Lessons in Laughing Out Loud (42 page)

“I imagine it is,” Willow said.

“And then one night Daniel came round, and I was supposed to be in bed but I could hear raised voices and them talking about you. Well, I didn’t know where you’d gone or why Dad was so upset so I got out of bed and crept to the front door. They were standing in the corridor, yelling, but in whispers. Daniel was worried about you, he was saying Sam had overreacted, that what happened wasn’t your fault, that it was all due to him. He said that you loved Dad, and that what happened had been a silly mistake and that it had meant nothing to you. He said if Dad had an ounce of sense he’d take you back. Dad said he’d drop dead before he took any advice
from Daniel.” Chloe shrugged. “I knew there had been some sort of argument between the three of you, but as far as I was concerned Dad was in the wrong. Daniel said you were sorry, that it was his fault, not yours. I couldn’t understand why Dad wouldn’t make up with you and of course he wouldn’t explain it to me. And in all these years since, I’ve been angry about it, angry about him taking you away from me. I just didn’t get it, and what really upset me was that half the time, neither did he. When I was looking for your address I found the divorce papers. They had Daniel’s name, and they said adultery.”

Willow let out a long breath, feeling her shoulders and chest deflate.

“I didn’t know that,” Holly said. “I didn’t know he’d called it adultery.”

“He wanted it to be over quickly, and his solicitor said that was the quickest way.” Willow turned to Chloe. “There was never an affair with Daniel, it was a one-off thing and it didn’t get as far as sex. I don’t know why I let it happen . . . I wanted so badly to be happy with you and your father. I regret it every single day. I’m so sorry you had to find out about it, about me, this way.”

“It’s okay,” Chloe said. “It was actually a relief, sort of.”

Willow looked up at her, perplexed.

“Dad’s never been the same since you went, I’m pissed off about that and I’m pissed off that you just left me. But . . . I woke up in the middle of the night, soon after Ed finished it, and it hit me. Like this massive slap in the face, it hit me. He used me, he led me on. He flirted with me and made me believe that things were real between us. But really he just wanted a bit of fun that wasn’t going to interfere with his life. That’s what I was to him. I felt so stupid, what a fucking stupid little girl, to let him, that
pig,
be my first. And now this?” She cradled her belly in her arms. “It’s not fair that one silly mistake
can ruin the rest of your life, is it? I mean I’m young, I’m a kid! How is it fair that trusting in someone, believing in someone, can be your only chance, your last chance? At least when I came to you I knew you’d understand that people sometimes do the wrong thing, even when they don’t mean it. And that sometimes it’s not just something you can move on from.”

Willow shook her head in wonderment as she listened to Chloe, reaching out to stroke her hair back from her face and pulling her into a hug.

“You are an incredible girl,” Willow said. “If your dad could see and hear you now he would be so proud of the young woman you’ve become. To deal with all of this for so long, all on your own, and to have the kind of insight and perspective on it that you do . . . I think you are amazing. I never knew your mum, but she must have been an incredible woman, and loved you so much to have produced a grown-up daughter as grounded and as strong as you.”

“Really?” Chloe’s black eyes filled with tears. “Do you really think that? Because all I ever think is how much I’ve let her down.”

“No, no,” Holly said, her voice uncharacteristically hard. “All you’ve done is be a fifteen-year-old girl. You are the one who’s been let down.”

“What you need to be certain of is the decision you are making now,” Willow said. “Nobody would blame you for deciding that adoption is the right step for you and the baby. But it has to be because that is really what you feel is right, not because you’re scared of the father, or angry at him. This is about you and your child, no one else.”

“Willow is right,” Holly said. “I promise you, when you hold your baby in your arms the love you feel is times about a million the love you feel for any man. It eclipses everything else. The circumstances of how he came about, all the trouble and
pain, won’t matter anymore because he is yours and you are his, and that is all that counts.” Holly smiled. “I’m not saying it wouldn’t be a tough road ahead for you if you kept him. You are so, so young. But I do promise you that if you did decide to keep him, all you would feel for him would be the most powerful, wonderful love.”

Willow found tears filling her own eyes as she listened to Holly talking about her experience of motherhood.

“It’s true,” Willow told Chloe, pulling her forehead in line with hers. “Holly is right.”

“How do you know?” Chloe asked her.

“Because when I saw you standing outside my flat that is
exactly
the way that I felt. My Chloe, my wish come true.”

Chapter
           Seventeen

T
he rare gift of autumnal morning sun streamed in through the window, revealing a chink of perfect blue sky, as if Holly had arranged that only beautiful weather should be permitted outside her beautiful house. Willow stretched, feeling the clean cotton sheets shift beneath her bare skin. She was in the second-best guest room this time. Holly had put Chloe in the nicest room, but it was still like Buckingham Palace compared to her own flat; a place where a person could have a clean mind, free of clutter and shadows. On the rare occasions that Willow came to visit she resolved to give her own place exactly the same treatment as soon as she got home; after all, she must have it in her to be the serene, competent woman her sister was, but somehow it never happened.

She sat up in bed, feeling the heat of the September sun trapped and magnified by all the glass, warming the skin on her bare back. Before anything else Willow slipped on her shoes and immediately felt better. Pulling a shirt on she went to the window and breathed in the horizon. Today looked like a good day to start again, today looked like a day when it might be possible to cut the ballast of the past and sail away up into the sky. Maybe today it would be possible to be free. To leave those locked rooms behind forever. Maybe, just maybe,
this would be the time when the shadows didn’t drag her back again.

Only, before she could do that, she would have to open at least one locked door. And to do that she would have to go back to her mother’s house.

