But he did this to me, she thought.
Sam’s lip was curled like there was a bad smell under his nose. She’d let him down, she could see that, and somewhere inside her that hurt; he was her dad, and she loved him. But she hated him too, and now the hatred was growing stronger, like this thing he’d planted inside her.
‘The doctor said…’ she started, and she had to stop, she didn’t know how to go on with it. Embarrassment flooded her cheeks with red and she faltered to a halt.
‘I know.’ His eyes wouldn’t meet hers. It was almost comical, only it wasn’t very bloody funny at all, really, was it? Not when you got right down to the facts of the matter.
‘We’ll sort it out,’ he said, and without another word he turned and left the room.
One week later, Dolly was still in bed, feeling fragile. Timid little Sarah came in with soup and tea and chatter, as she did every day, doing her best to keep Dolly’s spirits up.
‘This flu’s a bugger, but you’ll be better soon, don’t worry,’ she said.
Then Dad came in from work that evening and said: ‘It’s all fixed up, we’ll go tomorrow.’
His eyes were doing that slip-sliding thing again, going around the room, not looking at his daughter, and he was sweating. Fix what? wondered Dolly. As soon as he’d gone, her hands wandered to her stomach, feeling the slight alien curve of it. She’d seen pregnant women; she’d be like the side of a house soon, and there would be things to buy, nursery stuff, she supposed. That must be what Dad was talking about. And at least this thing inside her meant that he wouldn’t touch her any more; there was that to be thankful for.
The next day Dad stayed off work. Dolly got up, ate breakfast, spewed it back up, then cleaned herself and they caught the bus over to Aldgate. Maybe there was a shop there with kids’ stuff, she didn’t know and she didn’t ask. Dad didn’t talk to her on the journey and Dolly was glad of that. She felt both queasy and numb, all at the same time. The numbness, the distance from the real world, had started the first time he’d played the man-and-woman game with her, and it had stayed.
When they got off the bus, they walked a couple of streets along lines of identical Victorian semis. Dad opened the gate of one called ‘Swanlea’ and Dolly trailed after him up the little chequer-tiled path, feeling almost faint. Dad knocked on the door and in a minute or so it was opened by a middle-aged woman so heavily made up it looked like she was wearing a clown’s mask. Her eyes were huge and fringed with blackened lashes. Her darkly tinted red hair, all the life coloured out of it so that it had the texture of a Brillo pad, stood out around her face like a frazzled scarlet halo.
