When I Was Invisible (32 page)

‘What are you doing here, Miss?' she asks. Her eyes dart to where I was sitting as though checking that none of the other teachers will be out in a café at 2 a.m.

‘Catching up on my reading,' I say to her, raising my book so she can see.

Her eyes widen in surprise as she reads the title. Before she can say anything, I ask: ‘Who's your friend waiting for you outside?'

‘Erm …' She shrugs. ‘Just some guy.'

‘I'd like to meet him,' I state. I didn't mean to say that; I don't know what I meant to say, but not that, I don't think. But then, what was I meaning to do? I could have turned a blind eye, pretended I hadn't seen her and let her get on with it.

‘Yeah, right,' she scoffs.

‘Why not?'

‘Who are you, my mother?'

‘No, just someone who is interested. In you, your life, the “just some guy” you're hanging out with.'

What she's about to say is interrupted by the brief, loud knock of Just Some Guy rapping his knuckles impatiently on the window. When we turn towards him, he raises his hands at her in an aggressive ‘what are you doing?/don't keep me waiting' gesture. She is momentarily worried, looks at me, scared, then she makes an ‘I'm going as fast as I can' movement in reply. I smile at him, and raise my hand to wave at him. He shoots me a well-concealed snarl. I've seen that look from men like him so many times before.
Don't get involved
, that look is saying,
not if you know what's good for you
. Those looks were almost always directed at Nika when she wouldn't leave me with whichever man was pawing at me.

If I knew what was good for me, I would not have left the monastery, I would not have come out at this time of night to sit and stare at the pages of my book and wonder when I was going to get a proper night's sleep again. If I knew what was good for me, I would give up all ideas of finding Nika and would get on with my life. If I knew what was good for me, I might have taken the advice of the priest who now regularly hears my confession in north-west London and would have sat in that wooden box, found a way to tell all about what I did, and then accept absolution and move on.

I stride towards the door and open it, the jangling of the bell bringing the owner of the café from out back. He took Gail's money for her order then disappeared out back into his bakery area and had not reappeared since. I suspect he was stalling her, trying to stop her from doing what she was about to do because she is so young. If you ignore the clothes and hair, the make-up and the attitude, you can see she is so young.

The man straightens up as I approach. He takes his hands out of his pockets and confirms what I thought – wedding ring, thick and gold, sitting proudly on the ring finger of his left hand.

‘Hello,' I say to him. ‘My name is Sister Grace. I've just been talking to lovely Gail in there.'

He scowls at me, not sure what to think. I'm hardly dressed as a nun today, but his gaze does stray to the book in my hand and he's unsure.

‘Did you know she was fourteen?' I say with what I call my ‘nun voice and smile'. I only use it on particularly obnoxious people; that quiet, calm, patronising tone is so much more effective with the habit, but the name and the book in my hand should be enough for this deviant. ‘Fourteen. And how old is your daughter?' I ask. It's a guess, of course. He suddenly stands up a little straighter, his arms fold themselves across his chest in a protective, defensive move.

‘I-I-I-I don't have a daughter,' he says. By the end of the sentence, the end of the lie, he is quite confident about what he is saying. So confident, in fact, that he repeats it: ‘I don't have a daughter.'

I hold out my Bible. It is pink and new. I bought it the other day when I reached for my usual Bible, much used and much loved, and couldn't make contact with it because guilt was spreading out through my fingers. I'd felt something every time I touched it, but hadn't been able to name it until that moment, and I realised. I felt guilty. That Bible had been a part of my life as a nun. As I regularly say to people, I'm not a nun any more. I needed to get myself a new one to match my new life. ‘Swear on this that you haven't got a daughter,' I say to him. ‘Swear on this that you haven't got a daughter and I'll believe you.'

He stares at the pink-covered book, his eyes full of fear.

‘It's only a book,' I say to him. ‘I'm sure someone like you doesn't even believe in all that God stuff. So just put your hand on this good book and swear that you haven't got a daughter.'
One who is probably the same age as Gail, which is probably the reason why you picked her
, I add silently. I don't care what anyone might think, someone his age going after someone her age is disgusting and perverted and if he has a daughter her age, then he is even more perverted.

