Tell Me Everything (15 page)

I didn't think Miranda had listened to me when I told her all this one night as she was blow-drying my hair. She hadn't asked anything, hadn't made any comment. Just started telling me one of her magazine stories instead.

Mrs. Bartlett sighed. “Lovely,” she repeated, and I had a sudden pang of longing. It felt so safe sitting there in Miranda's sitting room that I was just opening my mouth to tell them how I didn't really have any dolls, didn't really have … when Mrs. Bartlett suddenly leaned forward. “But I'd like to hear about this boyfriend too, Molly,” she said. “Miranda says she hasn't met him, but in my experience—and I did have a fair bit of experience before I met Miranda's father—girls like to talk about their young men.”

I could feel myself blushing and, sure enough, Mrs. Bartlett clapped her hands in delight. “See, Miranda,” she said, “I told you Molly wouldn't mind. She's not like you, so secretive all of a sudden. Rushing out without so much as a pipsqueak's notice. All those letters you keep getting that you won't let us see. Hushed phone calls you think we don't hear.”

A flush started to creep up Miranda's neck. What did she have to be secretive about? I stored this one away to think about later.

“So tell us all about him,” Mrs. Bartlett said.

“He's called Tim and he's perfect.”

“And does he have a job?” she asked.

A few weeks ago even I would have enjoyed explaining in detail
about Tim's work as a special adviser but he had drummed it into me recently how you couldn't trust anyone. “No,” I said.

Mrs. Bartlett looked embarrassed. “Well, never mind, dear,” she said. “We can't all be lucky. It's such a lottery nowadays.”

I turned away so I wouldn't be tempted to blurt out about how really Tim was a big-time winner. How even now, while I was sitting there, he was studying papers for the mission he'd been waiting for years to be assigned to. And this is only the start of it all, I wanted to tell Mrs. Bartlett. This is what I've been waiting for too. Real life, at last.

I bit my lip now as I remembered, but Mrs. Bartlett seemed to take my silence as a sign she'd upset me. She rushed round clearing up the cake plates and took them through to the kitchen. Just as Miranda and I looked up at each other, she came back for the teapot. To freshen it, she said, holding it out at arm's length as if it was the teapot, not her, that had committed the indiscretion of making me admit Tim didn't have a job. Mr. Bartlett had fallen asleep in his wheelchair next to me. Miranda put one finger to her lips to make sure I kept quiet and then silently stood up and wheeled him away from us.

“I'm glad you came, Molly,” she whispered.

“So am I.”

“And now I know you won't mind me saying this, but I want to have a word about your hair.” Miranda looked concerned.

I put my hand up automatically and was surprised to feel how greasy it was.

“So how about if you come up to my bedroom now and I sort you out properly?” Miranda said. “Maybe I could even find you a nice outfit I don't want anymore. I'd love to see you in something bright and youthful.”

I watched Miranda's bum as she climbed the stairs in front of
me. The material on her own “bright and youthful” leggings was stretched to the breaking point, making the colors across her thighs more like random impressionist streaks than the colorful flowers they were supposed to be.

“So what did you have in mind for me to wear, then?” I asked as she opened her bedroom door. Miranda's home was so perfect, so much like ones I used to dream of having when I was a child, that I had been expecting a little girl's bedroom too. Pink, princess-style, with fairy lights and fluffy cushions. I couldn't speak when I saw inside. The walls were painted light green, and she had wooden shutters at her windows. The linen on her bed was plain white, the cotton so soft and luxurious you felt comforted just running your fingers along it. The furniture all matched, but in a polished pine warm rather than a just-bought-at-a-large-Swedish-style-warehouse way. The carpet was straw matting and she just had two pictures on the walls—black-and-white posters of old movie stars. I looked at Miranda. Of course. This was just what I would have done with my room at her age if I had lived the perfect life.

“You know, your cheekbones remind me a little of hers,” I said, pointing to the photograph of Katharine Hepburn.

Miranda smiled and moved a pile of books off her dressing table so I could sit down in front of the mirror. I watched as she pulled off the rubber band and my hair came tumbling down to my shoulders. She sprayed some dry shampoo all over and brushed it out, holding my scalp when we came to a particularly knotty part.

