All Grown Up E-Book

Catherine Evans

• Herausgeber: Inkspot Publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 394

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Neveah is fifteen, a schoolgirl who is neglected in different ways by both her parents. She lives with her mum, Marie, who works nights and isn't too bothered what Neveah gets up to, as long as it doesn't affect her. Neveah's dad is the lead singer of a band and is often on the road, maintaining sporadic contact with his daughter. Neveah is a good student and is ambitious for herself. She also has a secret life. She's earning good money by moonlighting as a digital freelancer. Neveah is also having an affair with her biggest client, Giles, who is married with a troubled home life. Neveah lies to him about her age, telling him she's twenty-two and he believes her. Neveah will do just about anything to stop him from finding out her true age. Not only does she need the money, but she has developed strong feelings for Giles. But a secret this big can't stay under wraps forever. When it all comes out, the consequences are devastating. Not only for Neveah and Giles, but for Giles's family. The novel examines toxic masculinity in boys and the early sexualisation of young girls and society's collective collusion in this process, including by the girls themselves. Why do some young girls become sexually active way sooner than is good for them, and if a man has sex with a girl who lies about her age, is he still culpable? Welcome to the murky world of contemporary sex, where everyone has something to hide.

Leseprobe

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

FEBRUARY

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

SATURDAY

SUNDAY

MONDAY

TUESDAY

MARCH

APRIL

JULY

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First edition published in 2023 by Inkspot Publishing

www.inkspotpublishing.com

All rights reserved

© Catherine Evans, 2023

The right of Catherine Evans to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-7396305-9-1

ISBN (Paperback): 978-1-7396305-5-3

Typeset using Atomik ePublisher from Easypress Technologies

Cover image: © Aila Bally

For Ricardo

In which the rose discovers that she is a weapon of war.

Victor Hugo, 1802 – 1885

FEBRUARY

TUESDAY

NEVEAH

Neveah lugs her overstuffed book bag up the stairs, wrinkling her nose at the smell of piss in the landings. Daft Punk is blaring from the flat. When the music’s this loud, she knows her mum has company. A little crowd of mates, or one of her lame-ass boyfriends. Hard to decide which is worse. Her mum’s friends like to party hard into the small hours, and when she’s with the boyfriends, she doesn’t keep things in the bedroom. Oh no. The whole flat’s her boudoir. Neveah’s sometimes too embarrassed to go to the loo, never mind poke her head out for a cup of tea.

Her mum’s a waitress (‘Hostess, darling’) at Jack’s Club, so most evenings Neveah has the flat to herself. She’d planned on having a quick supper and spending an hour on Giles’s website, before devoting the rest of the evening to her studies. She’d forgotten it’s her mum’s night off. Her phone beeps. A current runs through her when she sees it’s a text from Giles, all typed out correctly, with no abbreviations, as always.

I’d like to introduce you to an old friend who wants to create a website with his son. Can you join us for lunch tomorrow at around 1pm? Gxx

A moment later, a second text arrives, with a link to his mate’s profile.

He’s based in New York. He could be a great contact for you xx

God, she’s lucky. Giles is so into her. He’s set up his own consulting architectural practice and has paid her three grand upfront to create his website. Then he’ll pay her a grand a month to maintain it and manage his social media. On top of all that, he’s leading her to other clients. All thanks to Sweetman. She thinks about her schedule the next day. There’s no way she can make lunch with Giles. Shit.

She lets herself into the flat.

Her mum, Marie, sashays over to her. ‘Hi sweetheart,’ she coos, as she leans in for a kiss. She’s had a few, Neveah can tell. ‘Good day?’

‘Yeah, thanks. Hi, Archie.’ She waves to a guy who is as bald as an egg skinning up on the side of the sofa. It’s not a good surface. The coffee table in front would be far more practical. Archie’s okay. He’s a pisshead, but he keeps his hands to himself. And at least she knows him. Her mum brings all sorts home. As well as Archie and Marie, there are two women; a blonde sprawled over an armchair who looks familiar, and a good-looking black woman that Neveah’s never seen before.

‘You ’member Donna, don’t you, sweetheart?’ Marie says, waving her cigarette at the blonde, ‘and this lovely lady here is Peaches. Peaches just joined Jack’s as a hostess. This is my baby, Neveah. Vay for short. Isn’t she gorgeous?’ She pulls Neveah close and kisses her noisily on her cheek. ‘Mwah mwah. My baby girl.’

‘Aw, Mum,’ says Neveah. She waves at the group. ‘Hi, all.’

‘Oh my Gooooood, Marie. She is, like, beautiful,’ says Peaches. ‘And I thought you said she was fifteen,’ continues Peaches. ‘No way is this little stunner only fifteen. You are a heartbreaker, girl.’

Neveah smiles politely. She takes her oversized navy coat off, revealing her school uniform. Peaches points at her and laughs. ‘You look like you’re in fancy dress, sweetheart!’ She turns again to Marie. ‘Can’t believe she’s still at school.’ Then directly to Neveah: ‘You gonna have a drink with us?’

‘Nah, hope you don’t mind, but I got work to do.’

‘So polite, Marie. And a grafter too.’

‘Yeah, she gets that from me,’ says Marie, tinkling with laughter.

