Chapter Twenty-Three
Saskia
Over the week that followed, eating became easier again. Like a tide, the struggle ebbed and flowed for a few days, and then mercifully washed away. Clearly the upheaval of getting down to Cornwall and settling in had just flipped a switch in her brain. That switch had flipped back, and she was able to enjoy meals again. Which she was eternally grateful for, because Kivi really was an excellent cook.
Unfortunately, this did not mean that her brain was giving her an easy time, though.
Instead, it started on about her homophobia.
Erstwhile homophobia, that was.
That train of thought had been started off by a flashback popping up on her photo app from twelve years previously. June 16thhad been her grandmother’s birthday, the one day of the year that Saskia and Leo had been obliged to pay her a visit and wish her well. In the picture – what would turn out to be Grandma de Klein’s last birthday, as she had died a few months later – the old woman was sitting in the armchair at her livingroom window, scowling at the camera as she held a lit birthday cake in her wizened hands.
Whenever Saskia pictured her mother’s mother, it was with that expression, or a variation of it. Disgust, distaste, often all-out hatred – all of that made up Kathleen de Klein’s lifeblood. Saskia knew that her grandmother hadn’t had an easy time of it, having had a child very late and then losing her husband a couple of years after that – but at the same time, something in Kathleen’s life had turned her, at best, neurotic.
Twenty-three hours a day, she sat or slept in that overstuffed purple armchair that smelled of mould, glowering at the outside world through her net curtains. She wafted lavender through the house endlessly to scare away spiders. She had no television, no radio, no books – so any time spent with Grandma de Klein was a boring one to the ever-active twins. She rarely ventured outside, and when she did, it was to the local shop for some scratchcards (her one vice). One of Saskia’s earliest memories was of napping next to Leo in the double-buggy as a toddler, and waking up to the view of Kathleen’s black-clad figure frantically scratching away with a coin at the cards. Whatever she won, she would reinvest in more scratchcards, until she’d either had her fix or been distracted by something else. She never won anything substantial, although the odds must have been infinitely in her favour – perhaps some sort of punishment from the universe for her prejudice, Saskia wondered now.
Because ‘prejudice’ summed up Kathleen in a word. Her default setting, if humans had them, was Vitriol. From her prime position at the window, she’d give a running commentary of whoever walked past on their way to the high street: “Bah! Look at that little hussy over there! The state of that skirt! And the man who walks with her, he’ll get her pregnant sooner rather than later if she doesn’t have more decorum. You see that,Saskia? Her skirt’s halfway to the North Pole! If you want to scream‘I’m a tawdry English strumpet’for all and sundry to know,just take your fashion inspiration from her!”And on and on and on…
Of course, that wasn’t her only topic of choice. Her hate-filled screeds knew no bounds. She’d rant and rave at anything that caught her eye: the colour her neighbours painted their front door (red – sinful); the Staffordshire Bull Terrier owned by old Mr Conley (it would kill a child sooner or later, mark her words); the two short-haired women walking arm-in-arm down the street (they were clearly lesbians – ‘filthy-dirty queers’, as she called them).
Nobody was safe from Kathleen’s razor tongue. Not even her own family. Saskia had distinct memories of waiting in the hallway with Leo when her mother picked them up, while the two of them had it out in the living room with the door shut. Having caught her texting a boy, aged thirteen, Kathleen had called Saskia a whore and a harlot before locking her in the dining room until it was time for Lydia to pick them up. That was the last time Saskia and Leo had spent any length of time with their grandmother without Lydia present.
Looking back now, Saskia pitied Grandma de Klein. But she pitied her mother more. With no siblings, it had just been Lydia and Kathleen in the house, and Lydia had told her recently that Kathleen had had no motherly instinct whatsoever. “But I rebelled quite quickly,” she’d recalled recently with a glint in her eye. “Permed my hair, wore make-up, started smoking – God, she nearly scratched my eyes out for that one. And got myself a girlfriend. Although I didn’t tell her that bit until I went to uni.”
“Didn’t go over well, did it?” Gilly had said, squeezing Lydia’s hand, and the subject had been parked there. But Saskia wondered what impact Kathleen’s hatred had had onher. Spending time in an atmosphere infused with contempt – perhaps it was no wonder she had absorbed some of it. Not in the least because being at home hadn’t been much different. Lydia had been emotionally absent: something that she admitted freely herself, and something that was one of her biggest regrets. Her parents’ marriage hadn’t been a happy one. Her father, Hugh, had never treated Lydia or his children with any malice per se, but he had certainly never given any indication that he cared about them. He cared about his career. In insurance, first of all, then opening a gym completely out of left field when the twins were tweens.
