‘It’s more than that,’ he says when I tease him that I already know what it is.
I think about it for a while and find myself starting to smile as I work out what it’s most likely to be.
In a little over a month it’ll be my birthday and he’s said so many times that he wishes I was sixteen.
We’ll be able to get married then, or live together – some people are doing that now without trying to hide it – but I’d rather be his wife and have him as my husband so the whole world will know that we belong to each other. It won’t happen straight away though, because I know my parents will be upset if I don’t complete this last school year to make sure I’ll at least have some O levels to my name. So do you know what I think he’s going to do today, I think, I’m certain he’s going to propose to me so that when we go back for the new term we’ll have our secret as well as our love to keep us together.
When we get to his uncle’s the first thing we do is make love, as we always do, and after, because he loves it so much, I put on a long, white dress he bought me in Paris that’s as soft and transparent, he says, as a butterfly wing. He loves to watch me dance when I wear it, writhing and pirouetting, stretching tall and curling to the floor in a ball. Or he sits me in front of a mirror and brushes my hair like it’s the most precious part of me, down over my shoulders until it and his hands are covering my breasts.
‘Sometimes,’ he says, ‘I feel as though you might float away, disappear into nothingness like notes already played, and I couldn’t bear that.’
I couldn’t bear that either, but he doesn’t seem as melancholy today as he was when he said that, so I unpack our picnic and he puts on a record. I recognize it right away as one of his favourites: ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ it himself on the guitar, but today he stands quietly listening to it as though it’s making him think about it in a way he hasn’t before. Perhaps he is a little bit melancholy after all.
When it finishes he puts on Mozart’s Night Music and it makes me smile because I can play it much better now, and with both hands. Of course this is the orchestral version, nothing like my amateur flailing around the basic keys, nevertheless whenever I hear it, it reminds me of the first time he put his hands on mine to teach me.
We eat and listen to more music and I notice after a while that he isn’t saying very much. He definitely seems sad about something but when I ask what it is he just shakes his head. I think he’s worried about us going back to school and how difficult it’s going to be pretending we don’t mean anything to one another, so I go to sit on his lap and put my arms around him.
He catches my wrists in his hands and holds them between us as he looks into my eyes; it’s for such a long time that I start to feel nervous. It’s like he’s seeing me for the first time, or that he doesn’t really know me … I don’t know what he’s thinking.
He says, softly, ‘I’m not going back for the new term.’
I hardly have time to take this in when he says,
‘I’m going to America to join my brother.’
I feel confused, frightened even, but then I realize what he’s waiting for me to say so I say it quickly. ‘I’ll come too. I don’t care about school …’
‘No, listen,’ he interrupts. ‘Your schooling is important …’
‘No. I’ll come …’
‘Cherie, you can’t. You must try to understand that there cannot be a future for us.’
I shoot up from his lap crying, ‘No! You don’t mean that. You want us to be together. You’re always saying it …’
‘In a different world, at a different time …’
‘Stop!’ I cry, covering my ears with my hands. ‘You can’t go to America and leave me here, I won’t let you. I’ll come too. I want to come …’
‘Sssh, I know you do, but it isn’t possible. You’re too young, and this, what’s happened between us, it’s more beautiful than I can ever put into words, but it should never … It wouldn’t have …’ He pushes a hand through his hair, and I grab it harshly.
‘Please let me come,’ I implore him. ‘It’s what you promised, that we would go to America together …’
‘No, I didn’t say that. I know it’s what you’ve told yourself, but …’ He grips my shoulders as I start to sob hysterically. He shakes me and holds me tight until I quieten down and when I look at him I can see how hard he’s struggling, how much he hates himself for doing this – but not as much as I’m starting to hate him.
I want to lash out at him, to smash all the records and pummel my fists into his face and into my own. I can’t bear it. I have to make him understand that I can’t stay here without him, I have to go too. ‘Please,’ I beg, choking the words into his chest. ‘Please take me. I’ll do anything.’
‘I can’t,’ he says and it sounds so final.
‘’Why? I don’t understand …’
He takes hold of me again and says, ‘You know how hard it can be to tell the truth sometimes?’
I want to say that I don’t, that I just want him to stop.
‘Well this is one of those times.’ He drops his head but I know there are tears in his eyes and it’s making me panic.
‘There’s someone I’ve never told you about,’ he says. ‘I know I should have, but … I …’ He can’t get any more words out and I’m trapped in the silence like a terrified mouse before the spring comes down. ‘I have a girlfriend,’ he whispers, ‘and she’s coming with me.’
Shock pushes the blood from my veins. I stare at him, unable to believe what he said because it doesn’t make any sense. He’s lying, because how can he have a girlfriend when he’s been seeing me during almost all of his free time? He took me to concerts, to Paris; he came to Wales …
‘Her name’s Linda,’ he says. ‘She’s been travelling around India for the past three months with my sister. They’re coming back next week and in September we’re joining my brother in Georgia.’
Joely stopped typing. Young Freda’s devastation was flooding through her. The lies, the false promises and brutal crushing of her dreams was too much for anyone, never mind someone so young. It might be true that she’d talked herself into believing in a future he’d never actually promised, but he’d never, until now, said it was impossible either. Nor had he ever mentioned a girlfriend.
He was weak, a coward, and worst of all he was cruel.
In her mind’s eye she saw the older Freda’s face as she’d recounted the scene all these years later, her eyes moist, her mouth twisting with remembered pain. She’d said only a few more words beyond those that Joely had already transcribed, but they were perhaps the most devastating of all.
I hate him, I hate him. I want him to die and I want to die too, because I can’t live without him. I need to find out who Linda is so I can kill her. They won’t be able to go anywhere then. He’ll have to take me. I know he wants to really, but he can’t now, because I’ve already told Mummy and Daddy what he did to me. I was crying so hard when I got home that I had to tell them. I’ve never seen Daddy so angry. He sent me to my room and now he’s saying that he’s going to destroy ‘that pervert’. That’s what he called Sir. A pervert. Good, because after the way he’s treated me he deserves to be called vile names. He’s going to find out that he can’t just throw me away like a used-up toy.