Page 16 of If We Were Young

I knew full well what she'd sprayed on the walls of the boy’s toilets. What I wanted to know was why. Why were all boys wankers? I mean, I knew we were a female only house, but I’d never been one of those single mothers who berated all men. Why would I? My husband died in a tragic accident. He didn't leave me for someone else. He didn’t plan to drown in snow.

It didn’t matter though; regardless of whether he’d wanted to, he did it all the same. Right there and then, standing with my arms folded tight over my stomach like I was trying to keep myself together, I hated him. Hated him for leaving us to go skiing. Hated him for taking the black slope despite the weather warning, and I hated him more than anything for promising me he would make me forget my disappointment in love, but then failing to do so when he broke my heart all over again.

Tears scattered along my lashes and I dashed them away with the back of my hand. A giant bubble built in my chest until it could have burst and taken over the room, the house, maybe the universe.

“Han, I’m sorry.” I softened my voice and lowered my hips onto her bed. Not really sure what to do, I placed a hand on her shoulder, waiting for her to shrug me off. She didn’t, but she also didn’t turn around.

I took a deep breath. Let’s be real, I’d never sit on the hot seat of Mastermind and have my specialist subject as boys. I mean boys are boys; immature versions of girls, with dicks instead of vaginas, but I didn’t understand them. Not really.

I cringed. “Is a boy upsetting you?” I asked, my false mummy voice bouncing back off the bedroom walls at me.

The condescending sigh that rolled out of her was almost tangible. “No, Mother.”

Ooh. Mother. Mother territory, one of my absolute favourite places to hang out.

“You can talk to me you know?” I prodded her shoulder, still unable to see her face. I knew she wouldn’t, but I said the words hoping one day she might just collapse in a furore of sobs and tell me what the hell was going on in her head. She wouldn’t. She had my most fundamental flaw flowing through her veins. The complete inability to speak and say something important when needed to.

Of all the genetic flaws to pass on to your child. The inability to speak when needed has got to be the worst. I mean, she could have got my nose and that would have been bad enough in itself—but silence. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

“Listen, I know I’m old and not cool, but I was your age once too.”

Lame, lame, lame, just stop bloody talking, Ronnie. She flinched.

I couldn’t actually remember what life was like at thirteen. For me it was like my life started at eighteen on my first day at university, when. . . I stopped the thought.

I gave up at the point when my hand had been on her shoulder for five minutes and she still hadn’t turned around and I was looking at a paperback on the floor with considerable longing. “Okay, I’ll leave you alone for a while, but door open, okay?”

I was by the door when her voice broke through the wall of deathly quiet. “Did you ever have someone you liked, but didn’t tell?”

My skin paled, a responsive sweat prickling my palms. I folded my hands under my armpits. Come on, Ronnie, this is one of those moments.

Tell her.

Tell her about the day you cocked up.

I opened my mouth, but as the words formed themselves on the tip of my tongue, she turned to look at me, her gaze very similar to that of the eight-year-old who I’d had to tell would never see their father again.

I just couldn’t. Couldn’t say anything of any value, didn’t have the words within me.

I shrugged. “Boys are boys,” I said wanting to bitch slap myself. The glacial gaze she liked to reserve just for me spread across her eyes and her lips twisted into a snarl.

Godzilla was back. “Sure they are.”

I sighed and stared at her. “Hannah, this can’t go on, you know it right?”

When she didn’t answer, I walked to my bedroom and threw myself on my bed hoping that just maybe the duvet would reach up and wrap itself tight around my body suffocating the shit out of me.

If I suffocated myself then I wouldn’t be able to sip into porno dream land.

But then…

Messenger

On the way to Mr Jewson’s office two days later, I cursed myself for thinking my ‘This can’t keep happening’, would have any effect.

A bell inside my head told me that right now I walked the same path my mother had with me twenty years before. I imagined being in her shoes as I walked up the stairs to the school.

Did I want to be in her shoes when Hannah was my age?