The perverted ‘ordinary bloke' in front of me stares at my pink Bible. The bell of the door tings and Gail steps out. ‘What's going on?' she asks.

Just Some Guy looks up from the book at her. A thousand thoughts flit across his face as he takes her in, and I wonder if she can see them, understand them. He's older than me, probably from a generation where many, many people didn't necessarily believe in God but didn't actively disbelieve, either. They quietly ignored that part of life, hoping it would go away, and only went to church for the usual festivals of life, maybe even for Christmas. He's wondering, in that way a secular person who has memories of religion once being a large part of his life would, if Gail is worth it. If it is worth denying the existence of his daughter(s) so he can get to screw someone this young.

‘I don't have to put up with this shit,' he says.

‘No, you really,
really
don't,' I say.

‘What's she been saying to you?' Gail demands.

‘I asked him how old his daughter was,' I state, ‘and he claimed he didn't have one. So I asked him to swear on my Bible that he didn't have a daughter and he was about to, I think?' I turn towards him, thrusting the book a little closer to him as I do so. ‘You were about to, weren't you? I mean, knowing I'm a nun and all, you were going to swear on my Bible that you don't have a daughter.'

‘She's not even a nun any more,' Gail tells him. ‘You're not even a nun any more,' she reminds me. I think it's meant to reassure him, but it does the opposite. His eyes flash fear. Fear that I was once a nun, fear that I may actually know him and what his family situation is because his daughters go to a religious school or I've seen them all at church.

‘Here,' Gail says stroppily and clasps his hand in hers. ‘Just swear.' She pushes his hand towards my Bible. ‘It doesn't matter, it doesn't mean anything. Just swear and we can get out of here.'

He snatches his hand away and takes a step back. ‘Get off me,' he spits. Suddenly he's a lot less distinguished and attractive, now he's far more obviously the pathetic, cowardly pervert he clearly is.

Gail frowns at him, her face a tumbling mass of confusion. Under the make-up, the dress, the coat falling off one shoulder, is a confused, naïve girl. She's seen so much, she's experienced so much, but there are still moments like this that will trip her, throw her back into the world of being a teenager, barely more than a young girl. ‘Why won't you swear?' she asks. ‘If you don't have a daughter, why won't you swear?'

‘Screw this,' he says. To Gail he adds: ‘I bet you would have been crap, anyway, so screw you.' The most venomous tone he reserves for me, all his contempt and hatred, bundled together and thrown at me with: ‘And screw
you
backwards.'

I'm surprised as well as relieved that he actually walks away. I'm even more surprised to find Gail has her face in her hands and is sobbing her heart out.

‘How did you know?' Gail asks me. ‘How did you know he had a daughter and that he was lying?'

She has both hands around a cup of coffee, and has pulled her coat up properly on to her hunched shoulders and stares into the drink's black depths as she speaks.

‘How did I know that a man who wanted to have sex with a fourteen-year-old girl was probably a lying toad? I don't know, lucky guess?'

‘He thought I was older. I told him I was nineteen.'

‘Right, course you did, and you think he really believed that? He was mid-forties
at least
. And wearing a wedding ring. He has been around long enough to know you are not nineteen, no matter what he would have told everyone afterwards. He's old enough and experienced enough to know that girls – and that's what you are, sorry – always dress to look older. And if, by some miracle upon miracles, he was the one forty-something man in the world who didn't know that you were probably lying about your age, then I'd wager in his mind he would be
hoping
you were younger than nineteen so he'd have got away with having sex with a girl the same age as his daughter.'

She purses her lips together before raising her gaze. ‘Are nuns even allowed to say “sex”?' she asks.

‘I'm not a nun any more,' I reply.

‘Yeah, right,' she says.

