She didn’t want to see her this morning, not after the awkwardness at the yoga class. She would tell Jake about it later. But for now, she needs to concentrate on getting this commission done. Telling Tales has no orders lined up for the next few months. Summer always tends to be quiet before the annual Christmas rush and although Marisa knows to expect this, and usually puts money aside to see her through, this year she has had to use her savings for moving costs and is anxious about there being no regular income. When they moved in together, Jake’s salary was more than enough for both of them to live on, but now finances are more precarious and every outgoing has to be carefully monitored. Lately, he has been stressed and distracted, even less affectionate than normal. It worries Marisa, but she tells herself not to be stupid. She reminds herself that he loves her, that their love is strong enough that it does not need daily reassurance to bolster it.
Whenever she recognises the gradual slow-motion descent into her usual panic, she reminds herself to focus on things as they actually are. She counts off the points on her fingers. He wants to have a baby with her. He has encouraged her to download an app on her phone in which she keeps track of her cycle. He is so happy he met her. They are living together. These are the facts. And beneath all of it is another, unassailable truth that Marisa keeps buried deep within her, pluckingit out from the earth only when she needs to hold it and feel the certain weight of it in her hands, and it is this: Jake is not her mother. Jake will not abandon her.
When she was seventeen, Marisa had run away from her boarding school for the weekend. She had typed a letter, forged her father’s signature and informed her housemistress that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and that he wanted her to come home for the weekend.
‘We’re trying to stay positive,’ she said to her housemistress Mrs Carnegie, when she was called into her office. ‘I’ve looked into it and I think it’s quite normal for men his age. There are good recovery rates.’
Marisa was pleased with herself for this flourish of detail. She had decided that the most convincing attitude would be one of hard-won courage. Tears would be too much, although she knew how to cry on demand. But with Mrs Carnegie, she wanted to imply that she was shocked by the news, yet coping with it in a practical way and not allowing herself to imagine the worst. Mrs Carnegie, a jolly-hockey-sticks type, would appreciate that.
‘Quite right, Marisa,’ her housemistress said, right on cue. ‘It’s good to keep positive.’
She took off her glasses and let them hang across her generous chest on a colourful plastic chain.
‘Will someone be picking you up?’ Mrs Carnegie asked.
‘Well, it would normally be my dad,’ Marisa said. ‘There’s just the two of us, as you know, but …’ and here, Marisa allowed her voice to falter slightly. ‘He’s not really in a fit state so I’m going to get the train.’
Mrs Carnegie nodded and said, ‘Very good, very good,’ and signed the permission slip.
Her father had been fine, of course. He never knew that Marisa had claimed a terminal illness on his behalf and when he appeared at the end of term, seemingly healthy, if a touch absent-minded, Marisa had told her housemistress that their prayers had been answered and her father had made a full recovery.
‘He doesn’t like to talk about it though,’ she had said. Mrs Carnegie had smiled and placed a supportive hand on Marisa’s shoulder.
‘Of course not, dear. I won’t breathe a word.’
With Mrs Carnegie’s permission slip in her blazer pocket, Marisa was granted magical access to the outside world. Her school, a neo-gothic edifice complete with gargoyles and a tower that was said to be haunted, had been built right next to the town’s railway station, so it was a short walk to catch the train to London and once she had found a seat, she took off her blazer and replaced it with a denim jacket from her bag. She rolled up the waistband of her navy school skirt four times until the hem lay a couple of inches above her knees. She untucked her white blouse and tied it in a knot by her belly button and then she unclipped her hair, shaking it out over her shoulders. She did her make-up in the train toilet and had to reapply her eyeliner when the carriage juddered and her hand slid across her face, leaving a smudged kohl mark across the top of one cheek.
Marisa had learned how to do make-up by reading girls’ magazines. There had been a cut-out-and-keep guide to ‘Make-up For Your School Prom’ in one of them, and she had bought or shoplifted all of the products suggested. Now, in the blurry mirror, she brushed her lashes with two coats of Maybelline mascara: ‘Heavy lashes are totally having a moment!’ the magazine had informed her, confidently. She dabbed cream blush on her cheeks at an angle, underlining them with sweeps of bronzer. She slicked her lips with pearlescent gloss and then stood back, assessing her reflection. She looked older than she had thought she would and her face seemed detached from the rest of her, briefly unrecognisable as her own. But then she got used to it and she began to smile. She looked sexy, she thought, and mussed up. A bit like Britney Spears in that video or an old photo of Brigitte Bardot her dad had once shown her.
When the train drew in to Paddington station three hours later, it was already mid-afternoon. She had a carefully mapped-out plan and she knew she needed to get the Circle Line tube from Paddington to King’s Cross, and then change to the Northern Line on the High Barnet branch. There were two branches to the Northern Line, sheknew, so she would have to be careful to get the right one. Although apparently you could always change at Camden Town if you made a mistake. Her destination was Kentish Town.
A few months after her mother had left, Marisa overheard her father on the phone, talking to an unknown person. It had been late at night and she was meant to be asleep, but Marisa could tell from the lowered, urgent sound of her father’s voice that the matter being discussed was important. As a child, she had been finely attuned to the gradations of every conversation, and had become expert at discerning the importance of what wasn’t being said in between the gaps of what was.
‘No idea,’ her father was saying as Marisa crept out of bed and crouched by the upstairs banisters in her nightdress, kneeling quietly so as not to make any of the floorboards creak and pressing one ear between the varnished wood roundels.
‘As I say, she never left an address.’
There was a long gap as the person on the other end of the line spoke. Marisa knew, without needing to hear any other details, that he was discussing her mother.
‘It’s so fucking irresponsible, you’re right. But what did I expect, really?’
Marisa had never heard her father swear before. His words were slurring. He sounded angry. She wondered if he had been drinking whisky.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Last I heard it was Kentish Town.’
The name slotted into a gap in Marisa’s mind and locked itself away for her to take out later and examine more closely.
‘Ha! Quite. Yes. Well, quite.’
Another long silence.
‘All right then. Yes. You are kind to call, I do appreciate it. Sorry if I’ve been maudlin, it’s just …’
Marisa started tiptoeing back to her bed, aware that the call was about to end and that her father would probably come up and check on her.
‘Marisa?’ He sounded surprised to be asked. ‘Oh, she’s fine, fine. Taken it like a trouper. No trouble at all.’
She felt proud, then, that she had been no trouble. It was only years later that she came to realise she should have caused a lot more of it.
