Gilly sat down beside her and lit a cigarette of her own. It was her sole concession to rebellion. She had not gone down Karen’s road of facial piercings and tattoos. She was certain to go to university, where she would probably get a master’s degree or a doctorate, then spend the rest of her life raising children. She said, ‘You’re in deep shit, girl.’
‘Yeah? Whose?’
‘Mrs Forrest’s, for a start.’
‘Aye, well, she’s pretty full of it.’
‘She went straight to the headmaster’s office after you’d gone. Left us a good fifteen minutes on our own.’ She grinned. ‘The place was in uproar. If you stood in the election for student rep you’d be a shoo-in.’
‘That might be a little difficult after they’ve expelled me.’
‘They won’t expel you!’
Karen shrugged. ‘That’s a pity. Guess I’ll have to quit, then.’
Gilly gave her a sceptical look. ‘And do what?’
Karen inclined her head very slightly but said nothing. ‘What’s got into you, anyway? You’re being a right pain today.’
Karen took a pull on her cigarette and stared at the ground.
It was a long time before she said, ‘That bald-headed bam’s moving in with my mum.’
‘What, that guy she’s been going out with?’
‘Yeah, her boss at work.’
Gilly shrugged. ‘So?’
‘So he thinks he’s just going to walk in and take over where my dad left off. Well, he’s got another think coming.’
‘Could be worse, she might have married him.’
‘She can’t. It’ll be another five years before she can apply for a legal declaration of presumed death. As if it’s not pretty fucking conclusive as it is. An empty boat and a suicide note. At least it means she’ll not be changing her name and trying to change mine, too.’ She flicked her cigarette away across the tarmac and watched the sparks kick up from it as it hit the ground. ‘Think it’s probably time I moved out.’
Gilly was taken aback. ‘Moved out? Where would you go? How would you live?’
‘I’ll figure something out. But I’m not staying there to let him boss me around, and spy on me in the shower.’
‘Is that what he does?’
‘Not that I know of. Not yet, anyway. But he probably will.’
She grinned and stood up. ‘I’m out of here.’
She took a bus into town, then rode out to the airport and back again on the tram. The airport was somehow symbolic of escape. But it was only ever a dream. An impractical fantasy.
The tram was fun, and she was still newfangled with it. The outward and return journeys took her through western suburbs she didn’t know, and then slap bang through the city centre. Priority for the tram, and unrivalled views of the gardens and the castle through panoramic windows. And no matter how busy it was, no one would speak to you. People travelled in their own little bubbles, listening to music or reading books, or simply staring into space, like Karen.
She had removed her tie, opening the top of her blouse to reveal a little of her tattoo, lipsticked her mouth deep purple and reinstated her lip rings. She was determined to be as defiantly ugly as possible, staring down anyone who had the temerity to look at her.
But today she wasn’t catching anyone’s eye. And, contrary to all outward appearance, she was bleeding inside, where Daddy’s little girl hid from the world, succumbing to guilt and grief.
It was still a mystery to her why she had given him such a hard time. Driven by some internal devil that made her say and do things that she really didn’t mean. Just to be difficult, or obstinate, to hurt with malice aforethought. She had felt almost possessed, driven to truculence, and always filled, in the aftermath, with regret that she could never admit to.
Her mother had doted on her when she was wee, an only child, an only daughter. But it was always her father’s approval she had sought, him she had wanted to spend time with. And in those early years he’d had endless patience, and limitless time, or so it seemed. He’d played games with her for hours on end — hide the sweetie, snakes and ladders, chequers — and read to her every night. Silly, childish stories, but they had given her an appetite for reading. Only now did she realise how desperately boring it must all have been for him. But he had never stinted on his time. He had taught her to swim on holiday in France, to ride a bike in the back garden, running along beside her, holding the saddle. ‘Don’t let go, Daddy, don’t let go,’ she had shouted, unaware that he had let go long ago.
She glanced from the window of the tram, out across the roofs of Waverley Station, and, jumping focus, saw her reflection in the window. An involuntary smile on her face with the memory of it. And tears sprang suddenly to her eyes.
From the age of twelve or thirteen she had become unaccountably angry with him. Not entirely her fault, because his work had taken up more and more of his time, leaving less and less of it for her. And she had punished him for it, mercilessly, with her moods, and sullen sulks, and sudden outbursts of anger. Even when he had gone out of his way to make time for her, to take her out sailing, or walking in the Pentland Hills, she had found excuses not to go. Hurting herself just to hurt him.
And then the very last time she’d seen him. He had been going to come and watch her in the school debate. The proposition was that GMOs were the future of food and the only way to feed the world. She knew that it was one of her dad’s hobby horses. He had always been implacably opposed to the idea of genetically modified crops, and so she had boned up on the subject and was the principal speaker against the proposition. He had called off at the last moment. A problem at work and he had to deal with it. He said that he would drive her to the school but couldn’t stay.
That he hadn’t even been going to hear her speak, after all the work she had put into it just to please him, had seemed like the last, unforgivable straw. She blew up at him, accusing him of being hopelessly selfish, of not caring about anyone or anything in the world but himself. And least of all her. As usual, he had stayed calm and patient and tried to explain. But that only infuriated her further, and she had screamed in his face, ‘I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!’ And fled from the room in tears.
She never saw him again. They found his boat that weekend, out in the Firth of Forth. Empty. All the life jackets still on board. And then the note her mother had discovered that night, left on the pillow, beneath the duvet, so that she hadn’t seen it until going to bed.
For the longest time, Karen had been utterly overcome by guilt. It was her fault. Somehow he’d been driven to take his own life because of her. The way she behaved, the things she’d said. And she had wished with all her heart that she could just go back and undo it all. Tell him that she’d never meant any of the things she had said, that she loved him really. But there was no way to do that, no way to unsay the things she’d said. And in the end her only means of dealing with it was by growing a hard outer shell that would never let anything in to hurt her ever again.
She became aware of a middle-aged woman sitting opposite, staring at her, and caught a reflection of herself again in the window, her face streaked now with black mascara, and shiny with tears.
It was mid-afternoon when she got back to the house. Her mother would not be home for nearly three hours yet, returning no doubt with Derek, since it seemed he had already moved in.
Karen could not for the life of her see what it was that her mother found attractive about him. His head was completely bald on top, smooth and unnaturally shiny. But he had a ring of dark hair around the sides and back, greying a little at the ears. And he wore it far too long, as if that could make up for the lack of it elsewhere. It might not have been so bad had he just shaved off the lot. That’s what men did these days when they went bald. And it looked so much better.