The Ice Cream Girls (24 page)

‘I came home, told Adrian about it – you know, as you do, wife to husband.’ She swings round suddenly, clutching a white china mug in her hand and pointing it at me as though she was about to accuse me of something sordid and tea-related. ‘Do you know what he said? “God, Mez, isn’t it enough that we’ve already got one crim in the family, or is it something genetic?”’

I thought Adrian liked me. I thought, because he knew me, because he was around at the time of the trial and the stuff in the papers and the aftermath, that he knew I didn’t do it. I thought, like everyone else in our family, who stood by me, who were supportive and strong, that he knew I wasn’t capable of such a thing. Obviously I thought wrong.

‘He was joking, he said, when I burst into tears. But not that much, eh? So, that’s why I don’t tell him. Imagine what he’s going to say now. What other “jokes” he’s going to come up with. I can’t handle it at the moment.’ Having seen the hurt and horror on my face, Mez hides her face in the cupboard. ‘I will tell him, just when I feel better about it. When I know what to expect exactly, I’ll tell him.’

‘Do you want me to come to court with you?’ I ask the back of her head.

‘No,’ she says emphatically. ‘I’d never put you through that again. Thanks for the offer, but no, I’ll be fine. Adrian will probably have to come, show them I’m a respectable woman with a supportive – ha ha – husband and a young family, who made a mistake I’ve owned up to and who they can’t throw the book at. I’ll be fine. Everything will be fine.’

‘What about you and Adrian?’

‘We’ll be fine, too. We just need to sit down and talk for a change. It obviously doesn’t help that he’s off on holiday with the boys every two seconds. Trying to “blow off steam”. That’s why I blew up at Fez. That crack she made really hit home. And hot on the heels of Adrian’s remark – it all just got a bit much. But it’ll all be fine. Everything will be fine.’

Why is it that each time she says everything will be fine, I believe her less?

‘Let me know if there is anything I can do,’ I say to her. She won’t. I know her, she’s like the others in my family; we won’t ask for help no matter how bad things get. We continue until breaking point; we soldier on until we cannot march any more. It doesn’t matter though, I know exactly what I have to do to help her.

‘OK,’ she says, from inside the cupboard. ‘Will do. Do you want to stay for dinner? There’s plenty.’

‘No, I, erm, have a couple of things to do before I head back to Brighton. I’ll just go play with the kids for a while and then go.’

She finally stops unloading the dishwasher and while carefully avoiding eye contact with me, she turns her head to look at me. She smiles the saddest smile I have seen in years and my heart starts to break. ‘See ya, then. I’ll let you know what other ideas I’ve come up with for the dress.’

‘Oh, no, don’t worry about the dress, I’ll buy one. You’ve got enough on your plate.’

‘I’ve said I’ll make it and I will. I
want
to make it. It’ll take my mind off everything. I’ll email you some sketches.’

‘Fantastic. See you, love.’

‘Yeah, see ya.’

My sister is still smiling her sad smile as I leave the kitchen.

I know how to help her all right: to give her husband a kick up the backside.

‘I don’t understand why you were at this man’s house, anyway,’ Mum said.

Unusually, the police, who had just arrested me, let my parents and my sisters visit me in the police cell. They were being generous because, they said, in the morning, after the hearing, I would be sent to Holloway without the chance to go home in between to see them. I could be on remand there for up to a year until the case went to court. They were going to recommend no bail because of the nature of the attack, they were going to tell the Court that I was a dangerous criminal and that I should stay behind bars until the Court could put me away for good.

That was how they told it to me, before they led me to the cells, and that was probably what was going to happen, my solicitor said, because I admitted being there. It was no wonder the police could be generous with my visitors: from now on, they said, it’d be two people at a time for the rest of my life.

My father had his arm around my mother, while Faye and Medina, I’m not sure they were aware, were clutching each other’s hands, like they used to do when we were small children. Faye had a face of stone on her; Medina looked like she had been crying. They’d both been called away from their lives in other parts of London to come here to see me. To see me like this, sitting in a dank, tiny room on a hard metal bed garnished with a wafer-thin mattress, and with a metal toilet in the corner.

