Chapter 3
THREE
TWENTY YEARS AGO
Camilla
I don’t know anyone at this chaotic birthday party and I am really sorry that I came.
There must be at least sixty people crammed into this stuffy room and the music is so loud, it’s making my teeth rattle.
I should have just stayed in my room and I would have done that if my stepfather, aka ‘the arsehole’, had not pounded on my bedroom door and demanded that I either help my mother prepare for her stupid book club meeting by setting up chairs and making snacks, or get out of the house.
‘I’m tired,’ I tried.
‘Get your ugly arse up and help,’ he thundered. Solid gold step-parenting. He had no interest in lending a hand because he was watching some football match on television.
In between forcing me to take part in domestic tasks and insulting me, he likes to lecture me on everything I am doing wrong, from what I’m studying to the way I dress to how I speak to my mother.
I was going to push back and accept the thunderous argument that would be the result, but then I remembered this party. ‘Sorry, have to go,’ I said, leaving him to deal with my mother and ten of her friends.
Gemma, who is in my history tutorial, mentioned her party last week.
She didn’t invite me specifically but she was talking to the whole group and she did share the details so here I am.
Gemma is petite and pretty and also, it must be said, pretty stupid.
I have no idea how she managed to claw herself into university, but then I feel like that about a lot of the people I share classes with.
I’ve been standing here for five minutes, looking around the room, hoping that I would see someone worth talking to but no luck so far.
I hate that I have to leave the house to get any peace but at twenty years old, I’m still stupid enough to be living at home while I finish my degree so I guess I deserve what I get.
I could have just told Bert to leave me alone but he doesn’t accept that.
‘You live under my roof and so you follow my rules. Feel free to leave if you don’t like it.
’ That’s good old stepdad’s favourite phrase.
He’s been using it since I turned eighteen every time I even contemplate disagreeing with him.
He and my mother have been married for ten years and every year he takes being an arsehole one step further. He is now the king of all arseholes and all I want to do is get out of the house where all the rules are his rules, even though the house actually belongs to my mother.
Occasionally I try and talk to my mother about this, hoping for some support over how he treats me, but I know by now that none is available.
Maybe she simply got tired of raising me at some point but it seems to me that we speak less and less.
‘You have a sharp tongue, Camilla,’ she told me the other day when I asked her why she didn’t even ask me how my day was when I got home from writing my final exam for the semester.
‘I never know what’s going to upset you. ’
‘Well, you’re the mother,’ I told her. ‘Isn’t it your job to find that out?’
She didn’t reply of course, just slunk away to her bedroom, clutching her cup of herbal tea like it was a shield. Screw her.
I have finished this year at the top of my class again and next year I’ll begin applying for places on a master’s degree. My dream is to do that at Cambridge in the UK. And once I get in there, I am never coming back.
I would leave now if I could but I have no money because I have to pay for everything myself and even with government help, I just don’t have enough. If I had to add rent and food on top of what I already pay for, I would be screwed.
So I have to tolerate his bullshit. He’s a swim coach at a high school and I’ve never met a man so dedicated to being in control of everything. He doesn’t like me to call him anything except Coach.
The kids he coaches, the other teachers at school and the parents all think he’s just fabulous.
They see him as a teacher with endless reserves of patience for his swimmers.
But at home, all that niceness, that patience and good humour disappear, leaving my mother and me with a great hulking bully who seems to enjoy grinding my mother down more every day.
She used to be kind of curvy, but now she’s a tiny skinny woman because he has a lot of opinions on the kind of food she should be eating.
He does not apply those opinions to himself.
If I didn’t know better, I would say my mother was shrinking in every direction.
She seems shorter than she was a year ago, but perhaps that’s just my perception.
He’s erasing her and he wants to erase me but I’m not going to let that happen.
Pushing away thoughts of the man I have to live with, I spot a table covered in bottles of alcohol and make my way over. I should have brought something to contribute but why spend the money. I knew there would be plenty for everyone.
Pouring myself a large glass full of some pink-tinted gin, I look around for someone to talk to.
I began my final school year with three good friends and I ended it with no one.
It wasn’t my fault. People are overly sensitive.
