Hate to Love You (8 page)

“Bloody hell, Pais,” she gasped. “Not only did you impersonate your saintly sister to satisfy your lustful loins, you deceived her intolerable toff into infidelity. I hate to think what you would’ve done if you had
liked
the fellow.”

I laughed, feeling lighter than I had for the past week. “It was a two-for-one deal.”

“More than two by the sounds of it,” she quipped. “I want details.”

A mature, reserved sort of person would stick to the minimum, but that wasn’t me. I felt just like the waves crashing on the pebbly shore, my heart pounding as I told Marcia everything. Sure, I’d told her about my experiences before. Little snippets like “his arse is tight” or even “his dick was fire-engine red.” I’d never felt anything with the men I’d made out with though. Not even a tiny thrill, although I’d certainly tried my hardest.

This was different; it was new and completely consuming. And the funny thing was that I hadn’t even seen a single centimetre of James’s body. All I could do was describe touch and taste and sensation while Marcia listened, wide-eyed.

She fanned herself with her hand. “Shut up or I’ll grab the next man I see and shag him, gay, straight or in-between.”

The jogger behind us skirted around her and glanced back, then did a double take, making me smile. His reaction was pretty normal—Marcia resembles Catherine Zeta-Jones. Her Brazilian parents also gifted her with permanently tanned skin, although she complains she’s too pale. She gave him a saucy wink and he jogged backward a few steps before resuming his run.

I plunged into the bit about sex that still worried me two weeks later.

Marcia grinned salaciously. “Gushing like that is called female ejaculation.”

I stopped walking. “Like a guy? You’re shitting me, right?”

“Nope.”

Oh God. Nothing I’d seen in Tarzan’s stash of hilarious eighties porn had prepared me for female ejaculation. “I thought that only happened to men.”

She snorted. “And to some way too soon, poor buggers.”

“But what if I go off too early or spout like a leaky fire hydrant nobody can fix?”

Marcia sniggered. “Then you call in the fire brigade to sort you out. Or the army.”

“It’s not funny, Mar—it’s bizarre. I didn’t even know women could do that,” I said, still taken aback.

She shrugged. “It depends on how stimulated you are and if he got to your G-spot the right way. And don’t worry, it’s nothing to do with urination. It’s to do with hot sex. Trevor tried to get me to blow once, but...nada. Guys think it reflects on their virility.”

I smiled, remembering James’s reaction. The pleasure had been intense but...
ejaculation?

“Why does the weird shit always happen to me?” I whined.

“Just enjoy it. What I want to know is how Caroline reacted to your little tryst with her hombre.” She linked her arm through mine and we continued walking. “Is she still going to marry James? And what did he say when he found out it was you?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I thought I was in for it after James phoned from Sydney but Caroline never switched on the raging bitch. I figured they hadn’t discussed their row that night and would get to it the next day. When she came home last weekend I was shitting myself, waiting for her to burst into my room and strangle me, but she didn’t say a word about it. It was freaking me out.”

Marcia’s eyebrows puckered. “Your sister is evil. Maybe she’s plotting her revenge, just waiting for the right moment.”

“Nope. She left her laptop open when she went shopping and I read her messages. James sent her a pretty hot e-mail after he arrived in Sydney.”

I sighed, remembering. He’d just got out of the shower, hard and aching and—

Marcia shook my arm impatiently.

I mimicked Caroline’s voice. “I love you darling but your sexual talk is making me very uncomfortable. Please can we wait until we see each other to discuss intimacy?” The rest of her uptight message flashed through my mind. “James was graphic but she reacted as if he’d said he wanted to be her tampon. Like it was gross—when it was so hot I couldn’t sleep.”

Marcia laughed, delighted. “Inside the buff and haughty lurks the rough and extra-naughty. I like James more by the minute.” She shouted at Kai and waved him back. “Maybe you should come clean. After all, James isn’t blameless. He came on to you, masculine and irresistible. And then he seduced you with his dirty talk!”

“We seduced each other,” I murmured.

Kai ran back to us, his face smeared in chocolate. Much to Marcia’s amusement, I promised to join him on the trampoline. So what if I had a soft spot for him? I’m a real sucker for cute little curly heads with brown eyes, and he had a crush on me. I didn’t want to let him down. Marcia tugged on Kai’s hair. She dropped a few coins into his palm and gave him a little push.