Marie’s eyes are glassy. She’s still waving that cigarette around like it’s a wand, dropping ash everywhere. The three women are holding pink drinks.

‘What’s that you’ve got there?’ Neveah asks.

‘Peach Bellinis, darling,’ says Peaches. ‘S’how I got my name. Your mum’s taken to them, haven’t you, Marie? Archie here’s real boring.’ She sticks her nose in the air, affecting his accent: ‘I’ll stick to a good old G&T, thanks,’ and cackles at her own wit.

Archie ignores her and carries on rolling.

Neveah escapes to the kitchen. She finds a lonely frankfurter in the fridge, the last of a packet of ten. She wolfs it down and chucks the plastic packaging on top of the overflowing bin, which is mouldering and stinks of old fag butts. She searches amongst the bottles and jars and is rewarded with a pot of no-brand strawberry yoghurt, which she peels open and spoons up while she continues her search. The Tesco economy brand pizzas she’d stashed in the freezer have vanished. She separates a couple of crusts of frozen bread and pops them in the toaster, before putting the kettle on. She wrestles with herself. Her mum sometimes gets annoyed if she doesn’t offer a cuppa to anyone else. Other times, she gets laughed at for even suggesting it when there’s booze aplenty. She just wants to eat some supper and get on with her work. Is that so much to ask? She can’t help thinking of the home-cooked meals her step-mum, Sandra, produces night after night. Sandra has known Neveah since she was a baby and has always treated her as one of her own. Occasionally, Neveah has caught herself daydreaming that her mum was more like Sandra.

While she waits for the toast to brown, she tries her dad’s phone. She hasn’t heard from him in weeks. He never listens to voicemail, so she texts instead:

Dads! Call me, yeah?

She knows not to hold her breath. Her text joins an unbroken line of one-way messages with no response from him.

She checks out Giles’s mate’s LinkedIn profile. His name’s Bruce Linneker. He’s a partner of an asset management group, whatever that is, called Tremain Street Capital, which has offices in New York, London and Tokyo. Nice photo, she thinks. Quite good-looking, even if he is a million years old. Funny. She doesn’t think of Giles that way anymore, and he must be the same age. She considers her timing dilemma for the next day. She has to hand in the English essay she’ll finish tonight. She’ll get her essay on Stalin back tomorrow. She can’t think of anything she could have done to improve it, bar interviewing Uncle Joe himself. Maths at noon. Skiving any other subject is a doddle, but Sweaty Sumner has a preternatural ability to sniff out a lie and ruthlessly checks all alibis. She’s wondering how the hell she can get out of school when Peaches spills noisily into the kitchen.

‘Tooooooast … I smell tooooaaast …’ Her eyes are bugged out and her arms are held aloft, like a zombie’s. She collapses into giggles. ‘Can you bung in a piece for me?’

‘Er … sure,’ says Neveah. ‘There’s two bits there. Not sure if there’s any butter though.’

Marie ambles in. ‘I’m a bit peckish too. Archie? Donna? Want some toast?’

Neveah quells her irritation and resists the urge to tut. ‘There’s hardly any bread, and I can’t find any butter.’

‘Ah, Vay, be a darling and nip out. It’ll only take five minutes.’

Neveah grabs her bag. ‘Yeah, okay,’ she says. ‘No problem.’ It is very, very important never to show any kind of temper in front of her mum’s friends, as the shit that can rain down on her head for it is just biblical.

Marie makes a show of looking for her purse.

‘It’s okay, Mum. I’ve got some cash.’

‘Thanks, sweetie. I’ll pay you back.’

Marie hasn’t given Neveah money since she was thirteen and isn’t remotely curious about her daughter’s constant solvency. Neveah shoves her arms into her coat and is about to exit the flat, bag over her shoulder, when she spins on her heels back to the kitchen. She might as well take the rubbish out, she thinks resentfully. Marie’s had all bloody day to do it. She gathers up the corners of the filthy, leaking bin liner, trying not to spill fag ends and old teabags on to the floor while she ties them together. She holds it as far from her body as possible as she thuds down the stairs.

Before she marches to the corner shop, she decides she can bunk off lunch the next day and double English, which follows. She knows Sylvia Plath as if she’d written those poems herself. She’ll hand in the essay at breaktime and invent a trip to the dentist’s. Marie will sign a note for her. She taps out a text back to Giles.

Can’t make lunch but can join for coffee 2ish. Text me location xx

‘She’ll spend extra time on the website, so she can impress the hell out of Giles’s mate.

It was going to be a long night.

WEDNESDAY

GILES

The large bedroom is dark, crypt-like. In the light, it’s a tasteful mix of muted colours; purples, mauves, taupes and soft browns, but now it’s bathed in gloom as it’s early morning. So early that the dustmen have not yet been, and all is still except for movement on the bed. It’s a man having sex with a woman. Nothing strange about that, but what is unusual about his current activity is that it’s with his wife, in the bed that they’ve shared for close to twenty years.

