Chapter 18 #2
‘This is the wildest day ever, isn’t it?
First there was the assembly, and then have you heard about the radio show?
I haven’t listened to it yet, but everyone at school is buzzing about it.
Can you believe Mr Kent? It’s, like, so wild and so gross.
Blake is mad– so, so mad– at his mum. He was saying he’s going to go home early to have it out with her.
He thinks she had no right to do that to Mr Kent or this woman– the prostitute, I mean… ’
Abi turns away from Lily, anguish overwhelming her briefly, before smoothing her features and sitting down at the Formica kitchen table.
‘You OK, Mum?’
‘Yeah, I’m just trying to take it all in, that’s all.’
Lily bends to open the tiny under-the-counter fridge, but she’s too excited to eat so it sighs shut. She stands back up and, turning to look at Abi again, says, ‘Mum, you know Blake?’
Abi feels the skin around her mouth crack into what she hopes is a smile and Lily beams back, her voice full of wonder, as she says, ‘Well, I think he likes me! He asked me out and we’re kind of getting quite close.
But poor him– I mean, his mum has gone properly mental.
’ She hardly pauses for breath before she adds, ‘Oh my God, and you’ll never guess who I just saw– Rosie!
She was walking like she’s some kind of celeb who doesn’t want to get caught.
Poor woman. I didn’t say hello, I know she saw me, but she looked totally broken.
Do you think it’s OK that I didn’t say hello?
I don’t want her to think I’m being cold, but Blake’s right, I reckon, it was no one else’s business, not really. ’
Abi feels her heart beating too hard, like it’s trying to escape.
‘What’s this appointment I’m back for, anyway? Mrs Greene said something about the optician?’
Abi can’t answer.
Lily’s forehead pleats and she steps closer to Abi. ‘Mum, why are your eyes all red?’
Abi touches her face; it’s wet.
‘God, Mum, are you crying?’ Lily is nervous suddenly; Abi can’t remember a time when she would have seen her cry.
Lily takes her hand and pulls her up into her arms so she can hug her.
Her daughter is so strong. ‘Mum, Mum, what is it? Is it something about all the stuff going on today? I saw you in assembly, I…’
Then she stops again, finally tuning into Abi, into the atmosphere swelling thickly in the tiny kitchen.
Abi wants nothing more than to let herself go at last, she wants to sob in the arms of her daughter and beg, beg her forgiveness.
But that is what Abi wants, that is not what Lily needs, so she stops herself.
Abi turns away from her briefly to breathe and Lily moves closer to her, touches her arm.
‘Are you sick, Mum? Is that it?’ Lily asks, panic lacing her voice.
Abi takes one last big breath, the breath that could ruin them forever and, turning around to face her daughter, she looks her in the eye as she says, ‘It’s me, Lil.’
Lily stares at her, frowning.
‘It’s me they were talking about on the radio. I’m the woman. The woman Mr Kent paid for sex.’
Lily’s shaking her head, like she’s trying to shake the words away. ‘Mum, what are you talking about? You were a therapist, Mum, a therapist…’
‘Lily, please sit down…’
Lily is still shaking her head and starts backing away from Abi. ‘Is this some kind of sick Halloween prank?’
Abi doesn’t say anything and Lily’s freckled face fills as she thinks all the worst things Abi has ever thought about herself. ‘No, Mum. No…’
‘Lily, please, let’s sit down. I want to explain, I want to explain everything to you…’ But Lily won’t sit, instead she’s shaking her head, and when Abi reaches out to touch her she shrieks, ‘Don’t! Don’t touch me!’
Abi can’t stop crying but she forces herself to calm down enough that she can say, ‘I’m sorry, Lily, I’m so sorry for lying to you.’
Lily starts backing away again; she’s still shaking her head, and she points at Abi, her mouth twisting, as she says, ‘You’re disgusting,’ before she turns and runs out of the flat.
For the first hour, Abi waits for Lily at home.
Lily, she knows, needs space. Abi thrums, numb, around the flat.
She messages Lily that she loves her, that she’s sorry.
She deletes the message because, again, she’s writing it for herself, not for Lily.
She tries to cook but her hand is shaking too much to chop.
She messages Lily that she’ll answer all her questions, just to please come home.
She deletes that one, too. She slumps on the kitchen table, which is where she’s still lying when her phone starts ringing.
She grabs for it– Lily, please, please let it be Lily.
She almost throws her phone across the room when she reads her friend’s name instead.
‘Abi,’ Diego says, his voice tense. ‘Tell me you’re on your way?’
Oh. The restaurant, her shift tonight.
‘D … I …’
‘What, what is it?’ He’s angry, his tone like a rough shake.
‘D, I can’t come in now.’
‘What the fuc—?’
‘I told Lily, D, I told her what I used to do, that I lied to her.’
‘Jesus,’ Diego says in English before continuing in rapid-fire Spanish. ‘Is she OK?’
‘I don’t know,’ Abi says before adding, ‘Well, no. She’s not OK, but I don’t know where she is; she ran away somewhere, she’s not answering her phone. I’m going to have to go and get Margot soon; she’s gone trick-or-treating. I’m sorry, D, but I can’t come in to work until I know they’re both OK…’
‘Fuck!’ Diego shouts. ‘This is our first week, Abi, almost our second weekend open, and you’re not fucking here!’
‘Look, I might be able to come in later, but I need to make sure the girls are…’
‘Yeah, yeah, I know, I know you do. Look, sorry. We’ve got a full house tonight and the staff here are just…
well, let’s just say they’re not London-trained, so please, for the sake of our careers, come in as soon as you can, OK?
