The Ice Cream Girls (34 page)

‘
Especially as you’ve been getting one over on him since the second you met him, eh, Serena?
’ says my conscience. I do what is best for all concerned and ignore it.

‘I got you this,’
he
said, holding out a wide, flat velvet jewellery box. He’d bobbed down beside me as I was reading for my A’Level homework at his house.

‘Thank you,’ I said automatically, knowing I had to show my gratitude straight away or . . .

He gave a little laugh. ‘You haven’t seen it yet, you might not even like it.’

‘I’m sure I will,’ I said.

I opened the lid, braced myself to put on a happy face, no matter what I found inside. Where a watch or a bracelet would normally rest, lay a white, star-shaped flower with five petals. It had long stamens that were topped with red. It was a pretty little flower, but I did not understand what it meant, why he had given it to me. Panic spiralled inside: I didn’t know what to say.

‘It’s a Stonecrop,’ he said, before I could think of how to hide my ignorance and not ignite his temper. ‘It grows in warm rocky areas. It took me ages to find one. In the language of flowers, it’s the symbol of tranquillity. And your name means the same thing. I wanted you to have it.’

‘It’s lovely,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

‘I thought we could press it between the pages of a book so you could keep it for ever.’

‘Yeah, yeah, that’d be great,’ I said.

He reached out towards my face and I flinched, closed my eyes as I waited for it – I hadn’t sounded grateful enough and now he was going to make me pay. I was grateful. I loved it. It was a thought-filled present, but I hadn’t been grateful enough. ‘I love it,’ I said desperately. ‘I really love it.’

His hand stroked gently on my cheek. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I – I haven’t been very good to you lately, I’m sorry.’ I said nothing, I did not want to say anything that could be used against me later.

‘I’m going to try really hard, you know, Serena? I’m going to try not to get so angry about little things. I’ve hurt you, and I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I won’t let it happen again. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you. I’ve never given up anything for anyone – not even Marlene – before, let alone a job I loved, but when it came down to the choice between you and the job, the job lost.

‘I could find a job any time, but you, you’re it. You’re the one for me. I could never find another you. I don’t want to lose you. I really mean it. OK?’

I nodded.

‘You know, whenever Marlene shows up here, shouting and ranting at me, I’m always tempted to tell her that I want nothing to do with her because I have you. Someone as beautiful as you.’

I nodded again.

‘It’ll never happen again. I promise you.’

I nodded. ‘OK.’

He leant in to kiss me and I kissed him back. He had said everything I needed to hear. Everything that told me he was going to change and everything would be all right between us. He had reconfirmed for me that I was the most important person in his life and he would change for me, he wouldn’t hurt me any more, and I could trust him again.

He was telling me that he was the man I fell in love with, the man of my dreams.

We both knew I had heard it all before.

Princess Verity thinks that, if she closes her eyes and turns her music up loud, she won’t have to help load up the boot. I sometimes wonder if she remembers who her parents are, what we are like. Verity and Con have a list of chores they have to complete every night, as well as their homework. They watch minimal TV – if any – during the week, and they have an hour every Sunday to tidy their rooms. Helping out, being part of the clockwork that is our family, is not optional.

Con is keen to get started in loading up – he loves that part. I suspect it’s to do with feeling a bit like his dad, scrabbling around in the boot – the area he’s only ever allowed to go near when there is shopping to be loaded or unloaded. I tell him to wait a second and go over to the front passenger window, tap on the glass. Verity keeps her eyes closed and her music loud, her head bobbing in time to the music. Like I hadn’t tried that ploy with the radio when I was her age. Like I didn’t get busted for it every time till Mum just took away my radio.

I open the door and she almost spills out because she has been half-leaning on it. I reach out, my fingers brushing her ears as I pluck the earpiece from her left ear. ‘Your other mother might do all the work, but not this one,’ I tell her. Knowing she has been caught out, she reluctantly pulls the other white earpiece from her ear, stops the music and tucks the player away in her bag. She climbs out of the front seat and I’m taken back again at how tall she is. She’s almost as tall as me. I’m sure I didn’t reach her height until I was about fifteen.