The man, Giles Hawthorne, is approaching the pinnacle of this joint abandon, and is employing his usual tactic of thinking hard about the test match against Pakistan, to ensure that his wife, Christine, summits first. Once she’s safely beyond the point of no return, he allows himself to surrender, and collapses on top of her. For a long while, neither of them speaks. Eventually, he raises himself onto his elbow and kisses her on the forehead. He lies on his back, drawing her close, and stares at the ceiling, which is gradually getting lighter. Where in the name of all the holies had that just come from? His wife, Christine, clings to him, and it’s so quiet he can hear, as well as feel, her elevated heartbeat. This is the first time they’ve had sex with each other in seven years.

It’s a breakthrough. Her extensive sessions with various psychotherapists and weekly attendance to a victim’s support group must have finally worked. The years since her attack have been terrible. He’d watched, powerless, as she had disintegrated, and had completely withdrawn from normal life. When she emerged from hospital, she was a wreck and confined herself to the house. Now, seven years later, she still won’t set foot beyond the garden gate unless someone is with her.

During those early days, she refused food. He did his best to coax her, preparing simple, nourishing meals; thick soups, shepherd’s pie, spaghetti bolognese. She’d take in a spoonful, a bite, then would push the plate away.

‘I can’t face it,’ she’d mumble, and would resume her constant stare into the middle distance, listless and lost, or she’d cry. She cried a lot. She tried to hold it together whenever their daughter, Serena, was with her, but the child was at school for hours at a time, and Giles arranged for her to spend some nights away with her grandparents or with Chrissie’s sister. It was a relief to Giles when Serena was out of the house, as her bewilderment at the change in her mother was as painful to watch as Chrissie’s breakdown itself. Week after agonising week it went on, and Chrissie became so thin she was always cold, and had to layer herself up even in mid-summer. Whenever he tried to comfort her, she flinched from him. It was heartbreaking.

‘If you’d only eat something, darling.’ He felt that if she took better care of her body, then her mind would begin to recover. He tried tempting her with her former favourites: cheese and pickle on toast, bacon sandwiches with onion and chilli, the gorgeously buttery pastries from the deli round the corner that she used to adore, but she took no notice of food, or would get tetchy that he could be preoccupied with something so trivial when it was plain she just wanted to destroy herself as slowly as possible.

He gave baby food a try: mashed banana, porridge, apple slices. Eventually, he became desperate. ‘For the love of God, Chrissie, eat something! Do it for Serena, if for no one else.’ Finally, it was only the prospect of being drip-fed in hospital that forced her to consume a few calories. She started with a cupful of soup. Then some cheese and crackers, followed by a buttered piece of bread and marmite, then a square of dark chocolate … and every waking moment since, certainly from Giles’s perspective, she has not stopped eating.

‘Could have been a lot worse,’ his mate Bruce had said. ‘Could have been booze or drugs. She’ll come round, you’ll see.’

And Giles, not wanting to be flippant, had refrained from saying, ‘Yes, she has become round. Incredibly round.’

He’s done his reading. His research. He understands that some rape victims want to build a barrier around themselves. They want to be invisible, to deflect attention, to make themselves as unattractive to a potential attacker as possible. And he recognised that she would not want sex for a while.

‘For a good while,’ her first shrink privately advised him. ‘Wait until she’s ready.’

‘Of course I’ll bloody well wait! What kind of monster do you take me for?’

The shrink raised her eyes to meet his. ‘You’d be surprised what men expect from women.’

He learned to hold his arms in the air, as if facing an armed robber, and say, ‘I’m coming in for a cuddle, Chrissie, that’s all.’ Otherwise, she shrank like a sea anemone. It was wholly understandable, he scolded himself. He would never rush her. He had all the patience in the world.

He had his first affair six months later with a structural engineer he’d met at a conference. They had furtive meetings in bars and hotels, sometimes they’d get together just for coffee and a chat. She had a stay-at-home husband who looked after their two children. On paper, it was the ideal arrangement, as each had as much to lose as the other. She broke it off after a few months. ‘I feel too guilty,’ she said. ‘He trusts me. That makes it worse, somehow.’

The first affair is a bit like committing your first murder. Once you’ve done it, it’s all too easy to do it again, and pretty soon the bodies begin to pile up. There followed a series of flings and one-night stands. He’s careful. He goes for women who have no connection to Christine. Those who are bored, lonely, who need a boost to their self-esteem, who crave variety, a dash of romance or some good old-fashioned knee-trembling lust. It’s not always him who does the running. They often come for him. This makes him feel less guilty.

He takes them to fancy restaurants, to bars, to decent hotels. He buys them presents and flowers. He likes these women, becomes fond of them, but he maintains a distance and he’s always upfront. He tells them he’ll never leave Christine. He sometimes tells them Christine’s story, then feels grubby as it’s the mother of all excuses for adultery. Even worse, it’s like a cheap shortcut to intimacy. The tale can’t be categorised as ‘small talk.’ And when he doesn’t tell, they find out anyway, thanks to the power of Google.

He’s the master of the dead-end relationship. The flash in the pan fling. He won’t leave Christine. Not while she needs him. Not while she’s battling to overcome her mental traumas. He loves her. He can’t pile more misery on to her, let alone Serena, now fifteen and currently in the swirl of GCSEs.

And now he’s seeing Neveah.

