Don't You Love Your Daddy? (22 page)

But that night I needed it and it was only my father who had the power to give it to me. He stood watching me, as I tried to get my breath. Eyes wide with panic, I saw he was holding it in his hand. ‘Is this what you want, Sally?’ he asked, and frantically I stretched my hand out to take it. He laughed and took a step backwards so it was out of my reach. ‘Say “please”, Sally.’ Still my breath rasped in my throat and I couldn’t get the word out. My chest tightened even more and still I could see him smiling at me as he taunted me with my inhaler.

‘What? Can’t speak?’ He let me see it dangling from his hand.

‘Please,’ I managed to gasp out between coughs.

‘That’s better,’ he said, and held it out to me.

I grabbed it, put it to my lips and felt the release of pressure as I puffed it into my mouth. Gradually my breathing eased and I puffed again.

‘Enough, Sally,’ he said, and took it back.

Weakly I lay on the bed. The pillow that had been over my face was now behind my head. I felt my body going hot and cold. My face was beaded with sweat and tears and my pyjamas clung damply to me.

He left the room and came back holding a damp facecloth and a glass of milk. He wiped my face gently, then wrapped my fingers round the glass. ‘Drink this. It’ll make you feel better,’ he said, in his nice-daddy voice. Gratefully, I swallowed it.

‘There,’ he said tenderly. ‘Daddy’s made it all better. What do you say, Sally?’

‘Thank you,’ I answered, knowing the game wasn’t over.

‘Now admit you want me,’ he said, and seeing that I was looking at him numbly, his hand snaked out towards my bedside table where he had placed the inhaler. ‘Say it, Sally.’

Terrified that he would do the same thing again, I said the words he wanted to hear. ‘Yes,’ I whispered, and felt the bed sag with the weight of his body as he climbed in beside me.

It was after that night that I started creating a secret world in my head, an imaginary place where I could take myself when reality became too cruel, a world in which my mother was still alive, and it was to her that I talked.

I had forgotten that when she was alive she had failed to keep me safe from my father. In my new world that was why she had sent me away: her knowledge of what he was like was in the story she had told me. He was the dragon, wasn’t he? And the people who had taken in the little girl were my aunt and uncle. But, of course, the little girl hadn’t lived happily ever after with them. My mother had died not knowing that.

At night as I slipped into sleep, it was my mother I confided in. I told her of my fears and in my mind she comforted me.

I withdrew from my classmates – what did I have by way of interesting conversation that would amuse them? I felt very remote as I watched groups of girls giggling in the playground. They talked of family outings – we didn’t have any; of playing at each other’s houses and parties – I wasn’t allowed to do or go to either. Having issued invitations that had always been refused, they now saw my remoteness as unfriendliness. Gradually they stopped trying to include me in their games, and invitations to their homes ceased.

My mind was constantly full of my mother and I wanted her back in my world so much that it hurt. In my imagination I had taken the person I had loved, eradicated from my memory her bad days and turned her into the perfect mother. Hopes, dreams and far-fetched wishes became fantasies that I turned into endless stories with myself as the heroine, then replayed them, like films, over and over again in my mind.

Sometimes I was a famous pop star standing in front of a crowd of adoring fans, or an athlete winning at sports with the whole school applauding, or surrounded by friends who listened to my every word. And in every dream my complexion was clear and I could breathe without fear of asthma. Gradually the dream world in my head became more and more real until fact and fantasy were completely intertwined and I frequently retreated into it.

As my imagination ran unchecked, I brought my mother back to life. I began to believe that she had run away and was hiding from my father; not me – never me – but always him. Had he made her do the same things that hurt me? I wondered if that was why she had left us. I started to see her in strange places but she was always just out of my reach. In the streets I often thought I’d spotted her but she was always in the distance. I saw the whirl of a bright, flowing skirt, a cloud of long blonde hair and opened my mouth to call her. But before I did, I realized it was a stranger who resembled her.

