15
Stupid. I’m so stupid. Oh, God, stupid. I’m so bloody desperate to have someone love me, anyone, I’ll literally fall for anything.
Oh, God, I fucked him in here. Literally on this bed. Now I’m never getting that out of my head. Every time I even look at it, I’ll remember him sitting there looking at himself in the mirror while I went down on him. I glanced up and saw us both with his hand on my head, and he was smirking. And I just pushed it out of my head because … God, I’m so stupid.
She feels sick. Sick at her credulity and sick at the fact that she is the kind of girl to whom every rejection feels like a little death. And boys are so … they’ll just use you. And every time. Every time a boy shows even the slightest bit of interest, she rolls over like a puppy. Love me, love me. Please, just love me.
She hears her mum come home. Hears her move around downstairs, humming. She goes into the kitchen, then back out into the hall, and a door shuts. A couple of minutes later, the loo flushes and she calls up the stairs.
‘Gem? You home?’
Gemma sits up and wipes her face with the sleeve of her uniform jumper. Catches sight of herself in the mirror – the red-raw face, the salt-stiff bird’s-nest hair, the general air of woe.
Why would he fancy you anyway? she thinks. You’re pathetic.
‘In my room,’ she calls. Gets up and throws a scarf over the mirror.
‘Come down!’ calls Robin. ‘I closed on two houses today and I’ve got you a present!’
Oh, God.
Hurriedly, she scrubs her face with a cleansing wipe, rubs in tinted moisturiser with the hand mirror, and trudges downstairs.
Robin is at the sink, washing up the breakfast dishes and singing. ‘Dancing in the Moonlight’, an ancient song from what she calls her ‘clubbing days’, that she always seems to sing when she’s feeling cheerful.
‘Finally managed to get shot of Sternhold Road,’ she says. ‘A couple looking for a fixer-upper. Honestly, I thought it was going to be on the books till the roof caved in.’ She turns round, drying her hands on a tea towel, beaming. ‘Treat supper tonight. I got some fillet steak. Hey, what’s up with your face?’
She’s the last person Gemma is going to tell. As if she’d understand the first thing about it. It would just be yet another opportunity for a lecture, and some excruciating offer to take me to Family Planning.
‘Ugh, an allergy,’ she says. ‘I tried on some perfume in the chemist’s and it blew up. It’s okay. It’s getting better.’
Robin laughs. ‘What are you like? Honestly, you’re just like me. Skin like tissue paper. That cheap stuff’s horrendous. Anyway – your presents are on the table.’
She points, though Gemma knows perfectly well where the table is. There are two bags, the posh sort: thick paper with string handles.
‘Funnily enough,’ says Robin, and she’s still smiling, pleased with herself, ‘turns out one’s completely appropriate.’
She picks up one of the bags and hands it over. It contains a bottle of Jo Malone: Lime, Basil and Mandarin. Proper expensive stuff, the sort of thing Gemma’s allowance would never buy.
‘Probably best to wait till that’s died down before you try it, mind,’ says Robin, nodding at her salty face, and laughs with the sort of unobservant sympathy that makes Gemma cringe. Everything in her mum’s world is interpreted through the lens of the mood she’s in at the moment. Of course she’s never going to notice how miserable her daughter is.
‘Thanks,’ she says, and puts it back in the bag, and the bag on the table. She just can’t work up the enthusiasm. She musters a ‘Can’t wait to try it’, and Robin looks semi-satisfied.
‘Aren’t you going to open the other one?’ She nods encouragingly at the other bag.
I’m being shitty, thinks Gemma. But her heart feels like a lump of lead. Once someone’s lost your trust it’s hard to get it back, and she’s not inclined to confide in her, after the scratchcard fiasco. Gemma’s not stupid, nor is she blind. She knows perfectly well that that whole episode was more about getting at Dad, about Letting Him Know the Consequences of his Desertion, than it was about the seriousness of her infraction. And she knows that Patrick’s continuing reproaches are about still being annoyed that she’d put him in that position. Whatever, she’s learned her lesson.
She picks up the bag. It bears the logo of the boutique on Duke of York Square, where they were a couple of Saturdays ago. Her heart sinks. She has a good idea what it is. A couple of Saturdays ago, she would have given her eye teeth for it.
What a difference a fortnight makes. When she was longingly fingering the jade crêpe cloth, the sequinned shoulder straps, the self-covered waspie belt of this dress, she was thinking about what Nathan would think when he saw her in it. But it’s all spoiled now. Everyone is laughing at her. If she ever goes to a party again, which at the moment she doubts she will, and wears it, she’ll be right on the ‘trying too hard’ list.
‘Thanks,’ she says, dully.
She sees hurt cross her mother’s face. Sees the hurt, as it so often does, transform into annoyance.
‘Really?’ says Robin. ‘That’s it?’
Gemma doesn’t have the energy.
‘You were all over it two weeks ago,’ says Robin. ‘I thought at least you’d manage to be pleased about this.’
‘It’s great,’ she says, dully. How did you explain? She feels enough of a fool already.
Robin snatches the dress away and bundles it back into the bag. ‘Christ, you’re a piece of work,’ she says. ‘I literally can’t do anything to please you, can I?’
Something wells up inside, and Gemma wants to scream out loud. Wants to cut her skin with a knife, just to watch the blood come out and relieve the pressure. Can’t you see? Can’t you see me? Help me, Mum! Help me! Just put your arms round me and give me a hug, for God’s sake!
She takes a breath to speak, but her mother has already flounced from the room.