“Go get yourself some rock candy, mate. And more chocolate.” She wagged her finger at him and gave him a fierce look. “Don’t tell Mum or I’ll yank your willy.”

“You gotta catch me first,” he called over his shoulder.

I stopped to put a hand to Marcia’s forehead as she had done to me. She believes giving sugar to children is a form of child abuse, and I’d had to beg her to let Kai have the ice cream.

She sighed heavily. “When I drop him off he’ll be too hyper to settle down for tea. Then Mum will be too worried about him to nag me about dumping Trevor. She thinks he’s an immature wannabe football player who’ll break my heart.”

Mrs Oliveira had the right of it and I’d told Marcia as much before I went into rehab. When I came out they were living together. Sometimes you have to let people get hit by the train no matter how much you want to yank them off the track. I heaved a frustrated sigh at my freaky ability. It’s more than an unwanted quirk; it’s a useless curse from a God with a sick sense of humour. Why the hell give me the ability to see things if I can do nothing about them? I wasn’t even able to protect myself when it came down to it. I’d tried to protect Marcia, telling her what I’d seen in Trevor’s eyes when he looked at me. That didn’t go down well and our tense conversation ended with her telling me to take a chill pill. So of course I did.

“If he slashes your heart I’ll slash his tires,” I said.

Marcia frowned. “There’s been no shoplifting or graffiti in two years and no visits from the cops. You don’t want to spoil your perfect behaviour with a trip to the clink do you? You’ve got a weight-gain problem to worry about.”

I was immediately wrenched back into my desperate situation. “Are you sure I can’t get an abortion on the NHS?”

Marcia nodded. “Two doctors have to agree to it and refer you. They only do that when they think the mother will be endangered by carrying to full term. You’re eighteen, healthy and you live with your parents. You’re not likely to bump yourself off ’cause you can’t cope with motherhood. With your drug history they’d get social services involved but you’d still have the baby.”

I let out a snort. “I’ll sell my sapphires and get it done privately.”

Marcia frowned. “Are you sure you’d go through with it?”

I watched the children on the pier and tried to imagine myself pushing a buggy or changing a nappy. It creeped me out and yet...a part of me longed for somebody to love, somebody of my own flesh and blood who would have to love me back. Selfish, I know. Stupid too, since I also know that blood is just as thin as venom. But the tiny yearning held me back, as did the sense that abortion could change me in ways I wasn’t sure I could handle. But would I do it anyway? I stared at a tumultuous sea that didn’t give me any answers.

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “Sometimes I just want to run away, go anywhere else but Brighton.” James’s hotel dream popped into my head. “Spain, maybe, or another warm country where I could forget about everything.”

Marcia poked my stomach. “You can’t forget about
that
.”

“I’m going to get in touch with Alex tonight, okay? He won’t want a kid either, especially since he’s getting married. He’ll have to fork out.” I pushed down the little stab of sadness. “I can’t decide anything until I hear from him.”

“And in the meantime you’re going to secretarial school.”

It wasn’t a question. “Yes, Mum,” I said drily. “I can start with the April intake.”

She glanced at me sideways. “And what about you and James? He might call off the wedding if he finds out his glorious goddess was really a succulent succubus.”

“There is no ‘me and James.’ We were drunk and I hate him, remember? He’s an arrogant toff who thinks he’s better than me.”

Her smile turned into a full-blown grin. “
Icksnay on the iarlay
, hon. Tell those sweet little lies elsewhere.”

Shit. Why do I always end up telling her everything? I’d returned to James’s Facebook page and read his threads properly. The “underclass” post was somebody else’s and James had copied it onto his page in order to tear the guy’s argument to shreds.

“Yeah, well. James was arrogant to
me
. First he insulted me to my face and then again when he thought I was Caroline. He thinks I’m beneath him,” I huffed angrily. “He may have been hot and passionate and...whatever, I still hate him.”

Marcia’s laughter made it hard to cling to indignation. I was blushing, damn it, my lips curling into a silly little smile.

I raised my hands in surrender. “Okay, okay maybe I don’t hate him. But I don’t like him either and I don’t feel any differently about his job or his awful taste in brides.”

