Gimme More (16 page)

He was laughing now, and blushing. Good, healthy teeth, Robin thought. Well, if they met on the Net, at least it means he can write.

He said, ‘I know it's a risk, Mrs Emerson. People can say any old thing and you never know if it's true or not. But I recognised Grace straight away, so I reckon she's the honest type.'

‘Oh, she is,' Robin said. When she actually tells you anything.

‘So I guess we both thought, like, OK. We can go to a party together and see how it goes from there. I don't know about you, Mrs Emerson, but I like to get to know people slowly.'

‘We-ell,' Robin said, pretending to think about it, ‘there's no point in rushing things, but you
are
in my bedroom and I don't even know your last name.'

Alec looked mortified. He even squirmed. ‘Parry,' he said. ‘Alec Parry. I'm such an idiot. Sorry.'

He's a puppy, she thought, all wriggly and waggy. Odd how much more mature Grace seems. Perhaps she feels most comfortable with men she can control. Well, it's as good a way of finding
out about men as any. Better than finding out about them from the ones who can control her.

She said, ‘Don't worry about it.'

‘But, in the same situation, my mother'd go potty. You're so cool, Mrs Emerson. Your whole family's so cool.'

‘Wait till you meet Jimmy,' Robin said, laughing. ‘Now, I must go and do some work. Grace's room is next to yours on the other side.'

‘Right,' he said, ‘but I'm really glad I had the chance to talk to you.'

‘Me too,' she said. A happy accident, she thought. It would've taken ages to learn as much from Grace. She hoped he liked garlic and ginger prawns.

She sat for a moment, after he left, staring absently at Jack's young smile. So, so long ago, Jack, what would you look like now? Would you be fat or thin? Would your hair be grey, like mine, or would you touch it up, like Lin? Would you
have
any hair? Would you be famous or forgotten? Would you have dumped Lin or would she have dumped you? Would I have ever really got to know you or would you still be an icon on my wall? If you were alive, Jack, would you still be a memory? After all, there are many more ways to lose people than by death.

Upstairs in the attic she picked up the work Lin had interrupted. She was making an old-fashioned frock coat for a fat actor and she was taking pains over the detail because she knew he'd buy it from wardrobe when the production was over. He always did. But the cloth was heavy and dull, so after a while she put it aside and took up a riot of colour – something she was making for a private client out of hundreds of pieces of off-cut silk. This was what she enjoyed most – making the fabric from which the garment would be shaped – holistic dressmaking. Very slow. Very expensive. Thank God for private clients.

And there, blinded by colour, soothed by silk, Robin lost herself for a few hours.

‘That's beautiful,' Lin said, putting two glasses of white wine on her work table. ‘Who's it for?'

Robin blinked, slowly refocusing her eyes. She slid her reading glasses up on to her hair and said, ‘Rich old lady. It'd suit you better. Where've you been?'

‘Out. Trying to mend bridges, but …'

‘Oh no.'

‘Sorry, darlin', I've been replaced – no more Cole-Adler pay packets. Don't look like that – it isn't the end of the world. I'll find something else. They're giving me a great reference.'

‘I suppose that's better than nothing.' Robin stretched and then took a sip of chilled white wine. ‘Where are the kids?'

‘Movies,' Lin said.

‘Well, I'm not worried about Alec any more. He's a puppy.' And she told Lin the story of Grace and Alec meeting on the Net.

‘Which site?' Lin asked immediately.

‘Huh?'

‘Never mind, sweetie. I'll find out.'

‘Does it matter?'

‘It might,' Lin said. ‘This is a guy who travels with a locked camera case hidden in a studenty backpack. For your information, he also has a big box of gossamer condoms and half a pint of lubrication gel which he's carrying quite openly. And an ounce or two of very nice grass and some sweet little white tablets with doves stamped on them. He's not bothering to keep
them
hidden. Makes you wonder what he'd lock up, doesn't it?'

‘Oh
Lin,'
Robin said.

‘Well, he's got the sex and drugs bit covered, hasn't he? So what's he doing for rock'n'roll?'

‘Shit, shit, shit, Lin. I thought butter wouldn't melt.'

‘Well, they're going to a party.' Lin shrugged. ‘Which bit upsets you most? You've got to assume Grace is doing all the usual stuff.'

