The Fat Lady Sings by Jacqueline Roy

Author:Jacqueline Roy [Roy, Jacqueline]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241992029
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2020-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

There is a nurse with me all the time now. I know why she’s here. As we sit together I keep writing in my notebook. If you repeat the same words often enough they lose the power to confuse.

‘Where are your clean clothes?’ the nurse says to me.

I don’t answer her. I hid my T-shirt in the cistern when they forgot to watch me for a moment. I have to be so careful what I wear.

See the way she comes down the stairs in a skirt that’s three or four inches above her knee and a top tight enough to show the curve of her breasts. These are the clothes she’s always worn, but her father says they are a temptation to sin. When men look at her, they are filled with forbidden thoughts. Beyond their control. She examines herself in the mirror and becomes aware of the body she has taken for granted until now. She tries to see what her father sees but it remains undetectable to her. She wants to wear the skirt but she’s afraid. Perhaps her father’s right. She goes upstairs again and puts on a pair of jeans.

i am captured in the looking mine and theirs all tangled up

Her father comes to talk to her. He sits in the chair by her bed. ‘You know how much I love you and your mother,’ he says. ‘I only want what’s best for you. I missed you so much. You were always with me, even in my dreams. My one great regret about that time is that I didn’t see you growing up.’

She knows that he is only trying to protect her. She wants to please him, to be the daughter that he dreamed about.

‘What would you like most? I mean, if you could choose any present in the whole world, what would it be?’

She tries to think. There are so many things, yet nothing that really matters to her. Perhaps she should say clothes but they will only be a source of conflict. A music system. Or a dog, she’s always wanted one. She can’t decide.

When the compensation comes, he buys her a computer. ‘It’s to help you with your school work. You could get top grades.’ He’s already mapping out her future. Sixth form college. University. She’s slow to get the hang of it but eventually she learns to type her essays on the laptop he’s provided.

They move again. To a three-bedroom terraced house just off Hackney High Street. They buy it outright. Her father takes a pride in this; he says he earned the money. They’ve got a garden again now. She could have had a dog.

Her father is always there, watching her. He follows her round the house, telling her what she should be doing and how she should behave. In the early days of his return, she longed for him to come alive. Now she wishes he’d go back to playing dead again. She needed to be visible to him then but now she wants to be ignored.

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