She put her hands on my shoulders and peered into my eyes. “What’s that, flashing its scaly claws? Ah yes, a green monster trying to hide in the deep. Oh dear, she’s blind and stubborn on top of delusional, poor thing,” she said. “I don’t need your magical ‘pierce and prod’ to see clearly, y’know.”

“Sounds like a sex toy.”

“For use with snobby knobby?”

Marcia sniggered and I burst into helpless giggles. Thankfully, I was saved from further embarrassment by Kai. He ran up to us and tugged on my arm.

“Come
on
, Pais,” he whined. “You promised you’d bounce on the trampoline with me.”

“Sorry, Mar, duty calls.”

She waved me away. “Go forth and tramp.”

Chapter Five

The Scale of Truth

Social networking sucks.

Alex was travelling in Mexico when he got my PM and he put his street Spanish to use in his reply. Growing up bilingual has its advantages; I was able to translate straight away.

“
Jódete puta
,” he wrote. Literally, “
Fuck yourself
,
slut.
”

Alex denied any responsibility for the baby and concocted a story for his fiancée Claire, who then had a major hissy fit. The irony is I hadn’t even threatened him with telling her. What the hell for? It wasn’t like it would help my situation any. All I asked was that he send me the money for an abortion. I never found out if I’d go through with it though, since he didn’t oblige. I got an insulting e-mail from Claire instead.

That was the beginning of a cyber hate campaign against me. At first, Claire contented herself with slagging me off. I’m a desperate slut who goes after other women’s men, blah blah. I took it on the chin. After all, I
was
kind of slutty and if you do the shit you gotta take the hit, right? But then men I didn’t even know boasted about shagging me, contributing stories of threesomes, foursomes and whatever else they could think of. I was the gold medalist in a massive fuckathon around Brighton.

Then came the gut kick. Claire announced that Paisley Benton, of 107 Darton Road, was a pregnant druggie who didn’t know who the father of her baby was. Soon enough, people I didn’t even know had heard about my pregnancy. The next time Caroline checked her Facebook page I’d be toast.

Miraculously, she didn’t.

Never underestimate the single-minded concentration of a bridezilla. Caroline was deliriously happy organising her wedding and said she was too busy to bother with what she called the “electronic trivia of mundanity.” Marcia was worried and Tarzan was angry. He said Alex was a prick and offered me his savings towards baby costs—all eighty-two pounds of it, which I thought was sweet. I wasn’t used to guys caring about anything beyond my cup size, but Tarzan read up, made me drink lots of orange juice and bought me folic acid. Instead of watching
Great Sexpectations
we watched
Expecting a Baby
, which I thought was pretty damn funny in light of our previous porn habit.

After a few people from church looked at me strangely I knew my time as a closet gestator was coming to an end. I was so strung out I nearly headed to 27B to take the edge off, but at the last minute I called Marcia. She baked me chocolate cupcakes and we watched
Final Destination.
Call me weird, but in moments of stress a slasher film can calm me down. I decided to stretch my luck until after the wedding and marked the date with a big red
X
on my wall calendar.

As soon as the excitement was over I would tell my parents about my pregnancy and hope for the best. With Caroline on her honeymoon, I hoped that they would find it in their hearts to help me. Having a grandchild might make them soften towards me and heal some of the scars in our relationship. I convinced myself that all I had to do was make it to Caroline’s big day and everything would be fine.

Unfortunately, Caroline had other ideas.

On the eve of the wedding I came home from Tarzan’s house and walked into the kitchen. My parents and Caroline were seated at the table in silence, their faces stone cold.

“How could you be so immoral?” Caroline asked.

Shit! James must have finally told her everything. “It wasn’t my fault!”

My mother stood up, her eyes red and her face blotchy from crying.

“How can getting pregnant not be your fault after everything I’ve told you?” she snarled.

Fuck! My mind did a quick switch to “
They know I’m pregnant
,
now what?
”

Total brain freeze as it happens. My father was so quiet it was scary, freaking me out more than any fist banging or shouting could have done. He stood up and came towards me, one small step at a time. I backed away, a protective hand over my belly but Caroline got up and blocked my exit. She pointed at the counter, her eyes gleaming.

