Jewell, Lisa - Then She Was Gone by Jewell Lisa

Author:Jewell, Lisa
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House UK
Published: 2017-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-nine

I first met Sara-Jade when you and I had been together for a year. Up until then she’d only been spending every other weekend at yours and it was easy to keep us compartmentalised. But then your ex got a job and suddenly she was dropping Sara on your doorstep all the time, quite often at short notice, quite often when you’d already invited me over for the evening.

Well, you’d told me that she was a difficult girl; she’d responded badly to the split, so you said. And like I said, I’d never really liked little girls. They have a way of looking at you sometimes, as though their hearts are full of hate.

And Sara-Jade, she barely looked human. Skin so thin and pale you could see the veins of her. And this shock of white hair. Not blond, no; white, like an old lady. She was tiny too, more like a five-year-old than an eight-year-old.

I tried to be nice. I really did. You know that. You were there, remember?

‘Oh, so you must be Sara-Jade. It is a pleasure to meet you.’ I tried to shake her hand. I always do that with young children because you never know whether they’re the kind to appreciate adult attention or not. Some children thrive on it; their eyes find you and they reel you in: Look at me, find me impressive, tell me that I’m better than all the other children. Others could not give a sideways shit and just want to get away from you as fast as they humanly can. So I find that a handshake is a good compromise between fussing them and ignoring them and sometimes you’ll find you’re the very first person to shake their hand and that’s a nice thing however you look at it.

Sara-Jade did not take my hand. She turned and ran from the room sobbing.

Jesus Christ.

You ran after her and I heard your voices and stood there in your hallway, my hand hanging heavy at my side.

I felt like a monster. I remember looking at myself in the mirror that hung on your wall there, above the table by your door. I’d begun to look fondly upon myself at that point. I’d begun to focus on the positive rather than negative. If a man like you wanted to touch me, to behold me, then surely I could not be quite so bad? But the face in the mirror that day, as you soothed your sobbing girl behind a closed door somewhere, it was not a face I wanted to look at. I saw the darkness around my eyes, the pull of my skin away from my cheekbones and towards my chin, the hair that had dulled to rusty water and grown too long for my face. I was not pretty. I was not.

Your daughter reminded me of that.

After that, well, it was hard to like her.

After that, for quite some time, it was hard to like myself.

I should not have taken it personally, I can see that now.

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