She had hair she could sit on, and she wore long ethnic skirts and baggy jumpers and Doc Marten boots. Basically anything that would cover her up from head to toe and not draw any attention to her body or the fact she was a female. She shied away from anything that was ‘trendy’; she loved Tolkien and Dungeons and Dragons and chess and Led Zeppelin and Fleetwood Mac (although her first loves were Bach and Beethoven and Brahms, but she didn’t mention that for fear of mockery).
By the time she was sixteen, the thought of putting on a skimpy dress and heels and make-up and going out to a pub or club, like all her friends were starting to do, terrified her.
What she was, though, was funny. She had a sharp eye and an even sharper tongue, and she was a brilliant mimic. So although she wasn’t like all the others, wasn’t into raunchy vampy singers like Madonna and Transvision Vamp and Shakespears Sister, she was quite popular with all the different subsets – the cool girls and the sporty girls and the arty girls – who were amused by her.
There was, however, one person who didn’t like her one bit.
Corinna was everything Emily was not. She was wild and rebellious and always in trouble. She lived in a rough part of town and went to nightclubs in Birmingham with her cousin in his clapped-out Ford Fiesta. She loved dance music and had taken ecstasy. She wore neon and fishnet and crop-tops and ripped jeans – daringly outrageous clothes Emily couldn’t imagine wearing. There were rumours that she as good as lived on her own. Her parents were hardly ever around. And she had a reputation for being a bit easy.
Emily couldn’t understand why Corinna felt the need to bully her when she was hardly a threat, and they were so different. Polar opposites, almost. But something in her thrived on making Emily suffer. She seemed to get high on her fear. She seemed to relish asking her personal questions that would make Emily blush and everyone else laugh. Crude questions about her sex life designed to make her squirm with embarrassment. Or personal comments.
‘Do you spit or swallow, Emily?’
‘Oh, look, Emily’s off to the toilet. Cystitis again, I’ll bet.’
‘Watch out, lads, here comes the Worcester bike.’
Emily was mortified. Corinna was everything she loathed. Crass, insensitive, cruel. What had happened to her to make her like that?
‘Don’t pay any attention to her,’ the others would say. ‘She’s a cow. She’s jealous because you’re clever.’
At first, she tried to ignore her, but it seemed to make Corinna worse. One weekend she saw Corinna with a bloke, in the video shop, and Corinna nudged him and pointed at Emily.
‘Wanna come back for a threesome?’ Corinna cornered her by the comedy section. ‘Watch some porn?’
Emily had fled, their laughs ringing in her ears.
Corinna carried on, honing in on all the things that Emily was self-conscious about but wasn’t sure how to change: her shyness, her lack of fashion sense, her obvious chastity. It made her withdraw even further, her clothes getting longer and baggier. She’d go over to the music block and practise her cello, hiding away for the whole of the lunch hour, eating the ham sandwich and prawn cocktail crisps and the two Jaffa cakes wrapped up in foil that her mum gave her every day.
‘Are you eating enough?’ her mum asked. ‘You look awfully pale. Are you sure you’re not anaemic?’
‘I’m fine,’ Emily insisted, but noticed that her mother kept adding extra things to her lunch box. Little squares of cheese and bunches of grapes.
She knew what her mother would say if she told her about Corinna. ‘Sticks and stones, darling. Just ignore her.’
Her cello teacher, Olivia Bembridge, was the only person who sensed how much the bullying was affecting her. She tried to get her to talk about it, and even said she would speak to the head.
‘I should notify him, really. If you think you’re being bullied.’
This suggestion filled Emily with horror.
‘Please, please don’t. If Corinna gets any idea that I’ve squealed on her, I’ll be dead. It’ll make her worse. Forget I said anything. If you tell anyone, I’ll deny it.’
‘OK,’ agreed Miss Bembridge, but she was very unhappy about it. ‘Why don’t you take an earlier bus to school, to avoid her? And leave a bit later. And you can stay in the music block whenever you like.’
