Page 79 of Mad Mabel

It felt like the perfect crime, and yet I couldn’t shake a feeling that if anyone saw me, they would know. I’d read books where women and girls had described feeling “dirty” after interactions such as this, and in a sense that was how I felt. As though something physical covered my skin, something that could be seen and felt and touched, something that should be washed off. At the same time, “dirty” didn’t quite describe the part of it that felt wonderful, the part I never wanted to wash off in case it never happened again.

Each week, Daphne joined me outside the church as the people spilled out to help me distribute whatever flyers needed handing out—about the parish car boot sale, or the youth dance, or the choir auditions.

“Talk about dull,” she said one Sunday, reaching into the box of flyers.

I grinned. “Not for me.”

I waited for Daphne to ask why, but instead she went pale.

“What?” I said. “What is it?”

She pointed to the top of the stairs where a woman in a twinset and pencil skirt was exiting the church. She had platinum-blond hair tucked under a burgundy felt cloche hat and her stilettos were of a height that my mother would have called “highly inappropriate” for church. Still, it was clear the woman was unconcernedabout what was deemed appropriate, given she had linked her arm with my father’s.

My father: a widower of a couple of months. And Susan.

I stared at them as they came down the stairs, chatting to other parishioners, their arms linked in a way I’d never seen my father’s arms linked with my mother’s. Her hand was in the inner crook of his elbow, and he covered her hand with his own. A girl of about six, with blond hair and blue eyes like a baby doll, walked to one side of my father. I thought I might be sick.

My father looked at me. I wanted to look away, but I found myself staring back. Susan, seemingly unaware of any of this, extended her gloved hand for a flyer.

“Whoa, Mabel,” Daph said to me once they had passed. “Talk about a death stare.”

“My father’s?”

“No. Yours.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, looks can’t kill.”

“I don’t know,” Daphne said.

“They can’t,” I say. “Or he’d already be dead.”

49

People love talking about how “kids are different these days.” The inference, of course, is that kids were better off in the old days, a time before the internet, before fast food, a time when they read books, ate vegetables, and played outside from dawn till dusk. I say fiddlesticks to that. Kids are the same surly, irrational, resilient, narcissistic beasts they’ve always been, forging their way in the world while being simultaneously pummeled and delighted by life. The horrors and the delights were a little different, that’s all.

My horror, obviously, was the fear of being thrust into the care of my father. My delight? My little romance with Mr. Loukas, obviously. My “Gilbert Blythe.”

Unfortunately, in the end, that turned into a horror as well.

It fell apart the day we’d made a plan to meet in the school sports shed. The meetup was arranged in class—a handwritten note—and the cloak-and-dagger of it thrilled me and took my attention fromthe things I didn’t want to focus on—my father and whatever he was planning to get Rosehill back.

“There you are.”

It was after school. My instructions had been to let myself inside and then hop into the cupboard that held the hockey sticks. That part had been a challenge. The cupboard, not dissimilar to a broom cupboard, was not only too short for me, but it was also filled with hockey sticks. I tried contorting myself inside without much luck, but abandoned the exercise when he walked in.

“Did I overestimate the size of that cupboard?” he said, grinning. “Or did I underestimate the size of you?”

I shrugged. I felt girlish at the sight of him, and at how pleased he looked to see me.

He walked inside and the door closed, bringing complete darkness apart from the daylight that shone through the cracks. Neither of us spoke, which was typical of our interactions. We exchanged a few words here and there, but mostly we let our bodies do the talking. After all, what would I say? I felt like I was playing a role but didn’t know the lines.

It was silent in the shed, apart from the sound of our lips smacking together, and the occasional satisfied noises from Mr. Loukas. I liked it when he made those noises—it felt like getting an A on my history paper. But when he tugged my shirt out of my skirt, and slid his hand underneath and over the top of my bra, I wasn’t so sure I did like it. That had never happened at his house, or around the back of the church.

I should have stopped him. But strange as it sounds, I’m not sure I knew I was allowed to. Stupidly, I made my own satisfied noise in the hopes it would wrap things up. A mistake, because heresponded by pressing himself against me, forcing my back against the metal cage of basketballs with an almighty clang.

He tugged up my skirt. Oh, the thoughts that went through my head! Fear, obviously. Panic. But also resignation. I had, I believed, signed an invisible contract by entering the shed. The contract said I understood and agreed to whatever was going to happen. If I didn’t understand—which I hadn’t—more fool me. The train was going to leave the station with or without me.

As he slipped his hand into my underwear, my brain went in search of the pleasure I read about in my mother’s romance novels, but I didn’t find it.