Are You My Mother? (16 page)

I, however, remained staring at the blank screen, struck with a gigantic realisation. I absolutely could not believe that I had never thought of it before. It was so incredibly, glaringly
obvious
… I’d have to ask Mack to help me, though. I wasn’t sure which of those search engine thingies to use, and I couldn’t ask Stella. Not yet. But at least it would be a start; the start I’d been putting off making for two weeks.

Thanks, Lori Singer, I told her, and imagined her like an angel, smiling soporifically at me and playing me a special little aria on the cello, glad that she could have been of assistance. Because, the thing was, I already knew my birthmother’s surname.

After finding that letter with her Christian name and address on it, ten years ago, I’d phoned up the reference library in Salisbury, where a lovely old librarian with a tweedy-sounding voice had gone and looked her up for me on the local Electoral Register. I later found out exactly the same information by the more straightforward method of sending off for my birth certificate, but at the time I hadn’t realised you could do that, and I’d been utterly elated at my discovery. I had sent my own letter again, bursting with renewed hope and unbearable anticipation, this time with her full name on the front – Ann Paramor – and PLEASE FORWARD; but once again it had been returned to me, either stubbornly or blithely unopened, and all my earlier resolve had crumbled away, defeated.

I turned to Mack. ‘Are you busy tonight? Do you fancy coming round to watch
Men In Black
on TV with me? There’s beer in the fridge, and Stella’s going out, so I could do with the company.’ I could ask him then, I thought. When Stella’s out.

‘
Aren’t you seeing Gavin tonight?’

I narrowed my eyes at Stella when Mack wasn’t looking, willing her not to say anything, but she was engrossed in a copy of last month’s
Company
magazine, and didn’t seem to have heard.

‘
No. So, are you up for it, or what?’

‘
Sure. I’ll come round at about eight then, shall I?’

Chapter 15

Stella was leaving to meet Suzanne at the pub, just as Mack came back that evening. She was dressed in one of her own designs; a PVC and cotton miniskirt with trapped rose petals, and her legs flowed out like solidified golden syrup from underneath it.

‘
Inspired by natural forms,’ she remarked smugly, as she noticed Mack’s pale-fringed eyes tracking over her cinematically.

‘
So I see,’ he replied, not meaning the skirt at all. I gave him a look, which was lost on him until Stella had left the flat in a cloud of CK One, banging the front door behind her; my exhortations to be careful hanging in the air, mingling with the perfume.

‘
She’s very easy on the eye, your sis,’ he said wistfully. ‘It’s such a pity she’s so young.’

‘
Yeah.’ I flipped the top off a beer and handed it to Mack. ‘I really worry about her,’ I said abruptly.

‘
Well, you shouldn’t,’ he replied, taking a long swig, and putting his palm over his mouth to suppress a little burp. ‘Stella’s old enough and – ‘

He evidently realised that by no stretch of the imagination could the expression ‘old enough and ugly enough’ ever be applied to Stella, so he stopped. ‘Old enough to enough to look after herself’, he concluded. ‘I mean it, Emma. She’ll do whatever she’s going to do, and she’ll be fine – she’s not stupid. In fact, Stella is one of the most self-possessed women I’ve met, even at her age. She knows what she wants.’

‘
She’s had enough practice where men are concerned, I suppose,’ I said, changing my mind about the cup of tea I was making, and helping myself to a beer as well. I suddenly had a craving for its sharp fizzy clarity, and not the brown workaday dreariness of tea. Perhaps if I drank less tea, I too would be going out on dates as often as Stella.

The stupidity of the thought made me laugh – Stella had men of all ages falling at her platform soles, and it had everything to do with her blonde hair, porcelain skin and Kate Moss body, and bugger all to do with how much tea she did or didn’t drink.

‘
She’s ten years younger than me but she’s still probably been out with more than twice the blokes that I have. And she and her mates are so
experienced.
They talk about all this stuff that I hardly even know about - God, for all I know, she might even be
doing
it!’

