Chapter 5
5
When George got home, she dumped the van outside and raced indoors. She hated her mother. She always made her feel inadequate, always tried to shut her out of family life. So many years had passed since she had taken on the black sheep role. She had hoped one day, she could shrug the stigmatic fleece off, or at least have been allowed to have it highlighted. But no, it seemed she was still paying for her actions all those years ago.
Up in her bedroom, she rifled through the back of the wardrobe for a faded-green wallet file. It was all she had to remind her of the family they used to be.
But if she was honest, there weren’t many photos of happy times before Adam was born. There was a photo of George at her fifth birthday party, almost setting light to her fringe as she blew out the candles on her cake. In that photo, her mother was actually smiling in the background and clapping her hands with glee. There were a couple of others pre-Adam: George and her dad eating ice creams on a day out at the farm, her mother pushing her on a swing, and a photo of the three of them standing to attention next to a Busby at Buckingham Palace.
She smiled as she moved on to the pictures of Adam. There he was, paper crown on his head, at one particularly awkward family Christmas. That day, her mother had blown up over forgotten bread sauce and charred stuffing balls. Dinner had been eaten in virtual silence after that, apart from Adam telling cracker jokes and making sure he got everybody’s novelty prize.
Then she pulled out another photo and felt her chest tighten as she looked at it. All this time and she still felt so strongly about someone she hadn’t seen in so long.
She had been sixteen and madly in love. Yes, George Fraser had been madly in love. It seemed hard to believe now because she hadn’t felt anything remotely like love since. Nowadays, she flirted and she had sex, but it was just fulfilling a physical need. It was lust, nothing like love. What she had with Paul back then, despite their age, had definitely been love. She had no doubt about that.
Paul Robbins was the same age, bright, funny, cool, good looking. Everything a fifth former’s dreams were made of. Everything George’s dreams were made of. He rode a motorbike and had shoulder-length hair. He introduced her to lager and he played guitar in a band.
She let herself smile now as she remembered him. He had made her laugh every single day. Whenever she was with him, she’d been happy. He didn’t care what people thought about him; he just did his own thing, ran from the mainstream, embraced originality, laughed in the face of rules.
She loved him, he loved her, they were going to be together forever. Back then, she had never even contemplated life without him. Their feelings ran deep; they were for keeps. Her mother hated him; he was everything she despised about ‘feckless teenagers’. She called Paul an ‘irresponsible, long-haired hooligan’ and it only made George love him more.
Then, one day, Paul announced he was leaving. But not just leaving the town: leaving the country. His mum had been ill for as long as George could remember and she was getting no better. She needed pioneering treatment that was unavailable in the UK. His dad had got a new job in Canada and the family were leaving for a new life on the other side of the world.
When he broke the news, he had sobbed. Her tough, strong, guitar-playing boyfriend had wept inconsolably, worried for his mother and unable to imagine what his new life would be like minus George.
She remembered the day he left like it was yesterday. Standing in her school uniform – skirt trimmed three inches above regulation – clutching a photo Paul had given her of them. They were both smiling and laughing, happy together after one of his gigs. In the picture, her hair was long and streaked with pink and she was wearing his leather jacket. Her eyes were heavy with eyeliner and her mouth was decorated with pillar-box-red lipstick she knew her mother hated. But it was her expression that said so much. She was smiling, not just with her lips, but on the inside. And their hands were clasped together tightly like an unbreakable link.
The moment the car engine started up, she had burst into tears. She ran alongside it as far as the end of the street, her hand touching the glass where his hand was pressed up against it. She wanted to smash the glass, she wanted to feel him kiss her again, and more than anything, she wanted him to stay.
She had taken one last look at him, his handsome face, his sad eyes and then finally, she had let go.
Two weeks after he left, she found out she was pregnant. She’d been too busy pining for him and trying to ring him on an apparently unobtainable number to think about things like periods. It hadn’t arrived, she had started to feel sick and her friend Tracey suggested she ought to do a test. Tracey knew everything about everything; she read Just Seventeen and More! and she smoked Marlboro Lights without coughing like an asthmatic and puking up.
So with Tracey giving careful instructions from behind the school toilet door, she had done the test, in between science and drama. And it was positive. Sixteen and pregnant. She had never felt so ashamed.
They were usually so careful. But sometimes, things between them were so intense, practicalities took a backseat to desire. When they were together, the real world just didn’t exist.
George knew when it had happened. They had stayed at a hotel, saved up for months to jump up and down on the bed wearing nothing but complimentary robes. They had been Mr and Mrs Robbins for only one night and they had drunk smuggled in Asti and made love to Whitesnake.
