives.’

  It was a pointed comment, but Ailsa’s attention was consumed by Ben, who was handing over a small sports bag to his grandfather.

  ‘What’s this?’ Adam asked, pulling him onto his knee.

  ‘It’s a survival kit for you in your shelter,’ Ben explained. He opened the case and lined up the contents on the table. There was a box of matches, a water bottle from the cowboy and Indian kit and a list of phone numbers in code, in case Adam needed help. Ben pulled out his treasured Swiss army knife from his pocket and with a very serious expression handed it over to his grandfather. ‘In case you need to find your way home alone. It’s even got a toothpick.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Ben,’ said Adam, his bottom lip trembling.

  ‘I’ll come and visit every weekend,’ Ben promised.

  ‘I’m six miles up the road,’ Adam reassured him. ‘Less, as the crow flies.’

  ‘Why is it a crow?’ asked Ben. ‘Why not a pigeon? Do crows have a better sense of direction than other birds?’

  ‘In the States we say “as the wolf runs”,’ said Wolf. This distracted Ben. Ailsa was grateful.

  Her anxiety about Matt’s discovery had displaced her feelings about taking her father to his new flat in Cromer the following day, but now these emotions spewed to the surface unchecked. Conversation continued around her. Ailsa tried to focus. Rachel said something about their father starting a new phase of his life as if he was Ben starting secondary school. Harry had a discussion with himself about how new experiences released dopamine in the brain and told his father-in-law that he might have a whole new lease of life. Ailsa, however, was blindsided by the conviction that this was another ending. Not a beginning.

  She swallowed over and over again, and when she couldn’t get hold of herself retreated into the kitchen and leaned against the cool wall beside the cooker, where no one could see her. The good thing about large groups of people was that it was easier to hide in the shadows for a while. She noticed the floor beneath her feet was slippery with olive oil, grabbed some kitchen roll and kneeled down to wipe it up. She imagined Matt in the room next door surreptitiously glancing from Harry to Luke, looking for their similarities or more likely spotting their differences. He would be wondering how Harry could not have questioned Luke’s paternity when he looked so unlike every other member of the family. ‘Like father, like son,’ he might say in a well-meaning attempt to reinforce the bond between them. Ailsa had done a bit of that herself over the years.

  This made Ailsa feel terrible. She and Harry had wreaked horrible destruction on their relationship. But the cruellest cut was other people knowing you had been betrayed when you didn’t. Matt would treat Luke differently from her other children, more favourably perhaps, because he felt sorry for him. Or perhaps more cautiously. His attitude to Harry would be more restrained, in case he let something slip. Her thoughts ricocheted from Matt back to her father and then back to Matt like a game of pinball in her head. She was aware that someone was in the room beside her and knew even befo
re she looked up that it would be him.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Matt asked. ‘I just thought … There’s a lot going on …’ His voice trailed off. He stepped towards her and dropped down on his haunches until he was at her level. They were now invisible to the people on the sofas. Ailsa applied meticulous attention to the oil.

  ‘Stop, Ailsa,’ Matt said quietly. ‘Please.’ Her wiping became less vigorous. She noticed a small hole at the end of his trainers and then the pointy shape of his knee through his threadbare suit trousers.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said finally. He stretched out his arm and covered her clenched fist with his hand until finally she dropped the ball of kitchen roll. But instead of releasing her hand his fingers slid between hers. He searched for her gaze and found it. Look away, she told herself.

  ‘I didn’t mean for this to happen,’ said Matt eventually.

  14

  A few words about Wolf and Loveday. The standout characteristics at least, because you could write a whole book about them: they considered seven to be a magical number because the menstrual cycle occurs in four units of seven, as does the orbit of the moon around the earth. They sprinkled salt across their doorway to absorb negativity. They didn’t really believe in sit-down toilets and worried about obstructed colons more than exam results. They even had a special machine in their bathroom imported from California for colonic irrigation.

