Queen Mum (19 page)

‘Your course. Crystal healing, wasn’t it?’

‘No. Film studies. It’s brilliant, I’ve just started. He’s lent me a load of books and videos to check out, ’cause he says even though it’s quite a good
course, there are gaps in it. Mind you, one evening a week I don’t suppose they can fit a right lot in. But you look at the old films, then at the modern ones and compare them, and you can
see where they get their ideas from. So tell him I’m really enjoying it, will you?’

‘I will. Look, I’d better go, I’m getting the girls their tea while Juno’s away and I’ve got to pick Ben up from football later on.’

‘Have yours started back already? Chris and Marco, their term starts Monday. It’s all go, in’t it?’

‘It is indeed.’

As I put the phone down I realized how like Juno I’d been speaking, clipped vowels, breezy tone, all northernness slewed off. I hadn’t done it deliberately, it had simply happened.
As though I was trying to make myself as unlike Kim as possible. Upstairs the music boomed on.

I made the girls a sandwich each to keep them going till dinner and put the plates on a tray with two glasses of milk, as I’d seen Juno do. Then I went to see how they were getting on.

Pascale was already changed and doing her homework.

‘How can you use a compass properly when you’re lying full length on a squishy duvet?’

She grinned at me and slid the sandwich off the plate. ‘Natural genius. Cheers,’ she said and took a big bite.

I left her to it and went into Sophie’s room; no sign of her. Across the landing, the bathroom door was closed. I went over and listened and heard running water. Back to her bedroom, then,
to wait, because now was the time to talk to her about supporting Juno, being more grown-up. Now was the time to straighten things out.

I went to sit on the bed but found I couldn’t cope with the stale air in the room, so I got up to open the window. Sophie’s china-horse collection was still arranged along the sill,
reminding me of how recently she’d been a little girl. Over the bed now, though, where the picture of trotting palominos used to be, was a poster of an almost naked man rising from the sea,
water dripping from his nipples. Makeup bottles and compacts and tubes covered her dressing table messily, joss-stick ash lay in lines across the top of the bookcase. And did she expect her mum to
pick those clothes up off the floor? Even Ben knew where the linen basket was.

I should have left them where they were, to demonstrate the point, but mums can’t do that. It’s a reflex action, the bend-and-grab. I draped a blouse and jeans over the back of her
chair and went to pull the bedspread straight, because that was all hanging down over one side. Then I found all the bedclothes were rucked up underneath. I pulled them right back and started
again. Fourteen and couldn’t even make her own bed. I’d show Soph how nice the room could look with just a tiny effort.

But in flicking the bedspread back into place at last, I caught the edge of a glass that had been balanced on her bedside table and knocked it backwards against the wall. Coke splashed into a
jellyfish stain on the wallpaper and ran its tentacles down the back of the cupboard. The glass bounced and fell without cracking, rolling in an arc towards the door. Damn and damn and blast, and
that was something else that was Soph’s fault because they weren’t supposed to have fizzy drinks except as a treat, and certainly not at night-time when the rot fairy comes.

I retrieved the glass, rubbed it on my sleeve, then placed it on the windowsill. The bedspread wasn’t too marked, and the covers of her paperbacks would wipe clean; most of the drink had
gone down the wallpaper. I snatched a packet of make-up-remover tissues from the dressing table and tried to dab away the worst, but I couldn’t get to it all. Gingerly I tilted the bedside
table forwards and saw that dark runs of Coke had gone right down to the skirting board and were pooling in a long bead there. I sighed – Soph should be helping with this – and edged
the table out.

And there it was, a little packet of Durex. A dark blue box standing on its thin edge up against the skirting. Just handy. As I stared, it toppled over onto the carpet.

At the precise moment my brain registered what I’d seen, the bathroom lock clicked and the door across the landing swished open. I whipped the packet up and into – where? –
where? – the breast-pocket of my blouse, then I settled the bedside table back against the wall, sod the Coke stain, and was still dithering when Sophie walked in.

‘Oh, hiya.’

She was wearing an old baggy T-shirt and her hair was wrapped in a towel. I froze, very conscious of the square bulge in my top pocket, worried that the logo might show through the cotton. My
hand came up to play with the chain at my throat, self-consciously bringing my forearm across over the box.

‘I was tidying your room. And I brought you a sandwich.’

