Sorry Isn’t Good Enough, page 1
To Anna and Lucy
and your wonderful laughter
Contents
Dedication
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Acknowledgements
Credits
About the Author
Copyright
The characters in this novel are fictional
(although my lovely mum’s DIY skills were legendary:
she could make anything – except, perhaps, a decision)
Chapter One
The Man on the Station
May 1997
I have never told anyone what happened that summer.
I find myself trailing back to those woods over and over. Back, back along the paths that led me there. I was nine years old, and the prospect of telling anyone was unthinkable. I thought I’d successfully blocked it out for thirty years. But something has just happened to jolt me out of this delusion. And now I’m running. I’m running down the platform on Paddington station in my stockinged feet.
Less than an hour ago I was the headline speaker at The Dolphin Project conference in a smart London hotel. Everything had gone better than I’d expected, and I was taking questions when a woman at the back asked me a question I had hoped never to hear. She took me completely by surprise.
‘Do you think your development of this project is in any way connected to your own traumatic childhood?’ I went over suddenly on my right heel. I knew I couldn’t wear stilettos. What a fool I’d been to imagine I could pull off the look. I had no doubt that the question had been intended to trip me up. ‘I mean, as I understand it, you were implicated in a notorious murder when you were nine. Is that right?’
The words I had prepared to say at the end of my talk seemed to pile up at the roadblock of her question. They formed a tailback down my throat. All the clever things I had imagined saying, choking me into silence.
The woman who had introduced me sprang into action. ‘I think that may be a question for another time. Now, we can fit in just one more question … Yes, man at the back in the blue jacket.’
It was another unexpected topic, and I thought it suggested he knew something about my children, but I fumbled my way through an answer. I was so shaken up that I didn’t hang around afterwards, although lots of kind people came up to me to discuss ideas. I darted for the exit and got in the first taxi I could flag down for Paddington.
As soon as I was at the station I allowed myself to relax a little. The truth is, I’m something of a hick from the sticks, and I was feeling quite cosmopolitan standing there looking at the board for train departures, hundreds of people of all nationalities milling around me. I’d been to the conference in my new role as leader of The Dolphin Project for young people. I thought, I’m one of them. I belong to this bunch of busy, worldly individuals. I felt anonymous rather than invisible.
And it was while I was immersed in this special glow that I spotted a man staring at me from about twenty metres away by the warm baguette stall. I ignored him at first, telling myself he must have mistaken me for someone else. The next time I looked he was still eyeing me, and I wondered if this was how it happened, this was how you got ‘picked up’ by a stranger, how love stories started. But of course I knew that wasn’t going to happen to me. This was some weirdo. Or perhaps he was the man standing next to that journalist who’d asked me the last question. It was. It was him. I looked back at the screen. Platform Five. Good.
I started to make my way to the gate when he leant in front of me, almost standing in my path. ‘Stephanie Townsend?’
I looked directly at him, and wondered if there might be something familiar about the eyes. I was about to speak when I remembered another man leaning against a wall once, saying my name with that exact questioning tone, and it sent a ripple of terror through me. I said nothing.
‘I thought it was you,’ he said.
He followed me through the ticket gate, feeding his ticket in like me. I could feel the pulse in my temples.
‘We should talk.’ He took hold of my arm and I yanked it away, panicking now.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, turning myself away, heading down the platform.
I walked briskly and painfully in my unfamiliar heels, passing the first carriage, and the second. He followed.
‘I know what happened. I’m—’
The tannoy cut in with a loud, grating announcement: ‘The train now standing at Platform Five …’
That’s when I took off my shoes and started to run.
Chapter Two
Poppet
My earliest memories of Dawn Webster must be from reception class, in 1961. I have a vivid memory of her mother bending down to hug her at the school gates and calling her ‘poppet’. My own mother lets go of my hand and tells me she’ll be there to pick me up later. To the amazement of our mothers, we start to seek each other out in the playground, and we are inseparable for years.
Dawn wants my loyalty; I want her mother.
Dawn is short, spiteful and smart. She is spoilt and prone to tantrums. I think I know this straight away, from the way she arches her back when she stands. She is tightly sprung. ‘Whatever do you see in Dawn?’ Mummy asks, bewildered. I want to tell her – because it’s simple – but I can’t articulate it. Dawn gives me the time of day; she seeks me out. I am flattered. I want to please her, because when I please Dawn, the world is a better place for a short while. ‘You let her walk all over you,’ says Mummy. ‘You can’t say “no” to her. You’re like someone half-baked.’ But Dawn likes me, I think. Which is more than can be said for Mummy. Nothing I do seems to please her. Also, seeing a lot of Dawn means I get to see more of her mother, who calls me poppet.
