Lying Together by Gaynor Arnold

forget about her, then. Start being a bit fucking normal, you know?’ He grabbed my wrist, jabbing at the scars. ‘Stop this bloody nonsense, too.’
    I could see it might be better without having to wake up all through the night. Wayne didn’t like me getting up. He’d say, ‘Let the little bugger wait. See to me first.’ I had to fill my mouth with his cock while Nigel screamed next door. Then I had to sit in the cold and feed him. Then I had to take something to make me sleep. Sometimes I wouldn’t wake up till the afternoon, Nigel screaming again. And me still tired.
    â€˜You’ll get over it,’ said Wayne. ‘You can have plenty more little bastards, no problem. Only they can be mine this time.’
    She was all sweetness and light when we went to talk things over. Wayne surprised her with his suit and gold cufflinks and the shirt I’d ironed that morning and the way he agreed with everything she said. They got on like a house on fire. They had a lot in common: they both had a problem with me. Wayne smiled and said he was going to sort me out. Stop my bad habits. Make me smarten myself up. Take a pride. Help him in his business. ‘There’s a lot she could do.’
    She got Dad to get out the photo album. Showed Wayne the snaps. Me, shy, neat, squinting up at the sun at Mablethorpe. She was a lovely little girl. No trouble at all, then.
    I went over to look at Nigel. She’d got him all decked out in white. Perfect. Spotless. Tightly wrapped like a Christmas parcel. She saw me looking, said, You don’t have to worry, Geraldine. I’ll look after him. I’ll see he has the best of everything. The very best. Just like I gave you.

ANGEL CHILD
    I didn’t used to think you could give a child too much attention. I thought if you put the effort in, they’d return the compliment and be a credit to you. Clifford says you don’t have children in order to expect anything from them, but I reckon that where Geraldine’s concerned, he’s as disappointed as I am. Except that he sits down under it all. Sits in that damned armchair and sighs as if I’m not worth listening to. As if it’s all mouth-breath to him.
    It’s not as though he wasn’t as keen as me for her to have all those private lessons; as if he didn’t pipe his eye when he went to see her do a solo fairy in the ballet concert and play an angel in the Christmas play. He thought she was lovely, took snaps by the dozen, showed them to all our friends. But he never understood that children don’t bring themselves up. You have to work at them. But Clifford never worked at anything. ‘As long as she’s happy,’ he’d say, in that stick-in-the-mud way of his. As if happiness was an alternative to success.
    I’d get worked up then. ‘Can you be happy stuck in a little terraced house with no education and no prospects? When you’re clever and talented and could do all sorts if only you had the chance?’
    He’d say, ‘Calm down, Theresa. Don’t shout.’ But I’m one of eight and I’ve had to shout all my life to get noticed. Geraldine has never needed to shout, though. She’s an only child and I used to listen to her every word with bated breath. Anything she asked for she could have. Yet by the time she was ten she started to turn on me, saying of all things, ‘You don’t listen! Why don’t you ever listen?’
    â€˜I’ve listened too much, my girl,’ I said in the end, the day she wanted to go out shopping in my best high heels. ‘Now it’s your turn.’ She didn’t like that; she turned sullen, scowled at me. But you’ve got to be firm. That’s why I know it’s not my fault she went off the rails.
    It was gradual of course, the onset. When she was little, she was a sunbeam. Lovely blond hair, almost white. Skin you could nearly see through, so delicate. Big