She laughed. ‘Cheers, that’s great. You didn’t put butter in mine, did you?’

‘No.’

‘Cool. I’ve got to cook for twenty minutes, now.’

‘What do you mean?’ I managed. ‘Do you know,’ I heard myself saying, ‘what I’ve just found?’

‘I’m putting a copper tint on my hair.’ She misinterpreted my lingering look of horror. ‘It’s not permanent, don’t panic. Washes out in six to eight
weeks.’

‘I hope you haven’t left the bathroom in a state.’

‘Oops. I might have, now you mention it. Shall I check?’

‘That might be an idea.’

When I heard the shower going again I ran downstairs, though the side door and back into our kitchen where I pulled the condoms out and threw them on the table. The blue box skidded then spun
cheerily. When it stopped I saw there was a picture of a seashell on the front.

Little Sophie. Still only – and this was illegal, so it was serious – fourteen. Fourteen! Who with, for Christ’s sake?

I touched the box with my finger and it shifted gently round on its axis. No cellophane. On a sudden impulse I picked the packet up and ran my nail under the flap, then tipped the contents out.
Three condoms dropped out, wrappers intact. How many should there be? Three, it said on the blurb. So she hadn’t used any! But then again, this might not be her first box. God knows how many
she’d got through before now. She’d probably taken the outside plastic off for speed.

And what if, now I’d removed them, and she didn’t realize, she got herself into a position where she needed one and it wasn’t there? That would be my fault, and she could get
pregnant, and some friend I’d have been then. To her, to Juno.

I ought to tell Juno. But she was so fragile at the moment I didn’t think she could cope with anything else. Manny was around, would be home at seven. Could I tell Manny? Or would he
simply fly into one of his tempers and do a whole lot of damage; and wouldn’t Juno be upset that I’d gone to him and not her? I could hear her: ‘She’s my daughter, we have a
special bond.’

And unbidden, a picture flashed into my head of ten-year-old Soph piping cream on dishes of red jelly to make four smiley faces, and Juno leaning over her shoulder with a handful of chocolate
buttons for the eyes. I remember looking at Sophie’s Breton top and her chic white pedal-pushers and thinking: What a pretty little girl. That would have been the first summer we were here,
with Joe. And Ben had his first skateboard, was skateboard-mad up and down the drive endlessly and wouldn’t wear a helmet, and the whole of our lives stretched away into those new-house sunny
days.

The back of her bedside table; it was so ill-judged, a child’s hiding place. Perhaps she wanted them to be found.

It was no good. I was going to have to tackle Sophie myself.

The knowledge of the condoms hung over me all evening. Even Tom noticed something was up.

‘You’re very distant tonight,’ he said as we settled down to watch TV. ‘Not still brooding over Juno’s true identity, are you?’

I tried a mild lie, to distract. ‘It was a shock, but I don’t think any the less of her.’

‘You do.’

‘No. It makes her more like me, which is good.’

‘Is it?’

‘
Top Gear
’s on, did you know?’ I said. ‘Motorbike special.’

That shut him up. I picked up my library book and tried to read but the words just skidded off the surface of my mind. I kept imagining Sophie’s face when she realized the box was gone.
Would she go to Pascale? How much did her sister know? Was, dear God, Pascale at it too? That really would give Juno a breakdown.

The door bell went at twenty to nine and scared me half to death.

‘You are in a funny mood,’ said Tom as I mopped coffee from the sofa arm. ‘Shall I get it?’

‘No. I’ll go.’

Soph stood on our doorstep under a cloud of midges. ‘Can I talk to you?’

‘I think you better had,’ I said, and felt my stomach swoop with fear.

I couldn’t take her through, past the lounge, because I didn’t want Tom walking in on us, so we went upstairs. Ben’s door was shut and his Do Not Disturb sign was on the
handle. Sophie hovered on the landing behind me as I pushed open the door of Joe’s room.

‘Oh!’ she said, glancing at the Tweenies sticker on the door. ‘Is it all right?’

‘It’s the one place that’s really quiet. We don’t want Ben interrupting, do we?’

I don’t keep it like a shrine. It’s the room I sometimes go to think, and to be alone with Joe. It’s true a lot of his stuff is still here but that’s more to do with not
being able to let it go, not wanting to feel disrespectful. It’s not that I think he’s coming back, or anything.

