Читать книгу Tell Me Everything - Sarah Salway - Страница 13

Chapter Eight

‘I used to be a little scrap of a thing, so small no one really paid any attention to me.’ I ignored Mr Roberts’s snort from the bottom of the ladder as I noticed my voice turn to almost a whisper. ‘Then all of a sudden one morning I woke up and it was as if I’d turned into someone else. With a cartoon sexy body I couldn’t control. I can’t have developed that quickly, of course, but it was what it felt like. None of my clothes fitted and at first Dad refused to waste money on new ones. I got to hate the way he’d glare at me every morning and tell me to pull my skirt down, or button up my shirt properly as if it were my fault I was popping out of everything. He was always on at me.

‘I’d walk around with my arms crossed, my shoulders hunched, but you can’t be on guard all the time. Round about that time, all the boys at school started to notice me too,’ I spoke down to Mr Roberts. ‘Even the little boys had crushes on me. Once when they had an exam, they begged me to give them a good luck kiss, queuing up so I wouldn’t miss one out. They’d bring me presents, things they’d stolen from their mothers just so I’d remember them the next time I walked past.’

‘What’s that?’ Mr Roberts grumbled. ‘Speak up, Molly. You’re mumbling.’

‘But it was the boys my age who were the worst.’ There was no one else in the shop but my heart was knocking against my chest so hard I could almost feel it vibrate against the shelf. ‘My pigeon hole would be filled with notes. I’d find telephone numbers scribbled on my class books. They came round to my house in gangs and just stood outside the door. Once a boy knocked himself out on a lamppost because he was clowning around to get my attention. He had a black eye the next day at school.’

‘Teenage boys,’ Mr Roberts sighed. ‘Too many hormones. They never learn.’

‘But I wouldn’t go near any of them,’ I said. ‘I think that’s probably why they all kept after me. It wasn’t that I didn’t want a boyfriend. My father would never have let me. He thought it was all my fault.’

‘Only natural to want to protect you,’ Mr Roberts said.

‘After that, nothing I did was right. I couldn’t stop making him angry,’ I said. ‘I’d come out after school, and there he’d be, waiting for me. He’d glower at every boy who passed us when we walked home. He said he couldn’t trust me. As if it were my fault.

‘I learnt never to talk to boys anywhere, inside or outside school. And then not to girls either. He’d always find out somehow and there would be an inquisition. He made me wear all these really frumpy clothes. Once when we were at the shops, he had to leave me alone for a minute and a boy I’d never seen before came up and asked if I knew where the chemist was. That was all, but my father caught us and the fireworks went on for days.’

‘Sounds a bit harsh,’ Mr Roberts admitted. ‘Although you do have to look after daughters.’ He seemed unsure though and there was a silence before he spoke again. This time he was more enthusiastic. ‘But did you meet the boy again?’ he asked. ‘The one in the shopping centre? Did you get up to some rumpus-pumpus? I bet you did, Molly. I know your sort. You like your hanky-panky. Nothing wrong with that.’

I squeezed my eyes shut and pictured the rage on my father’s face as he came out of the gents to see me pointing to the bottom tier of the shopping centre and the boy nodding away. I’d just taken his rage for granted then, something I’d learnt to live with, but now I tried to see it through his eyes. What did he think could happen to make him so angry?

‘We did,’ I said. ‘But not after. That same day. I got my father to leave me for five minutes by pretending I was buying him something special as an apology, and then I ran downstairs and met the boy. We went down one of those side corridors no one uses.’

‘Just like that? In the shopping centre?’ Mr Roberts whistled through his teeth. ‘Weren’t you worried someone would see you?’

‘We were like animals,’ I said.

‘You dirty girl. It’s unbelievable.’ Mr Roberts held the ladder steady for me to come down.

‘It’s all true.’ After all, my father had thought it was the truth. He probably pictured the whole scene in much more detail than I’d just told it.

‘And not very nice,’ Mr Roberts said, with more than a hint of pleasure.

He was right. It wasn’t nice, but that night, for the first time since I could remember, I slept like a baby. I woke up early to the electric whinny of the milk van as it made deliveries along the High Street, and drifted back to the kind of safe half-sleep world where everything is sweet, anything is possible. I knew I had found my stories.

Maybe because I had already confessed to Miranda, it was easier to tell Mr Roberts I’d got a boyfriend.

I was halfway up the ladder, moving boxes of staplers and ballpoint pens from one side of the shelf to the other. Mr Roberts’s hands were on my calves to keep me steady.

‘I’ve got a boyfriend, you know,’ I said. ‘A proper one.’ I paused a moment, waiting for his reaction.

‘Well, good for you, girl. I knew you would get cleaned up, although—’ He shook his head, his middle fingertip pressing against my flesh a little too hard.

‘I’ll still tell you stuff,’ I said quickly. ‘Maybe I can even tell you about Tim. It’s OK. He won’t mind.’ He won’t know, I whispered to myself.

‘I’m not sure it will be the same,’ Mr Roberts said. ‘It seems impure somehow. Young love and all that.’

I held my breath because I knew I couldn’t afford to lose my home and salary. Mr Roberts was quite capable of docking my wages if I didn’t come up with the goods. I’d seen him with salesmen. They thought he was going to be an easy catch because of his woolly jumpers and funny thick glasses, but more often than not, they’d stand outside the shop afterwards, going over figures on their calculators as if they couldn’t believe what had just happened to them.

If Mr Roberts spoke before I counted to ten then everything would be OK.

He came in exactly as I reached eight. ‘We’ll maybe see how it goes. Give it a few weeks.’

I shoved the box I’d been pretending to move right over to the end of the shelf. ‘That’s it finished up here,’ I said cheerfully, but Mr Roberts kept his hand on my leg longer than he normally did. And he stayed where he was as I climbed down so I had to hold my body against his until I got to the bottom and could step aside. This was a new development, one I wasn’t too sure about.