She had continued to call him – no answer. She wrote – no reply. She didn’t know what she expected him to do or say but she just wanted him to know. Deep down, she would have loved for him to come back and take her away from her spirit-crushing mother. But she knew his parents would never let that happen. They wanted the best for their son and having him tied to a pregnant sixteen-year-old was never going to be it. Besides, they had bigger things to think about, like his mother’s deteriorating health. Compared with that, her issues seemed almost insignificant.
She touched the ring on the chain around her neck now and closed her eyes.
Her mother had been despising her ever since. She had brought shame on the family by getting pregnant. Apparently, she was no better than Debbie O’Connor from number twenty-three who had given birth long before her sixteenth birthday and was now on a Methadone programme.
That black fleece had weighed heavily on her shoulders since then.
‘Cooee! George! Are you here?’ Helen’s voice called from the annexe .
‘Yep, I’m up here, just coming,’ George replied hurriedly, piling the photos back into the folder and stowing it back in the wardrobe.
No one knew about the pregnancy, apart from her parents. Heather said if people knew, her life would be over. They would label her a tramp and a failure. ‘It might be the en vogue thing to do in the eyes of this current society, Georgina, but I am telling you, if people find out then you’re tarnished for life,’ Heather had said. She hadn’t really believed her, but pregnancy had seemed to quash the rebel in her and it was easier to just agree.
‘You’re early. I said not before ten and it’s five to,’ George remarked as she joined Helen in the kitchen.
‘I couldn’t lie in. Geraint had to get up for work. I tried to lounge around reading magazines but I couldn’t relax knowing there was so much to do today. Shall I start buttering? Marisa will be here soon, but she was slightly better at lying-in than I was,’ Helen informed as she put gloves on her hands.
‘Yeah, that would be great. I need to look through my recipes and find something new and exciting to do with lamb. What d’you think?’ George asked as she got some files out of a drawer.
‘Well, mint always complements it.’
‘No, not mint. Too tart, apparently. I need something that hasn’t been done before, something you wouldn’t think of. Something a bit out there.’
‘How about jam?’ Marisa suggested as she crept up behind the pair, chewing gum and clutching Star Life magazine to her chest.
‘I need something edible, not revolutionarily gross.’
‘You want edible? Let me show you edible. I almost hyperventilated in the newsagents. I give you Quinn Blake, almost naked in this week’s Star Life magazine,’ Marisa exclaimed .
She laid the magazine out on the worktop and opened up the centre pages. With nothing to cover his dignity but a strategically placed violin, there was Quinn Blake, oozing sexuality and staring out from the photo like he was personally undressing every voyeur.
George swallowed as she looked at him. There probably wasn’t a woman alive that didn’t feel something stir inside her when looking at a photo of him. And she had experienced the man at close quarters last night. Very close quarters.
‘I hear they airbrush a lot of things in magazines these days. I mean, he has to be airbrushed there, doesn’t he? I mean, that isn’t how a man looks, is it?’ Helen remarked, staring at the magazine all too enthusiastically.
‘Mother! He isn’t airbrushed! He isn’t like Dad, is he? He doesn’t sit on his arse all day eating cheese straws and reading Nuts . Quinn Blake is perfect in the photograph because he’s perfect in the flesh!’ Marisa announced, swooning.
‘Hmm, well, I’m not so sure. I mean, his skin is flawless; you just don’t get skin that flawless, do you? He must use some wonderfully expensive moisturising cream,’ Helen continued.
‘I wonder who rubs it in for him?’ Marisa asked excitedly, letting out a shriek of delight.
‘OK, on that note, let’s get rubbing some ingredients together. Let’s check what needs to be done for the sixty-fifth this afternoon and what we need to get ready for the Hexagon tonight,’ George spoke, shutting the magazine up and clapping her hands together.
She couldn’t look at him a second longer. She was already conjuring up a recollection of the texture of his tongue.
‘What? The Hexagon again tonight? With him?!’ Marisa exclaimed excitedly.
‘Didn’t you tell her, Helen?’ George enquired .
‘Not yet. I thought she might spend all morning heavy breathing into the fillings.’
‘Oh. My. God! Another party? Another Quinn Blake party! Do we need staff? No one is going to believe this! Once was like mega but twice…’ Marisa carried on.
‘Yes we need staff, for the next four nights. Ring around,’ George said, smiling at her enthusiasm.
‘You realise we have Lady Harrison-Bowater’s ball to cater for at the end of the week and you know how much planning that involves. We’re talking crusts off and complicated arrangements. She inspects everything personally before it even makes it through to the banqueting hall,’ Helen reminded.
‘I know,’ George answered.
‘And the Army party. Crusts on, but mountains of everything,’ Helen continued.
‘I know, Helen; it’s under control,’ George insisted, flicking through her recipes.
‘Oh. My. God Callie! Can you speak? Is your throat OK yet? If it is, then you are going to like love me forever!’ Marisa gabbled down the telephone.