We start to work at putting the green cloth bags into the boot and just as I pull my upper half out from having rearranged them to make them all fit together snugly and securely, I see Angie coming to a stop beside the huge Land Rover that is parked beside us. My car is dwarfed by hers.

‘Oh, hi,’ she says.

‘Hi,’ I reply, awkwardly.

‘Doing the shop?’ she asks.

‘Yeah, you?’ I reply.

‘Yeah,’ she replies.

‘Yeah,’ I say, because I don’t know what else to say. I don’t know how to extract myself from this. For once, the kids are both silent as they stare at her. It’s usually them who save me in such situations. They’ll do something that will call me away from the person I need rescuing from. But, for some reason, they are suddenly The Angelic Twins.

‘Look,’ Ange says, ‘I wanted to apologise about never arranging that coffee properly. Life, you know?’

‘Oh, that’s OK,’ I say. ‘We’ve had a lot on, too.’

‘Are you feeling better now, Mrs Ryan’s Mum?’ Conrad asks.

Her eyes widen a fraction and she swings her gaze to the eight-year-old glued to my side. ‘I haven’t been sick,’ she says, a little confused.

‘What are you talking about, Conrad?’ I ask, looking down at him. ‘Where did you hear that?’

‘Luc told me. He said his mum told his dad that Ryan’s mum had another one of her accidents and this time she’d had to go to hospital because her husband couldn’t keep his fists to himself.’ I curl my toes into my shoes with embarrassment. I wish he’d run that piece of information past me, so I could tell him that he shouldn’t really ask people about it. Especially not the people involved.

While I am embarrassed, Angie is terrified. Her eyes are wide and fixed and she is running scenario after scenario through her head about what will happen if her husband ever hears this. It’s obvious my other neighbour has been gossiping, that’s what she does, which means it may come back to him. And he will most likely go for Ange if and when it does. That’s what you do in those sorts of relationships: you don’t worry about the humiliation and embarrassment you’re feeling at someone saying something about your situation, you worry about what is going to happen to you if he ever finds out that someone else knows. That’s why you are so careful to hide your bruises and lie about cuts because you know that if he finds out that someone else saw, someone else questioned you, then he will get upset. And life will not be worth living if he is upset. Everything is easier for everyone if he is not upset. So you do everything in your power to make sure he is not upset.

‘Are you?’ Conrad asks again, just in case he hasn’t embarrassed me enough. ‘Are you feeling better?’

Verity is wide-eyed in incredulity. Conrad hasn’t shared this information with her either and she is agog at this woman whose husband tried to kill her.

‘Come on you two, into the car. The frozen stuff will be melting. Let’s hit the road.’

They both drag their feet getting into the car, stealing long, curious glances at Ange as they go. Even when they are belted in inside the car, they stare at her through the window. She must feel like an extraordinary special exhibit in a carnival freakshow.

‘I’m sorry about that,’ I say to her. ‘I didn’t know he knew that, nor that he was going to say it out loud.’

‘Please,’ she says trying to sound dismissive, ‘kids make things up all the time, I wouldn’t worry about it. We both know he’s got it wrong.’

‘I’ll make sure he doesn’t repeat any gossip about you when I’m out with him,’ I say in a tight voice. ‘But, Ange, we both know he hasn’t got it wrong.’

I wish I could tell her that there is only one way this is going to end: badly. Unless she gets out now it will only end in someone getting really hurt. But she won’t listen to me. Why would she? I know what I’m talking about, but I’m pretty certain that if someone had tried to give me that advice when it was necessary, I wouldn’t have listened.

Why would I? Why would I listen to someone who told me to walk away from
him
when he was the love of my life?

‘Did I do something wrong, Mum?’ Conrad asks as I get into the driver’s seat.

‘No, sweetheart,’ I say, as I watch Angie get smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror. ‘You told the truth as you knew it, and that’s the only thing any of us can do. It was just that she didn’t know that you knew.’

‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ he says, ‘I didn’t mean to make her cry.’

‘You didn’t. She wasn’t crying.’
Yet
.

I glance at him in the rear-view mirror – his face is scrunched up in concern and worry – and, because I cannot pull over and go to hug him, I’m glad I let him have all of the treats. ‘I’m sorry, anyway,’ he says.