He becomes aware that Christine is crying. His arms tighten around her. ‘Shh, darling. The first time’s bound to be a shock.’ He lifts her chin. In the stronger daylight, he sees that through her tears she’s smiling.

‘Oh, Giles. It’s all going to be okay now.’

He holds her close and hopes she can’t see his face. If Christine ever suspected his infidelities before, she’d never said a word. All the little liaisons he’d got himself involved in during the past seven years… he could have easily walked away from any of them. But he can’t just wash his hands of Neveah. She’s so adorable. So much fun to be with. She makes him feel half his age. The way she looks at him … as if she’d taken dedicated lessons in how to make a man feel good. Plus, it would be beyond tiresome to have to find someone else to do all that social media guff. She was doing a brilliant job. But Christ on a bike, if Chrissie found out about Neveah … he feels a tightening around his heart at the prospect. Christine’s eyes are closed, and her hair is spread all over his upper body, covering her face. He can’t see her smile, but he can sense it. He’s got to dump Neveah, he thinks grimly. Nothing else for it. But then he pictures her lovely luminous young face, her laugh, those clever hands, that unbelievably cute dimple … he can’t help noting the contrast between Christine’s heft and Neveah’s youthful slimness. He tries to banish the thought and feels shockingly disloyal when he can’t. He focuses furiously on the batting stats of England against Australia to stop himself from getting hard again.

NEVEAH

Neveah checks her phone as soon as she’s on the bus. Giles has sent the restaurant details. Still nothing from her dad. It hurts that he can’t be bothered to even tap out a text every now and then. It would take him seconds and would mean the world to her.

She gets out a small notebook in which she has written out the full conjugation of dozens of French verbs. French is her weak subject. A B grade will wreck her planned clean sweep of A stars.

She’s knackered. As well as new bin liners, she’d brought home milk, bread, butter, baked beans and a multi-pack of variety crisps, all of which had been devoured by Marie and her mates faster than if they’d been a pack of starving rats. She’d also bought a box of Cheerios, so there was something for breakfast. The corner shop feast gave the party a renewed kick, and they continued to drink for hours, playing their favourite tracks to each other, singing, dancing and noisily squabbling over the iPod. Neveah did her bit for Giles and tuned out the racket to write her English essay. God knows she’s used to that.

She did all her work on a MacBook that Sandra had given her when she started secondary school. Sandra had always been way more ambitious for her than either of her own parents.

She got up to brush her teeth before bed. She’d been drinking cups of sugary instant coffee to keep herself alert, and her mouth felt coated in fur. Music still blaring, Marie had passed out on one of the sofas. Donna was gone. Archie was fast asleep, still upright on the sofa where he’d been sitting earlier, except Peaches was on her knees in front of him trying to coax his lifeless penis into action. Neveah had barked out a laugh, instantly covering her mouth with her hands to shut herself up. Peaches looked in Neveah’s direction, but her gaze lacked focus. She showed no sign of embarrassment, but her lizard brain must have registered that she was wasting her time, so she got up and collapsed onto the sofa next to Archie, burrowing into him, her arm slung around his hairy stomach. Poor Archie hadn’t stirred.

As the bus lumbers its way down Coldharbour Lane, Neveah thinks about how he must have felt on waking up with his trousers open, his todger sticking out with a drunken limpet stuck to him. She never found out, as by morning Archie was gone, leaving the two women to their slumbers. Rather than wake her mother, Neveah forged her signature on a note she’d confected to get herself off double English.

She can’t help smiling at the memory of Peaches kneeling in front of Archie and how base and ridiculous they both appeared. She will never in a million years throw her dignity away like that, she thinks. An unwelcome voice in her head adds the word ‘again’.

The bus is packed, so she loops her arm around a pole to keep herself steady while she holds her notebook with one hand, clutching her satchel with the other. She also has a rucksack on her back, containing her laptop and a change of clothes. She needs the laptop to show her work off to Giles and his mate. Fancy landing a client in New York. She has pictured herself in New York so many times. She’s imagined herself in lots of places. The things she’ll be able to do when she leaves school. She focuses on the French subjunctive. Il faut que je le fasse. It is necessary that I do it. It could be a motto for her life.

She glances up and sees a familiar blonde head among the throng of people. It’s Fern. A memory hits her, of those buttery tresses flying through the air in the playground while jumping rope, Neveah holding one end, someone holding the other. ‘Cinderella had a fella …’ they’d chanted, but Neveah had been in another world, wondering what her life would be like if her hair had been that blonde, her skin that white, her eyes that blue.

Fern sees her and waves. Neveah waves back, hoping that’ll be the end of it, but Fern threads her way through the crowded bus.

‘Hey, Neveah,’ she says, and gives her a hug. ‘You okay?’

‘Yeah, good. You?’

When Fern was ten, her mother landed herself a rich second husband, allowing her to indulge all her social ambitions. Fern, pale and hollow-eyed went home every day to extra maths, French tuition, music lessons, tutor after tutor recruited as part of her mother’s desperate drive to get her into Tiffin Girls’. She even rented a place to be within the catchment area. Neveah could have told her for nothing that her efforts were doomed. Fern was quick-witted and funny, but academically, she was a dead zone. After the girls finished primary school, Neveah went to the local comp with the majority of the class, while Fern’s tutors managed to shoehorn her into a selective private school.