The man behind the counter, with his balding head and clean white apron, approaches with two fresh cups of coffee. When we came back in, I noticed that he had positioned himself on the other side of the counter, right near the exit, where he would have been able to dart out of the door and step in should things have turned nasty with Just Some Guy. When we returned to the table where I'd been sitting, he seemed to conjure from nowhere Gail's peanut butter and banana bagel, and coffee, gave me a nod of approval and murmured ‘Good work' as he placed them in front of her. This time as he leaves our refills, he gives me a sad look – he's obviously seen girls like Gail in his place many, many times. He's probably glad that she isn't back out there with Just Some Guy, having who knows what done to her.

‘How often do you go out like this, Gail?' I ask her.

Gail rests her head on one hand and stares at the table, shrugs. ‘Dunno, once or twice?'

So that'll be three or four times
, I immediately think. ‘Do you get very drunk and take drugs every time?' I ask.

I remember the drugs headline scandals involving Nika before she disappeared from the magazines and papers. Her footballer boyfriend had been pictured with the coke he'd confiscated from her and the whole thing had blown up. He was the clean-living sportsman who was being brought down by his drink-loving, drug-fuelled girlfriend. But he vowed to stand by her while she went to rehab and got herself help. I had known it wasn't true. Nika, Nikky, whatever she was called, would never have taken drugs. Even after all these years, I knew Nika would rather suffer than give in to things like drugs.

‘What's it to you? Why do you care what I do?' Gail asks.

‘It's nothing to me, I suppose,' I tell her. ‘But I care what you do because, well, you remind me of someone. And even if you didn't remind me of her, you're an interesting person, Gail. Despite the way you constantly have a go at me, I really like you.'

Her gaze flickers up at me for a moment, trying to gauge, probably, how serious I am. ‘You think I'm interesting?' she mumbles.

‘Yes. I genuinely find you interesting, and I truly believe you're important. Not like the men like Just Some Guy, who pretend to be interested in you so they can have s—' I'm not a nun any more, but having her question whether nuns can say ‘sex' makes me falter on the word. Of course we can say it. Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex. We can say it as many times as we want. I'm self-conscious now she's brought it up. ‘So they can have their way with you.' Now I sound like a prude, which a lot of people think nuns are but we're not. Not that I'm a nun any more.

Gail's lips turn upwards in a small smile. ‘You're really weird,' she says.

‘Wow, thank you, that's the nicest thing anyone's said to me all night.'

‘Well, you are. I mean,' she looks around us, ‘look where you're sitting at, like, three of the a.m. That's weird shit.'

‘Where does your mother think you are?' I ask her. She isn't going to answer the drugs question, so I'll try another line of questioning.

‘Dunno. At home, probably.'

‘Does she work nights?' I ask.

‘No, she goes out at night.'

‘Where?'

‘Dunno. She doesn't tell me. It's like, she's free to do what she wants now cos I'm old enough to be left alone and when I wasn't old enough she got herself a built-in babysitter.'

‘I don't understand, sorry.'

‘My stepdad.'

‘Right. He stays in rather than go out with your mum?'

‘He used to, but now they go out together sometimes, too.'

I know what she is telling me, even if she doesn't realise that's what she is saying. ‘Do you get on with your stepfather?' I ask. I watch her answer. She doesn't reply straight away: she thinks about it, watches the still surface of her drink.

‘Dunno,' she replies. ‘Suppose.' A pause. ‘Not like anything would change if I didn't get on with him, is it? So I make the best of it.'

‘What do you mean?' I have teased information out of people before, but that was when they thought the way I dressed made me similar to a priest and everything I said was confidential until the day I die.

‘He's a good bloke,' she says. ‘Everyone says so. My real father, he's not around at all and that's cos he was a real bastard to my mum. Used to hit her and stuff, was really controlling and wouldn't let her go out, shouted at me and my brothers all the time. Then my mum met my stepdad and, you know, with his support she found the courage to leave. And everyone says how much of a good guy he is. He's got a good job so we can live in a really posh house, and he doesn't hit my mum, he lets her go out whenever she wants, gives her loads of money. Everyone says it all the time: “You've landed on your feet with him, Cecile. He's one of the good ones.”'