‘I know you are. And that’s because you’re a good boy.’

‘You’re not a good girl, are you Serena?’
my conscience says in my head.

‘And since you’re such a good boy, which one of the treats are we going to have when we get home?’

‘What did you get?’ Verity asks.

‘Marshmallows, wine gums, popcorn and oven chips.’

‘Wine gums,’ Verity says.

‘Marshmallows!’ Conrad says.

‘I’m with Conrad,’ I say, ‘it’s gotta be the marshmallows.’

‘No way!’ Vee exclaims.

We argue about the best choices on the way home, while, ‘
Are you sure you don’t want ice cream, Serena? Are you sure, are you sure, are you sure?
’ plays on loop in my head.

poppy

It’s Dad’s sixty-third birthday today.

And my parents do not want me around for it. They haven’t said so outright, they’d never do that, but it has been made clear to me.

Last week I casually asked Mum if they were up to anything the following weekend. I didn’t let on that I remembered it was his birthday. I just wandered into the kitchen where she was making shepherd’s pie for dinner and sat down.

The atmosphere in the room immediately shot up a volt or two: charged, tense and uncomfortable. ‘I love your shepherd’s pies,’ I said, trying to be nice. Mum wasn’t the world’s best cook. It stemmed from the days when she was unwell; she couldn’t really do much except lie in bed most days and Dad had been given a crash-course in feeding himself and a baby, then a toddler. Ever since then, Mum had been trying to cook and bake – and having varying levels of success. Numerous times as I was growing up Dad would coach me and the kids to say something that was disgusting and barely edible was delicious. He was desperate to spare her feelings, to keep encouraging her. We got quite good at lying about her awful food.

Her cooking hasn’t improved much over the years, but prison food makes her seem worthy of one of those Michelin Man Gold Star thingies.

Mum struggled to hang a smile across her face; it sat uncomfortably on her thin lips and merely glanced off the edges of her eyes. My heart ached, actually physically ached sometimes, that she was so uncomfortable around me. It didn’t seem fair when I had done nothing wrong.
I bet Serena’s family all love her despite everything she’s done
, I thought as I watched Mum struggle to mash up the potato topping in the pan – it was obvious what the problem was: she hadn’t cooked the potatoes properly, some of them were still virtually raw.

‘So, Mum,’ as usual, she flinched when I used that word, like I had called her a whore or something, ‘what are you up to next weekend?’

Her hand paused for a second in its mashing duties, before continuing. ‘Nothing special,’ she said innocently. ‘Why?’

‘Oh, no reason,’ I replied. ‘I was just thinking of maybe going to see some friends in London if you weren’t doing anything? You know, unless there was any other reason I might want to stay around here?’

This was my olive branch, my way of saying, ‘Include me,
please
. Give me another chance to be your daughter.’

‘Your father and I were thinking of going out for dinner, maybe catch a show in town.’

‘Sounds nice, any special occasion?’ I asked. She must know that I knew it was his birthday. Every year I sent him a card and every year it was returned to me. But that should tell her that, because this is the first one since I’ve been out, I’d want to try again to get through to him. To get through to them. I want my parents back.

‘No, no special occasion,’ she said, her eyes fixed on the disgusting mash in front of her.

‘OK,’ I said, sitting back in my seat. ‘What about Bella and Logan? What are they up to these days?’

‘Oh, they never tell me anything about their lives, you know how youngsters are,’ she said.

‘Are they not coming down for a visit soon, maybe next weekend?’

‘Not that I know of,’ she said. She was working up a real sweat, trying to mash up her pan of under-boiled tatties – it’d be funny to watch if it wasn’t a way of her avoiding looking at me.

‘Oh, OK. Well, could you give me their numbers? I might visit them if I’m up in London next week.’

She faltered in her mashing, almost knocking the pan off the table. I have never asked directly, before. From prison, I would write them letters asking for them to be sent on, and I’d often get a reply weeks later saying Bella and Logan didn’t want to be in touch, to leave them alone. Now I was out, I wanted to hear it from them myself. I wanted them to look me in the eye and tell me they wanted nothing to do with me. Even if they had been brainwashed by Mum and Dad, it’d take nerves of steel to tell someone to their face that you had disowned them.