He takes a slurp, looks out the window and starts again. ‘It’s so good that you’re reading a book by a woman. When I was at school it was strictly for the boys – you know, Trollope, Dickens, Sir Walter Scott… God, he was terrible,’ he smiles. ‘Anyway. I’m sure you can identify more easily with Mary Shelley. As a – young woman.’

‘Why?’

He swallows. ‘Well.’ He looks round the room, flicks his fringe. ‘Well. For example. Shelley could be said to be writing about her own miscarriages when she calls the monster my hideous progeny. Quote-unquote.’

‘I haven’t had a miscarriage.’

He takes off his glasses and pinches the top of his nose as if his eyes hurt. ‘Do you want another coke?’

‘I’m not even pregnant.’

‘I didn’t say you were, Joanna.’

I try to find his ankle again with my foot. ‘Mind you, I could be.’

He clears his throat. ‘What do you mean?’

I hook his trouser leg round the point of my shoe. ‘I’m old enough. Mum had me when she was seventeen.’

‘You’re fifteen.’

‘What’s two years?’

He reaches down to disconnect his trouser from the end of my shoe. After waiting a bit, he asks, ‘Did your mother really have you when she was – seventeen?’

‘Didn’t you know that?’

‘Was she married to your dad then?’

‘No. But she was soon after.’

Simon puts his glasses back on. His lenses are smeared. He nods slowly. Then he tries to pour more tea, but there’s only a dribble.

‘Are you and Mum getting married?’ I ask.

He puts the pot down. ‘I honestly don’t know, Joanna.’

I can’t see his eyes properly behind the smears.

‘Then why are you living in our house?’

‘This is supposed to be a tutorial, not an interrogation,’ he says, his hand pressing down on the teapot lid.

I finish my coke and crash the glass back on the saucer. ‘Isn’t it time we went home? I’m starving.’

As I get up to go, he clasps a clammy hand round my wrist and nearly pulls me back into my seat. ‘Joanna, it means a lot to me, that you’ve agreed to these… sessions.’

His top lip is sweating again.

‘I mean, I want to help your mother – although sometimes I wish she would help herself a bit more – and I want to help you, and I really think that, you know, together we can do something… something good.’

The girl in the frilly apron comes back over and drops the bill on his plate. While he’s looking at it, I take the opportunity to slip my wrist out of his fist.

five: Howard, November, 1985

five

Howard

November, 1985