I switched the bedside light on and we sat in non-threatening gloom, me on the bed, her on the tiny chair by Joe’s mini-desk, hugging her knees.

‘Have you got them?’

‘The condoms?’

She flinched. ‘Mmm. I saw the bedside table had been shifted, and when I checked behind . . . ’

‘I’ve got them, yes. Do you – need them back?’

She shook her head vehemently.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah. For definite.’

God, this was difficult. I said, ‘You’re not going to get yourself in – a pickle without them, are you? Because that would be worse—’

Sophie began to giggle. I stared at her.

‘It was that word, pickle,’ she said, her voice unsteady. ‘I know it’s not funny.’

‘No, Sophie, it damn well isn’t.’

I looked again and saw she was shivering. It was nerves, she was strung out.

‘Do you understand how serious this is? You’re only just fourteen.’

‘Are you going to tell my mum?’

‘I don’t know yet. It depends on whether you can reassure me that you’ll stay well away from – this side of life – until you’re ready, and it’s legal.
Fourteen! I hadn’t even kissed a boy then.’

I wanted to tell her about self-respect and STDs, I wanted to explain the importance of hanging onto a time of your life that’s special and uncomplicated, but I knew if I started a lecture
she’d be gone. Behind her, Joe’s poster of the four seasons showed snowmen, daffodils, beaches, brown trees.

‘Ally, would it make you cross if I said something?’

‘It depends what it is.’

She chewed her lower lip for a moment. ‘Right, lots of girls my age are doing it. Loads of girls at school. They are. And when I’m with them it seems like it’s no big deal. But
now I’m here, talking to you, it seems like it is. Do you get me?’

I reached across and took her hand. She squeezed it gratefully.

‘I think, Soph, that what people say they do, and what they actually do, are two different things. That the only issue that matters here is you, and what you want to do, and whether you
feel you’re ready. I’m not your mum, but I’m looking at you and I’d say you’re too young. You are, Sophie.’

‘But the teachers at school say I’m mature for my age. It said so on my last report.’

‘Oh, come on. There are all sorts of mature, you know that. It didn’t say, “We believe Sophie Kingston is now ready for full-on sexual intercourse,” did it?’

She did laugh then, putting her hands over her face and giving in to the horror that was talking about virginity to her mum’s best friend.

‘Have you had sex, Soph?’

She stopped laughing and sucked in her breath. ‘No.’

‘Honestly?’

‘Honestly. I swear.’

‘Because if I find you’ve been lying to me, I shall be very hurt.’

‘Ally, listen, right? This is the honest truth. What it was—’

Light suddenly flooded the room.

‘Jesus.’ Ben stood in the doorway, his face white. ‘Mum! I thought, I thought—’

‘It’s OK, Ben. We’ve nearly finished.’ I tried to sound calmer than I felt. ‘Look, love, can you go down and check your dad’s unloaded the washing
machine?’

He stood for a few seconds, still gazing round the room, then he detached himself from the door frame and we heard him thudding down the stairs.

‘God,’ said Sophie. ‘Do you think he heard?’ She looked stricken.

‘If you mean, is there any chance Ben could have crept up quietly on us, then no. You’ve heard him; he moves around like a rhinoceros.’ I smiled, trying to calm her. But she
was too spooked to carry on. She was on her feet and across the room before I could do anything.

‘I will tell you about it,’ she pleaded, her knuckles yellow-white where she was gripping the door handle. ‘I promise. You’re just about the only person I can talk to,
sometimes. But not now. There’s something I need to work out first, in my head. Please, please don’t say anything to anyone else, will you? I’m begging you, Ally.’

My eyes searched her face for the truth.

‘OK,’ I said at last. ‘I won’t, for now. Don’t make me regret that decision, Sophie.’

By the time I got to the bottom of the stairs, Sophie was closing the front door. I stood for a moment in the hall and heard Ben singing under his breath his tuneless version
of ‘Shamed’:

‘Looks like she don’t love you

But she taste so good

She taste sohhhhh good—’

He jumped with embarrassment when I walked into the kitchen. ‘Soph still here?’

‘No, she went home.’

He’d flopped the wet washing into the basket for me and was rewarding himself with a processed-cheese slice out of the fridge. He likes to bend the little squares up into tubes first.
I’ve told him it’s disgusting. ‘Is she OK? Has the grandma died?’