“So tell me about your dad,” I asked as I relaxed into position. “Did he lose his foot in an accident?”

“He ran over himself.”

I turned round so she had to stop brushing my hair. “Get away with you.”

Miranda sighed. “It was a new automatic car. He put it into reverse, but then remembered he needed to get something out of the trunk so he nipped round the back just as it started to move. He'd forgotten that automatics would keep going.”

She said it without feeling, and in a way I guessed she'd rehearsed because there was no room for sympathy in her account, or laughter either.

“And that's why you and your mum have to look after him all the time?” I asked. “Can't he do anything for himself now?”

Miranda started brushing my hair from the bottom up so it frizzed out around my head. “He hasn't changed that much,” she said. “He did sod all before, too, but that's men for you, isn't it?”

“My dad—” I started.

“Yes?” It was the first time I had started talking about the past and Miranda hadn't shut me up. In fact, her interest was all but crackling through the brush and onto my hair.

“He was a bit of a bully really. He was always thinking the worst of me. He never let me do anything that the other girls were allowed to do. I think he wanted me kept young forever, like a doll. Maybe that's why he gave me so many.”

Miranda nodded but didn't say anything. The silence began to be uncomfortable.

“Can I go on?” I asked. “Shall I tell you more?”

“If you want,” Miranda said. She was brushing my hair gently now.

“He was always taking center stage,” I said. “It was like he always had to be the only one anyone in the room looked at. The only one who ever did anything. Even my mum. She just did whatever he said. I couldn't work out why she put up with it.”

“My mum hates my dad.”

I thought back to the scene I'd witnessed downstairs. Miranda was probably right. So there could be trouble even in paradise?
Miranda smoothed my hair down. She ran the palm of her hand behind the brush. I relaxed into the movement and just enjoyed the feeling of being looked after.

“He used to do this thing,” I said. “He'd lie in bed as if he was dead, and I'd have to sit by him, hold his hand and tell him how much I loved him. And then just when I started to get teary, he'd jump up suddenly and give me the shock of my life. I was only about nine the first time, but we carried on until …” I paused. “Until it was the only way we could be nice to each other, I suppose. The rest of the time it was as if we were in some kind of battle. A fight to the death. Every weapon allowed.”

“Men,” Miranda said, curling the ends of my hair under neatly. “They're just kids really. I suppose he thought he was being funny.”

“But …” I considered this. I'd expected Miranda to react in horror like the biology teacher and the counselor, but now I remembered how it was always me asking him to play dead like that. The anticipation of not knowing when he was going to jump up would make me teary with excitement, not sorrow or fear. It was a way of briefly controlling the fear that was always around him. Perhaps I even relished the chance to tell him how much I loved him. “You're probably right,” I said finally. “Hadn't thought of it like that before. Although—”

“There,” Miranda cut me off mid-sentence, taking a step back from me and pointing at my reflection. “Doesn't that look better?”

I looked at myself in the mirror: my hair was hanging down on either side of my face like curtains I longed to draw as if I could shut myself off. I nodded, numb.

“You still look awful peaked though, Molly. Do you want to stay here tonight? Have some supper in front of the TV with us?”

But I'd had enough confessing for now. I liked talking about
Dad so much I was worried I wouldn't know when to stop. And I knew how dangerous that was. Plus, speaking to Miranda had given me a new slant on things. One I wanted to think about. “I'll just get home.”

Miranda started rooting around in her wardrobe and I thought I'd upset her again, but she was beaming when she turned, a stiff black cardboard bag in her hand.

“Here we go,” she said. I went over to stand next to her as she undid the thick black ribbon that tied the bag together. She wound the ribbon round her fingers, leaving it coiled up by the side. Inside the bag were layers of black tissue paper, which she pulled out carefully, smoothing each piece down with her pudgy fingers, folding it up and placing it on the bed.

Not even this performance prepared me for the dress Miranda finally took out. It was peach-pink, a shiny slip of a garment that seemed to move through Miranda's fingers like water. When she held it up I could see the gathers at the neck, the silver straps that made the dress look as if it wasn't stable enough to stand up on its own. It was toga-shaped, a silver belt pulling in the material before letting it flow out again. I'd never seen anything quite so perfect.

