9
She waits with the lights off, reading on her phone in the darkness on her daughter’s bed. But the long wait, and her long day at work, get the better of her and she falls asleep. And she’s woken by the overhead light coming on, and her daughter’s slurred cursing.
She sits up. Gemma stands in the doorway of her bedroom, glaring, make-up awry, dressed like a whore.
‘Fuck,’ Gemma says.
The alarm clock tells her that it’s three a.m. Gemma’s dress barely covers her crotch, and it looks as if it’s glued to her skin. It actually is, in places, for it’s damp with sweat, and sticky. She has scraped her curls up into a topknot, looks a bit like a pineapple. She looks more forty than sixteen. The skin beneath her foundation is pale, and greenish.
Ridiculous, thinks Robin. You look ridiculous.
She’s wearing diamond earrings, and smells of Diorissima.
Christ, thinks Robin, where’s she getting the money for this stuff? And where’s she hiding it? I’ve not seen anything like this dress in the laundry. Diamonds? At her age? Maybe they’re fake and I just don’t have the eye. Please, please let them be a guilt gift from her stupid dad. And those ankle-breakers she’s wobbling on have scarlet soles, and we all know what that means.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ she asks. Hears every angry mother in history in her voice.
Gemma suddenly clamps a hand – glittery green fake fingernails – over her mouth and runs from the room. Robin sits on her bed among the K-Pop posters and the rainbow-feather pencil toppers, listening to her retch, and wonders where the hell her little girl went.
When Gemma falls quiet, she gets up and, clutching her old woollen dressing-gown closed, goes through to confront her. Gemma is limp on the lino, hugging the pedestal of the lavatory bowl. Jesus, she’s got so thin, thinks Robin. She’s been hiding it with extra layers when she’s in the house, but I should have noticed.
One of the shoes has fallen off, and a glance at the interior confirms her suspicions. Sixteen-year-olds don’t own Louboutins.
‘Where’ve you been?’ she asks.
Gemma stirs, then looks up, all defiance. Robin can barely make out her pupils.
‘What do you bloody care?’
‘Oh God, don’t be ridiculous.’
She can’t bear the sight of her. The dress has ridden up over her hips, revealing a nasty little black nylon thong that disappears between her buttocks. I suppose I should be glad she’s wearing knickers at all, she thinks, and feels sick.
She goes back to the bedroom and fetches Gemma’s dressing gown. It’s pink and fluffy and has matching slippers, and it actually seems to have got bigger in comparison with her daughter since she got the set as a Christmas present last year.
She takes the robe back to the bathroom and thrusts it at her. Gemma takes it, sulkily. Drapes it over herself as she rests, knees up, against the bath. She glares at the wainscot, pouting. She’s been wearing red lipstick. The remains still cling to the edges of her lips.
‘Where the hell have you been, Gemma?’ Robin repeats. ‘It’s three in the bloody morning.’
‘Oh, fuck off,’ says Gemma.
‘No, I won’t fuck off. And don’t talk to me like that.’
‘Don’t pretend like you fucking care all of a sudden.’
She’s pulled up short. Guilt. The howling harpy that stalks all mothers, just waiting for an open window. I bet Patrick doesn’t have to feel like this, she thinks resentfully. I bet he’s not sitting up all night, wondering where he went wrong.
He can’t be buying her clothes like this, surely? Even Patrick wouldn’t be that stupid?
‘Of course I care,’ she says. ‘I’ve been out of my mind with worry.’
Gemma sneers. ‘Yeah, I totes saw you out of your mind with worry on my bed just now. You were so worried, you were snoring.’
And the first thought that flashes through her head is God, do I snore now? and then she pulls herself together and makes another attempt at being the adult.
She steps over her daughter’s feet and fills the tooth mug with water from the basin. Hands it to her. ‘Drink.’
Gemma takes the mug but doesn’t drink. Just sits there, a resentful goblin on the lino.