This Is Not Forgiveness (17 page)

‘It was Rob,’ she says it quickly, as if she wants to get this over. ‘Rob told me.’

‘But how . . .’

‘There’s something you ought to know.’

Then she tells me what really happened at Martha’s party.

I leave in the cold, early morning. I don’t know if it’s the mescal, or what she’s told me, but my face feels stiff, like a mask. I feel disarticulated, as if my arms and legs don’t belong to my body. I can’t feel my feet but I manage to put one in front of the other. I’ve got plenty to think about on the long walk home.

Chapter 23

‘If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.’

Attrib. Emma Goldman

I don’t know if Emma G really said it, but I hope she did.

He’s right. I shouldn’t drink. Never mind the driving bit. I can’t keep track of what I’m saying. Why did I tell him about his dad? I promised Rob I wouldn’t. It just slipped out. I certainly shouldn’t drink mescal; it acts like a truth drug. I was wrecked and reckless, or I never would have told him. Or what happened at Martha’s birthday. Despite reports to the contrary, I’m not that much of a bitch.

He’s perceptive. He knew I’d been lying about the party. He just didn’t know why. Of course I remember.

I felt out of place. Had done all night. I was new to the school. My friendship with Martha had happened quickly (she’s like that, given to sudden enthusiasms for people) and developed with an intensity that bewildered me. I should have been more wary. I was nearly a year younger than her, even though we were in the same year group. Her friends didn’t like me for taking her away from them and I didn’t really fit in.

It was all dependent on Martha. If she’d been on my side, it would have been OK, but she wasn’t. That’s the other thing about her, she can turn for no reason. All it takes is some slight, real or imagined, and she’s not your friend any more. Bad time for it to happen. During the evening, I felt her turning against me, siding with the others. As soon as they saw this, they were on me like a pack of dogs. From my choice of pizza topping, to the clothes I was wearing, everything I did, everything I said, was wrong and open to ridicule. Martha didn’t join in – she just sat back and watched, enjoying the power she had over them – and me. I’d have gone, but I didn’t want them to know how much they were getting to me and I didn’t want to upset her mum who’d gone to a lot of trouble. I escaped to her bedroom, joining the ones who’d had too much of the spiked Fanta. I figured I’d rather be puked on than take the outpouring of vitriol down in the living room. I’d just stay there. Wait it out.

It looked like it was going to be a long night. One, two, three o’clock in the morning. I heard Martha’s mum go down and have a word, turn off the TV. I pretended to be asleep as Martha came in to claim her bed. The others had to find somewhere to crash on the floor. I couldn’t sleep. The more I thought about it, the worse it got. It wasn’t just the stuffiness that got me, the proximity of bodies. It was their hostility. The room was crowded, but there was a cordon sanitaire around me. The latecomers had stumbled in, whispering, giggling, taking exaggerated care not to set their sleeping bags near to me. I felt trapped. My sleeping bag binding round me like a nylon coffin. I was choking back tears as I lay there, eyes open, with the darkness beginning to take on substance, weighing down on me, clogging my nose and mouth like black cotton wool. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t want to disturb the others, but I knew I couldn’t stay there. I had to get up.

It was easier than I thought. Once I was standing, the panic left me. The darkness seemed less total. I could see a path through the bodies to the door. As soon as I was out of the room, I began to feel better. The air was cool. There was light from the street outside. I remembered where the bathroom was. Second door on the right. I crept down the corridor, not wanting to wake any of the family.

I didn’t know what the time was, but I guessed it must be getting towards morning. I thought everybody but me was asleep, but a light showed from the room at the end of the hall. I don’t know why I did it, but I glided past the bathroom and went to look through the crack in the door.

Rob was lying on the bed. I don’t know how old he was. Seventeen? Eighteen? He was back from his first tour. He was more man than boy now. It was a hot night and there was a sheen over his skin; the muscles showed: curved and shadowed, like sculpture. He was wearing briefs, but he might as well have been naked. I was transfixed.

He must have heard me – sensed me, anyway. He didn’t say anything but he got off the bed. I just stood there as he padded over and opened the door. He invited me into his room.

‘Can’t sleep?’

I didn’t say anything. I just stood there.

‘Me neither. It’s the heat. Want some of this?’ He offered me cider that he had down by the side of the bed. I shook my head.

‘What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue? You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. Have you been crying?’ He wiped a tear from my cheek with his thumb. ‘Come here.’

He put his arms round me. He’d just had a shower. His hair was still wet. He smelt of mint and marshmallow. His skin felt smooth. He kissed me then. His mouth hard on mine. I’d never even been kissed before, not like this, anyway – by someone who knew what he was doing. Before I knew it, we were on the bed. He pushed my hair back from my face and smiled. Then he peeled off my top. I didn’t even try to stop him. I was curious. Curious to know all the things I’d heard hinted at, whispered about. If I was a novice, he was not. The most surprising thing was I liked it. The kissing and caressing made me feel things that I had never felt before, made me feel special and powerful. In the way that girls calculated such things then, I went from zero to ten.

Afterwards, he asked me if I was all right.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Fine.’

It was my first time. I didn’t want him to know that, but I’m sure he guessed. I just lay there next to him. I remember feeling released. I’d done it. I didn’t need to wonder what it was like any more. I had to get out of the room without anyone knowing. The worst thing, the very worst thing, would be for them all to know what had happened.

I slid off the bed and left him, let myself out quietly, still worried about waking people. As soon as I was out of the room, the shock of what had happened hit me like a cold blast of air. I had to steady myself against the wall. Above all else, above every other consideration, I did not want anyone to know.