Miranda held it in front of her and walked the dress over to the mirror like that. We were both silent, full of a painful longing.

“I'd never fit into it,” Miranda said eventually, “and it cost a fortune even on sale, but I couldn't resist. I get it out sometimes just to look at it. It's French, you know.”

I nodded, unable to take my eyes off the dress. It seemed to have a life of its own, throwing up a light onto Miranda's face that made her glow.

“It wouldn't fit me either,” I said.

“Would you like to try it on?”

My heart jumped. It was all I could do to stop myself running
over and pulling the dress from her, but I recognized the expression she had had on her face when she had looked in the mirror. It had been love I saw. She loved that dress, and I knew I shouldn't take it away from her, however much she pretended she didn't mind, but she practically forced it into my hands.

“It's your dress,” I said, hardly breathing as I rubbed my fingers up and down the material. I put my face down to smell it, and was surprised to inhale the sweetness of silk. I'd been expecting Chanel perfume, woody cigars, money.

“OK.” Miranda put her arm out for me to drape the dress over. “If you don't want it.”

Miranda's three dolls were sitting on top of the wardrobe. Like mine, they were the sort of dolls you don't play with, their horrible lifelike expressions staring down at me, the frills and patterns of their period costumes mocking the perfect simplicity of Miranda's dress and the room they sat in.

“I do,” I gulped. “I do want it.”

I couldn't resist sneering at the three dolls as I slipped the dress over my head. No zipper or buttons, just a thin ribbon tie at the neck. I adjusted the straps, pulled the belt in at my waist, felt over my breasts and stomach with my fingertips as if I could mold the dress to my skin.

“Lovely,” Miranda said, sitting down on the bed and watching me. “I knew it would be just right for you.”

“Lovely,” I repeated, gazing at myself in the mirror. Finally, this was the Molly I always knew was hidden inside. Beautiful. For a moment I wished my father could see me now.

I wore the dress home under my coat. Never mind that my trainers and ankle socks were sticking out underneath. There was no way I was going to take it off. “Are you sure you want to give it to me?” I'd kept asking Miranda, until she said if I asked her again she'd take it back. “Just a loan,” I said then, “until you lose
enough weight for it to fit you too. I really do think you're looking thinner.”

“Bye, Molly,” she said, putting her hand on my shoulder and steering me out of the door. I hadn't said good-bye to her parents. Miranda said she didn't want her mum to see the dress as it would only cause questions.

“I've had a happy time,” I told Miranda, “such a happy time.” And it was true. I hadn't been in too many houses like Miranda's. Ones that felt like real homes. Where people could bicker, even hate each other, and yet it didn't seem to matter. There wasn't a feeling of fear underlying everything. It was just how I imagined. I all but skipped down the street as I made my way back, only keeping away from car lights when I remembered Tim's instructions. It was hard to stay hidden though, when what I really wanted was for everyone to look at me. Even if they couldn't see the dress through the coat, its magic must be obvious.

F
our more ribbons were hanging on the tree, one of them threaded through a pink cardboard heart. There was still no message, or any visible reason why this was happening.

Seeing the decorations silenced my usual conversations with Jessica. I filled up the bottle I'd brought up with me and sprinkled water on the pansies I'd planted, clipping off the dead flowers with my fingers and scattering the wilted petals round the edge of the bench. It was as if she wasn't mine anymore, the ribbons a reminder that I was just an interloper on her bench.

SEIZE THE DAY.

But could I, even with the dress to bolster me? By the time Tim came I was skittish with nerves. I didn't want to sit there anymore.

“But where shall we go?” Tim asked.

I realized I had no idea what to expect from him anymore. He looked younger tonight, his face no longer set and square as it got at times. When I reached to take his hand, he just held mine softly before putting it up to his mouth and kissing it in the way I didn't have to ask him for anymore. Then he closed my fingers one by one around the spot he'd just kissed.

“Molly,” he said.

“Tim,” I replied.

Then he pressed my hand tight. “Keep it safe,” he said. “For when times aren't so good.”