We are different to other people. It’s possible that my father, lay preacher and Bible class teacher for the Church of the Three in One, has made up this church himself, because no one else I know goes to it. Dawn, for example, goes to a different Sunday school sometimes, at the end of Plum Lane. So does everyone else. Or else they don’t go anywhere and have a free Sunday. In any case, it makes us different. Every week we press our knees into the hard prayer cushions that Mummy puts out with some other women in hats, then I go to Sunday school.
We don’t have a television. Daddy thinks they ‘brainwash’ you. And Mummy agrees. Dawn watches television, and saves milk bottle tops for Blue Peter and gets to help choose a dog’s name. So does everyone else. I see Blue Peter as a fairly tall boy, painted in the same pale blue as the Websters’ front door, who organises things in a good cause. It’s not until Dawn lets me watch her television in secret (her mother says best not tell Daddy she let me watch it) that I realise it’s a cheery children’s television show, with pets, news and, best of all, instructions on how to make wonderful things from bits and bobs. Later, I make a tie rack for Daddy out of a cornflake packet, and he says I have a good imagination. Of course, my creation is not as good as the one made on the television, because I have no sticky-backed plastic to cover it with. It has a cockerel on the side, though, and half a bowl of cornflakes, which look quite nice.
Dawn has three teddy bears to my one. Mine is called Trevor, after next door’s rabbit who died, and he is threadbare with cuddling. Hers are called Teddy Stroud, Teddy Gloucester and Teddy Hackney, after the places they came from. All their fur is intact.
I know very early on that Dawn has a cruel side. From the way she steps on ants and caterpillars for fun, to the way she happily blames me for stealing apples from the orchard. Her father, who is a short, angry man, is so furious about the owner of the orchard abutting his garden making complaints about stealing, that he cannot let the matter go. He bawls at Dawn until she’s red and shaking and tells him it was my idea.
‘You!’ he shouts, pointing a finger with wide, stumpy nails, just like Dawn’s, but larger. ‘You, of all people! I expected more from you, Stephanie Townsend. You wait until your father hears about this!’ I’m sure I detect a look of satisfaction on his face when he says this. It’s useless to protest. I’ve learnt this. I look at Dawn, but she looks wronged, for all the world like someone who didn’t call me a wimp for not wanting to join her in scrabbling through the hedge at the bottom of her garden and gathering apples in our skirts. I have the measure of Dawn, but still I am loyal to her.
Dawn says she’s a ‘Cockney’, which sounds like something you would keep in a hen coop, but she says it with such pride that it makes me wish I was one too. I don’t know what I am, apart from a freak. She plays with me even though I have a wonky walk caused by a disease when I was little. This is because Daddy didn’t believe in vaccination because God said it wasn’t okay. And Mummy agreed. God decides what diseases we get. So I got a disease and I ‘drag’ my foot. Daddy does believe in vaccination now, and Mummy does too. So Jonathan got vaccinated and he walks like a normal person.
Daddy is always happy to sing me to sleep with hymns and he always has hugs for me. It’s not that I don’t want them – I need them – it’s that I need Mummy’s hugs more. I have to hang onto what I have, though. Mummy hugs Jonathan. Daddy hugs me. I know it’s fair, but it doesn’t feel like it. I watch Mummy carefully, and she takes her lead from Daddy when it comes to things like God and so on. So I try to be like her. I find church a bit like school, full of rules it seems impossible to make sense of. Not being worthy to gather up the crumbs under God’s table makes as much sense as our teacher telling us not to stand with our hands in our pockets. But I try to learn everything I’m taught anyway, and I can parrot the parables to impress Daddy. I need his approval, because it’s all there is. I don’t see that the more he praises me, the less she wants to. Or if I see it, I make no connection. I just keep on digging myself in deeper.
When Daddy accosts me about stealing apples from the orchard (Mr Webster has been treacherous and told him), I speak honestly.
‘It was Dawn’s idea. I didn’t know there was an orchard there. She told me the owner didn’t mind and she’d done it before.’
‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’ says Daddy. He is still cross with me, and gives me a slap on the leg for stealing.
I say I’m sorry, but Mummy says, ‘Sorry isn’t good enough.’ She wheels that phrase out every time I apologise, but I’ve never been brave enough to ask her what would be good enough. The worst thing, though, is that Daddy forbids me from playing with Dawn again, as she is ‘a bad influence’. And Mummy agrees.
Well, he can’t stop me from playing with her at school, where I’m endlessly delighted by her mischief and daring. One playtime, she spots that Miss Worth has popped into the infants’ toilets when there’s no one in them. She wears flat brown lace-up shoes and has a furry face.
