Dot. Araminta Hall

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СКАЧАТЬ to blame. He’d been joined at the lips to Debra Paulson since year nine and she had the wardrobe of Kylie Minogue and the body of a porn star, as well as the reputation for never refusing anal sex. And Mavis had gagged. She’d been trying to block out the memory since it had happened but it refused to leave her alone, worrying her like a bad dream. She had been reassuring herself by repeating the mantra, ‘It had only been for a second, maybe he hadn’t noticed?’ Mavis groaned and lay back heavily on to her bed; of course he’d noticed. He’d noticed and told all their friends; right now boys she had known since primary school were doubling over at the tale of that frigid freak Mavis. But it had been a shock. She’d read enough Anaïs Nin and Nabokov to expect his dick to taste salty and fishy like the sea, but it hadn’t, it had tasted of sweat and even (faintly) of urine and she’d been overwhelmed by the thought that she might as well be licking a toilet seat, which had made her gag, just for a second.

      Her phone rang and it was inevitably Dot.

      ‘Hello.’

      ‘Mave, did you just get a text?’

      Her friend sounded so over-excited she wanted to put the phone down again, she even contemplated lying, but knew it was useless. ‘You mean the one from Clive?’

      ‘Like, hello? Of fucking course.’ Mavis felt herself sink lower, as if her body was melting into the sheets. ‘I mean I didn’t even know he had our numbers.’

      ‘Of course he’s got our numbers. We’ve sat in small classrooms with him for most of our lives.’

      ‘Yeah, but …’

      ‘He’s gotta fill the cricket club.’

      ‘But still.’

      ‘Yeah, well.’

      There was a pause and then the question Mavis had been dreading. ‘You are going, aren’t you?’

      ‘I sort of thought not.’

      ‘But why?’

      ‘Cos he’s basically a dick.’

      ‘Clive’s a dick? When did this happen?’

      ‘It didn’t happen, he’s always been a dick, I just hadn’t noticed before.’

      ‘Fuck.’

      ‘Fuck what?’

      ‘I mean, what’s got into you, Mave? You’ve got so moody lately and now you’re saying Clive’s a dick when I’ve sat up with you on many nights discussing the fineness of his arse.’

      ‘Yeah, well, you can be fit and still a dick, so.’

      ‘Right.’

      ‘I mean, fuck, we live in the middle of fucking nowhere and he’s having a hip hop night and in the fucking cricket club. I mean, please. He’s probably never even been to London, it’s so far on a fucking coach. And New Year’s Eve. That’s like ten weeks away or something. It’s tragic.’

      ‘OK, don’t come then, I’ll go on my own.’

      ‘Come on, don’t guilt trip me.’

      ‘Whatever. Have you asked your dad yet?’

      ‘Shit, I hoped you weren’t serious.’

      ‘Well I am.’

      ‘OK, I’ll do it tonight.’

      ‘Great.’

      ‘Great.’

      Mavis and her parents’ supper always took place in the kitchen, even though they had a dining room, and her mother always kept the main light shining down, as if daring either of them to spill a drop. Her father was smoking at the back door when Mavis went in and her mother was worrying herself into a frenzy.

      ‘I think the ash is blowing in, Gerald,’ she was saying as she tried to drain the beans without splashing any unnecessary water over the pristine sink.

      ‘Well, if it is then I’ll sweep it up,’ he replied, raising his eyes at Mavis who pretended she hadn’t seen, sitting heavily instead in her place. Her father stubbed his cigarette against the door and threw the butt in the bin.

      ‘I wish you wouldn’t,’ said her mother.

      ‘Wouldn’t what?’ he answered.

      ‘It leaves marks, when you stub it on the paintwork.’

      ‘You’re joking, right? For Christ’s sake, Sandra, I stubbed it on the outside of the door. No one’s going to notice, except maybe a passing squirrel.’

      Mavis was never going to hate anyone as much as her parents hated each other. She had to live here, but they actually chose this life. Her father pulled a bottle of wine from the rack and sat down. He was still wearing his tweed jacket, which he now shucked off, revealing another choice shirt/cardigan combo. He sniffed his wine before he drank it and Mavis hated him all the more for pretending that it wasn’t really £3.99 from Tesco.

      ‘Can I have a glass, Dad?’ she asked instead of the bile she wished she could vent.

      He looked surprised, but checked himself, not wanting to betray the role he played of the hip music teacher. I should have been in a band, he liked to say, nearly was before family life came calling. He poured out some of the dark red fluid into Mavis’s glass but didn’t bother to offer any to his wife, who had never drunk, to Mavis’s knowledge.

      The wine warmed her and so she said, ‘Oh, before I forget, Dot wants to learn piano.’

      Her father looked stupidly pleased, as if he knew that the desire to appreciate music would come to everyone in the end. ‘Does she? That’s fantastic news.’

      ‘So, like, you’ll give her lessons?’

      ‘Of course. Hang on.’ He fetched his diary from the sideboard and flicked through it. ‘Mondays at five are good for me.’

      ‘I’ll text her.’ Mavis jabbed the message into her phone before the wine wore off, spooning her food in with the other hand.

      ‘You’ll spill it,’ said her mother.

      ‘For goodness’ sake, Sandra,’ said her father.

      The phone bleeped back.

      ‘Looks like you’re on,’ said Mavis.

      3 … Redemption

      It began with the production of Romeo and Juliet at the village hall. Up until that moment Alice hadn’t realised that she wanted to stand on a stage and say other people’s words to a blacked-out audience. But she’d seen the poster when she was running an errand for her mother the Christmas after she’d left school and, really, what else was there to do? She’d gone straight round to Mr Jenkins’s house, as it said on the poster, and knocked at the door and he’d let her in and she’d read for him and got the part of Juliet, СКАЧАТЬ