Stell and Suzanne behaved like men, as far as I could see; strutting about, proud of their sexuality and the discerning manner in which they erroneously believed they distributed it. The picture I had of them, flitting around from one preternaturally hormonal boy to another like two bumblebees bouncing around inside different flowers, nothing in it for them except the thrill of fresh pollen dusting their noses, could have scared me witless, if I let it.

‘
Doing what? Having sex?’

‘
No – although I know she is. I meant, doing all the stuff that they giggle about. Frottage. Water sports….’ I couldn’t think of anything else.

Mack laughed. ‘I’d say it’s extremely unlikely. Since when have teenagers ever done more than about five percent of the things they discuss? Give yourself a break, why don’t you? She’s an adult. What she gets up to in the privacy of her own room is really none of your business.’ His face assumed a wistful expression, and it was not difficult to imagine what he was thinking.

We adjourned to the living room. ‘Have a seat. The film doesn’t start till nine,’ I said, waving an arm towards our plum sofa, where we sat in silence for a few minutes, drinking our beers and listening to the traffic noises outside the window. The sound of cars passing reminded me of the suck and crash of waves on a shore.

‘
Haven’t you had many boyfriends then?’

‘
No. A few flings here or there before Gavin, but he’s been the only serious one…’ I tailed off. I still didn’t know why I hadn’t told Mack about Gavin finishing with me. I supposed I felt it was too humiliating to admit. If Mack had been a girl, I’d have told him like a shot, but ours wasn’t really that sort of friendship. I had a sudden craving for a close girlfriend or two; that mutual combination of secret vocabulary, fan club, personal shopper, shrink and punchbag, the way that Stella and Suzanne were with each other.

‘
Stella must have started young, to have been out with twice as many boys as you.’

‘
Actually,’ I said, pulling a scratchy little feather out of the sofa cushion, ‘we started at the same age – thirteen. The difference was that I didn’t get another date for about four years after my first one, and she’s had a different boyfriend approximately every month since then.’

‘
Well, at least with all that experience you can be sure she won’t let anyone try it on with her. Innocence is probably the biggest danger, especially combined with drop-dead beauty like Stella’s.’

‘
Whatever,’ I said, morosely.

Mack glanced at me, and realised that perhaps he’d been extolling Stella’s physical virtues a little excessively. ‘So, tell me about your first ever date,’ he said, nudging me into a smile.

‘
Funny you should ask, actually. I was only thinking about him the other day. He was called Pat Short, which was a bit unfortunate because he was this teeny little second year from the boys’ grammar. He looked like he ought to have a catapult and a copy of the Beano sticking out of his back pocket.’

Mack laughed, stretching back on the sofa and sticking his red All-Stars out in front of him. God, I hated those All-Stars. No wonder he couldn’t pull, I thought bitchily.

‘
Where did you meet?’

‘
In the children’s library. I was getting some more Dr. Seuss books out for Stella. I don’t know what Pat’s excuse for being in there was - he probably thought that all those miniature tables and chairs might make him seem bigger. He slipped me a note.’

‘
How romantic.’

‘
Wait – you haven’t heard the best bit. It said something like “do you want to go out with me?” and it was signed Hawkwind.’

Mack spluttered into his beer. ‘
Hawkwind
? As in, the band? I thought you said his name was Pat?’

‘
It was. He just liked Hawkwind, that’s all. Of course, I’d never heard of them, and so I thought some tall, gorgeous, nut-brown Cherokee was writing me notes, but when I looked around, all I saw was this undersized schoolboy with National Health glasses like mine on. He was sort of gurning at me and staring at my boobs like he had X ray vision, so then I realised it must be him.’

‘
Did you have boobs at thirteen?’

‘
Yes, actually. The trouble is, they stopped growing when I was fourteen.’ I cupped my hands over my chest protectively, trying to imagine that they were Gavin’s hands on my bare breasts, like that Janet Jackson album cover. I felt my nipples harden at the thought – it was an odd sensation, to be simultaneously aroused and depressed. I wondered, yet again, what Gavin was up to that evening.

