The one thing that might have helped was moving towns, thereby forcing Lucy to change schools, but saving Lucy from her skanky schoolfriends would have amounted to sacrificing Lou. Because where Lucy was not doing well at Dane Court (and she really, really wasn’t), her brother, calm, serious, geeky Lou, was consistently top of the class.
But the sad truth is that with me whizzing around the south-east opening new branches, and Dawn chasing around after Lucy (mainly) and (far more rarely) Lou, alongside the hours she put in at Home From Home, we were too busy to go house-hunting anyway.
We worried about Lucy constantly, though. When, at twelve years old, she vanished for a whole weekend, we called the police, and when she came home we grounded her for a month and took away her iPod.
Later, we tried switching off the internet or banning her from watching TV. We’d forbid her seeing this person or that (not that it ever actually stopped her), or lock her possessions in the naughty cupboard for a week. We docked pocket money and confiscated make-up too, but it was all pretty pointless. It was like giving a good telling-off to a terrorist. Nothing we came up with was ever anywhere near equal to the task at hand.
Lucy made me feel powerless, and that, for a man like me, was tough. I’d always liked to think of myself as The Great Problem Solver, you know, car broken? Rob’ll fix it! Not enough space? Here! New shelves! Aching back? Try these pills. Or massage. Or swimming. Or yoga! But with Lucy I ran right out of solutions. Because nothing ever helped.
‘I don’t give a shit,’ Lucy told Dawn, one time. She must have been nearing fourteen and we believed that life with her was at a low point – though, looking back, she hadn’t got started.
‘If you say that to me one more time, I’ll take those boots I gave you for Christmas as well,’ Dawn warned.
‘Say what?’ Lucy asked.
‘That youdon’t give a shit,’ Dawn said. ‘You know full well we don’t use language like that in this house.’
‘Only we do use language like that in this house,’ Lucy said, snidely. ‘You just actually saiddon’t give a shityourself.’
‘I was quoting… Anyway, that’s it!’ Dawn told her calmly. ‘The boots are history. Carry on, girl, and see what gets confiscated next.’
‘In case you didn’t notice,’ Lucy replied, her glossed lips curling – an expression she had already mastered, ‘I reallydon’tgive a shit.’ And then she flounced out of the front door and vanished to a friend’s house for the weekend.
‘Other than chain her up in her room like an animal, I don’t know what I could have done,’ Dawn told me that evening, when I got home late and shattered from work.
‘I know,’ I agreed. ‘I’m not sure either. But I’m sorry I wasn’t here to help.’
‘And it’s not like I could do that even if I tried.’
I frowned at her, so she explained. ‘Chain her up, I mean. She’s bigger than me now. She’s taller and she weighs more. I’m pretty sure she’s stronger, too. You know, we should never have let her take those self-defence classes. That was our one big mistake.’
‘I could still come out on top in a fight,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a great right-hand jab, me.’ I feigned boxing – an attempt at lightening the mood.
‘Yeah, but you won’t,’ Dawn said. ‘Thank God! I’d hate you if you started hitting our kids.’
‘I’d hate that too,’ Lou said, from the doorway. We hadn’t known he was there.
‘Hah, I could never hit either of you,’ I told him. ‘Or anyone for that matter. Come here and tell us what we should do about your immensely annoying sister.’
Lou crossed the lounge and sat down, looking thoughtful. ‘I suppose it’s too late for an abortion?’ he said. He was eleven, so we tried not to laugh.
‘Yeah,’ Dawn said. ‘Just a tad.’
‘There’s still time for you though,’ I joked. ‘The age limit’s eleven these days.’
‘Send her to live with Uncle Wayne then,’ Lou offered. Wayne, who liked to say he’d ‘dropped out and tuned in’ (though what he’d tuned into, no one knew) was currently WWoofing on an organic farm in Portugal.
‘Now that,’ I said, ‘is an excellent idea.’
‘She’d never go for it,’ Dawn said. ‘Shehatesgardening. Plus there’s no internet, apparently. She’ddiewithout the internet.’
‘Plenty of drugs, though,’ Lou said. ‘She’d love those.’
‘Lou!’ I exclaimed.
‘What?’ he asked, pulling his most innocent face.
‘She doesn’t do drugs, does she?’ Dawn asked, suddenly serious. We’d repeatedly caught her smoking cigarettes but it hadn’t gone any further – that we knew.