‘Yeah, I’m fine thanks. Mum’s panicking about my exams.’

‘And you’re not?’

‘You know what she’s like.’

Neveah crumples the corner of her mouth in sympathy. ‘You gotta learn to stick up for yourself.’

A glint enters the girl’s eyes, and she smiles. ‘I do all right.’

Neveah remembers when she and Fern were little, no more than eight, when Fern had skipped up to her mother and asked if she could have a sleepover with Neveah. Fern’s mother looked nervously at Neveah, standing next to the furiously chain-smoking Marie, and said: ‘We’ll see, darling,’ which even at that age, Neveah understood to mean not until hell and all its angels had frozen over.

‘I went to one of your dad’s gigs a couple of weeks ago with my boyfriend. He is soooo cool.’

‘My dad or your boyfriend?’ Neveah smiles. Her dad, Jackie, is the lead singer of a band.

‘Both. You gotta meet him. Josh, I mean. He sells records at Camden Market with his dad. They got a vinyl stall. You’ll really like him. His dad’s cool too.’

Neveah wants to ask what Fern’s mother makes of her talking wide Estuary and dating a market stallholder, but she doesn’t want Fern to think she’s having a dig.

‘This is me,’ says Fern, indicating the next stop. ‘It was really cool to see you. I’ll message you, yeah? Let’s meet up.’

‘Yeah. That’ll be good,’ says Neveah, and means it.

While the bus heaves passengers and sucks new ones in, Neveah watches Fern’s blonde head bobbing off into the distance, gleaming in the winter sunshine like a beacon. Maybe she’d message Fern first. It had been good to see her. It wasn’t her fault her mother was a snobby, racist, social-climbing, Grade A bitch. She looks down at her verbs again and tries to focus, then it strikes her that if she had a child, she wouldn’t want Marie to look after it either.

GILES

Giles is at work, but he’s taking a moment to surf Cartier’s website. He’s scrolling through trinket after trinket, imagining Neveah wearing each one, visualising the perfect gift. He can’t take too long about it though, as he’s got a number of calls to make and a meeting with a new client before he has lunch with his old friend, Bruce.

Christine’s incredible comeback is darkened by the knowledge that he will have to end things with Neveah. He pushes the thought aside.

He takes a sip of coffee as he considers. A ring would be in very poor taste, obviously. He deliberates between a gold chain with two interlocking ovals riveted with diamonds, and a gold bracelet, which will gleam brightly against her beautiful skin. ‘Yellow gold or rose gold: how far would you go for love?’ he reads on the website.

It’s a ridiculous question.

How much will you stake for lust? That would be more honest. As well as all the usual things a married man risks by having an affair, he’s dicing with Christine’s fragile recovery.

Christine wouldn’t leave him, he rationalises. She couldn’t. She can’t even leave the house by herself. She wouldn’t be able to cope without him. He recognises that banking on her dependency is actually quite loathsome.

He loves her. So why can’t he ditch Neveah? Sooner or later, he’s going to have to do it.

He decides on the bracelet. This will be a goodbye present, not a love token. As he enters his details, he’s obliged to reveal his date of birth. He’s often shocked by how far he has to scroll down to find the year that he first appeared on the planet. He has never been concerned by his age before, but suddenly the weight of all those years is oppressive, and they sit in the forefront of his mind when he thinks of Neveah. Men have always been drawn to younger women, as if their very youth and glow were properties that could be assimilated, sucked in like a vampire draws blood. He understands that these powerful feelings are a trick of the genes. He’s read books about it. He opts to pick up the bracelet from Cartier on Old Bond Street. He can’t have it delivered, obviously.

So. A goodbye gift then, he tells himself firmly. What he’s doing is beyond stupid. She’s twenty-two, for Christ’s sake. When she reaches her thirties, the prime of her life, he’ll be past retirement, approaching his dotage. He has to end it. It’s a relationship that has no legs at all. But as soon as he talks any kind of sense into himself, he’s overwhelmed by the impossibility of walking away from her. She intoxicates him. Only senility will erase the memory of their first kiss. His PA, Julie, had gone home and they were alone in his office; she on an armchair, and him on a sofa. The charge between them had been growing for weeks. They’d been talking about Yoast and SEO rankings, when she’d abruptly stopped speaking. She had stood up and slowly stalked the distance between them and sunk wordlessly into his lap. When he thinks of her, it’s of a slow, knowing smile, that dimple, the feel of her in his arms. He’s got to finish it. He’ll do it soon, he promises himself, knowing it’s a lie.

CHRISTINE

Christine is still a bundle of static. She feels like an athlete who has broken some kind of record. She accepts it’s a flawed analogy, unless the athlete in question is a sumo wrestler. She stands on the scales. Three stone to go.

She understands that what happened that morning is the culmination of dozens of tiny changes that began a little over a year ago, a minuscule gathering of strength, a growth in her confidence, an ebb in her fear. It had started with her determination to exercise, to once and for all do something about her colossally excess weight.

