LITMIR.BIZ

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And I definitely never lay in bed thinking like this about Robin, only about the act itself.

      I feel teased by Ed, that is, I want to know him better. And I have to admit to a certain feeling of lust; I have a sense that sex with him might be entirely different to sex with Robin.

      I wonder if he will come back to the Albert. Maybe I’ll see you around, he said. It wasn’t hopeful, even though when I think about our conversation I feel we sort of connected, and that he was interested in me.

      But then there was the walk back here, until there was no hiding the fact of who I am: the daughter of his friend’s boss, whose mother he had to practically fight off at their party before leaving at speed. If Ed has any sense he’ll stay well clear, I think gloomily.

      Flinging back the covers I emerge from the warm huddle of my bed and go to the window. The weather has changed, and yesterday’s sun has been replaced by a damp and grey sky, the colour of old washing-up water. It’s windy too. Leaves are coming off the trees and blowing around the lawn, skittering in little whirls, like tiny dancers. It looks chilly, and uninviting, and I feel as leaden as the sky as I wonder what to do with the day ahead. Maybe I should go into town, to one of those temping agencies, and try to find a job. And I have said I’ll enrol on a computer course; there’s one starting soon at the local library, something called CLAIT. I’ve used the BBC computers at school to type up the odd essay, whenever I could get on one of the few available in the library. But this course is supposed to teach things like spreadsheets and databases. I’m not too sure what they are or how useful they’ll be, but everyone is saying it’s the way things are going, and that soon everything will be done on computers. So if I want to be employable I should start learning fast.

      And, of course, there’s always work to be done for my English and history resits, which I have to hand in tomorrow at college. I could go to the library and work there.

      After my shower, instead of my usual big, baggy sweatshirt and leggings I put on some clean jeans, with the Fair Isle sweater I had last Christmas. It looks cold enough for that today, and the jumper is smart enough for job-seeking. On the way out of my room I stop to look in the mirror, not concerned so much with my body, which I quite like (enough, but not too much, of boobs and hips), but with my face, which I’m never sure about. I run my fingers through my hair – dirty blonde Louise calls it – lifting it up off my face, then I brush the fringe more to one side and stare into my eyes, large and grey-blue, with long lashes. These are my best feature. My gaze skips over my nose, which I think is too fat at the bottom, although an old boyfriend did once tell me he found my nose sexy. When I get to my mouth I pout, to make it seem fuller, then relax it and smile, to see how I look when I’m not just staring. But the smile comes out as a fixed grin, the sort I always have on me in photos. I hope I look more normal when I really smile.

      Downstairs in our newly refurbished kitchen – all oak and cream, with the huge Aga that apparently everyone has now – my mother is sitting at the breakfast bar with a coffee and cigarette on the go. She too has just got up; in fact this is early for her. She must have eased off on the drink last night. She’s wearing her brightly printed kimono, and her hair – which is naturally the same shade as mine, but currently dyed mahogony – is caught behind her head in a clip, with wisps hanging down at the front. She’s flicking through a recipe book. She does this a lot, and then makes one of the same old dinners she always makes; she just seems to like looking at the illustrations. Sometimes she even gets as far as buying some of the ingredients – herbs and spices and special sauces – but then hardly ever gets the essential meat or fish to actually make the dish. On the rare occasions she does, she gets all flustered and het up and swears the recipe must be wrong because it isn’t coming out right. The Aga, I think, is wasted.

      ‘Look at this, Eva. Guacamole.’ She pronounces it ‘goo-acamole’; I have to stop myself from correcting her, because my mother really doesn’t like it if she thinks I’m trying to show her up. ‘It’s made from avocado pears. You put it on chilli. Sounds lovely. I think I’ve got some of that tabasco sauce.’ Suddenly she stops, and stares into space. ‘Avocado,’ she says, with a distant look on her face. That’s all.

      I make tea and toast, while my mother carries on looking through the book. I smother the toast with raspberry jam then lean against the sink to eat it. I’m thinking of nothing in particular, staring absently at my mother’s hair. The red is growing out slightly, and I can see the roots, which somehow seem less blonde than I remember. When did that happen, that my mother’s hair began to fade? Otherwise, I have to admit, she could actually pass for younger than she is. Her jawline is still firm, and her skin smooth. Thirty-nine she was, last birthday.

      ‘Who was that that brought you home last night?’ The question shoots out of my mother, at the same time as she turns another page of the recipe book.

      ‘Jon,’ I lie smoothly, licking jam off my fingers.

      My mother taps her cigarette on the ashtray then looks up at me.

      ‘No. That wasn’t Jon.’

      It was her then, looking out of the window. ‘Okay, it wasn’t.’

      ‘So who was it?’

      Usually when my mother is trying to get information from me about my friends, it’s in a silky, persuasive sort of voice, hoping that I will confide in her. I never do, just as I never brought friends home from school or invited them for sleepovers – especially after I went to All Saints, the private school my parents insisted I went to once they could afford it. It was hard to fit in there, and I chose to stay friends with people from my primary school – Louise and some others – although often it felt like I was tagging along, an outsider. So to ask a friend home became fraught with danger: with my old friends it was fear of being branded a snob, when they saw the size of our house; with the girls at All Saints I knew that one wrong move on my mother’s part would have been disastrous. It’s quite possible that she wouldn’t have touched a drop while they were here, that she would have been all smiley and chatty and laughed with them, and they wouldn’t have met her coming up the stairs with that glassy look in her eyes, the oone that comes after the final few drinks. But I never took that risk, and never relented in the face of my mother’s cajoling.

      Today, though, she sounds almost angry. ‘Aren’t you going to tell me?’

      I take a gulp of tea. ‘What does it matter?’

      ‘It matters. Let’s just say that.’

      ‘No. Let’s not just say that. Tell me why it matters who walked me home last night. And why you feel you have to spy on me.’

      She snaps the recipe book shut. ‘I wasn’t spying. I couldn’t sleep, and I happened to hear voices and wondered if it was you, that’s all.’ I say nothing. ‘It was Steve’s friend, wasn’t it? Steve who works for your father.’

      Still I keep quiet, feeling uneasy, as though guilty, with a dim sense that somehow I’ve crossed a line that until recently I hadn’t known was there; that I’ve trodden on my mother’s toes.

      ‘Well, your silence says it all.’

      ‘So? If it was?’

      She stands up and begins clearing the breakfast bar, clattering pots and plates and banging cupboard doors. ‘It’s not a good idea,’ she says, pouring water into the sink. She adds washing-up liquid and swooshes the water until it bubbles up. ‘He’s too old for you.’

      ‘How would you know how old he is? He came here once.’ Although, as I picture her pinning him against the wall, I think she probably did get his entire life story.

      ‘He just happened to tell me; we were talking about big birthdays I suppose,’ my mother says, a little defensively. ‘She turns to look at me. ‘He said that next year he’ll be thirty. He’s ten years older than you.’

      My gaze slides away from her as I chew slowly on a mouthful of toast. Ten years. Nearly thirty. Older than he looks, while I look older than I am.

      ‘And?’ I say.

      ‘It’s

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