The Good Girl (4 page)

I waited for Loveday to go over to Wolf and squeeze his lower arm in the way that Mum did with Dad when she wanted him to stop doing something, but she didn’t.

Their garden was already a chaos of half-open boxes and random objects that didn’t fit into conventional packing schemes. Like, for example, a family of wooden giraffes, taller than Ben, which had been knocked over and now lay on their sides staring at us. Or the growing pile of woven carpets to the left of the back door. The packers already had to pick their way round these objects when they carried heavy bits of carved wooden furniture into the house. But Wolf continued to unpack instruments from the box until he found a set of bongos, which he placed in front of him and started playing. He sat cross-legged with his eyes closed.

‘He’s
quite good,’ said Ben.

‘Anyone can play the bloody bongos,’ said Dad. ‘They’re the African equivalent of the recorder.’

‘That’s a bit harsh,’ I said.

‘Four Fairports,’ said Ben, pressing the binoculars so hard to his eyes that when he finally put them down it looked as though he was wearing red-rimmed glasses. He carefully wrote this down in one of his many notebooks.

I should probably say right now that Ben has some non-specific developmental issues that can’t be parcelled up in a tidy title like dyslexia or dyspraxia. At least this is what I have heard my parents say to other adults. Basically he’s a bit weird. Instead of labels I prefer descriptions. Ben keeps every bus, train and tube ticket that has ever been bought for him and sticks each one on his bedroom wall in a predetermined pattern. Once Luke removed a train ticket and replaced it with one of his own and Ben noticed immediately. He hoards food. Mum has found packets of crisps at the back of his wardrobe and we got mice at our old home because he had taken up a floorboard to hide biscuits. He also loves manuals and keeps box files of them in his bedroom: instructions for Lego, mobile phones, computers. He isn’t choosy. He mostly beats us all at Cluedo, which is his current favourite obsession.

Sometimes I think that if Dad wasn’t an expert in the adolescent brain Ben might just have been allowed to be the family eccentric instead of being sent off to special
ists. Actually, this is what my grandfather said, but I tend to agree with him. Dad said Grandpa resisted labels because he used to be an alcoholic.

‘I am a question with no answer,’ Ben once declared over dinner after an autism expert decided that he didn’t fit the criteria. But Dad is a scientist and believes there is an explanation for everything if you try hard enough to find it. I think that sometimes you just have to accept that there isn’t. ‘Shit happens, and you just have to deal with it,’ as my Aunt Rachel is so fond of saying. Our family has a lot of sayings but they all tend to contradict each other.

I was so distracted by the drumming and Dad’s reaction to it that I missed the moment when Jay walked into the garden for the first time.

‘Two boys,’ declared Ben, squinting through his binoculars again. ‘Bish, bash, bosh.’

Later I asked Ben why he said that. Was it because he once had a Bish Bash Bosh train as part of his Thomas the Tank Engine set? Was it something recorded in his notebook on the page reserved for favourite phrases? Or did he see Jay and Marley shove each other? Did they jostle to see who could get through the gate first? Ben couldn’t remember. He consulted his notebook for clues. But on the page dedicated to the first day the Fairports moved in next door there was nothing but a rough pencil drawing of a huge fire. A vital clue had been lost.

The four of them came together to stand in an arc, looking up at their new home. Just as they were still, the
sun came out from behind a cloud, bathing them in a blinding arc of light. A ray bounced off our window and the Fairports all turned towards us at the same time, shielding their eyes from the glare. Jay pointed directly at me. His hair was thick and curly and hid his eyes so I couldn’t see where he was looking. We all ducked down, even Dad, and giggled manically.

‘What on earth are you all doing?’ asked Mum. We were so involved in what was going on in the Fairports’ garden that we hadn’t heard her coming in through the front door. She noisily piled bags of shopping on the table to make us feel guilty and came over to the window.

‘Good day?’ asked Dad, tickling Ben until he pleaded for mercy.

‘The deputy head pastoral, as she insists on being called, needs managing,’ said Mum. ‘Someone with a deep sense of irony put her in that post. But the head of Biology is a great appointment. Even if I say so myself. What are you hiding from? A family of wooden giraffes?’