Once she’s alone in the house in the morning, she does at least an hour of work. She translates novels and non-fiction books from their original French or German into English. She works with three specialist agencies who offer her regular contracts. It doesn’t pay well, but it’s satisfying, and, occasionally, she’s lucky enough to work on a book she loves and feels privileged to be part of the creative process. She translates not only the words but the sense of the author’s meaning, and pays particular attention to characters, their class and educational backgrounds and likely speech patterns. All the while she’s doing this, a part of her brain is gearing up for her physical workout.

She has stuck to the promise she made herself. Every day, when Giles is at work and Serena’s at school, she begins with stretches, then she runs on the spot, does press-ups, star jumps, mountain climbers, burpees, squats, the plank. She needs to work on her form, she knows it’s atrocious, but the air is pushed forcibly from her lungs and she goes red in the face as every muscle in her body screams, so it must be doing her some good. The groaning of the floorboards is almost as bad as her own gasping for breath. Thank God no one can see her. Once her routine is over, she gets herself ready for her run to the park, which she does Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays without fail. She gulps half a glass of water and smears some salve on to her lips. Heavy breathing outside in the winter months can result in terrible chapping. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, she walks instead. No less of a game changer for someone who has locked herself up, Rapunzel-like, for so many years.

That morning, they’d all had breakfast together. She wondered if Serena could guess there was a change in the air, that powerful pheromones were flying about, but she gave no sign of it.

She tucks the key to the house in her bra and shuts the door behind her, then walks past the gate and begins to run when she is on the wide, tree-lined street beyond it. Every time she goes out, it’s like a marvel to her, a gift. She’s cautious, always watchful, but she’s finally shaking herself free of the crippling anxiety that has kept her prisoner for so long. She remembers the first time she ventured further than the gate by herself. It all started with visualisation. She had lain on the sofa picturing every detail of the journey beyond the gate, conjuring up every house and every front garden, every tree on the pavement, every sign on the road. She’d gone beyond the gate countless times, but never on her own, not for years.

She focused on her body language; Look confident, she told herself. Hold your head high. Relax. Look ahead, not at the ground. And it worked. No one paid her the slightest attention. That first time, she walked the quarter mile to the gates of the park, gone for her run, then walked back home again, her heart thumping in her chest, and not only from exertion. Once she was back indoors, she picked up the phone to call Giles, then thought better of it, deciding to keep her adventure to herself. Better to go at her own pace. To manage expectations.

Each day, she starts slowly, then gradually picks up speed. Today is interval training. Short sprints alternating with a steady jogging pace. I’m not a freak, she thinks as she trots past a woman with two terriers. Christine’s stomach wobbles as she runs, but it’s hidden beneath her sweatshirt and the woman doesn’t give her a second glance. Christine loves this feeling of invisibility, as reassuring as a safety blanket. A few of her fellow runners acknowledge her with a smile or a wave, as if she’s part of a secret club. Most of them are listening to something, earphones in, clutching phones or iPods. Not her. She has to be aware of her surroundings and monitor the people around her, yet increasingly, she catches herself going for long minutes without thinking of lurking danger, but of mundane things, like what she’ll cook for dinner, or she becomes wholly preoccupied with a tricky idiomatic phrase which has no easy translation into English. She’ll worry at it from multiple angles and will suddenly find she’s halfway across the park without the slightest sense of unease.

I’m perfectly normal, she tells herself. I’m a runner. I’m a working woman, a wife and a mother, like thousands of others in this city. Okay, so I’m forty-seven, I’ve only recently managed to go out by myself, I’ve just lost my second virginity and I’m afraid of my own shadow. But apart from all that, there’s nothing weird about me. She smiles and breaks into a sprint as she crosses the road.

NEVEAH

Mrs Beck sweeps into Neveah’s History class and hands back marked assignment papers on Operation Barbarossa.

‘Katie … Soraya … Nice work, Mo-Q. Jason, I detected a bit of cutting and pasting. I hope you donate a quid or two to Wikipedia. Neveah. A fantastic piece of work. Really incredible. You’ve broken the mould. Mo-B …’

Blood runs to Neveah’s head. In her peripheral vision, she feels the heat of Connor Johnson’s stare. His little mate, Kerry Sellick giggles and falsettos: ‘Weally incwedible. Bwoken de mould.’

Mrs Beck frowns. ‘Settle down, Kerry.’

Kerry makes a face and looks towards Connor for approval, but he ignores her, and she flushes.

‘Turn to page 121 in your textbooks please …’

In the next few minutes, Mrs Beck manages to take the entire class to Stalingrad. It seldom happens, but she engages them all with the horror of that wintry hell.

‘The Russians made everybody fight. Men, women, children … anybody with a pulse who could pick up a gun had to fight. Guns were in such short supply that the Russians had to crawl behind each other in lines. Imagine wading into battle without a gun, only able to get your hands on one when the poor soul in front of you has been killed, knowing that there’s someone behind you, on your side, eagerly waiting for you to die so they can get their hands on it.’ Her hands are waving as she talks, and her voice is energised but tinged with solemnity, as if paying tribute to those masses, all long dead and forgotten. ‘In the city, the fighting went on for months. People died in their droves.’

