The Flavours of Love (3 page)

In response to this, she turns her head even further away from me, not in the direction the bus will be coming from, but towards home and back towards the school.

I stop watching her, she’s not going to look at me. I focus myself instead towards where the bus will come from and I wonder:
Is she wishing herself at home, is she wishing herself back in the safety of school, or is she wishing she was anywhere but near me right now?

There’s an area of faded purple on the white tiled floor of our kitchen. It’s an irregular-shaped patch that I’ve tried to remove over the last fifteen months but it’s still there. No one else can see it, apparently, or maybe no one else is bothered by it – I’m the only one I’ve noticed who stares at it. I’ve tried white vinegar, bleach, cream cleansers, everything I know to get a stain out, but nothing has worked. It’s still there, splashed across six tiles, reminding me of the time I dropped a bowl of blackberries and didn’t have the presence of mind to clear it up before the black, viscous juice leached into the surface of the white tiles and left a permanent dark bruise in our home.

Every time I walk into the kitchen I look at it first. I glance at it and fleetingly remember the numbness that overtook my body with frightening speed; the phut, phut, phut of blackberries exploding on the tiles; the sound of the bowl, already chipped and scratched with age, smashing as it hit the floor; the sensation of all the air leaving my body in one go.

I watch the grey-sock-covered heels of my daughter walk across the patch as if it’s not there. She plonks herself at the table, in the seat nearest the sink, where she always sits, and immediately takes her phone out of her jacket pocket. She shouldn’t be wearing her jacket in the house, but in the grand scheme of things, I don’t think it matters.

‘Zane’s staying at Imogen’s house tonight. He and Ernest have got a new game to try out,’ I explain to her. I talk to her as normal even though she hasn’t even acknowledged my existence since the headteacher’s office. Or was it before that? Did I stop existing for Phoebe all that time ago, when I did what she wanted and agreed not to go
to the police? Did getting her own way make her lose all respect for me?

Zane, Phoebe’s ten-year-old brother, is with Ernest, his best friend since reception. Ernest’s mother, Imogen, has been sweet, and kind, especially in the last eighteen months, but I haven’t told her what has happened today. I can’t even begin to find the words to explain it to myself, let alone someone who has brought up three children – two of whom have made it past teenage-hood without this kind of scandal.

I ran through our Hove flat, my heart sounding like stampeding buffalo in my ears after I threw aside the cloth I was using to clean the kitchen surfaces, and answered Joel’s urgent cries from the other side of our flat. We were renting a beautiful art deco place right on the Hove seafront and I was bordering on obsessive with keeping it clean.

‘What, what, what’s the matter?’ I asked him. He stood in the bathroom, naked apart from his white underpants that were so tight, so moulded to his body, I was surprised they didn’t cut off circulation between his torso and his legs.

‘Ffrony, I think it’s time. I need you to shave my back for me.’

‘That’s what you were calling me like that for? I thought it was an emergency. Or at least important.’

Like a blanket of short, black wool, his chest hair lined the sink in front of him, and his chest was smooth and hairless. Each of the well-defined areas of his six-pack was emphasised now it wasn’t covered in hair.

‘It
is
important,’ Joel replied. He frowned at me in the mirror, his beautiful face knitting together in mock horror that I didn’t realise this. ‘It’s extremely important. I need you to shave my back.’

‘Erm, I think we can pretty much say that’s a no,’ I replied. Even though I wasn’t going to shave anything, I perched on the roll-top edge of the white bath with its brass claw and ball feet, and took the
opportunity to watch my boyfriend. I loved to examine, whenever I could, the way his body contracted and expanded, how many tiny, seemingly inconsequential expressions flitted across his face without being manifested as words or actions. I adored watching him.

‘Excuse me, Babes, I think you’ll find it’s part of the whole “for better and worse” deal,’ he cajoled. ‘Come on, it won’t take long – a few strokes and we’re done.’

‘How many times have you said that?’ I laughed.

With a grin on his face, he spun towards me, tugged me to my feet, then pressed the electric shaver into my hand.

‘Why do you need to shave your back, anyway? I wouldn’t mind you being hairy.’

‘Yes, but it’s unbelievably uncomfortable having a hairy back, especially when it’s hot.’