’ He sounds like he wants to hang up straight away but mutters a quick, ‘I love you all.’
She doesn’t know how much time passes before she hears Lily’s key in the lock for the second time. She pulls herself off the table. She’s never been so nervous, more afraid in this moment of her own daughter than she ever was of any strange man.
Lily pulls her key away from the lock slowly.
She’s aged a decade since Abi last saw her.
Her pale skin is puffy, her blue eyes bloodshot.
Abi longs to hold her but there’s a new force field around Lily and she senses that she doesn’t want her too close, so she holds on to her own arms instead and says, her voice quiet, her words simple, ‘I’m glad you’re home, Lil. ’
Lily looks at her, nods slowly. Her eyes are set and unblinking, her new world still blurry and out of focus.
‘I promised I’d get Margot,’ Lily says plainly. ‘I thought we should talk a bit before.’
She walks into the kitchen, not looking at Abi, and sits down at the table.
Abi feels a tug of temptation to fall into logistics, to tell Lily that of course she doesn’t need to collect Margot, not today, Abi will collect her from outside the school as arranged by the parents taking the class trick-or-treating, but they both know that collecting Margot isn’t the real reason Lily is back.
Abi sits quietly opposite her daughter and waits.
When she starts talking, the words come slowly at first before flowing into a great flood.
‘You know, pretty much every one of my friends in London and here moans about their parents. They say their mums either embarrass them, want to be their best friend or boss them around, never trust them.’ Lily shrugs, runs her thumb along a scratch on the table Margot made with some scissors, and keeps talking.
‘But I never join in. I thought you, our relationship, was like my superpower. Our incredible secret. I might not have a dad, not really, but you know what? I never really cared because I had you. I have always known that I was loved, respected, important…’
She looks up; there’s more she wants to say, of course, and Abi nods, gently, steadily showing Lily she can say it. Lily’s strong enough to say it.
‘I’ve always known that I was loved, respected, important. Until now.’
It hurts like hell, the heavy truth.
Abi nods again, puts her hands together on the table in front of her. Lily keeps running her thumb along the scratch as she says simply, ‘You’ve been lying to me my whole life.’
Lily has the courage to say the truth, so Abi has to find the courage not to deny it.
‘I have.’
Lily looks up from the scratch to meet Abi’s eyes as she says, ‘You were a prostitute.’
Abi nods.
‘Why?’
Abi isn’t ready; she’s liquid and unprepared. These words feel too huge, too big for her body, but she forces them out. ‘I wanted you and your sister to have better choices.’
‘Why did you lie?’
‘I wanted you and Margot to grow up free from the stigma of my choices. Free of my mistakes.’
‘Do you regret it?’
‘I regret that I had to lie but, no, I don’t regret what I used to do for work.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, because I made a better life for you and for me and your sister. I created my own work, so I was always there when you woke up and was always the one to put you to bed at night. I had other options, other things I could have done– of course I did– but there was no way I could have done those things and been the kind of parent I have been. And the reasons for me to lie to you– well, they’re more complicated. ’
Lily nods for Abi to keep talking.
‘There were… whispers, gossip about me on the estate. I mean, there was about most people. I didn’t let it get to me until… well, it was true. The gossip. My mum heard stuff about me, asked if I was a sex worker, and when I told her I was she got really upset and kicked me out.’
What Abi doesn’t say is that her mum hadn’t called Abi a ‘sex worker’, she’d called her ‘a fucking whore’, and that it hadn’t been just Abi she’d kicked out and said she never wanted to see again, but also Lily who was asleep in her pram.
‘That’s why we never see her,’ Lily says quietly.
Abi nods, adding, ‘I’m sorry.’ Because she knows Lily would have liked having a granny.
‘But honestly, I don’t regret it because here you are, sitting in front of me, the most honest and brave person I have ever known.
Having one of the hardest conversations we’ll ever have.
You are entirely yourself and I couldn’t be prouder of you. It’s all been worth it.’
They stare steadily at each other for a while before Abi says, ‘You can ask me anything about it. I promise I’ll tell you the truth.’
Lily nods– she believes her– but she looks away, her hands fluttering in her lap. ‘Yeah, maybe. Not now I—’
A buzzer goes on Lily’s phone, the reminder she sets whenever she’s picking Margot up. Lily silences it and Abi says, ‘I’ll go,’ not feeling ready to leave Lily, never feeling ready. ‘You feel like painting or maybe having a bath…?’
Lily scrunches up her face before she says, ‘Nah. Margot’s expecting me. I’ll come with you, if that’s all right.’
‘Of course, Lil. I’d like that.’
They both stand, the shock of the truth still pulsing through Abi. She’s not sure exactly how to be now that Lily knows the truth, but there’s no stiffness in Lily. She moves normally to her room to get a jumper for the walk to school.
Lily’s back a moment later, her phone in her hand. ‘I’ve just got a message from Blake,’ she says. ‘He’s kind of upset about everything his mum said on the radio and he’s asking if we can meet up in the park in a bit. Is that OK?’
Abi’s never been so glad to be asked such a normal child-to-parent question. It’s not full acceptance but at least it shows, Abi thinks, that Lily wants to try.
‘Of course it is, sweetheart. Say “hi” from me, won’t you?’
Her hand feels cold as she takes Lily’s warmer one and squeezes it, gently, before Lily moves towards her, and they’re the same height now so when they wrap their arms around each other, tightly, there’s no imbalance, they hold each other.
It was all worth it.