‘Told ’em to stop coming here. All of ’em, but it don’t make a difference.’
By the time I got home, I’d been gone for about an hour and a half. Thunder rumbled in the distance, a warning. I entered the house quietly, put my keys on the side and walked into the living room, switching on the light on the wall with the heel of my hand.
And there was Edie, frozen to the couch, her jeans around her thighs, her eyes comically round with shock. On top of her a boy, athletic, good-looking, his hand shoved into her knickers, moving as though searching for something. He had thick curly hair and dark, blank eyes. When he saw me he lowered his head on to Edie’s chest. I could hear his muffled swearing, could see Edie’s hands in the crotch of his trousers. His T-shirt was pulled up to reveal the skin of his torso, the muscles there clearly defined. I’d remember this scene for a long time. Every moment of it.
‘Edie, get dressed now.’
‘Mum!’ She was angry, embarrassed, her face turning a vivid red.
I turned to the boy. ‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘Mum, stop it.’
The boy looked up at me. He pulled his hands out of Edie’s knickers, wiped them discreetly on his trousers. I could feel the pulse in my throat stutter. He didn’t respond to me. He talked to Edie. ‘I thought you said she was going to be out for hours.’
‘Mum, what the hell?’
‘Right. You, upstairs. You, out.’ I pointed at him.
He smiled slantwise. It wasn’t a very nice smile and there was no humour in it. ‘Sure.’ He raised his hands. ‘I’m going, I’m going.’
‘I’m coming with you,’ Edie said, rising from her seat.
I laughed. ‘Are you joking? Get upstairs. Now.’
‘All you do is embarrass me. I hate it here. I can’t wait to live by myself.’
‘But you don’t, do you? You live with me, in my house, under my rules. So get dressed and go upstairs before I do something to really embarrass you.’
There was a brief silence. I tapped my nails on the sideboard. Click, click, click.
The boy looked shifty and caught-out. He ran his hand over his face. ‘Edie, maybe I should go.’
‘Then I’m coming too.’
‘Your mum says – uh—’
‘That bitch doesn’t tell me what to do.’
I grabbed her. I grabbed her by the arm and I knew I was squeezing too hard because she looked shocked, horrified, and I was glad because that is how I wanted her to look. Later I would think about the marks I left there, red stripes on her pale skin.
‘Upstairs, Edie. Now. Now!’
I heard her start to cry as she walked through the kitchen and then clattered up the stairs. I just wanted the best for her, and these boys, these eager, narcissistic boys, were not the best. I stared at him. He stared back, defiant. He sat like a man, his legs spread almost the length of the two-seater couch. His hands dangled in the gap between them.
‘What’s your name?’
He mumbled.
I made him say it louder. ‘Speak up.’
‘William, I said.’
‘So you like my daughter, do you, William?’
‘Yeah.’ He lifted his hand and tugged at his hair where it hung over his ears.
‘Well, then, you need to have some respect for her—’
I stopped and looked at his face and I remembered that he was just a kid, and that he was just as humiliated as me, and that all he wanted was to get out of here and go home.
‘Get out of my house. Stay away from Edie.’
He rose, left, closed the front door quietly. I composed myself, lit a cigarette. I had thought I was liberated, easy with my daughter’s burgeoning sexual desires. I tried to remember myself at that age but it was like catching water in a sieve. Edie had turned her music up to screaming pitch.
We didn’t speak for a few weeks or so after that, kept our distance from each other. In September, Edie went back to school and I hoped she would forget about him, this William with the shifty eyes and fleeting, half-felt smile. Then, one bright morning barely a month later, she left for school and I never saw her again.
Don’t talk to me about triggers. I know all about triggers.
Frances – Now
William’s mother has forgotten who I am. At least, that’s how it seems. Alex has told us we are to expect some mental ‘hiccups’ caused by the brain injury. They’re temporary, the doctor has reassured him, but it doesn’t make it any less difficult.
She peers at me with watery, Arctic eyes. ‘Which one are you married to?’
‘The handsome one,’ William cuts in, and his brother groans in the background.
I’m sitting beside her bed, my hand on hers, the skin paper-thin and stitched with blue veins. She is propped up on pillows, facing the French windows which lead into the walled garden. Alex has moved her into the study, setting up a bed among the polished teak and musty old books.
‘She likes to watch the birds,’ he said, filling her hot-water bottle from the kettle, steaming up his glasses. ‘They’ve always given her so much joy.’
His voice cracked then, and William stood awkwardly while I held him, running my palm up and down his back. It’s okay, I told him, it’s all right.
Later we are together in Mimi’s room, Alex, William and I. The television plays in the corner. Her respiration is wet and noisy.
‘You want me to brush your hair, Mum?’ Alex has her hairbrush in his hands; old-fashioned, silver-handled, porcelain-backed and decorated with roses. It’s an oddly intimate moment, his hand so large on