I examined the shaver in front of me; the prongs seemed vicious and dangerous, like they’d slice off chunks of flesh instead of efficiently and effectively snipping off hair. ‘Hang on, we’ve been together two years, lived together three months, how come this is the first time you’ve asked?’ The answer, of course, was immediately obvious. ‘Fynn does it, doesn’t he? Still?
Still?
Do you do his as well?’

‘That’s between me and him, Ffrony, there are some things you can’t know.’

‘I swear, you two … I don’t know whether to be jealous or impressed sometimes. You’re way too close.’

‘No such thing. Come on now, Babes, sort me out here.’

I pushed the large rubbery on button and the buzzer jumped to life, vibrating violently in my hand.

‘This is a very important moment in our life together, Ffrony. Not just anyone gets to do my back, you’re the first woman I’ve ever asked to do this. You are about to be initiated into the Great Hall of Joel.’

‘The Great Hall of Joel. Riiigggghhhttt.’ I sounded confident, but I was trembling, shaking with anxiety. I didn’t want to hurt him, not ever. My hand quivered as I pushed it against the hairy area over his right shoulder blade.

‘Don’t worry about hurting me,’ he said seriously. His whirlpool eyes held my gaze steadily in the mirror. ‘I know you’d never do that.’

I steadied my hand, willed myself to stop quaking. He was right, I wouldn’t hurt him and I
could
do this. ‘OK.’

‘You can’t anyway, it’s got a safety guard,’ he added before laughing so much it was a full five minutes before he was still enough for me to try again.

*

‘I was going to make chicken pesto with mash and veg for dinner,’ I say to my first-born child. Joel and I tried for her for what seemed like for ever. Every month my period started I would feel such extreme disappointment, and the second the two lines turned blue on the test the dread and panic that bolted through me was like nothing I’d ever experienced. ‘I’ve made the pesto already, so how about we have it with gnocchi instead, it’ll be quicker?’ Her head is lowered and her right thumb is flying over her phone’s keyboard as she types away. For Phoebe, it seems, everything is normal, nothing has changed.

She lifts her head, looks briefly at me and then shrugs a ‘Suppose’ before returning to her phone, to her important, real life. My tongue hurts from how hard I clamp down with my teeth, reining in the scream that has flared up in my chest. With the scream still bubbling at the back of my throat, I quickly rotate to the chrome kettle and take it to the sink. All the while:
I will not scream, I will not scream, I will not scream
pirouettes like a clockwork ballerina through my mind.

‘What do you want the baby to be?’ Joel asked, resting his hand on the ever-so-slight swell of my three-month-pregnant stomach. ‘I know we’ll be happy whatever we get, but what, ideally, would you like the baby to be?’

‘Human?’ I replied. I placed both my hands over his, pressing him closer to our child and holding onto him at the same time.

‘
Human?
As opposed to … ?’ he questioned.

‘Klingon?’

He used his free hand to tug me closer as we reclined on our sofa together, then he snuggled his face into the curve of my neck, where he was always pressing his cold lips, which made me giggle and shudder at the same time. ‘Now, what have you got against Klingons?’ he asked, mid-nuzzle.

‘Nothing. I’m going to marry you, aren’t I, Mr Ridge Face?’

He immediately touched his forehead, as if he needed to check, as if I wasn’t always calling him that. ‘I do
not
have a big forehead.’

‘No, course you don’t,’ I giggled.

‘Don’t listen to her, baby,’ he laughed. ‘Your dad doesn’t have a big forehead.’

‘He doesn’t,’ I conceded, ‘it’s
huge
!’

‘I know what you’re doing, Ffrony,’ he said, suddenly setting aside his laugh, ‘and it’s not going to work. Stop avoiding the question.’

‘Sorry.’ I closed my eyes and thought of the future; thought of him and me and a bundle of a baby. Immediately the white-hot fear of uncertainty started to close in around the edges of my thoughts and set off the tumble of worry, about what would come next, what could go wrong, how I could fail, that was always precariously balanced like a stack of fragile teacups inside me. I couldn’t pin down the thoughts, the needs, the wish list of what I wanted for our future, because that might jinx it, that might make it a real thing that could be taken away from me. ‘I don’t know what I want, Joel, I really don’t.’