It wasn’t that easy, but Emily appreciated her support. Miss Bembridge was her refuge, the one person who understood what she was going through, and it inspired her to practise even harder for her Grade 8, which was looming. She set herself demanding challenges – Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E Minor, Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto Number 2 – losing herself in the impossibility of the task. The music was the only thing that drowned out the taunts in her head. And playing the cello was the only time she didn’t mind being the centre of attention. She could play in front of an audience as long as her cello was between them and her. It was both a shield and a comfort.
In the meantime, Emily tried her hardest not to react to Corinna, remaining stony-faced when she taunted her, because, she thought, eventually – surely – she would get bored? But with every encounter her stomach would be churning and her pulse racing. The flush on her face would give her fear away. She was terrified because she didn’t know what Corinna wanted. She came to the conclusion that she was simply evil. A dark shadow flittering along the school corridors, lying in wait.
Eventually, Corinna teased and needled and humiliated her once too often. Emily was tired of turning the other cheek. It never had the desired effect. And she was only human. She had a breaking point.
One lunch hour, when Emily had been so absorbed in her cello practice that she was late back to lessons, Corinna and her friend Lisa were coming up the stairs to the music block as she was on her way down.
‘Do you walk like that because you play the cello,’ asked Corinna. ‘Or because you take it up the backside?’
Lisa snorted, and Corinna fell against her laughing.
Today, Emily drew herself up, like the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland, and looked Corinna in the eye.
‘What did you say?’
Corinna blinked in surprise. Emily hadn’t ever reacted to her, let alone confronted her. And Emily could see that in that moment she wasn’t so sure of herself after all. She could smell her perfume, strong and sickly – a knock-off designer scent that her cousin sold on his market stall. It turned her stomach.
Then Corinna recovered her composure and repeated her question, smirking.
Next to her, Lisa gave a twisted smile that could have been interpreted as appreciation of Corinna’s wit or sympathy for Emily, her eyes flicking back and forth between the two girls. How gutless, thought Emily, to try and please us both.
A mist of blood shimmered behind her eyelids. She was so angry. All the months of needling crowded into her mind at once.
She reached out and pushed her.
It was so sudden. She didn’t even need to push that hard. She took her completely by surprise. Corinna fell backwards down the stone steps, tumbling in slow motion, her long legs in their black tights flailing desperately for purchase, like a spider thrown from a window. Emily stood there, impassive, until she landed at the bottom. She didn’t move.
‘You’ve killed her!’ screamed Lisa. Emily crossed her arms. She felt almost nothing, except a mild curiosity as to what would happen next.
There was chaos as staff and students came running and gathered around Corinna’s body. The deputy head came to the top of the steps, her face creased with anxiety.
‘Did you see what happened?’
‘I pushed her,’ Emily said calmly. ‘It wasn’t an accident.’
She wasn’t going to pretend it was, because then she couldn’t explain what had driven her to it, and she was ready to reveal the truth.
The headmaster listened with an impassive expression in his office when she o
utlined, calmly and clearly, the vile invective Corinna had levelled at her over the past year. Her parents arrived halfway through her evidence. Her mother gasped in horror and her father looked distressed.
‘How do we know you’re not just saying this?’ the headmaster asked. He knew she was clever. Emily could see he wouldn’t put it past her to make it all up to save her skin.
She shrugged. ‘You can ask Miss Bembridge. I told her everything.’
Miss Bembridge was duly summoned and corroborated her evidence.
‘Why didn’t you come forward before?’ demanded her mother.
‘Emily begged me not to. I was keeping her confidence.’ Miss Bembridge looked defiant. ‘The bullying affected her deeply. I can vouch for that. I’ve seen her in tears on numerous occasions. Too frightened to go back to class. I’ve been very concerned about her indeed.’
But somehow, a physical assault was perceived as more serious than verbal bullying.