He had been physically absent, as well as emotionally, and his appearances were characterised by an overweening machismo. He was ‘an overgrown Jack-the-lad’, as Kathleen had once put it (for once, spot-on). Loud, cocky and brash, he certainly behaved as if nobody else on the planet existed except himself, or carbon copies of himself. He was superior. Every other mortal could only strive to reach his plane of existence. Ordinary mortals were beneath him – and the extraordinary ones? The ‘abnormals’? The ‘liberals’, the ‘weaklings’, the ‘nancy-boys’? They weren’t even on the same planet as him. They didn’t deserve a look-in.
Young Saskia and young Leo had tried desperately to mould themselves into junior versions of him. It was this Hugh-inspired hubris that had given Saskia the confidence to make strides in her career, but it had come with the heavy price of picking up all his prejudices too. After all, her mother had never said a word against him, so she didn’t know any different. Her early schooldays had been slap-bang in the middle of Section 28, the law in 1990s Britain that forbade the ‘promotion of homosexuality’ in education or publication. Even after it had been repealed, schools had dared not teach about the topic, so it had always been a strange and unfamiliar concept. With herdefault setting also set to Vitriol, the same as her grandmother’s and her father’s, was it any wonder that Saskia had grown up to be a raging homophobe?
And ‘raging’ was the right word for it. Because she had certainly not been passive about the subject – she’d never been passive about anything in her entire life. She’d attended anti-LGBTQ meetings, pushing earnestly for conversion therapy. Blasted gay people online from the safety of her incognito social media accounts. Launched into Kathleen-style diatribes whenever the topic came up, regardless of who was listening. And all of this had lasted right up until three years ago, when her mother had furiously come out to her as bisexual in the middle of a screaming argument. And at the same time, so had Leo.
Since then, some major changes had occurred. Initially, it had blown Saskia’s mind that she had shared her life with two ‘queers’ for so long, without ever knowing it. Now, of course, she knew that it was her own intolerance that had made it so impossible for them to share their rainbow leanings with her, or even with each other. They had feared her reaction, which would have been disgust. And that disturbed her more than she cared to admit. Even though she knew she had nobody but herself to blame.
“But I don’t understand, Mum. If you were gay yourself, why didn’t you stand up to Dad when he went on about gay people?” Saskia had asked her back when she’d found out.
“I don’t know, really.” Lydia had shaken her head regretfully. “I wanted you to see your parents as a united front, somehow. Rather than two people who were against each other. And by the time we split up, I was rather scared of you. Of both of you. Of how you’d react if I tried to introduce you to a different point of view. And before I knew it, you were both mini-Hughs.”
At that time, Lydia had recently split up with Gilly for a second time, and wanted to try and get back together with her. But she wouldn’t do it if she and Leo were not on-board. That was what she had said. And over the following few weeks, Saskia had realised that the only thing standing in the way of her mother’s happiness was Saskia’s own prejudice.
So she’d done the hardest thing she’d ever had to do: back down, and change her mind. Change her entire point of view. And since then, of course, her relationship with her mother and brother had blossomed.
(Her relationship with her father had gone down the toilet, but not because of that. After being evicted, she’d initially run to him, but he’d been too enamoured in his new girlfriend to give a damn. The scales had fallen from her eyes, and she’d seen him for the vapid, trite, careless man he was.)
Now, three years on, Saskia felt nothing but regret. She’d apologised a million times, but the knowledge that she could have ruined everything for her mother still plagued her. If she hadn’t changed, they’d still be living as they were: stinted, treading on eggshells, not wishing to poke any sleeping bears. Saskia had done her best to become a good ally. Signed petitions against conversion therapy. Attended a vigil of a transgender girl who had been murdered a few months previously. Actively challenged homophobia online, using her public account, despite warnings from the owner ofChicamagazine that they didn’t want her to become ‘too political’.
And now, she was planning a gay wedding.
And developing a crush on another woman.
Her knee-jerk reaction had gone back to disgust.What is wrong with me?
But there was nothing wrong with her. She knew enough about gay people to know that they were notwrong,for God’s sake. She was trying to be better than that.
And then she’d remembered something Gilly had said to her about a year ago. At the time, Saskia had been apologising to her for her hostility, but soon she had begun to stress. “What if I can’t change?” she’d fretted. “What if I’m stuck like this forever?”
“Darling, you’re already changing,” Lydia had reassured her. “The old Saskia would never have stressed about something like this.”