‘Don’t be scared,’ he said. He knew what I was thinking, how I was worrying and wrapped both his arms around me instead of just around the baby. ‘It’s all going to be fine.’

‘You can’t know that.’

‘I can, and I do.’

‘What do you want, then?’ I didn’t want my anxieties to spoil this for him. This was his time, too. Even if I couldn’t completely relax, the least I could do was give him that opportunity.

‘A girl, I think. I’ll be as happy with a boy, don’t get me wrong, but I’d love a girl.’

‘Why?’

‘Don’t know, really. I …’ He stopped talking and then glided into one of his now familiar and comforting silences as he considered my question from all angles. ‘I don’t know, I guess it’s one of those things you think you want and you have no real reason for wanting it.’

‘I see,’ I replied, even though I had no clue what he was talking about.

*

I’m standing at the sink, looking out of the window, watching the last of the light outside recede into early evening darkness through the gaps in our curtain of butterflies. When she was ten, Phoebe spent weeks stringing together multicoloured crystal butterflies. Night after night she’d take up her seat on a cushion in the corner of the living room, using a large needle to string butterflies onto jewellers’ wire, before twisting a knot on either side with jewellers’ pliers then adding another butterfly. When she’d finished, her dad tied them to a curtain pole and hung it up over the part of the window by the sink.

The curtain dots our kitchen with splashes of different-coloured light during the day, intensified, of course, when the sun is out. Some mornings I come in here before the sun comes up and sit at the table with a cup of coffee, staring at the blackberry stain while the room gradually becomes a multicoloured glow.

‘Who’s the father?’ I ask Phoebe, clattering our plates onto the butterfly-covered place mats I have laid on the table in the two minutes it took to cook the gnocchi.

Phoebe picks up the fork I placed in front of her earlier, and spears a rocket and basil pesto-covered potato dumpling. When I ask my question, she doesn’t raise the food from the plate to her mouth, instead she leaves it there, jammed onto the fork, sitting against the plate. Eventually, she gives a small, discreet shrug of her bony shoulders as her reply.

Panic billows up inside. ‘You don’t know who the father is, or you’re not going to tell me?’ I ask.

Phoebe treats me to another shrug, this time with one shoulder.

I inhale slowly and deeply, then exhale at length. I know what Joel would say right now. He’d remind me that she’s fourteen, she’s terrified and that there are worse things you could do than get pregnant. He would tell me not to scream. He would tell me to remember how it felt to be in a similar position to her. He’d tell me all these things and he would be right.

Picking up my fork, I remind myself of the sheer terror of sitting in front of a parent you are already scared of upsetting after they’ve been to the headteacher’s office about you, after they’ve learnt things about you that you thought would go away. I remember the words that came quietly spilling out of my mother’s mouth when I was in a similar position to Phoebe, how each syllable was a stinging blow that I can recall without trying too hard. I remember the way I didn’t speak at all until she stopped, and how I stayed silent as she ignored me for a whole week because I’d brought such shame onto our family.

This is different, though: ignoring this will not make it go away; pretending it’s not happening is not going to cure anything. I lower my fork and rest its prongs up on the edge of my plate. ‘The thing is, Phoebe, you can’t shrug this away.’ My voice is calm and reasonable, not at all how I feel inside. ‘It might be the way you want to deal with this, but you can’t handle an adult problem by behaving like a child.’

‘That’s how you see me, isn’t it?’ she says on the edge of a screech, her face screwed up like a wounded, cornered wild animal about to attack. ‘As a problem! That’s all I am to you, isn’t it? A problem!’

I have no idea what I’m doing here, of course. Joel would probably know. He’d work out how to deal with this, the right thing to say, the correct way to act. Me?

I keep thinking: SHE IS PREGNANT.

I keep thinking: SHE HAS BEEN HAVING SEX.

I keep thinking: SHE DIDN’T TELL ME.

Twelve months ago my daughter was still asking me to buy her
cuddly toys. Six months ago she was still racing her brother to the top of the slide in the park and screaming in joy as they slid to the bottom. Three months ago she was thirteen and still a little girl. My little girl. But she’s been having sex like an adult for God knows how long. And getting pregnant like an adult. Then reacting like a child. How am I supposed to know how to deal with it?