There was the Find Out test and next to that, my half-empty bottle of Absolut. I hadn’t had a drink in weeks but I hadn’t thrown out the bottle either. I looked at my mother appealingly. After all, she’d understand my predicament better than anybody else, wouldn’t she?

She stared back at me with loathing. “Why are you shaking?”

My eyes cut to the vodka.

“Oh dear Lord Jesus,” she said. “My daughter’s a drug addict
and
an alcoholic!”

“Shut it, María,” my father said. He picked up the pregnancy test and pointed it at me. “What the fuck is this?”

I could feel a flippant answer coming on so I bit down on my tongue.

“Paisley’s an accomplished liar,” Caroline said snidely. “I can’t wait to hear what she comes up with this time. No doubt it’ll be another far-fetched story so we’ll feel sorry for her.”

My mother shook her finger at me. “How could you do this to us? What have we ever done to make you an ungrateful, fornicating liar?”

It was too much. Three months of hoarding my secrets and living on tenterhooks merged with years of angry hurt.

“How about not be there for me when I needed you most? When Manuel—”

My father took a menacing step towards me. “Don’t you dare repeat your filthy lies in my house.”

I managed to stifle my words. His temper would boil over if I wasn’t careful and then there would be no escape. But I was still angry. My parents would never believe me about Manuel because they didn’t want to, because if they did they’d have to acknowledge their own failings and that they would never do. To the end of their days they would sweep what had happened to me out the back door with all the other dirt.

“You are unbelievable,” Caroline said. “First we had your false accusations against poor Manuel, then the drama queen suicide attempt and the selfish running away to do God knows what. And when you came back we had a drug addict on our hands. But that wasn’t enough for you, was it? You had to get pregnant so we have something else to be ashamed about. Should we be on alert and hide the razors?”

I looked at my wrist reflexively, my vision so suffused in red I could still see the blood. “I slit my wrists because I wanted to die and that’s the truth,” I shouted. “Because nobody believed me. When I hitched that ride to London I was only fourteen, but nobody fucking cared or bothered to look for me. And as for what I did on the streets? Mainly beg and steal. Sleep in shop fronts and avoid rapists. You’d be surprised at how many psychos want to rape a homeless drunk. I might as well have stayed at home though, kept it all in the family and let Manuel—”

Bam!
Pain exploded at the side of my face. My head snapped back and I staggered, both hands on my cheek. I guess I was lucky my father had backhanded me, even though his jagged ring had sliced into my skin. Had he used his fist my jaw would have been broken.

“I warned you,” he shouted.

He lifted his arm to do it again but didn’t advance. He was breathing hard, looking at me like he wanted to snap my neck. Nobody spoke or moved as he struggled for control. I stared at Caroline, tears of pain streaming down my face. Her pale skin was tinged with green. Now that she’d riled our parents she didn’t want to stick around to watch the fallout. She wanted to hide and not see how her words would make the pretty little world she inhabited downright wretched.

I saw my parents through a haze of desolation. How could I have ever thought they would be kind, that I could bring a baby into this family and repair the damage? Had they ever loved me? Maybe they had before my strange ability had freaked them out and Caroline had finished turning them against me. Before her lie had killed whatever love they had left.

“We have to deal with Paisley’s latest disgrace calmly,” Caroline said, her voice brisk and lawyerlike.

And just like that we sat and pretended to be civilised human beings and not shouting, fully paid-up members of the Dysfunctional Family Club. By mixing in circles my parents had never dreamed of, my sister had transcended the status of child and become their behaviour guru. It just goes to show how her fancy lawyer job and “old money” in-laws elevated her from saint to angel in John and María Benton’s eyes. I was grateful for her order to sit down though; my legs were shaking.

Caroline steepled her delicate hands, delivering her speech like a judge summarising in a court case. “I’m getting married tomorrow and we are going to have a wonderful day. Mum and Dad deserve to enjoy themselves, to see me marry the man I love and start a beautiful life with him. Nothing is going to ruin my wedding, not even you, Paisley.”

I couldn’t allow her to pronounce sentence on me.

“Mum,” I said, trying to keep the wobble from my voice. “I didn’t even realise what was going on until it was over.”

Caroline arched her delicate brows. “Oh, please. Soon you’ll be telling us you’re a pregnant virgin.”

My parents recoiled as though I was the serpent in their midst, and I couldn’t think of anything to say in my defence except that I was just as stupid as they were.