‘Bet she’s taking a piss!’ says Dawn, nudging me. ‘Let’s go and look.’
I follow her into the toilets, which are in a block in the playground. There is a row of four cubicles, and one is in use. Dawn widens her eyes at me, then kneels down and bends her head to floor level, taking a peek under the toilet door. She turns back to me, grinning. ‘Go on!’ she mouths. I do the same.
There is our elderly teacher, her flesh-coloured knickers around her knees, suspenders exposed, her skirt gathered in her lap. I can only assume that she must have had her eyes closed in concentration when Dawn looked, because now her pinprick pupils focus on me, and her purse-string mouth tightens bitterly. I get up quickly, and we run out into the playground, where we hoot and giggle. I don’t believe we’ve got away with it, and we haven’t. For whatever reason, Miss Worth only picks on me, for being ‘rude and disgusting at playtime’. I am invited out to the front of class after break and given the ruler ten times across my palms and ten times across my knuckles. I set my mouth in a rigid line. I don’t cry. Mummy says crying is weak and manipulative. I am four years old, and I have already taught myself not to cry.
If Dawn thinks it’s not fair that I got punished when she didn’t, she doesn’t say so. When I show her my sore hands and say I wish Miss Worth would die, she says, ‘Fuck her.’
‘Miss Worth is a stupid kant,’ says Dawn, and I agree. We don’t know what this word means, or even that we both have one, we just know that it’s something like a person who is really horrible. I also know it’s French, because when Dawn’s dad was talking about how he called his boss at work a stupid kant, he said, ‘Excuse my French.’ Speaking a foreign language comes in handy when people annoy us.
I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me when I overhear Miss Worth talking to my mother after school. I’m tidying the folders when she says in a low voice:
‘Stephanie is a very strange child, Mrs Townsend. There is something very odd about her. Very, very odd.’
Do they think I’m deaf as well as odd? I’m just on the other side of the classroom with my back to them. Grown-ups can be so dense. The turned back is such an easy trick.
‘What’s she done?’
‘Well, I’m sorry to say, she looked under the door while I was … spending a penny.’
‘Really? I’m so sorry! That’s shocking.’
Mummy yanks me by the hand and walks me home in silence. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, but it isn’t good enough, because she still seems cross. Because I am odd and shocking.
Our house, with its 1950s bay window and garage, is the first one in the crescent, and so at an angle to Napier Road, appearing to face up the road as we walk down it. Whenever I see it there, waiting for me at the end of a school day, I feel a sense of relief. It has different moods, though. Sometimes it seems to welcome me as I come through the door; other times it sighs, ‘Not you again.’ Either way, I like the familiarity of it. The smell of the floor polish on the hall tiles, the shoes that stand in pairs or on their sides or piled up, high heels and fluffy slippers, offering different possibilities, different roles I can try out. I like the dining room with the toy cupboard that Mummy made, the red carpet she fitted, the black china horse on the mantelpiece – Mummy’s pride and joy – and the wireless on the sideboard with its two knobs like eyes and its wide smiley tuning dial mouth. I don’t like the cruel drawers of the sideboard that contain scratchy hairbrushes and fearsome elastic bands to tie back my hair. I don’t go in the ‘front room’ much, except to read comics, unless it’s the weekend and that’s the room where the fire is made. The bathroom is far and above the most troublesome room in the house. The sink, of course, is where I can wash myself clean. But the curtains are white with spiteful green spots that make them look diseased, like they have a rash. Or else they’re watching me, staring with hundreds of tiny eyes. My own room is the best, because that’s where Trevor lies: my bear, waiting for a cuddle. Trevor always loves me, no matter what. A bit like Jesus, really, only I prefer Trevor. Jesus doesn’t have fur, and I suspect he’s a bit of a clever Dick. He may be a bit smug, too. I feel bad even thinking that, but he does sometimes look smug in pictures. Trevor isn’t smug. He doesn’t expect anything from me, except cuddles.
Sometimes at the weekend, when we are all in the front room because of the fire, I feel as if we’ve all been glued into place: Daddy and Mummy on the sofa, me and Jonathan in the chairs or on the floor. I wonder if we’re really all made of wood or plasticine, and just being moved around by a giant child, who seems to have forgotten about us today.
Chapter Three
Germs
Things don’t get much better in the class after reception. I’m determined to make an impression on Miss Maddison, who is dark and squat with a line of fur over her top lip. Which I like. I like fur. Although her hair is dark, she has pale, bloodless skin and her forehead looks like a lined parsnip. However, after finding out that we’re going to do Tens and Units this year, I promptly go down with measles, and I miss how to do them. When I come back, she makes no allowances.
