“How can I explain why I call you daddy?”
He brushes my hair out of my face. “Sweetheart, you need to stop fixating on that. It’s just a name and it’s the least of it. Your mother is going to be more upset right now over the fact that I hit you and call you my fucktoy.”
“I told her that you are good and kind and that you love me,” I offer.
His mouth twists. “Yes. Well, unfortunately that’s what battered wives say, as well. The more you defend me the more you’re going to sound like you have Stockholm syndrome.”
“Isn’t that what makes you rob banks or something?”
“Sometimes. You’re thinking of Patty Hearst. It’s what makes victims identify with their abusers. It’s a survival instinct and it’s got nothing to do with our relationship.”
We lapse into silence. I desperately try and think of ways around this without telling my mother anything about my relationship with Rufus. I come up with nothing.
“I know it’s hard, babygirl,” he says finally. “You have to be strong.”
I look at him, because he sounds like he really does know how hard this is. “I never asked you how you felt about yourself when you realized what you were into.”
He grimaces. “Oh. Yes. I thought I was a pervert. That I liked little girls and I was wrong in the head. I went through some of what you’re going through now, though my parents never found out about it. I used to wake up in cold sweats that I was going to be arrested.”
Of course. Calling your boyfriend daddy sounds weird to other people. Appearing to like little girls is dangerous.
“I asked my first girlfriend to do some things, wear some things... It didn’t go well. She called me a nonce and broke up with me. I begged her not to tell anyone. I was sixteen. I didn’t handle it well. I was too terrified even to acknowledge that part of myself for another five years.”
/> “What happened?”
He gives me a rueful smile. “I ran into a woman who used to babysit my brother and sister. We had a drink, she told me she always thought I was cute... I ended up at her place with a dizzying array of her paddles and canes laid out on the bed and her begging me to discipline her. I, um, obliged.”
Despite everything, I laugh. “Duck to water?” I ask.
“More or less. But the point is, Abby, I had five years of feeling so disgusted with myself that I could barely talk to women, and I was so unhappy. I just worked, and ignored everything else. I can’t bear that happening to you if we don’t face this.”
So it wasn’t just his mother’s illness and death that made him want to work so hard. He hated himself, so he devoted himself to the theater. It’s heartbreaking, thinking of him dealing with grief and self-loathing at the same time, but when my mind turns to my own situation, all I feel is panic.
I bury my face in his shirt. “I don’t want to. I can’t.”
He murmurs into my hair, “You’re going to have to be a big girl about this. I know she’s in there.”
“Not when I’m stressed or upset.”
“She’s there all the time. I love her, too.”
I can’t say anything. My mind is frozen with terror at the thought of the conversation with my parents.
“Babygirl,” he whispers, his arms tight around me, “if we don’t face this I’m going to lose you, and it will break me.”
I start to cry again. It will break me, too, if I lose him. “I’ll try.”
“Thank you, kitten. Please don’t cry. It makes daddy so sad.”
Hearing him talk this way should probably make me feel dirty after what’s just happened, but it makes me feel how I always do. Loved. Cherished. “Can we go to your flat?” I ask.
“I would love that, but I think for your mother’s sake it would be better if you stayed at home, don’t you think?”
He’s right. She’ll go spare if I just disappear with him, but I don’t want him to be right. I want cuddles and stuffies and his lap and cartoons. I just want to hide. “Then can I just sit here with you for a little while longer?”
“Of course you can, babygirl. Close your eyes for a bit and just relax.”
* * *