That was the first part of the story I made up – part fantasy, part wish. And when I had convinced myself it was true, I told the other girls in my class. ‘My mummy’s not really dead,’ I told them. ‘She’s in hiding, but she’s coming back soon.’

My classmates looked at me disbelievingly. But they were nice little girls who, on telling their mothers what I’d said, were instructed to be kind. ‘It’s not easy losing your mother when you’re a little girl,’ they were told, something that was repeated to me later. As those stories were harmless, nobody told the headmistress or my father. It was a little later that that came about.

It was on a rare occasion when I was left alone in the house that my curiosity became too much for me. I crept out of my room and went down the landing to Sue and my father’s bedroom. I pushed open the door and, for a few seconds, just stood looking inside. All thoughts of the rules about going into their room were forgotten, as was the rule that I must never touch any of Sue’s things: I had fastened my eyes on the dressing-table. The assortment of makeup and beauty paraphernalia on it proved too much for me to resist. My feet, almost as though they had a will of their own, took me over the cream carpet until I found myself sitting on her white-and-gold chair in front of the mirror.

I saw my child’s face reflected back. Blonde hair that was still cut to just below my ears, a pale face where the last of the plumpness of youth still remained and large green eyes with thick light lashes. What would I look like wearing makeup? Sue wasn’t often seen without it, but when she was, I had noticed how different she looked. Eyes that with cosmetic help seemed large and sparkling were small and nondescript with sparse lashes. When bare, her skin was rather pallid and her bone structure ill defined; the items on her dressing-table gave her high cheekbones. Her mouth was small and her lips narrow without the gleaming pale pink lipstick and enlarging outline in a darker shade. Without the help of cosmetics she was rather plain.

Slowly, one by one, I picked up the small jars, unscrewed the lids and inhaled the scent that floated out to me. A finger dipped into one came out covered with beige foundation. Before I knew it I was spreading the pale cream across my face. Another pot revealed a light orange powder for the cheeks and I brushed some on. I spat on the block of mascara, as I had watched her do at the breakfast table, and with the small brush, I started coating my lashes with a wobbly hand. I managed to smudge it on my cheeks, as I did the eye-shadow I put on next with my finger.

So intent had I been on my transformation that I hadn’t heard the front door opening, or Sue’s footsteps on the stairs. It was only when I heard her voice behind me that I realized she was in the room. ‘Sally, what the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she screamed.

I cringed away from her. ‘I was just trying to look pretty,’ I said.

‘Well, don’t bother,’ was her short answer. ‘With those spots you’re never going to be. Now go and wash it off.’

I slunk out of her room and went to the bathroom. There, I stared again at the person reflected in the mirror. My face, with its bright red cheeks, smudges of mascara and blue-stained eyelids, looked back at me with a serious expression. No, I thought. She’s right. I’m never going to be pretty. I picked up the flannel and slowly wiped every trace of the makeup off my face.

Sue decided that at weekends and during the approaching school holidays I should have a friend to play with. She announced that she had chosen the perfect companion for me. ‘It’ll get you out of the house and give you something to do,’ she said. She meant, I decided, that it would get me out of her way.

‘Who is she?’ I asked. I was told that her name was Jennifer and that she was the same age as me. After further questioning I learnt that she was the daughter of one of Sue’s friends who, because she was a weekly boarder at an exclusive school some miles away, didn’t know any of the local children. Jennifer had two older brothers who had little interest in playing with a younger sister.

Remembering how indifferent Pete had been to me when I was younger I felt something approaching sympathy for her.

‘She’s the right sort of girl for you to make friends with,’ Sue kept telling me.

I felt a spurt of anger at her assumption that I had no other friends, which I had never admitted to her. Pride made me protest that there were other girls I wanted to visit during the holidays.

‘And,’ she added, by way of a bribe, ‘her mother said you can take Dolly with you.’

The bribe worked.