‘Yes, but not under her own roof, my roof, with a stranger.' With a sudden gut-lurch, Robin felt herself sliding into a knot of linear time. The thread of her life wove over and under itself in a pattern which had no end and no beginning. She was a responsible, experienced adult who felt like a mystified, frightened teenager. She was conversing with a responsible, experienced woman who was, at the same time, her little sister – the one who ran wild and
took appalling risks, and yet always seemed to come up smelling of roses.

She, Robin, was the sister who stayed home, stayed in school and studied hopelessly for the exams she only just scraped through. She had to keep trying. Because there must be one good sister, one good daughter, mustn't there? Above all, Robin hated conflict. Anger scared her. How many screaming rows could a kid endure?

Then, one day, it stopped. ‘I can't do this any more,' said Lin, sitting on Robin's bed, skinny legs tucked under her. ‘Fighting's crap.'

‘So don't fight,' Robin said. ‘You're never going to win. Parents hold all the cards. And I'm fed up with it.'

‘So'm I. But it's like being in prison. Parents control everything. Nothing's mine. Not even my time.'

‘We could go away to university. Somewhere like Edinburgh.'

‘That's years away. And that's the other thing – it'd be just like school. And school is as bad as parents. “One fist of iron, the other of steel. If the right one don't get you, then the left one will.” Sing it, Robin.'

They sat on the bed, two kids, singing ‘Sixteen Tons', Lin trying to harmonise a third above the melody and getting it wrong. Giggling miserably. Because Robin knew that realistically she didn't have a snowball's hope in hell of getting into university, and she didn't think Lin would even try. All she could see ahead of her were years of the same old same old.

Now, she had a son and daughter and she was supposed to be the one fist of iron. She was supposed to be contemplating the control of her daughter – how to stop her doing what Lin so carelessly described as ‘the usual stuff.

The trouble was, she didn't have a clue. She was so busy avoiding confrontation that she rarely confronted Grace. So quite how much of the usual stuff there was in Grace's life was a mystery to her. Maybe Grace was simply getting away with it. Just like Lin did when, at the age of thirteen, she decided fighting was crap. Everyone was so relieved when Lin stopped needling and demanding that they failed to notice that she hadn't changed at all. She merely talked sweet, looked sweet and appeared with clean hands at meal times. Precocious in the art of man-management.

Is Grace a good, sensible kid, she asked herself, or is she managing me? Am I skilled at avoiding rows, or am I a neglectful parent?

She said, ‘Lin, do you think Grace is like me? Or is she like you?'

‘Grace is like Grace,' Lin said, with her silly-question expression.

‘Do you think she knows what she's doing?'

‘Not for a moment,' Lin said. ‘Who does? But she probably thinks she does.'

‘Then she's more like you,' Robin decided. ‘I never even thought I knew what I was doing.'

‘Bollocks,' said Lin. ‘You had it all mapped out.'

‘Did not.'

‘Did.'

‘It was a screwy old map then,' Robin sighed. ‘Nothing turns out the way you plan.'

‘Let's hope that's true for Alec as well. Some plans deserve a good trashing.'

‘Do I kick him out? Or keep an eye on him?'

‘Oh, definitely keep him.'

‘But I really don't want drugs in the house.'

‘Mmm,' said Lin. ‘We could probably sabotage those without being rumbled. If you want.'

‘The condoms are a symbol of social responsibility, don't you think?' Robin asked hopefully.

‘We don't want to damage those.'

‘OK,' Robin said, ‘let's do it.' She was thrilled. Years of passivity and ignorance fell away.

In Jimmy's room, under the eyes of famous footballers and Nobel prize winners, Robin and Lin examined the guest's luggage.

He was very organised, Robin concluded. ‘He's got rich parents,' she said. ‘Even the underwear's designer.'

‘Parents?' Lin said, raising one eyebrow. ‘Because he turned up with Grace? Because he acts like a puppy? I don't think he's as young as he's acting.'

‘No dirty laundry,' Robin observed. ‘No. Categorically, postively, he isn't as immature as he seems. What're we going to do with his stash?'

‘Turn it into something he'll throw away,' Lin said. She slid her hand between two T-shirts and drew out a tobacco tin.