The girls I had been friends with basically kicked me out of the friendship group over some stuff I said.
Bullshit, if you ask me. I set my sights on making friends at university but somehow…
arseholes are everywhere. As I scan the room I’m pushed from behind and I lurch forward, my drink spilling on the carpet.
‘Hey,’ I say, turning quickly to confront the person who pushed me. I assume it’s a man because men are… arseholes, but it’s not. Instead, it’s a girl about my age.
‘Oh my God,’ she gushes. ‘I am so, so sorry. I was trying to get away from…’ She turns her head to indicate a large guy standing two feet away from her, two drinks in his hand. He’s nice looking in a ‘I work out every second of the day’ way. But she seems eager to be away from him.
‘Your boyfriend?’ I ask as I brush some alcohol off my stretchy black top, grateful for the dark colour.
‘No.’ She shakes her head. ‘And I’ve already said “no, thank you” to his offer of multiple drinks. He’s been following me around the party for ten minutes already.’
As she speaks she gestures with her hands, a nervous smile on her face.
She’s one of those people upon whom the gift of true beauty has been bestowed.
Perfect auburn curls, large green eyes and a heart-shaped face.
But as the guy advances towards us, I feel like she’s also the kind of person who needs someone to step in for her when she’s confronted by your average everyday arsehole. So I do.
I move in front of her and look up at him. ‘Yeah, she’s not interested,’ I tell him.
‘But…’ he starts to say.
‘You know what that means, right?’ I ask him loudly enough that people around us start to stare. ‘I mean, I bet you do, and I could go around this party and ask a whole lot of people and they would also know what it means and they would also know that you’re crossing a line here.’
‘Screw you,’ he snorts, uncomfortable with the scrutiny from people standing nearby, and he throws the girl a look of disgust before downing one of the drinks and dropping the glass on the table, then turning around and stalking off.
‘Oh my God,’ says the girl, throwing her arms around me. ‘You’re my hero.’
She steps back and looks at me and I can see that she’s already had a few drinks.
‘My name is Reese and I haven’t seen you around campus but maybe you’re on a different course, but I’m so glad to meet you now.
’ She smiles an orthodontist perfect smile and I can see immediately that this is a girl who has lived a very different life to me.
She must be close to my age or the same age but she seems much younger.
Less cynical, perhaps.
‘I’m Camilla,’ I tell her.
‘Let’s get you another drink,’ she says as though she is the hostess of the party. She fills my drink up again and pours one for herself and then she grabs my hand and pulls me out of the squashed, heaving party, into a quiet garden, where the summer night air is beautifully cool.
‘Gemma and I have been friends for ages,’ she says as we walk across the garden, ‘and I love that she likes to throw parties, but she has this tendency to invite absolutely everyone.’
I don’t say anything because I’m pretty sure I fall into the absolutely everyone category. And I’m not even sure I was actually invited. I haven’t said more than two words to Gemma about anything except the topic of each tutorial.
‘Here,’ says Reese, stopping by a garden swing with a plump grey cushion. ‘This is the best place to enjoy a drink, away from all that nonsense.’
She sits down and I join her. ‘So, Camilla,’ she says after a sip of her drink. ‘Tell me all about you.’
I wonder if Reese has ever been rejected by anyone at all, man or woman. She looks like someone who glides through life, getting everything she wants. But she wants to talk to me so I down half my drink and tell her that I’m studying history with a focus on ancient civilisations.
‘I’m studying English and communications because I might go into media or I might become a teacher or… I have no idea, but I’m young, I’ll figure it out,’ she says with a laugh.
‘I’ve always known exactly what I wanted to do,’ I say. ‘I want to be a professor of ancient history and I want to live in the UK.’
‘Wow, smart cookie.’ She smiles.
Reese pushes the swing with her legs and we rock back and forth gently as I look up at the stars.
‘Is this a private party or can anyone join?’ someone says. Reese stops rocking the swing.
‘Of course anyone can join, unless you’re “won’t take no for an answer Brian”.’
A girl sits down next to me and I have to shuffle along to make room for her. ‘Is that the big guy?’ she asks.
‘Indeed,’ says Reese. ‘I’m Reese and this is Camilla and we have just met because she saved me from Brian.’