  Oh, and they lived by their conviction that men should ejaculate no more than twice a month to prevent chronic fatigue. Jay told me this was the best example of irony that he had ever come across. I tried to laugh with him but couldn’t. Dad called them an anachronism. I wasn’t sure what he meant but he said it fondly. Mum said they were kooky. Her tone was more disapproving.

  I think in part she was envious because every Friday Wolf came home very publicly with a present for Loveday. Sometimes it was a bunch of flowers that he had picked from a hedgerow. Once it was an old Afghan coat that he had found in a second-hand shop in Norwich. In December he arrived with a pot of translucent shells that he had picked up on the beach.

  I thought of Dad’s kindness to Mum over the past year and wondered whether Wolf was atoning too and whether all marriages were a series of atonements.

  What I do know was that they professed to believe in personal freedom, trust and the essential goodness of humankind. Qualities which meant Marley’s eighteenth-birthday party quickly became the hottest ticket in Luckmore. There would be no bouncers on the door frisking for alcohol, parents turning off the electricity when the music got too loud or rooms declared off limits.

  The morning of the party I went to a hairdresser in Norwich with Marnie and Becca. I showed the stylist a picture of Jennifer Lawrence’s pixie cut and came out one hour later feeling cold rather than cool. I hadn’t realized how vulnerable the back of your neck could be. It didn’t help that Marnie and Becca gave me sideways looks all the way back to the bus stop. ‘So Audrey Hepburn,’ Marnie kept repeating. We took a selfie and posted it on Instagram.

  Ben cried when I got home because I didn’t look like me any more. Luke glanced up from his phone for a nanosecond and said he’d already seen the picture that I’d posted. Mum said it looked great but I could hear the words getting caught on the lump in her throat. The last time I had such short hair I was a toddler, she explained. Dad was speechless. He loved my long hair. Which is exactly why I had cut it off.

  Marnie and Becca came back to my house to get ready. By this time the sun was going down. I opened the bedroom window so that we could hear when the music started. Wolf and Loveday had agreed the party could be held in the sweat lodge in the wood on condition everyone took off their shoes before they went inside. This was the sort of thing they obsessed about, Jay said. They would probably get angrier about dirty footprints on the new wooden floor than if he got a girl pregnant. Not that this was likely to happen soon, he quickly added. There was a note of caution in his voice that I hadn’t heard before.

  Only Ben was worried about the party venue. He’d come into my bedroom, ignoring the fact that Marnie was standing there in her most attention-seeking bra and knickers, and asked me to make sure that no one hurt his sweat lodge. His chubby hand squeezed my forearm tight. I was a little taken aback by his proprietorial tone but reasoned that he was still smarting from the disappearance of his film from Wolf and Loveday’s website.

  ‘Of course we’ll take care of it, Grub,’ I said. ‘It’s nice that it’s being used though, isn’t it?’

  ‘I helped build it,’ he told Marnie and Becca proudly. ‘The stones in the centre represent our ancestors. They’re special volcanic rocks. If we hurt them we hurt ourselves.’

  Becca and Marnie laughed. They were used to Ben by now and his offbeat view of the world. We were in that pre-party mood where everyone laughed at everything even if it wasn’t funny. If I had seen Dad before we left he would have said that our nucleus accumbens was releasing dopamine in anticipation of new stimuli.

  ‘I’m being serious. Why does no one take me seriously?’ Ben said.

  He stropped out of the room. Usually I would have gone after him, but I was struggling to zip Marnie into a fluorescent pink glow-in-the-dark catsuit that she had bought that morning in Norwich.

  I glanced over at Jay’s bedroom. The curtains were pulled shut. I guessed he was out at the sweat lodge helping Marley fine-tune the playlist. They had spent days putting it together. Wolf believed atmosphere should define music and lectured them on the importance of spontaneity and living in the moment. They agreed with him and then ignored everything he had said. A strategy everyone should probably adopt with parents.