‘Kitchen,' she said. ‘Something noxious and smelly – like lighter fluid or turpentine.'

They went down to the kitchen. Lin opened the tobacco tin. Tidy young Alec kept his pills in an airtight polythene sachet and his grass wrapped in tin foil.

‘I want just enough turps to grind these pills into a semi paste. They've got to stink so badly no one'd dream of putting any of it in his mouth. It's got to look like he was sold total shit and it degraded. Maybe a little green or yellow colour to ram the message home.'

‘Are you sure?' Robin asked. ‘What if he gives some to Grace?'

‘Well,' Lin said, working with speed and delicacy, ‘I'm sorry to say this, but if Grace lets some strange guy put this stinking mess in her mouth she deserves to die.'

‘Lin!'

‘Sorry, sweetie, but it's true. Oh, have a bit of faith in her. She's
your
daughter.
You
brought her up.'

‘Ok, but think what you took when you were her age.'

‘I never took anything that looked or smelled like this. Nor will she. And my bet is that Alec won't be offering it.'

‘What're you going to do with the grass?'

‘Smoke some,' Lin said, ‘while you go and piss on the rest. We want it so wet it won't light, and smelly enough to make their little eyes water.'

‘You're kidding?'

‘You're a creative old broad,' Lin said. ‘Think of something. Mother-love comes in strange shapes, I'm told.'

‘Amen,' Robin said. The thread of her life looped and folded back on itself, intersecting at the point where two pre-adolescent girls took revenge on King Leer, the local dirty old man. King Leer was a retired major who lived on the route between school and home. He was in the Rotary Club, the Lions. A pillar of the community, their father said, making both girls collapse with stifled giggles.

For reasons neither of them understood, Lin was his number
one target. And for reasons Robin didn't understand even now, they never told their parents. Perhaps it was because
all
adults seemed to be malign, ranged like a cohesive army against children. Adult behaviour was incomprehensible at the best of times. So a nasty old man waving his genitals at Lin, or squashing them against the glass of his front window whenever she walked by, might have been just another unpleasant manifestation of the power all grownups wielded against children.

Whatever. Lin, the rebel, rebelled. Scheming Lin planned. Thieving Lin stole a spray can of black enamel paint from their father's garage. Secretive Lin carried it hidden in her school bag for a week until the right opportunity came along. And, when the right opportunity presented itself, along with King Leer's exposed and swollen shaft, vengeful Lin sprayed him.

‘Sorry?' she said, peaches and cream, ‘what is it you want me to look at?' She stepped forward, her right hand hidden in her school bag. And then she whipped out the spray can and pressed the nozzle. Fired straight at King Leer's naked crotch.

Horrified, Robin watched the mauve pink flesh turn shiny black. Up until then she never thought Lin would actually fire. She thought the plan was just another giggling, childish fantasy – what I'd do if I had a hundred pounds, where we'd go if we could fly. Not so. Quite deliberately, Lin sprayed the major's cock, his balls, his trousers, his shirt front and his horn-rim spectacles. Then she threw the can in his face.

‘Run!
' she screamed, and the girls tore away up the street, running, until they fell in an exhausted heap in the park. Horror and fright made them laugh till they choked.

They were laughing now, Robin dizzy from the grass and wine. Two grown women, two little kids, taking action against someone who offended them.

‘I wonder what happened to King Leer,' she said aloud.

‘What on earth made you think of him?'

‘Don't know,' Robin said. ‘There were no repercussions, were there? And we were astonished. We thought Mum and Dad were going to come down on us like a ton of bricks. We thought that dirty old bastard would tell the police. We didn't realise that he
couldn't. Unless he incriminated himself. I guess we're applying the same principle to Alec.'

‘Mmm,' said Lin. ‘Good lesson, wasn't it?'

When the kids came home from the movies they were horsing around as if they'd known each other all their lives. They made Robin wonder if she'd ever been capable of such instant, easy intimacy. Trust, she thought, based on the same taste in music, liking the same movie. How deceptive. What if one of you is lying? She was excluded. She had excluded herself by not trusting them. Betraying them again, she made lasagna and left the king prawns on the middle shelf of the fridge. Grace didn't notice.