Neveah sees that Connor’s eyes, so like his father’s, are fixed on Mrs Beck and are glowing with a strange light. She experiences a flash of visceral hatred. He loves this kind of shit. Death on an industrial scale, a body count to dwarf the entire Bourne, James Bond and Terminator franchises put together. Like one of his stupid video games. There is only one person in the world she hates more than Connor. That’s his father, Blue.

As is usual with Neveah, her research had taken her far further into the subject than required. Stalingrad, the Caucasus, Baku, the Volga, Sebastopol, Moscow, Murmansk, Kiev … she is enchanted with the beauty of these evocative names. In her head, she goes places, becomes other selves; in reality she’s been out of London only twice, once with her dad to one of his gigs on the South Coast and years ago on a junior school trip to Cadbury World. Pathetic.

‘Brighton and Fookin’ Birming-gum,’ Sweetman had laughed when they talked about it. It was all right for him. He goes to all kinds of places as his wife Laura works for BA. Neveah starts dreaming again of New York.

Mrs Beck is discussing Stalin. Neveah is thrown back a week to a hotel night with Giles. They had been lying on luxurious high thread count brushed cotton, naked except for soft white bathrobes, waiting for Room Service to arrive (rare steak and chips with a side of broccoli and almonds for him, club sandwich with chips and ketchup for her.)

‘When did your family first come over?’ Giles had asked her.

‘To the UK? My granny and her husband were from Cork, and moved to London, but he didn’t stick around after my mum was born. She brought Mum up in Tufnell Park on her own.’

‘God, that must have been tough,’ he’d said. ‘She didn’t want to go back to the mother country?’

‘She’s hard as nails, Granny North.’

‘And your dad’s family?’

‘His grandad came over on the Ormonde. I wish I knew more, but Granny South doesn’t like to talk about family history.’

‘That’s a shame.’

‘Yeah, it is. There’s loads of stuff on the Irish side. Medals, letters, photos, and they all like to talk, there are so many stories, but nothing on the Jamaican side. All Granny will say is that her dad didn’t hang about in Liverpool, he made tracks for London as quick as he could. He married a nurse from Trinidad, and my Granny was born not long after.’

‘And what’s her story?’

‘Her family wanted her to be a nurse too, but she couldn’t stand the sight of blood, so she worked in the ticket office at Vauxhall Station for years. That’s how she met my grandad. She sold him a travelcard and he asked her out on date. He died in a factory accident when my dad was a toddler.’

‘God, how awful.’

‘Yeah, it was. She never married again. She’s got a nice little flat in Elephant and a decent pension with London Underground, but now she’s retired it’s like she’s waiting for the Grim Reaper to show up.’

‘Is she ill?’

‘She’s always moaning about this or that, but none of us can see there’s anything wrong with her.’

‘Maybe she’s depressed.’

The truth of this had hit Neveah like a hammer. She’d been annoyed at not thinking this through properly for herself.

‘What about your family?’ she’d asked.

‘Well, where would you like me to start?’

‘Start at the most interesting point,’ she’d smiled, and snuggled against him.

‘My grandfather was with the RAF and trained Soviet pilots to fly Hurricanes.’

‘That’s funny. My great-grandad was with the RAF too.’

‘Which one?’

‘The Jamaican one.’

Giles had nodded. ‘A lot of West Indians fought for the Allies during the war.’

‘I wish more people knew about it. Most people think the war was purely a white thing.’

He was silent as he digested this. ‘I’ve never really thought about it, but that’s probably true. Try and get your Granny to talk. While you still have the chance.’

‘We’ve all tried. She’s like a clam. So tell me more about your grandad and the Soviets. Where was he posted?’

‘Murmansk, on the Finnish border.’

‘That’s so cool. We’re doing the Eastern Front and Stalin at –’ she’d coughed to shut herself up.

‘Doing it at what?’

‘At college,’ she’d said, unable to think of anything else to explain away the bomb she’d just dropped.

‘College?’

‘Yeah,’ she’d said casually. ‘I like to do evening classes when I can fit them in.’

‘Bloody hell,’ he’d said, looking at her in admiration. ‘You must clone yourself.’

Another lie he’d swallowed whole.

‘Anyway, it’s really interesting,’ she’d said, sounding lame, even to herself.

He stared at her and furrowed his brow. She held her breath, afraid that he’d finally put two and two together. Instead, he intoned:

‘There once was an old bastard called Lenin,

Who did two or three million men in.

That’s a lot to have done in

But where he did one in

That old bastard Stalin did ten in.’

And he’d roared laughing. She had smiled. And exhaled.

‘Neveah?’ says Mrs. Beck. ‘Are you with us?’

Shit. ‘Sorry, I was …’

‘Come on, Neveah. Why was Stalingrad so important to both sides?’

She knows perfectly well, but her face is a mask and she says nothing.

Mrs Beck stares at her beseechingly. Mo-Q puts his hand up. ‘Yes, Mo?’

‘It was, like, symbolic, Miss. ’Cos the city was named after the boss.’

‘Well, there was more to it than that, but yes, there was a lot of hubris at stake for both leaders. Back to you, Neveah. Can you tell us what losing Stalingrad meant to the Nazis?’

She can not only explain what it meant to the Germans, she could go into the ramifications for the whole course of twentieth century history.

