The Lies We Told by Camilla Way (epub read online books .txt) 📗

some of its childish plumpness, her features becoming more certain—the beauty she’d always had becoming more distinct.

I can’t quite put into words the emotion that filled me at that moment. But I guess, mainly, it was a kind of panic. As long as she was physically still a child, I was able to fool myself that there was still time—for things to turn themselves around, for her to grow out of her difficulties, for me to become the sort of mother who knew how to deal with someone so clearly out of step with the world. That moment when I noticed she was growing into an adult triggered a sort of terror in me, because it meant that soon it would be too late for me to work out how to help her, to change the course on which her life was going. Perhaps I had a premonition of how badly things would end for us all. It terrified me; in that moment of clarity I was utterly terrified.

Nevertheless I took a deep breath and chose my words carefully. “Hannah, I was wondering if you would like to come shopping with me at the weekend.”

Her head shot up. “Can I get some new computer games?”

“I thought we’d look for some bras for you, some toiletries . . . or new clothes, perhaps. We could even get your hair cut. What do you say?” I heard the wheedling edge my voice always seemed to have when talking to her and cringed, but forced myself to continue smiling brightly.

Her glance fell downward to her chest and I steeled myself for her embarrassment, but her expression when she next looked up was one of ambivalence. For a while she held my gaze, before she plonked her bowl back down on the work surface and muttered, “Don’t want any,” then turned and walked away, the conversation clearly over as far as she was concerned.

Still, in the following weeks I bought her a variety of bras in different sizes, hoping that some of them might fit. I bought her some shampoo, deodorant, some sanitary towels and tampons, some nice new clothes that I chose with painstaking care. I even bought her a book about puberty. It broke my heart, of course, every purchase driving home the fact that this should be so very different: an opportunity to guide her lovingly through this important life stage, a chance to bond among the racks of Topshop. I tried not to mind, had long ago told myself to let go of the fantasy relationship I’d always longed for, but it still hurt.

Days later I found the clothes and toiletries dumped, still in their packaging, in the bin. She never wore the bras I bought her; as her breasts grew bigger, she let them flop around beneath her grubby T-shirts. She began to smell. Though she never talked about school, I knew she had no friends, and I could only imagine how she must have appeared to the other children: the smelly kid. The school weirdo. I felt so sorry for her, but my pity was useless. She didn’t want it. Really, it was self-pity, I suppose, and it’s amazing how even that turns to nothing after a while: even the hardest things become acceptable, just another part of life.

Her bedroom door remained firmly closed. I would stand outside it and listen sometimes while she played her computer games, the sounds of simulated death and destruction seeping between the cracks, before I’d creep away and leave her to it, turning up the television or closing the kitchen door. I told myself that at least she was safe, and happy, in her own way.

—

It was less than a year later when everything changed. I don’t know how long she’d been sneaking out at night before I realized what she was up to. It was three in the morning and I was in the kitchen getting a glass of water when she came creeping in through the front door. I screamed, seeing her so suddenly, so shockingly, in the dark hallway like that. “Hannah,” I said once my heart had calmed, “what the hell are you doing? Where have you been?”

“Nowhere.”

I stepped toward her, wincing at the pungent smell of cigarette smoke. “Where have you been?” I demanded again. “Who have you been with?”

At that moment Doug appeared at the top of the stairs, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “What’s going on?”

Hannah shrugged, a sly smile on her face. “Nothing. Just went out. What’s wrong with that?”

“You’re only fourteen!” I said. She took her coat off and threw it over the banister, stumbling a little as she did so. It was only then that I saw that she was drunk. We stared after her with openmouthed astonishment as she climbed the stairs, pushing past her father as she did so. A moment later we heard her bedroom door slam shut, and Doug and I stood staring back at each other in dismay.

—

No matter how much Doug and I threatened, begged, and cajoled over the following weeks, Hannah continued to make her midnight escapes. We tried everything—took away her allowance, put extra locks on the door; we even hid her shoes—but nothing worked. She must have been getting money from somewhere, because she continued to come back smelling of alcohol and I often found boxes of cigarettes in her coat.

“You’re too young to be doing this, to be out by yourself at night,” I pleaded when she returned close to dawn one morning. I had long since stopped being able to sleep, my anxiety and worry for her keeping me awake while I waited for her to return.

She smirked. “I’m not by myself.”

“Then who are you with?”

“Friends.”

“What friends?”

“No one you know.”

“There are bad people around,” I told her. “Bad men who take advantage of young girls like you. Don’t you understand that, Hannah? Don’t you realize it’s not safe?”

“So what? I’m having fun.” And then she’d sneer and add, “You can’t stop