We looked out of the window. The Fairports had disappeared into their new home. But one of them had righted the giraffes so that they now stared at us. In part it was nervous laughter because we had been caught doing something faintly illicit. We all laughed longer than the joke deserved. But mainly because over the past year Mum had stopped making jokes, and even though it wasn’t that funny it seemed that my parents’ hopes of the dawning of a great new era weren’t so misplaced after all. Dad stepped out from behind the curtain and
hugged her from behind. And for once she didn’t pull away. Had they always been like this? I wondered. Or was it that I had just started to notice? In my head I thought it had something to do with my grandmother’s death. Mum tried not to cry in front of us but the sunglasses were a giveaway.

The day after this Marley and Jay started school. They had the wrong uniform but didn’t seem to care. Marley lit up in the playground during break and negotiated his way out of detention by arguing that his old school in Ibiza had a more relaxed policy. Very cool. Jay kept himself to himself, hiding beneath his fringe. I don’t think I spoke a word to him until New Year’s Eve. That’s when everything kicked off.

‘Just explain why we are doing this,’ said Harry after locking the front door behind him. ‘I thought the forecast said to avoid unnecessary journeys.’

He put his arm around Ailsa to emphasize this was a joke rather than a challenge and tried to kiss her on the cheek, but at the last minute she moved and he ended up kissing thin air. For a moment they stood together at the top of the stairs locked in a slightly reluctant embrace.

There had been no recriminations over the car. Harry wanted her to acknowledge his tolerance in the same way that he wanted her to respond each time he texted her at school to say that he had put on a wash or renewed the car licence. He had never worked from home before and neither of them had foreseen how their domestic dealings would have to be recalibrated.

Relationships were like amoebas. Constantly changing shape.
Sensitive to tiny environmental changes
, thought Ailsa, staring down at the shiny cream surface of the trifle she was holding. It was their contribution to the Fairports’ New Year’s Eve party. Harry hadn’t waited for the custard to cool and it was leaching into the cream topping like tiny trails of snot. It had been made for her father, in memory of her mother, by her husband, a
sequence of events that was unimaginable less than a year ago. Ailsa wondered what would happen if she plunged her fingers in the cream and shoved a handful into her mouth. She knew her orderly habits irritated those around her. It would be nice to confound expectations and see how that played out.

‘It is a necessary journey,’ called out Rachel from the garden below. ‘Ailsa has to do penance for crashing into them.’ No mention of her role in the drama. Ailsa struggled to conjure up irritation towards Rachel for her latest entanglement but she couldn’t. She never managed to stay angry with her sister for long. Besides, it was no more likely to fail or succeed than any other of her relationships and she didn’t want the burden of disapproval.

‘I was ambushed in a moment of weakness,’ said Ailsa as she carefully negotiated her way down the icy steps into the garden, trifle cradled under one arm, and joined everyone else at the bottom to debate the best route through the thick snow to the house next door. ‘They’ve asked before and I’ve turned them down. I couldn’t say no again.’

‘We need some new friends,’ said Harry.

‘I suppose it’s marginally better than staying at home like a bunch of sad fucks …’

‘Luke,’ warned Ailsa, nudging him in the small of the back with the crystal bowl, but he didn’t feel anything through the layers of thick clothes.

‘I think I’d rather be a sad fuck,’ muttered Romy.

The snow had stopped and the moon was visible for the first time in days. Everything was white and even
usually murky corners of the garden gave off a strange luminous glow. It had snowed so much again that the bumper dislocated from the car earlier that day was already buried.

‘It’s radioactive,’ shouted Ben. ‘Like a nuclear winter.’

‘God, you can see for miles,’ said Adam, looking across the street to the fields beyond. His anxiety about getting back home to visit the grave had dissipated as soon as the prospect of a party presented itself.

‘It’s to do with the luminosity of snow,’ explained Romy. ‘The snow albedo is really high. I learned it in Physics.’

‘You are so knowledgeable,’ said Harry. It was the wrong thing to say. Romy was immune to flattery, and his increasing desperation to maintain the closeness they had once enjoyed only pushed her further away. She had never been a people pleaser.

‘Millions of Physics students know that,’ said Romy with a shrug. ‘It’s in all the textbooks.’

The recently cleared path to the front gate was covered in a thick layer of fresh snow and beneath it was as slippery as glass. Ben gingerly stepped out to test the ground and fell over. He lay on his back, rolling around like a seal and giggling. A half-eaten chocolate reindeer slipped out of his pocket. Romy pulled him up.