She maintains her mask. She can’t explain that while Connor’s behind her, she can’t say a word. She shouldn’t care, but when she thinks of the things he knows about her, the things he’s seen, she burns all over with a corrosive shame.

Mrs Beck throws her hands up in the air and shakes her head. ‘Neveah, I read your essay.’ She and Neveah’s eyes lock. Kelly Sellick giggles. Mrs Beck looks around the room and blinks, as if remembering there are other children in the room.

‘By the time Stalin died in 1953, he was responsible for the deaths of over forty million people, by starvation, execution, by using them in vast numbers as weapons, sacrificing them in whichever way he deemed necessary. Stalin himself said that the death of one man is a tragedy, but the death of millions is a statistic. That tells us something about the human psyche, don’t you think? Doesn’t that show …’ she pauses, in search of the perfect metaphor.

‘That Stalin was a bit of a cunt?’ Connor says and the class erupts.

‘I’ll not have that language in my class,’ says Mrs Beck, but she’s drowned out by giggles and guffaws.

Neveah doesn’t laugh. She takes in Mrs. Beck’s stricken face and feels really, really bad.

MARIE

Marie is woken up by the door buzzer. She’s in bed. She’d picked herself off the sofa earlier, cold and stiff, swallowed a big glass of water, dragged herself to the loo then had taken herself to her bed, leaving Peaches sprawled out on the other sofa. She takes a look at the clock by her bedside. It’s gone eleven. She feels rough. And old.

She drags herself up. Peaches is still comatose.

‘Who is it?’ she rasps.

‘It’s me, babe.’

Shit. It’s Blue. She’s in no state for him. She hesitates.

‘Come on. I haven’t got all bleedin’ day, have I?’

She buzzes him in. She rushes to the bathroom to brush her teeth. She looks terrible and feels even worse. Her mascara has smudged halfway down her face. With the toothbrush hanging from her mouth, she rubs ineffectually at the smudges under her eyes, then flies to the bedroom and throws off her skanky clothes, covering herself with her red silk dressing gown. She’s wearing socks, very unsexy, so she rips them off, only to find they’ve left deep grooves round her ankles. Her pedicure’s all chipped, so she pulls on a pair of Uggs. She tears back to the bathroom, scrubs at her teeth then spits and rinses. She madly fluffs some volume into her bleached hair. God, her roots really need touching up. She wonders if she’s got some time to splash her face, put some fresh mascara on … she doesn’t actually have to open the door ’til she’s good and ready … but no, she hears the door opening. Peaches’ voice.

She leaves the bathroom and sashays towards them.

Blue takes the scene in. ‘You girls had a late one, then?’ He gives a rakish grin as he checks Marie out. ‘God, you look like you’ve been shagged bandy already. You going to introduce me to your friend, darlin’?’

‘This here’s Peaches. She’s new at the club.’

‘Are you Blue?’ Peaches simpers. ‘Lovely to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you. God, this is so embarrassing.’ She gestures down at herself and giggles. ‘Still in yesterday’s threads. I’m gonna have to do the walk of shame.’

‘I wasn’t expecting you now,’ Marie stammers at Blue.

‘Evidently not. I’m working ’round the corner so I thought I’d drop by,’ says Blue. ‘Looks like my luck’s in. Two for the price of one.’ His eyebrows do a double bounce.

Peaches giggles again. ‘I gotta have a wazz,’ she says, and makes her way to the bathroom. ‘Any chance of a coffee before I head home, Marie?’ she calls over her shoulder before she shuts the door.

‘Get rid of her,’ Blue hisses. ‘Fast. I didn’t come ’round for no little chitchat. ’Sides. She ain’t exactly my colour preference. Not that I can afford to be that fussy these days,’ he laughs.

‘God, Blue. What are you like? You can’t walk around saying things like that anymore. And don’t forget who you’re talking to. The mother of –’

He mimes a yawn. ‘Yeah, whatever.’

‘Well it’s true. Neveah –’

He rolls his eyes. ‘If anyone knows what colour she is, it’s me. And all over too.’

‘I can’t believe you can be so bloody –’

‘So bloody what?’

‘Barefaced. Anyone else would be –’ she pauses.

‘Would be what?’

‘Ashamed of themselves.’

‘And why would I be ashamed? Beautiful little choc drop like her comin’ on to me? I’m not made of stone you know.’ A gleam enters his eye. ‘I bet she’s all grown up now.’ He cups his hands to his chest. ‘Filled out, I shouldn’t wonder. No surprise you don’t want me to see her.’

‘You’re disgusting,’ she says. That was the thing about Blue. He always took things too far.

He laughs. ‘I’ve asked Connor how she’s turned out, but he won’t say nothing. Says I should stick to birds my own age, the cheeky bugger.’

They hear the loo flushing and the tap running. He sits on the sofa and elaborately man-spreads while he puts his hands behind his head.

‘And what am I gonna say to Peaches? I can’t just kick her out.’

‘You’ll think of something. I don’t have time to wallow in bed all day like some people. I’ve got work to do.’ He looks her up and down. ‘And don’t think I’m shagging you, the state you’re in.’ He rubs his crotch. ‘Soon as she’s gone, you can get your laughing gear round this, my lovely.’

NEVEAH