On the appointed morning I brushed the little dog’s fur, then placed her red leather collar around her woolly neck. I gave her a hug and whispered the day’s plans into her fluffy ears. She licked me enthusiastically and bounced up to the car. Sue drove us to the outskirts of town, near to where her parents’ house was; this was where Jennifer’s family lived.

On arrival I saw a house very similar to the one that Sue had grown up in: a large red-brick edifice that sat in the middle of what appeared to be acres of manicured lawn, surrounded by a small forest of tall trees. Plenty of room for Dolly to run around, I thought. As that idea came into my head so did another: it was likely that Sue wanted to be friendly with the wealthy family who lived here rather than her worries about my isolation.

That first day it was Jennifer’s mother, a woman a decade or so older than Sue, who opened the majestic front door. I was instructed to call her ‘Auntie Ann’ and she looked impeccable. Her dark brown hair was cut into a gleaming bob and swung smoothly against her cheeks. Her face, with its small neat features and large brown eyes, was discreetly made up, and her pale blue linen dress, which Sue told me later was the latest Country Casuals design, looked as though it had just been ironed. Telling me that Jennifer was looking forward to my visit, she ushered us both into a room – three of its walls and the ceiling were made of glass; she referred to it as the conservatory. It was furnished with white wicker chairs that had pink-and-white-striped cushions, and on various tall stone stands there were masses of pink and white flowering plants. I heard Sue admiring it but it looked to me a lot like my late grandfather’s greenhouse. Only this room was much bigger and smarter and, unlike my grandfather’s with his tomatoes, none of the plants looked remotely suitable for eating.

Jennifer was already in there when we entered, and my first impression was of a plump little girl with a round, babyish face. She wore yellow cotton shorts and her feet were tucked into spotless white tennis shoes. Like mine, her hair, which was a mousy brown, was cut to just beneath her ears and kept in place with a brown hairslide.

Struck shy by the curious adults, neither of us wanted to say the first word and we looked at each other warily. It was Dolly that broke the ice. Within seconds of seeing my little dog, Jennifer was down on the floor stroking her.

‘Don’t let her lick your face,’ I heard her mother say to Jennifer before she turned to Sue: ‘Dear little thing, isn’t she?’

I was amazed to hear Sue say, ‘Yes,’ as though she had never thought of giving Dolly away.

A tray with a silver teapot, china cups and a plate of biscuits was brought in by a teenage girl. She was called an au pair, I found out later, and had arrived from France a few weeks earlier. She was there to improve her English, teach the children French and help with a little light housework.

Jennifer and I were given juice and biscuits before my latest auntie told her daughter to show me around while she and Sue had a ‘nice little chat’. Needing no more than those few words of encouragement, Jennifer and I left the two adults and hurried out into the grounds with Dolly scampering at my side.

That day we explored the orchard, where the fruit was still too green to pick. We took turns throwing a ball for Dolly and watched with glee as the little dog sped after it as fast as her legs would carry her, returning with it in her mouth, ready for us to throw it again. After lunch, which we ate outside in the garden, we changed into swimsuits and spent the afternoon playing in the family’s new swimming-pool. I had to wear blow-up armbands although Auntie Ann said the au pair could start teaching me to swim the next time I came. The pretty pool was surrounded by pink busy lizzies. Jennifer told me that her mummy had five hundred planted early each summer by the local nursery. I momentarily remembered our dusty little back garden, which my mother had been too depressed to attend to, and a shadow must have fallen over my face. Jennifer, mistaking my expression for something else, splashed me and we resumed chatting and playing in the warm water. Dolly sat on the side of the pool wagging her tail and giving the occasional bark.

By the end of the afternoon I felt Jennifer and I had become firm friends, and when Sue called to collect me, I left feeling thrilled that there was an arrangement for the following Saturday for me to visit Jennifer again.

It was, however, a friendship that was not going to last, for in the course of the next few weeks my actions would ensure its curtailment. But that day, not being able to see into the future, I believed that during the long summer holidays Dolly and I would have someone to play with.