‘Let’s go through their back garden,’ said Ben. ‘It’ll be easier for Grandpa.’

‘How do we do that?’ questioned Ailsa, suspicious of Ben’s sudden attack of empathy.

‘There’s
nothing wrong with my legs,’ protested Adam. ‘The doctor said I’ve got the flexibility of a thirty-five-year-old.’

‘I’ve created an opening,’ Ben announced. ‘It’s a really good route. But you mustn’t tell anyone.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Harry.

‘I took down some of the fence so that I could come and go into the woods,’ explained Ben. He had timed his revelation well.

‘Wreck head,’ said Romy. It was probably an insult but since Ailsa didn’t know what it meant she could hardly pull her up. Instead Ailsa’s attention was drawn to Romy’s long bare legs. She was wearing a denim miniskirt and fur-lined Ugg boots. Don’t say anything, she warned herself.

‘You’ll freeze,’ Ailsa said seconds after this thought.

‘I’ve thought about the message I’m sending out,’ said Romy. ‘I’m telling people that I have really healthy circulation because I don’t feel the cold, which means I have a good supply of oxygen in my bloodstream.’

‘The message you think you are sending might not be the message that other people receive,’ Ailsa pointed out.

‘They all wear the same thing,’ Luke intervened. ‘Marnie and Becca look exactly the same.’

Ailsa tried a new tack. ‘Have you ever considered why female singers perform in their underwear while the men get to keep their clothes on?’ she asked, remembering something she had read in a book she had bought for the library at her old school.

‘Because
they make more money,’ replied Romy. ‘There’s an inverse correlation between the amount of clothes they wear and the money they earn. Look, I’m not exactly going out in my underwear, Mum.’

‘I can practically see your knickers.’

‘If Luke was wearing this outfit would you have the same reaction? Because I think there’s a double standard operating here.’

‘Girls are becoming conditioned to the idea that they have to look sexually available all the time by showing more flesh than boys,’ said Ailsa. ‘You don’t see Harry Styles dancing in his pants.’

‘Unfortunately,’ said Rachel.

‘Girls have nicer bodies,’ said Luke.

‘Not helpful, Luke,’ said Ailsa. ‘Or Rachel.’

‘It’s because we live in a country where we aren’t required to hide our sexuality behind a veil,’ said Romy. ‘What is it you’re scared of, Mum? Do you think I look slutty? That I might get the wrong attention from the wrong man? Because if I do, I think that is his problem not mine. Or is it that I don’t reflect well on you? Because I thought that feminism was about being free to wear what you like.’ She sounded genuinely confused. And so was Ailsa. There was a lot of cognitive dissonance involved in being the parent of a girl. She told Romy frequently that she could do anything with her life but not that she would still have to work harder than any man to prove herself. She said that any job was within her reach but not that she might want to choose a career that was
compatible with family life. She told her that she regretted hating so many parts of her own body when she was a teenager then berated Romy when she had the confidence in hers to wear short skirts.

‘You look great, Romy,’ said Ailsa finally.

‘Thanks,’ said Romy deadpan.

Badly done, Ailsa
, Ailsa told herself.

Away from the path, the snow was deeper but less slippery. Ben led the way, making deep footprints with his snow boots so that everyone else could follow in his tracks. Adam shuffled along in his trail, wearing wellington boots two sizes too big. Rachel walked behind her father, ostentatiously holding her arms out to catch him, to demonstrate that at least for tonight she was there for him. Harry opted for the virgin snow beside Ailsa and offered to carry the trifle. Ben stopped beside a deep flower bed by the fence separating the two properties. He narrowed his eyes to examine a snow-covered willow, shaking a branch to create a mini flurry that fell onto everyone’s heads.

‘It’s this one,’ he said triumphantly.

‘How can you tell?’ asked Luke, peering into the flower bed.

‘The branches look like a corkscrew,’ said Ben. He stepped four paces forward and turned left into the undergrowth. Moments later he emerged holding four slats of wood, which he stacked beneath the willow in a well-practised routine.

‘Follow me,’ he instructed. They obediently walked
behind him in single file, heads bowed, like an army in retreat, and guiltily regrouped in the Fairports’ back garden. ‘Don’t break any branches. According to Ray Mears, it’s a dead giveaway.’