‘
So then what?’

‘
Oh, well, to cut a long story short, we went to see
Footloose
together, but I left before the film had even begun.’

The date had been a disaster from the start. It was just after Easter, and, to save having to buy overpriced jellybabies in the cinema, I’d brought with me the large box of Maltesers I’d been given as an Easter gift: Mum and Dad had laid on an Easter egg hunt in the garden for Stella, and the Maltesers were a tacit acknowledgment of the fact that I was too old to hunt under bushes for my chocolate.

Once we had paid – individually – for our tickets, Pat had led me, with an authority belying his size, straight to the back row. We sat down, with him on my left, and I crinkled the cellophane off my Maltesers. As I offered the box to him, two things happened.

Firstly, he immediately slid his right arm around my shoulders, before the previews had even started. He was clearly aiming for my right breast, but unless his arm were suddenly to grow about eight inches, he didn’t stand a chance. But he kept trying, valiantly pressing himself closer and closer to me until he was practically squashing me into my seat. I could smell the Brylcreem in his thick blond hair, and the warm teenage funk of Right Guard unsuccessfully disguising armpit sweat.

The second thing that happened was that his left hand began robotically stuffing Maltesers –
my
Maltesers - into his mouth. He reminded me of a game Stella had at home, called Hungry Hippos, where you had to make four primary-coloured hippos leap up and swallow as many yellow balls as you could, as fast as you could.

I had recoiled in horror from this dual onslaught. Every time I tried to move either myself or my box of Maltesers, his relentless hands would follow, squeezing and cramming. It felt as if those hands had some kind of inbuilt homing instinct, since he never once looked at me or spoke to me. His eyes remained fixed on the screen. I closed the lid of the box, but his fingers slid beneath it. Then I placed the box on the floor by my feet, but he reached down and pulled it across to beneath his own feet. Before
Footloose
had even begun, I’d had enough. Ripping his arm away from where it was draped, tentacle-like, across my back, I stood up.

‘
If you want them all that much, why don’t you just
finish them!
’

I had dumped the box and the remaining six Maltesers over his head, where one stuck, unnoticed, in the Brylcreemed thatch; and pushed my way past the rest of the snogging couples in the back row, stepping on toes and kicking over buckets of popcorn. Pat Short gazed after me, open-mouthed, but made no attempt to follow.

When I got home I shut myself in the larder, sitting down on the hard concrete floor next to a sack of King Edwards, and sobbed without restraint. Dad heard me, opened the door, and squeezed in next to me.

‘
Aren’t you supposed to be at the pictures?’

He hugged me to his chest, and I thought how different it felt to Pat’s skinny insistent grip. I pushed my face into the warm cotton of his shirt.

‘
He….he….put his arm around me.’

Dad stroked my hair. ‘Don’t worry, chicken, I’m sure you told him what’s what. But, on the other hand, who wouldn’t want to put their arm around a gorgeous girl like you? Is that why you’re back so early?’

Agonised, I lifted up my head so I could look him in the eyes. My glasses were partially steamed up with tears, making him seem edgeless, less substantial. ‘No, Dad, I left because he….he….he –‘

‘
What?
’ Now Dad was beginning to get worried. I could tell he was ready to go round to Pat Short’s house and give him a good kicking, and I’d felt delighted. ‘What, darling, tell Daddy. It’s OK. Shhh, tell Daddy.’

Taking a deep breath, I stammered, ‘Daddy,
he ate all my Easter Maltesers’
, before collapsing into a fresh storm of sobs. When I surfaced again, Dad’s mouth was twitching. He bit the inside of his lip, and swiped a hand roughly across his face, as if trying to wipe away his grin. Then he tousled my hair, gave me another hug, and stood up, his hand resting on the shelf between a tin of peaches and a box of Quaker Oats.