“Oh, don’t,” said Julia, but she laughed, in disbelief. “This is actually appalling.”
“Yes,” agreed James. “Let’s fire them and get better ones. But you know what, I’m pretty confident it will be okay. Probably the entire point was for you to see them and now the point’s made.”
“Loud and clear.”
“Yup. Loud and clear.”
? ? ?
FOR HIS PART, Nathan felt hopeful. He had charmed his way out of stickier scrapes than this one. He understood why everyone was angry but it would not alter the course of his behavior and now, safely across London, he had lost all traces of his own indignation and merely felt enlivened by the drama.
Gwen was not at all his usual type. Valentina, he’d known with pride, was a nine, a point docked for her high-strung madness. (His friend Edmund’s scale did not even consider faces, let alone personality, merely the hardware on display from the neck down.) But Nathan had eventually become bored and exasperated by Valentina, and what security and confidence he derived from having a steady girlfriend had been undermined by their relentless rows. It had seemed passionate and romantic at first, but whatever her physical attributes, he did not want a girlfriend who was always angry. Gwen Alden was a solid eight to eight-and-a-half. She was catwalk tall and could definitely be described as willowy, and her red hair was so startling that it transcended the traditionally disparaging label “ginger” and recategorized her as “striking.” She had a beautiful face. He liked her laugh, and her belief, however resentfully held, that he was an academic genius. It was worth a little heat from his father, and in any case, his mother was bound to take it in better spirits. As long as he furnished her with a few details, she usually said yes to anything.
? ? ?
BOXING DAY CAME the nadir. Julia sat on the end of Gwen’s bed, her head bowed, her fingers interlaced in her lap.
“I’ve been up all night,” said Julia, softly, “trying to comprehend why. I am very disappointed.”
Gwen almost laughed at this grave, teacherly cliché, for she, too, had been lying awake slightly manic with nerves and a sense of guilty defiance. It would be a day of reckoning. She restrained the giggle and said, “I’m sorry.” And then worried this was a concession, added primly, “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
“You cannot possibly have thought this was a good idea.”
“It’s not an idea. I like him. It isn’t like we planned it or anything.”
“It’s not appropriate.”
Gwen sat up and flung the covers off. Shouting would be awkward as she still had in her retainer, but she was too cross to pause and remove it. “Who says? You can’t actually control everything we do, we’re adults.”
“Adults! This is precisely the opposite of adult behavior. If you can’t see why this is fraught with awkwardness—”
“It’s not like I didn’t find it awkward when you started going out with James. It’s not like I didn’t find it awkward when he took over Dad’s house. That was pretty bloody awkward, if you ask me.”
“Can you not see that’s a little different?”
“No,” said Gwen, stubbornly. “I can’t. In any case, it’s done now.” To shore up her sense of dignity she removed her retainer at last, clicking it into the purple plastic case on her bedside table. She then padded over to her desk in search of her glasses, feeling vulnerable and at a disadvantage, with the world blurred.
“What’s done? You mean it’s over?”
“No, it’s done. He’s my boyfriend. There’s nothing you can do.” She and Nathan had never actually discussed the status of their relationship but he hadn’t contradicted her when she’d made her announcement the night before, and this bolstered her confidence. And then on impulse she added, “We’ve been together for ages.”
Julia looked startled. “How long?”
“None of your business. You don’t consult me with what you do with your love life.”
“Gwen, that’s enough. Don’t be rude.” And then in a different, quieter tone, “Gwendolen, darling, what do you mean by ‘love life’? How serious has this become? Many things are not my business but what happens under my roof is my concern. Are you—are you sleeping with him?”
And suddenly a conversation previously unimaginable to both of them was taking place. Gwen felt a simultaneous sense of injustice and betrayal. Here was conclusive proof of how wretchedly little Julia understood—about what was and wasn’t appropriate, about life in general, and specifically about her own child who had not yet removed a single item of clothing in the presence of any boy, Nathan included, and who did not even want to go to bed with anyone. She might as well have asked whether Gwen had taken up skydiving. Clearly her mother had stopped paying attention some time ago. Gwen had become a stranger to her, capable of anything. Self-pity threatened, but Gwen forced herself to focus on what she had for solace. And so she swallowed the outraged, honest denial that had risen and gambled instead. “Why is our sex life anything to do with you?”
As soon as the words were out a gulf opened between them, a lake of a lie. It’s not true! she thought, as loudly as she could, but the lie lay between them now, an expanse across which it was impossible to hear one another. Already she ached to confess, and already knew she never would. Watching her mother recede into the distance with the steady inevitability of a departing ship, she thought, hopelessly, one day it might be true. Sex was at present entirely unimaginable, but Julia had begun to cry, and then left in silence, and so it must be believable to her.
Gwen had felt known her whole life, known and cherished, and had, she realized, taken that charmed state entirely for granted. She now saw it for the flossy, muffling cocoon of na?veté and infantile solipsism it must always have been. A delusion. Only her father had entirely loved and accepted her, and he would certainly never have let Julia spend the rest of Boxing Day charging around in derangement demanding that James write a prescription for the Pill, nor allowed her to leave a frantic and humiliating message on the GP’s out-of-hours answering machine after James had said his own involvement would be inappropriate. Without her father, no one saw her. Except Nathan.
part two
16.
“I’m outside. What on earth is the delay?”