‘He’s my boyfriend,’ I said to Mum, knowing that I had to tell them everything before the police told them. ‘I’ve been going out with him for a couple of years.’

Faye and Dad both frowned deeply, not wanting to take in what I was saying; Mum and Medina’s eyes widened in alarm. Yes, that would mean I was fifteen when it started.

‘He was your teacher,’ Faye said. ‘Your History teacher. And you were going out with him?’

I looked down at the floor in shame. ‘Yeah.’

‘But, Serena, how could you?’ Medina asked.

‘He . . . he said he loved me.’

‘He’s not allowed to love you,’ Faye said angrily, ‘he was your teacher. He raped you.’

‘No, no, it wasn’t like that. He didn’t force me or anything.’

‘If you were under sixteen, then he raped you,’ Faye said. ‘You’re not old enough to give consent. He should know that. Whether you said yes or no, he’s not allowed to do that with you.’

‘I know, but . . .’

‘But, what?’ Medina said. I’d never heard her so angry, so enraged. ‘What? How can he love you when he’s an adult and you’re a girl and he’s meant to be looking after you? And now he’s dead.’

‘I didn’t do it.’ My eyes swung round wildly to each of them, trying to make them see and understand. ‘I didn’t. I couldn’t. No matter what the police say, I didn’t do it.’

‘But you were there,’ Faye said.

‘I didn’t do it,’ I said. I could feel the tears building up behind my face. ‘Mummy, I promise, I didn’t do it. I didn’t.’

‘I know,’ she said, breaking away from Dad and coming to me. She put her arms around me. ‘I know you didn’t do it, Serena. I know you couldn’t do that. That’s not how we brought you up. You couldn’t.’

I held on to my mother, knowing that I wouldn’t get hugged like this again in months, maybe years. The other three watched us, looking slightly removed from the situation.

I knew I had to get them to believe me. Because I didn’t do it, not in the way they were saying. I did not murder him.

Adrian holds up a ‘one minute’ finger to me as I enter the plush cocoon of his office because he is on the phone. His office is decorated in warm reds and burgundies with sumptuous furniture fabrics and thick-pile carpet. His office always reminds me of a womb, what it must look like to a baby, all red and soft. I’ve always privately thought that it’s a sign he never wants to grow up, but that’s the sort of thing I’d never say to anyone. Why would I? You don’t make mean jokes about the loved ones of the people you love. I like Adrian, womb-like office and all, which is why the whole journey over here to his management consultancy office in West London has been difficult. I cannot believe he thinks I am a criminal. What else has he said about me behind my back, what else has he thought about me and what I was accused of?

‘Sez,’ Adrian says, standing up as he throws the phone back into its cradle.

Don’t you ‘Sez’ me,
I think at him.
Not when you think I’m a criminal.

‘Haven’t seen you in ages,’ he says.

Like Judas, he comes to me and kisses me on both cheeks. I feel his touch like a burn of accusation, like the nicks of the knife he has inserted into my back. I stiffen at his warm greeting and allow him to move away before I relax and take the seat opposite his desk that he indicates.

‘I know, Adrian, it’s been a while – we really should get the kids together.’

‘I hear congrats are in order,’ he says. He claps his hands together and rubs them hungrily, as if in anticipation of the party we’re going to have. ‘You’re doing it all again, I hear. From scratch.’

‘Yeah, we are.’

‘Is that why you’re here? To ask me to be in the wedding party?’ He pushes a hand through his blond hair, temporarily moving it off his face, showing his fine-boned features and smooth-skinned forehead. ‘I know Mez is making the dress, and I’m assuming she and Fez will be bridesmaids, so I guess Harry and I will be groomsmen? I’d be honoured. Truly. Honoured.’

Adrian’s job as a senior management consultant – hence his own office and never being able to turn off his mobile – means that he can sometimes take over. He anticipates what a person (client) wants and needs then tries to fulfil that want and its corresponding need. However, when it’s not work-related, he often doesn’t actually take the time to find out what the person he’s dealing with really needs or wants. He makes assumptions and then takes over.

‘No, that’s not why I’m here,’ I say, gently. ‘I’m actually here to ask you to stop being such an arse to my sister.’