‘What exactly do you do here, Ben?’ asked Rachel.

‘Observe,’ said Ben, gratified by the attention. ‘Mum wanted to know what they were building in the woods. And I can tell you even though it’s got shelves, it definitely isn’t a pizza oven. It’s way too big. Unless they’re going to cook human beings.’

‘Don’t use me as an excuse for your nosiness,’ retorted Ailsa. She paused. ‘So what does it look like inside?’

‘I can stand but my head almost touches the roof. It’s really long and there’s a big pit in the middle,’ explained Ben. ‘In one corner there’s lots of really big stones and a shelf with candles. It’s really dark. And there aren’t any windows.’

‘Spooky,’ teased Harry.

‘What have you learned about them?’ asked Luke. ‘Because people are generally way more interesting than buildings.’

‘The youngest boy smokes in his room and has a poster of Nicki Minaj on the wall. His room is painted blood red, even the ceiling.’

‘I can see that from my room,’ scoffed Luke.

‘Who’s Nicki Minaj?’ asked Harry.

‘She’s a singer. Looks like porno Barbie,’ said Luke. ‘Breast implants, buttock implants, lip implants, toe implants. The works.’

‘Luke,’
warned Ailsa.

‘What does porno mean?’ asked Ben.

‘Pawnee,’ said Luke quickly, ‘as in the native Indian tribe from Nebraska.’

Luke stopped for a moment. Ailsa noticed his shoulders were already straining against a jacket bought only one month earlier. For the past three years Romy had looked down on her brother from a position of willowy grace. In less than six months Luke had overtaken first her, then Ailsa and finally his own father. Ailsa often caught herself staring at him in the kitchen, observing how the box of breakfast cereal looked tiny in his enormous hand or how dark hair had suddenly sprouted on his calves. His school trousers were already too short and even his hands were hairy. She couldn’t remember such sudden changes since he was a baby. Back then every new development had been faithfully recorded with a camera. Now she had to steal a glimpse. Everything about him was extreme. He was either immobile, sprawled on the sofa listening to music through headphones, or in loud, clumsy motion. He was ravenously hungry or completely full. Very angry or very happy. The polarity took her breath away.

He had fallen in with a new crowd almost as soon as he’d started at school. Not quite the right crowd but better than the crew he hung out with in London. He’d been suspended from Ailsa’s old school for stealing a rotary evaporator from the chemistry lab in a botched attempt to concoct his own version of the legal high
mephedrone from bath salts. Except it transpired that he couldn’t even get this right because Romy told Ailsa that the lab equipment he had taken turned liquids into solids. At Highfield the worst he’d done so far was get caught smoking by the head of Biology and he had got off with a verbal warning.

After the smoking incident Ailsa and Harry had sat down with Luke and explained that his behaviour reflected badly on his parents and undermined his mother. Luke professed to understand and was apologetic rather than defensive. Then last week Ailsa had found a packet of cigarette papers in his school blazer. She had mentioned this to Harry, who had told Luke that if he smoked too much marijuana his hippocampus would shrink and his short-term memory would fail. ‘I’ll bear that in mind, Dad,’ said Luke. ‘If I remember.’

‘I went there once with your mother,’ said Adam as they walked across the Fairports’ garden. ‘Ailsa, are you listening?’

Ailsa pulled herself out of her thoughts.

‘What are you talking about, Dad?’ asked Rachel.

‘Nebraska. We went up into the mountains to go fishing in Big Elk Park. I caught a huge salmon but your mother wanted me to put it back in the water. I refused. I tried to find my club to kill it but it was at the bottom of the bag.’

Adam stopped and stared straight ahead as if describing a scene unfolding in front of him.

‘The
fish flapped around our feet, trying to slide back into the water. The more it struggled the wider its eyes got. It was pleading for a second chance but I didn’t let it have one. It choked to death. I regret that decision now. It wasn’t the worst one I ever made. But it was close. Georgia never forgave me. Refused to eat fish ever again. Probably why she ended up having a heart attack. Omega oil deficiency.’

‘Come on, Dad,’ said Ailsa gently, taking his arm.

‘Don’t worry, Grandpa, a fish’s brain isn’t developed enough to feel pain,’ said Romy. ‘We learned about it in Biology Club.’