The cuddling became tickling, and play-fighting, and one day down in the sitting room Sam was laughing and Dolly was giggling wildly and they rolled on the grubby carpet, her and her dad, and his hand came to rest on the small barely formed nubbin of her breast. It stayed there, rubbing, and Dolly’s giggles faded in her shock and confusion as she felt her nipple harden.
‘They’re getting bigger,’ he said, and she didn’t know where to look or what to say, she was that embarrassed. It felt nice, the pressure of his hand there. Nice, and somehow very wrong. Shameful. ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ he said, and took her hand and placed it over his trousers. She felt something hard there, and jerked her hand away and sat up.
‘You know the facts of life, don’t you, Doll?’ he asked, sitting there on the floor staring at her. ‘You started your bleeds yet?’
Dolly didn’t know what to say. Was he telling her she was going to bleed from somewhere, like a nosebleed maybe? Was that somehow connected to what men and women did, how they had babies? The thought made her shudder.
Dad put his hand on her shoulder, slid it up to caress her cheek.
‘You know what men and women do together, don’t you, Doll?’
She wanted him to shut up. This was horrible. She thought of the angels in the stained-glass window of the little church, the beauty in them, the goodness. This wasn’t good. This was awful and evil. She knew it somehow, deep in her soul.
‘You know the man puts his thing in the lady?’ he said, and he was whispering now, leaning closer, his breath tickling her ear.
Dolly said nothing. She was frozen there, rigid with disgust and disbelief that her dad was saying these shocking things to her. She wanted to stand up, to run, but she was afraid he’d stop her if she moved. Or touch her again in that bad way.
‘He puts his thing right in her, and it feels good,’ he said, and he was touching her hand, grasping it, bringing it back to that strange hardness at his crotch. Cringing, Dolly tried to pull her hand free, but she couldn’t. ‘You’re my best girl,’ he said, and his voice caught as if he was breathless. ‘There. You see? It’s going to be so good for us.’
So, after Lucy’s birthday tea, Dolly almost ran away. As far as the rec, anyway. But Dad brought her home again, and when she got home there was Mum sitting in her chair at the kitchen table – and Dolly thought that, while Mum was here, she was safe. Dad wouldn’t try to do the man-and-woman thing with her, not while Mum was here.
