A Capital Crime by Laura Wilson Page B

think that her problem, like the silly business of believing that plates and cups had personalities, was to do with being young, and that, when she grew up, things would be straightforward. But she was grown up, wasn’t she? She was twenty, with a proper job and everything, and the whole business of feelings seemed to be more complicated than ever.
    She’d had boyfriends, for heaven’s sake – well, one boyfriend anyway, last year. And it wasn’t as if boys never asked her to come out with them, because they did, and fairly often. She didn’t particularly mind the things they tried to do, all the kissing and stuff – the thing was that she didn’t feel anything while they were doing it. It wasn’t horrible or frightening or anything like that, it just wasn’t … well, it wasn’t anything at all, really. Other girls, judging from their conversation, seemed actually to like it – or they said they did. She’d tried to persuade herself that she enjoyed it, too, but she didn’t. Not unless she was thinking of something else, anyway. Once or twice with Leonard she’d got quite passionate, but that was because she was imagining he was Lucy, the farmer’s daughter she’d been friendly with when she was evacuated in Suffolk. When he’d put his hand on her breast she’d imagined it was Lucy’s hand and things had got quite interesting for a bit, until Leonard had started talking to her and she couldn’t pretend any more.
    Taking the magazines off the bed so that they wouldn’t get creased, she lay down on her back with her hands behind her head and stared up at the damp patch – also friendly, because it was crescent-shaped, like a smile – on the ceiling. Her future, in so far as she imagined it, had always involved – ideally – sharing a flat with another girl. And carrying on working at the studio, of course, either in Make-up or designing frocks – or perhaps even making special props, assuming they let women do that. It would be lovely if she could share a flat with Lucy, or someone like her … She’dliked being with Lucy so much – well, that was normal, because everyone enjoyed being with their friends, otherwise they wouldn’t be friends with them in the first place – but the peculiar hot feeling she’d had inside, the sort of pleasant mild ache that she’d thought, aged fifteen, must be the effect of too much sun, was, in retrospect, disturbing. It wasn’t until Madeleine had mentioned something similar, in connection with a boyfriend, that she’d realised that it was actually bad . Not bad like, say, Hitler, or even bad like her cousin Johnny, who’d stolen things and got involved with the wrong sort of people, but definitely wrong and not normal at all. At work, surrounded by half-dressed actresses in Make-up, so casual about their nakedness, she kept her eyes averted for fear that one of them might spot her staring. And supposing she were to betray, somehow, what was going through her mind, nobody would ever speak to her again and she would lose her job … She might even end up in a mental asylum.
    Even thinking about it like this was dangerous; it made her feel all morbid and just … not right . She’d put the whole thing out of her mind and she wouldn’t look at the magazines any more. She sat up, swung her legs over the side of the bed and looked at her watch: twenty to ten. She’d promised Dad some cocoa, hadn’t she?
    But she must do something else first – something ordinary, to put a barrier between her thoughts and going downstairs. If ever Dad, the person she loved and admired more than anyone else in the world, got to know about her problem … No, it was unthinkable. She’d rather be dead.
    She must pretend to be normal, even if she wasn’t. Perhaps, if she pretended for long enough, the strange feelings would go away, like the constant and terrible grief she’d felt when her mother had died. No-one need ever know she’d been ‘different’. Glancing round her