Sam was sitting at the kitchen table when Willow came down, doing his level best to make conversation with little girls, something Willow knew he had once been very good at.

“Do you like scrambled eggs?” Jem was asking him, nose delicately wrinkled as Holly served him up with exactly that on toast. “
I
think it looks like when you’ve got a cold and snot comes out.”

“Jem!” Holly exclaimed. “Try to remember you are a lady!”

“I’m not a lady, I’m a child,” Jem replied, equally exasperated.

“Now you come to mention it . . .” Sam said, regarding the eggs quizzically. Then he grinned and winked at the girls. “Lucky I love snot! Yummy!”

The girls giggled hysterically, tucking into their own eggs with renewed vigor.

Willow was both pleased and worried to see Sam sitting at the table. Chloe needed him here, Willow was sure of that. Equally, though, someone would have to tell Sam about Mr. Jacobs, and Willow was pretty sure that it was going to have to be her.

The three women had sat up a long time last night, Gray entering at one point and then, sensing the situation, tactfully leaving them again, as he had done, without complaint, over the entire span of his relationship with Holly.

They talked around and around all the choices that Chloe had, the older women desperately trying to neither lead nor push her in any direction, simply to help her order her thoughts, to make sense of them, but the more they talked the less clear Chloe seemed.

“Can’t you just tell me what to do?” she had begged Willow at one point. “Whatever you say, I’ll do it, I promise. And then I won’t have to think anymore.”

“The worst thing about growing up is that there are some things you have to decide for yourself,” Willow told her. “And this is one of them.”

Eventually Willow had taken Chloe to bed, tucking her into an expanse of clean white cotton, the way she used to when Chloe was a little girl, leaning over and kissing her forehead.

“Holly is going to have a nightmare trying to get all that mascara off her sheets,” she chided Chloe gently. As she went to leave, Chloe caught her hand, pulling her back to sit on the bed.

“Do you think Dad will hate me, for what happened with Ed?”

“I think your dad will be angry and he has a right to be,” Willow said honestly. “I think that it will be difficult and painful, and that you’ll have to tell a few people what happened. And there will be consequences. A teacher can’t get involved with a pupil and get away with it.”

“But . . .” Chloe looked anxious.

“But I think you also know that you needed to tell the truth. It must have felt like a very grown-up romance to you, and perhaps it was. But he should have known better. What he did was wrong.”

“Yeah, but only because he was my teacher. I mean, what if he was a bus driver, or a . . . mechanic. He wouldn’t lose his job then, would he?”

“No, I suppose not.” Willow could see how much Chloe was struggling with what had happened. Even now, even after Ed had let her down so very badly, she didn’t want to think badly of him or of their affair. He was her first love, and she didn’t want that memory to be sullied by scandal or by the
harsh reality that sex with an underage girl was still technically considered rape in the eyes of the law.

“The thing is, he’s chosen to work with children and to abuse that trust placed in him by the school and the parents is unforgivable. As beautiful and as grown up as you are, you are still legally underage. And he was fully aware of that, otherwise he wouldn’t have been so intent on bullying you to cover it up and save his own skin.”

“I really thought he loved me,” Chloe said softly. “He looked at me like he loved me. He
looked
at me. When I was with him I felt like I existed.” She sniffed. “Willow, there’s something I’m worried about, but I don’t know how to say it.”

“What?” Willow asked.

“Well . . . have I been abused? I mean, I haven’t, have I, because like loads of girls have sex at my age, don’t they, with older boys, out of choice. It wasn’t abuse, was it, because I wanted it, and I wanted him. I know what he did was wrong and the way he’s treated me is shit, but it’s not the same, is it? It’s not the same as what happened to you?”

Willow but her lip, tears confusing her vision for a moment.

“To me?” she managed to say, failing to keep the distress out of her voice.

“In Dad’s drawer, in his file on you there was a letter, a letter he wrote you and never sent. He was saying sorry for not being able to deal with all the stuff you told him.” Chloe hesitated. “About your stepdad.”

“Oh God, Chloe,” Willow gasped, covering her face with her hands. “I never wanted you to know.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” Chloe sat up, winding her arms around Willow’s neck. “I didn’t want to make you sad. I didn’t know how to tell you that I knew, and then I didn’t know whether you’d want to know I knew, and then I kept worrying and worrying that what happened to you had happened to
me and if I didn’t realize it, if I didn’t realize it, then what did that say about me? Please, Willow, don’t be sad because of me, please!”

“I’m not sad because of you,” Willow said. “I just . . . you still like me after everything I’ve been through. I would hate for anything you find out about me to change that.”

“How can anything change the fact that I like you?” Chloe asked her simply. “How can anything change the fact that I love you, which sounds quite lame, but anyway I do, so . . . there.”

Willow looked at Chloe’s face, unable to take in her incredible good fortune to have found this person to love and to love her in a world where the odds had seemed so stacked against it. If Chloe could still love her, then anybody could, if she was able to let them.

“I love you too,” she told Chloe simply.

Chloe nodded, her brows knitting together in concern. “So is it the same, what happened with me and Ed?”

Willow turned her head away, searching very carefully for the right words to say. To be impartial, rational, reasonable at this exact moment was almost impossible, she was so intent on being careful not to leave any more scars for the girl to bear.

“Willow? I’m sorry, I don’t want to make you cry.” Chloe propped herself up on her elbows, putting her hand on Willow’s shoulder. “It’s just that when I talked about what happened, last night to you and Holly, it sounded . . . well, it sounded wrong. And I’ve never thought that it was wrong before. I mean stupid, and hurtful and messy, but not wrong. And I don’t want to feel like that, I don’t want to be weirded out, because that would do my head right in. Did Ed ‘abuse’ me?”