I wanted to shout at Caroline that I
was
a pregnant virgin but I couldn’t, not anymore. James had seen to that several times over and the joke was on me. My father cursed and grabbed the vodka. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as the liquid slid down his throat. Glug, glug, glug. It was torture to watch.

He banged the bottle on the table. “Answer the fucking question!”

“She can’t answer, Daddy, because she isn’t a virgin. Isn’t that right, Paisley?” Caroline said.

“No, I’m not a virgin,” I ground out. “Not anymore but I was until...”

Shit!

“Until you had sex?” she said derisively.

My mother was crying in earnest now, fingering her rosary and wailing about God’s judgment. I was a selfish liar, evil and perverse, heading on a fast train to hell and wanting to drag my family with me. The usual.

“Get up,” Caroline ordered.

I did as I was told without any back chat. Caroline walked a circle around me, surrounding me in a cage as surely as if she’d magicked up the bars and drilled them into the linoleum. Lips pursed, she came closer. Her rose-scented perfume made my stomach roil.

“How far gone are you?”

She made it sound like I had a terminal illness. My mother stopped crying, as if my answer would somehow make me less pregnant.

“Just over three months, I think,” I said.

“Too far gone for an abortion,” she murmured too softly for anybody else to hear but me.

My mouth fell open. Caroline says abortion is murder. In her view, it’s only acceptable if the baby is “damaged,” like a defective laptop or a wonky chair. Then it’s not abortion anymore; it’s mercy and God will understand. I guess abortion was also mercy when it prevented her new social standing from being tarnished.

“Who knocked you up?” Caroline said.

For an insane moment James’s face popped into my head. I shook the image away with an effort. I had to focus, stick to my plan no matter how bad it now seemed. If I told my parents the truth they would harass Alex and his family, and I didn’t want that.

My father would insist on marriage and when that didn’t happen he’d get violent, and not just with me. Don’t get me wrong—it’s not that I gave a toss about Alex, but going after him wouldn’t do
me
any good. The hate campaign would get worse and in the end nothing would be resolved.

When it came down to it, fantasising about happy endings while I made sketchy plans for the future didn’t compare to the harsh reality of telling my parents that I was pregnant. I had to buy myself some time to figure out what to do next.

“Well?” my father demanded. “Who is the father?”

I took a deep breath. “I don’t know.”

Three pairs of eyes widened, mouths opened and jaws dropped. Only saying that Father Martin was my lover would have trumped my declaration.

Caroline’s eyes narrowed. “How can you not know who the father is?”

“I didn’t look at their faces,” I blurted.

My mother’s voice climbed to a scream. “You didn’t look at
their
faces
?
”

Oh crap
. I should have expressed myself better but between “I screwed a lot of guys” and “It could’ve been anybody,” I opted for what I thought would do less damage. It proved too much for my mother. She ran to the Virgin Mary altar and started praying, which I thought was pretty ironic.

My father spoke so quietly I hardly heard him. “Get out of my sight or you won’t live to regret telling me that you’re a whore.”

Caroline’s cajoling tones followed me all the way to my room. She said she wanted me at her wedding so tongues wouldn’t wag but I knew better. Having me witness her happiness while my life was in shambles would make her day much more enjoyable.

I lay on my bed conjuring up memories of sex with James to get me through the shakes, but it didn’t work. I was lying under a blanket of fear. Fear for my future and that of the tiny life current inside me.

No crying
, my mind warned.
Not yet
.

Not until my visitor had left. My head fell forward and I shut my eyes, sighing deeply as I heard her footsteps grow closer. Caroline opened my bedroom door and stepped in. Her voice lost its habitual sweetness, leaving just the bitch part.

“You’re more stupid than I thought.”

There are times in life when it takes all your willpower just to shrug.

Caroline smiled slowly, relishing my despair. “You’re going to get everything you deserve—that’s what happens to vulgar little whores who kiss my fiancé.”

Every triumphant gloat she’d ever enjoyed at my expense came flooding back to me.

Every lie.

“Why did you do it?” I asked quietly.

She knew exactly what I was talking about. “Your dirty secret would’ve been exposed sooner or later.”

“Why have you always hated me?” I asked angrily. “What the fuck did I ever do to you?”