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Chapters (86)
  1. Title Page
  2. CONTENTS
  3. Love
  4. Before
  5. One
  6. ONE
  7. Two
  8. TWO
  9. Three
  10. THREE
  11. Four
  12. FOUR
  13. Five
  14. FIVE
  15. Six
  16. SIX
  17. Seven
  18. SEVEN
  19. Eight
  20. EIGHT
  21. Nine
  22. NINE
  23. Ten
  24. TEN
  25. Eleven
  26. ELEVEN
  27. After
  28. One
  29. ONE
  30. Two
  31. TWO
  32. Three
  33. THREE
  34. Four
  35. FOUR
  36. Five
  37. FIVE
  38. Six
  39. SIX
  40. Seven
  41. SEVEN
  42. Eight
  43. EIGHT
  44. Nine
  45. NINE
  46. Ten
  47. TEN
  48. Eleven
  49. ELEVEN
  50. Twelve
  51. TWELVE
  52. Thirteen
  53. THIRTEEN
  54. Fourteen
  55. FOURTEEN
  56. Fifteen
  57. FIFTEEN
  58. Sixteen
  59. SIXTEEN
  60. Seventeen
  61. SEVENTEEN
  62. Eighteen
  63. EIGHTEEN
  64. Nineteen
  65. NINETEEN
  66. Twenty
  67. TWENTY
  68. Twenty-One
  69. TWENTY-ONE
  70. Twenty-Two
  71. TWENTY-TWO
  72. Twenty-Three
  73. TWENTY-THREE
  74. Twenty-Four
  75. TWENTY-FOUR
  76. Twenty-Five
  77. TWENTY-FIVE
  78. Twenty-Six
  79. TWENTY-SIX
  80. Twenty-Seven
  81. TWENTY-SEVEN
  82. Twenty-Eight
  83. TWENTY-EIGHT
  84. Eleven Months Later
  85. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  86. Copyright

I just shrug. ‘Nothing. My mother didn’t weep and embrace me and tell me that it was OK, that she still loved me. And she didn’t yell or kick me out of the flat. She didn’t even suggest that I didn’t accompany her to mass on Sundays like I thought she might. I thought she might tell me that I was confused, that I’d change my mind, I just hadn’t met the right boy. But she didn’t do any of that, she just sat there, staring at me, as I waited for her to say something. But she did cry,’ I admit. ‘Not in that wild, pantomime way she does when she’s mad and asking God why he cursed her with such a selfish daughter because I forgot to take the rubbish out. It was quiet. Devastating.’

I try not to think about my mother’s face after I said it. How do you know? That’s all she said. How do you know? So I asked her how she knew that she loved my father and I saw it – the hesitation – the shiver that crossed her brow, not unlike the one that just crossed Poppy’s.

‘What happened after that?’ she asks. ‘When she stopped crying.’

‘We didn’t talk about it again,’ I tell her, shrugging again as if it’s nothing. As if it’s nothing that I have no idea whether my father knows or if it’s another thing we keep from him, like getting my period.

‘What?’ Poppy looks appalled. ‘Never?’

I shake my head.

‘So why did you tell her?’

I’m sure Poppy is just thinking aloud rather than asking the question, but I answer anyway.

‘I don’t know.’ And I don’t. I didn’t have to tell her. It’s not like she caught me with a girl or coming back from Pride, sticky with sweat and glitter. ‘She’d been bugging me for days, saying I’d changed, that I was keeping something from her. She kept saying, I know you, Ashana. I know something’s wrong.’

‘So you told her?’

‘So I told her,’ I say with a sad smile, my heart stinging at the memory of it. ‘I don’t think it was what she was expecting me to say.’ I know it wasn’t what she was expecting me to say. ‘She probably thought that I was being bullied or something. She could have coped with that.’

‘And that was it?’

I nod.

‘You never spoke about it again?’

I shake my head.

‘Do you regret it?’

It hadn’t occurred to me before now to regret it. ‘It was a relief.’