‘Fuck off,’ she mumbles and tries to push me away.
‘I need to get you inside, Nina. You cannot stay out here all night.’
‘You can’t tell me what to do,’ she slurs, but she’s not in any fit state to protest. Eventually she surrenders and allows me to help her to her feet. I slip my arm around her waist and we walk slowly and unsteadily towards the house.
She virtually falls on to a kitchen chair and rests her head on the table with a thump. My relief that she is home and safe tempers my fury. But I’m at a loss as to know what to say to a girl I don’t recognise. I wish that I could dismiss tonight’s behaviour as a one-off occurrence but it’s not. It’s not even close. Her unmanageable attitude is becoming frequent and I’m powerless to stop it. I’ve tried yelling, reasoning, crying and begging but my protests are falling on deaf ears.
I control the impulse to shout at her. It’s pointless because she’s unlikely to remember it in the morning. Instead, I take a glass from the cupboard and fill it with cold water, then place it in front of her. She pushes it away.
‘It’ll help with the hangover tomorrow,’ I advise.
‘I don’t get them,’ she replies.
‘Darling, you can’t continue like this. It’s not fair on either of us.’
Her eyes are closed but she hears me. ‘I can do what I want. You can’t stop me.’
‘You aren’t old enough or responsible enough to be going out and behaving in this way. You’re going to get yourself in trouble.’
‘I was in town with my mates. We were having a laugh.’
‘Where? In pubs?’ Her lack of response gives me my answer. ‘It’s against the law, Nina. And look at the state of you; who knows what might happen when you’re this drunk? Who were those men who brought you home?’ She shrugs. ‘Do you even know their names?’
‘They said if I gave them a blow job they’d drive me home.’ She bursts into a fit of laughter as I take a step back, hoping to God she’s joking. I wait for her to admit she’s being crude to hurt me. But she doesn’t. She catches my slack jaw and wide eyes. ‘Don’t look so freaked out,’ she says dismissively.
‘Who are these animals? What are their names?’
Nina shrugs. ‘What does it matter?’
‘Because you’re a child!’
‘I’m fourteen. That’s what girls my age do.’ Her version of fourteen and mine are worlds apart. ‘And I take precautions.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I make them wear a rubber . . . sometimes.’ She opens her eyes, stares at me and lets the statement hang before she laughs again. ‘Oh my God, you think I’m still a virgin, don’t you?’
I don’t say anything. Nevertheless, the fact that she is so blatant about her sexuality hits me with the sharpness of a slap. I can’t believe I haven’t been able to see what was happening right under my nose. I don’t need a psychologist to tell me why Nina is behaving like this. Her transformation from my beautiful, fiercely intelligent, empathetic daughter to this obnoxious, drunken teenager is happening because of her father; because of things I know and that I can never bring up with her. Now I am paying the price for doing what I must. What he has done to her breaks my heart, but for the sake of both of our sanities, she must remain in the dark. I must protect her at all costs.
Her bad behaviour began quickly, with the raising of her school-skirt hemlines; then she pierced her ears without asking my permission. Soon, reports from her teachers arrived about her failure to complete homework, playing truant and bullying a younger girl. I’m not sure whom I was trying to convince when I assured them it was a passing phase.
The first night she came home after her 9 p.m. curfew, I grounded her. Her response was to tell me to ‘get fucked’. When she did the same the following week, I imposed the same punishment again and this time she laughed in my face. I wasn’t aware she’d started sneaking out of the house until a police car brought her home a fortnight earlier. She was with a group of friends drinking cider near the parade of shops in the next estate. Then came the multiple love bites that appeared on her neck and shamelessly made their way down to her chest. But I told myself she wouldn’t have gone any further; she was just too young.
And now she’s offering oral sex for car rides home. Fury erupts inside me when I think of how these men have taken advantage of my child; I want to find them and make them pay for what they have done. She has suffered enough without now being easy prey for perverts. I continue glaring at her, trying to decide upon my next approach. I want to yell but it will do neither of us any good. ‘Let’s get you upstairs,’ I suggest, and she tries to swat me away like a fly. I approach her again and this time she attempts to slap me. She misses.
Eventually, she rises to her feet of her own accord. I remove an old blue bucket from under the sink and follow her as she stumbles up the stairs, using the bannisters to pull herself up. Almost as soon as her head hits the pillow, she is asleep. I roll her on to her side in case she vomits while unconscious. I leave her in her clothes and place a glass of water on her bedside table. The bucket is on the floor if she takes ill.
As I leave, something catches my eye inside the rubbish bin by her desk. I do a double take.
It’s a pregnancy test.
I turn to ensure she is still asleep before I bend over to pick it up. I scan the discarded box’s instructions and my worst fears are realised when I spot two blue stripes in a plastic window. I clasp my hand over my mouth and my knees threaten to buckle beneath me. My chest aches like my heart has broken. I steady myself with the doorframe, put the test back where I found it, leave her door ajar and try to reclaim my breath.
I spend the next few days with a mind as numb as my body. I put a brave face on it at home and at work, but it’s eating me up inside. This is the worst possible outcome. Even if the circumstances were less horrific, Nina would be nowhere near ready for motherhood – and the circumstances are in every way a horror. Trying to reason with her will be pointless as she is too stubborn to listen to anything I have to say. I wonder how far along she is, or if she even knows when she is due. I cannot take the risk, so there is only one solution. I must deal with this for her.
I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but my hatred for my husband has sounded new depths. I’m glad he is never coming back because Nina deserves better. I just need to make her understand this.
CHAPTER 9
NINA
The swimming pool is almost empty. I am in one lane and a teenager being coached by a vocal parent is in another. The boy is like a dolphin, flying up and down the pool practising the butterfly stroke. His dad follows him from the side, a stopwatch glued to his hand. Between lengths, he keeps trying to motivate his son with reminders like ‘think Team GB’ and ‘the next Olympics’. He is a pushy parent and his son is no doubt sick of it, when he should be grateful. At least he still has a father in his life. Even after all these years, I still feel the absence of mine. My memories of him didn’t disappear just because he did.
I slip my waterproof earplugs back in, kick off from the side of the pool and launch into the breaststroke. I like to swim at the Mounts pool two or three times a week before I go to work. It’s only a ten-minute walk from here to the library and I have set myself a goal to complete fifty lengths non-stop before the summer arrives. I’m not yet half the way towards reaching my target, but I’m getting closer.