He sighs and deflates all at once. ‘It was only a matter of time before you showed up, too. You can’t have one Gorringe bollocking without the other.’

‘Too? You mean Faye’s been here already?’

‘Of course. The second Medina starts moaning to one of you, I know you’re bound to turn up shouting the odds. No wonder Harry calls you the Witches of Ipswich.’

‘Yes, and no wonder Harry gets the living Michael taken out of him at every opportunity. And am I shouting?’

‘No, I guess not, at least that’s something.’

Faye when riled, when she thinks someone is taking advantage of a family member, is a monster. I can well believe she gave him a verbal kicking he won’t forget in a hurry, but it clearly hasn’t worked. Subtlety is the way to get Adrian to admit he’s being a dick, that he is a father not a single man and he cannot live the single lifestyle any longer. Or rather, he can but can’t expect to have his family there waiting for him at the end of it. I need to kick his arse so gently, he has no idea that it’s been kicked.

‘What’s going on, Ades? And, for the record, Medina didn’t come moaning. She hasn’t said anything that wasn’t dragged kicking and screaming out of her. She is one hundred per cent loyal.’ I leave the ‘unlike you’ bit hanging there like a ripe, red apple on a tree – he can take it and swallow it if he chooses or he can ignore it, but we both know the accusation, the fruit, is there, waiting for him.

‘You tell me,’ he replies. ‘I have no idea what’s going on in my marriage any more.’

‘Why are you either working all the time or running off on holiday with “the boys”? Why don’t you want to spend time with Mez and the kids?’

‘It’s not all me,’ he says defensively, spinning on his chair to stare out of his window at his uninspiring view over the hotchpotch black and grey of rooftops in this little square of London. ‘I just can’t talk to her any more. She’s not . . .’ He raises his hands and moves them towards each other as if he is holding a ball and trying to jam his hands together, but the invisible ball is stopping his hands from making contact. ‘She’s just not there.’ Another jam at the ball. ‘She’s not the woman I married.’

‘Well, of course she’s not – you married a single, working woman, now she’s a stay-at-home mother of four children. How can you expect her to be the same? Has it occurred to you that you’re not the man she married? The man she married would talk to her if there was a problem, not hide behind work or his mates.’

‘Serena, you have no idea what it’s like.’

‘Tell me then.’

‘I love her, of course I love her. I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving her. And the kids. They are my world. But . . . Medina’s got . . . She’s . . . I can’t talk to her. I come home after a busy day and all she wants to talk about is what the kids have done and the bread she’s baked and this new dress pattern she’s found. I don’t have a wife any more, I have a 1950s housewife who, for all I know, is doped up to her eyeballs on happy pills. It’s like Medina’s not there any more and in her place is this strange woman who has nothing beyond the home to talk about. I spend time with my mates so I get some stimulating conversation every now and again.’

‘How dare you.’ I keep my voice low and calm, let the words do the talking. If I do not shout, maybe the shame he should feel will be more acute, more effective. ‘She is bringing up four children –
your
children. What exactly do you expect? For her to take care of the children every day and then to go rushing to you when you come home and take care of your every need and provide you stimulating conversation and a good shag while she’s at it?’

‘You don’t understand,’ he says.

‘Well, then make me, because you’re not presenting a very good image of yourself here, Ades.’

‘Oh, Serena,’ he says on the crest of a sigh. ‘All of that wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the rest of it. Her obsessions.’ He glances over to see if I am listening, which I am, avidly. ‘She sees danger everywhere. Sometimes I’m surprised she lets the kids go to school at all – she was actually thinking about home-schooling them at one point until I put my foot down.

She’s scared of what will happen to them at school. Not with the other kids so much as, well, with the teachers.’

That knot of sickness, the one that comes from having done something wrong, tightens in my stomach again. Tugs itself so taut, I almost have to double over from it.

‘And every time the kids are out of the house and out of sight, she thinks something’s going to happen to them. That the world is full of people waiting to prey upon them. I can’t convince her that it’s not true, no matter what, so I’ve kind of given up. Because, you know, she thinks I don’t care enough if I don’t buy into all her paranoia.