Corinna wasn’t dead. She had slight concussion and a broken wrist where she put her hand out to break her fall. Nevertheless, the incident was every school’s worst nightmare. Corinna’s mother, suddenly on the scene, was talking about a lawsuit, no doubt seeing the opportunity for a lucrative pay-out. That was the kind of people they were. And although lots of people came forward to back Emily up, it was too little too late. She was asked to leave the school after her GCSEs.
Her parents did as much as they could to comfort her, but they were rather bewildered.
‘Darling, I wish you’d told us,’ said her mother. ‘I can’t bear to think of you being bullied.’
Of course she’d said nothing to them. Her parents would have gone straight to the school if she’d told them about Corinna. And that would have been disastrous.
At least by pushing her down the stairs, it was now over. Even if it was Emily who was being punished, not Corinna.
Somehow, her parents managed to broker a scholarship based on her GCSE predictions and her musical talent and got her into St Anne’s. And when she finished her exams, they bought her a new cello.
‘We’re not waiting for your results to reward you,’ said her mother. ‘We know you will have done your best.’
Emily was overjoyed. She poured all her pent-up emotions into her music. She loved her cello. When her arms were around it, it was like holding a living, breathing being. It spoke to her in a way that nothing else did. She could feel it in her heart. It understood her.
Luckily, she loved St Anne’s. Her original prejudice proved to be unfounded. The girls there were lovely – by and large, their parents were working their fingers to the bone to send them there, so none of them seemed to take it for granted. Mostly they were hard-working, kind and generous. It was heaven, after Corinna’s reign of terror, for Emily to come out of her shell. She felt confident again, and was even a bit more adventurous on the clothing front. She wasn’t an extravert or a trendsetter or about to go charging off to Cheltenham or Birmingham to hang out in nightclubs, but she did buy some jeans and a red plaid shirt – a massive change from her shapeless baggy black – and chopped six inches off her hair because it was getting ridiculous.
She thrived. Her parents were hugely relieved, glad that the horror of what had happened had had no lasting effect on their daughter, and were bursting with pride when the headmistress suggested she might be good enough for Oxbridge.
‘You wouldn’t have been pushed at Wormestall,’ Vivian said. ‘I’m so thrilled for you, darling. You’ve got a bright, bright future.’
‘And,’ grinned Emily, ‘I look better in the purple uniform. It suits my inner Goth.’
Emily started going to parties, bought a Maybelline eyeliner and felt generally optimistic about the world after all the trauma. Especially when she learned that Corinna had moved up to Birmingham to go to sixth-form college, so she wasn’t in danger of bumping into her in Worcester any time soon. She was still a bit of an oddball, but never made to feel like one by her new classmates. They quickly became fond of her, and any teasing was good-natured, never malevolent. It seemed as if her turbulent past was behind her and she was on her way to becoming an ordinary teenage girl.
If she had known what was around the corner, would she have done things differently?
13
‘They’ve had a cancellation,’ said Robyn on Monday morning, putting her phone on mute while she consulted Jake. ‘The first Saturday in May. If we don’t say yes now, there won’t be time to give the official notice. Otherwise we’ll have to wait till autumn. They’re fully booked all summer.’
Jake counted on his fingers and looked alarmed. ‘But that’s only a month away.’
They were holed up inside the bar at the Mariscombe Hotel. The weekend’s gorgeous weather had vanished, and the rain was pouring down on their site. It looked terrible, covered in muddy puddles, like a building site abandoned by cowboys. Jake was anxious to get back on track. Bruno had offered them a bonus if they finished the project by the end of April. Only a couple of thousand, but it would go a long way. Experience had told them the rain would pass if they were patient, and they could be back on site by the time they’d drunk an Americano. Or a hot chocolate in Robyn’s case, while she tried to book the registry office for their wedding ceremony.
‘I know. But think about it. It gives us the perfect excuse to keep it small. And I don’t want to wait until autumn. I’ll be out here.’ Robyn put her hand in front of her stomach.