Fat chance of that. Martha saw me. She was waiting for me when I came out of his room. I could see in her eyes that she knew. I went to push past her. She put her arm up to stop me.

‘Don’t think you can go back there like nothing has happened.’ She hissed the words close to my ear. ‘Get out, you little slag.’

She threw my stuff down the stairs by way of encouragement and I left, walking through the night. Martha’s mum must have phoned mine. She drove out and found me.

She was annoyed.

‘What’s the matter with you? What made you walk out like that?’

I wasn’t going to tell her, so I said nothing.

In the face of my silence, she filled the air between us with complaints, about me. I wasn’t normal, how could I be? What was I doing, walking out of somebody’s house in the middle of the night? What would people think? That girl’s poor mother must have been beside herself. You hear such terrible stories. I was so selfish. Never thought about anyone else. Never thought about
consequences
. No wonder I didn’t have any friends. Didn’t I have anything to say?

I shook my head and stared out of the window.

I took after my father; he’d always been a loner. Always the same. The silent treatment. Didn’t I have a tongue in my head? If I wasn’t careful, I’d be going the same way.
He’d
ruined her life. She wasn’t about to let me do the same. Didn’t I
want
her to be happy? Why didn’t I think about
her
for a change?

As if I ever had the chance to do anything else
.

Didn’t I want some security for both of us? Didn’t I want us to be part of a proper family? I could see where this was going. She was talking about Trevor. They weren’t married then.

Did I think she could go on for ever, doing everything? Did I think one income was enough? She was still a young woman (well, comparatively). Didn’t she deserve a bit of companionship?

I let her follow the well-worn grooves of her complaints against me, against life in general and the hand it had dealt her. Everything was my fault. I’d ruined her life just by being born. That was when it all began to go wrong. Everything was fine before that. Perfect, in fact. I was a mistake.

She used to go on about that in her rows with Dad.

I wasn’t really listening. I’d heard it all before. I wore the guilt like a pinching shoe. You can get used to anything in time.

Not long after that the whispers started, the messages, notes passed around, magic marker in the toilets, at the bus stop.

Vanessa Carington is A SLAG

What do I care? It wasn’t me up there. They couldn’t even spell my name correctly. Martha was behind it, I’m pretty sure of that, although she never said anything to my face. She sowed the seeds. No one ever knew what I’d done, or who I’d been with, to earn the sobriquet, but then nobody cared. Gossip creates its own reality. I am a slag because everyone says I am. Impossible to defend yourself against that, so I didn’t bother. It amused me that people called me that but didn’t know exactly why. That was not the reaction Martha expected. The campaign intensified. It didn’t work, because I simply didn’t care.

When I told Jamie, he lied and said it didn’t matter. I didn’t know whether to love or despise him for that. I ought to finish with him. Now. Stop dragging it out. It seems like every time I see him, I hurt him. He doesn’t deserve that. I still haven’t told him everything. That would finish it for good and I need him. He’s my lode-stone, the compass that points me towards normal. I’m not ready to let him go. I want to make it up to him, so I begin downloading music: The Vaccines, Arcade Fire, Cold War Kids, Friendly Fires, Crystal Castles, along with older stuff: Libertines, Smiths, Stone Roses. The kind of thing I think he will like.

What I
didn’t
tell him is that Rob and I went on seeing each other. He was there one day outside school, waiting for Martha. He had a car and was supposed to take her somewhere. He went home with me. We began meeting. In secret. He had a girlfriend back then so it was all very clandestine. The secrecy made it doubly exciting. We’d hook up when he was home on leave. I’d get a text and meet him. We’d go somewhere no one would see us, like the allotment shed or
al fresco
out on the ait. Sometimes a cheap motel on the ring road or off the motorway.

When he was away, he used to send me stuff. Video diaries. He’s not one for writing. The early ones were funny – montages spliced together with a soldier’s blunt, black humour. They got progressively less humorous until they were harrowing. Brutal as a bayonet.

And then I didn’t hear from him any more. I only knew he was home because of Martha. She’d begun Avon Against the War by that time. How they trembled in Whitehall and Washington. She organised petitions, went on demonstrations. I joined just to piss her off. There was nothing she could do about it. Societies were open to any member of the school body. Some of the staff were doubtful about the politics (they do tend to the conservative) but they were keen on anything that would encourage the girls to think about something other than boys, going out, MTV and vacuous TV series.

Rob was her prime exhibit. Look what’s happened to my brother. His leg’s shattered, he has post-traumatic stress disorder. He might
never
be normal.

I’d smile to myself. Who said he was normal in the first place? Then I’d think about how he’d react if he knew she’d told the whole school about him.

He
won’t be returning to the front line, but others will, she’d say, fixing us with her steely gaze. Boys like him. To brutalise and be brutalised in turn on war’s eternal carousel.

She’s right about that but petitions and peaceful protests aren’t going to change a thing. No one cares. Even Martha has moved on to other causes: eco issues, wind farms, carbon footprint. They must be made to care.

The front line is always somewhere else. Never here.

But it’s getting closer.

Time to bring it right back home.

Chapter 24

I don’t hear from her. It’s because of the thing she told me. Has to be. I want to tell her it doesn’t matter, but I can’t text her or call her because I haven’t got her number. I jump every time I hear my phone’s ringtone or the buzz of an incoming message. I sleep with the phone right next to me in case she calls in the middle of the night, in case she messages me. I’m on it before the first ring ends, just as it begins to buzz, but it’s never her. It’s always Cal or one of my other friends. As soon as I see who it is, I shut off the call and don’t answer.