  ‘What do you think?’ Marnie asked. She spun on the spot to demonstrate how the cloudy pink silk wings that she had sewn to the shoulders of the catsuit blew in the breeze like tattered sails. She wore a ribbon around her forehead, silver filigree fairy ears and thin bangles on her arms which jingled every time she moved. On her arm was a quote from A Midsummer Night’s Dream: ‘And though she be little she is fierce.’

  ‘Do I embody the spirit of Titania?’

  ‘You look amazing,’ I said, meaning every word.

  ‘Good enough for Marley?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t you mean good enough for Stuart? I thought you were getting with him?’ I asked. Becca looked surprised in that way that girls do when someone else from the group knows something they don’t. ‘Luke told me,’ I quickly added because I hate there to be an atmosphere between friends.

  ‘He’s a means to an end,’ said Marnie with a wicked smile.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘So this is my thinking.’ She sat down on my bed, cross-legged, looking serious. ‘Stuart thinks I’m hot. He can’t keep this kind of thing to himself, so he tells Marley, who sees me in a whole new light. Marley comes on to me. We drink a love potion and float off together to the Kingdom of the Fairies, for ever. Marley and Marnie. We are meant to be, like Bonnie and Clyde.’

  ‘Remember the love potion made Titania fall in love with a donkey,’ I warned.

  ‘And Romy, you and I can do double dates with Marley and Jay,’ said Marnie, too wrapped up in her fantasy to consider Becca’s feelings. ‘Oh my actual God!’

  ‘I’ll look forward to that,’ said Becca flatly.

  ‘Marley’s attitude has changed already,’ Marnie said dreamily.

  ‘How exactly?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s paying me more attention.’

  Becca raised an eyebrow.

  ‘He says hi every time he sees me at school. He asks me for cigarettes and twice in the same day checked whether I was definitely coming to his party.’ She paused for dramatic effect. ‘He said I could stay over.’

  ‘Only because Stuart is,’ I pointed out, then when her smile briefly faded, I felt as though I had been cruel. Like kicking a puppy. ‘What are you going to tell your mum?’

  ‘That I’m staying at your place. She trusts your parents. Don’t say anything. I’ll be back in
your bedroom by the time they get up.’

  ‘You know, that’s pretty fucked-up logic, Marnie,’ said Becca. I was glad she had relieved me of the burden of pointing this out. ‘Marley won’t want to steal his best friend’s girlfriend. He might think you’re slutty and have sex with you once and then dump you. Girls who put it out always get hammered.’ I think she could have been a little gentler but Becca was punishing Marnie for not telling her about Stuart.

  ‘If it works you’ll be congratulating me on the brilliance of my strategy,’ said Marnie.

  ‘Or going to your funeral if Stuart discovers,’ said Becca.

  ‘Are you still taking things very, very slowly?’ Marnie turned to me with genuine curiosity as though I was one of those American kids who swear off sex before marriage. I nodded because what else could I tell her? In some ways I felt as if I was taking things very fast. But back then I often felt like that about my life. I felt very old and very young, sometimes all at the same time. One minute I would be guessing that Miss Scarlett killed Professor Plum in the billiard room with the spanner, getting it wrong on purpose so Ben would win at Cluedo, the next I would get a message from Jay telling me he had watched the video (again) and that it was as hot as anything he had ever seen online. But the more he said it, the worse I felt because it underlined the fact that nothing had really changed between us.

  There was one small but significant recalibration. Jay had taken to skyping me at night. He liked to watch me watching him as he watched the video of us. I had tried to explain to him that this reminded me of the Dr Seuss book where there was a bee watcher-watcher watching the bee watcher, and that at some point you had to stop being an observer and actually participate.

  ‘Dad has an entire collection of first edition Dr Seuss books,’ he said, hoping to change the subject.

  ‘When you replace something in your life with technology you need to think about what it is that you are really replacing,’ I advised him.