Jake thought for a moment. He thought of his friends who had got married, and all the build-up and the stress and the tension leading up to their big day. All the things they’d had to deal with that they didn’t realise could be such a massive issue: choosing a wedding cake flavour or working out a seating plan. And it seemed leaving it to the bride wasn’t an option as then you were accused of not being interested. So maybe having it sooner rather than later was the best way of stopping the plans getting out of control? But was it wise to schedule it in between finishing the Linhay and the pool project? His head was already full of timetables and deliveries and orders. He didn’t want the pressure to spoil what should be a special day.
But Robyn’s eyes were shining. He could see this was what she wanted. And because she was the least likely person to become a nightmare over the arrangements – what did they call them? Bridezillas? – he relented straight away.
‘Go on, then. Why not?’
Robyn went back to the phone. ‘We’d love that date. Thank you. It’s obviously meant to be.’
She finished off her conversation by agreeing that they’d come in and do the paperwork at the first opportunity so the notices could be put up in time. She rang off and looked at Jake, her eyes sparkling.
‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a wedding date.’
‘I can’t believe it either,’ he said, then laughed. ‘No pressure. Isn’t that what they say?’
‘We love pressure, remember?’ Robyn prodded him with her foot. ‘We work best under pressure.’
‘Of course we do,’ said Jake as their drinks arrived, tearing open a packet of sugar and letting the contents trickle into his mug. ‘I guess I ought to ask for your dad’s permission to marry you. I can ask him tonight.’
They were going to Hawksworthy Farm for shepherd’s pie made with the remains of the Sunday roast.
‘What?’ said Robyn, open-mouthed. ‘Don’t be daft. That’s like something out of Jane Austen.’
‘Isn’t it polite, though?’
Robyn crossed her arms. ‘Only if I get to ask your dad’s permission.’
Jake laughed. ‘OK. Now you put it like that.’
‘At least we can tell everyone now.’ They’d kept the news to themselves over the weekend, wallowing in the novelty while everyone absorbed the baby news.
‘I really must phone Mum. I’ve been putting it off. I just hope she’s not
going to be tricky about the wedding.’
‘I’m sure she won’t be,’ Robyn reassured him. ‘She won’t want to spoil it for you, surely?’
‘She won’t mean to,’ said Jake. ‘But she can’t help herself, sometimes. I know she’ll be pleased about the baby, though.’
‘Good!’ said Robyn, who sometimes thought the Youngs worried too much about Tina’s feelings. She wasn’t sure how any woman could walk out on their husband and family, even if she was unhappy. She’d met her a couple of times, but usually Jake and Ethan went up to Enfield for the weekend to see her on their own. Robyn had liked her – Tina was fun and friendly and obviously very successful – but she was a little wary of her. She hoped she wouldn’t cause problems.
She sipped at the last of her hot chocolate, thinking that now Jake had brought up Tina, it was the perfect time to mention that she had opened her box of secrets. After all, if they were getting married they shouldn’t keep things from each other. They’d had a conversation about looking for her birth mother once, a few months after they’d first met, when Robyn had told him she was adopted.
‘I’ve always been too scared to find out anything more about her,’ she explained. ‘Some adopted people are obsessed with finding out, but I worry that it will cause more problems than it’s worth. And I don’t know what would be worse. Finding out your real mum was some amazing beautiful princess, like in a Hollywood movie. Or that she was a total loser. Someone you wouldn’t give the time of day.’
‘Probably something in between,’ said Jake, reasonably. ‘Someone who was a victim of circumstance.’
‘Yes. Probably. But it’s still a risk. And I’ve not quite had the courage to take it.’
The more Robyn thought about it, the more she realised Jake was right. Her mother was probably an ordinary girl who’d been dealt the wrong card early in life. Her curiosity about her began to grow along with the baby inside her, as if motherhood was the bond between them.
A Wedding at the Beach Hut: The escapist and feel-good read of 2020 from the bestselling author of THE BEACH HUT Page 7
