No chance of that now, though, was there?
FIVE
At the police station, a policewoman—a young woman, with a kind smile—scraped beneath Laura’s fingernails, took a swab from the inside of her cheek, combed her hair, slowly and gently, a sensation Laura found so soothing and so deeply reminiscent of childhood it brought tears to her eyes.
* * *
? ? ?
In Laura’s head, Deidre spoke again. You’ve no self-worth, that’s your problem, Laura. Deidre, the scrawny, hard-faced woman in whose arms her brokenhearted father had sought solace after Laura’s mother left, could, if pressed, come up with a whole litany of Laura’s problems. Low self-worth was a particular favorite. You don’t value yourself enough, Laura. Fundamentally, that’s your problem. If you valued yourself a little more, you wouldn’t just go with whoever paid you any attention.
A few days after Laura turned thirteen, she went to a party at a friend’s house. Her father caught her sneaking back into the house at six in the morning. He grabbed hold of her shoulders, shaking her like a doll. “Where were you? I was going out of my mind, I thought something had happened! You can’t do that to me, chicken. Please don’t do that to me.” He hugged her close to him; she rested her head on his broad chest and felt as though she were a child again, normal again. “I’m sorry, Dad,” she said quietly. “I’m really sorry.”
“She’s not in the slightest bit sorry,” Deidre said an hour or so later, when they were sitting at the breakfast table. “Look at her. Just look at her, Philip. Like the cat that got the cream.” Laura grinned at her over her bowl of cereal. “You’ve got that look,” Deidre said, her mouth pursed in disgust. “Hasn’t she got that look? Who were you with last night?”
Later, she heard her father and her stepmother arguing. “She’s got no self-respect,” Deidre was saying. “That’s her problem. I’m telling you, Phil, she’s going to end up pregnant before she’s fifteen. You’ve got to do something. You’ve got to do something about her.”
Her father’s voice, supplicating: “But it’s not her fault, Deidre, you know that. It’s not her fault.”
“Oh, it’s not her fault. That’s right. Nothing’s ever Laura’s fault.”
Later still, when Deidre came upstairs to Laura’s room to call her for dinner, she asked: “Did you use protection, at least? Please tell me you weren’t stupid enough to do it without a condom?” Laura was lying on her bed, staring up at the ceiling. Without looking, she picked up a hairbrush from her bedside table and hurled it in her stepmother’s general direction. “Please just fuck off, Deidre,” she said.
“Oh yes, that’s charming, isn’t it? I’ll bet your filthy mouth is not your fault either.” She turned to leave but thought better of it. “You know, Laura, you know what your problem is? You don’t value yourself enough.”
Low self-worth was indeed one of Laura’s problems, but it wasn’t the only one. She had a whole host of others to keep it company, including but not limited to: hypersexuality, poor impulse control, inappropriate social behavior, aggressive outbursts, short-term memory lapses, and quite a pronounced limp.
* * *
? ? ?
“There now,” the policewoman said, once she was done. “You’re all set.” She saw that Laura was crying and she squeezed her hand. “You’ll be all right, love.”
“I want to phone my mum,” Laura said. “Is it all right if I phone my mum?”
Her mum wasn’t answering her phone.
“Do I get another call?” Laura asked. The officer at her side shook her head, but seeing Laura’s dismay, she glanced this way and that along the hall and then nodded. “Go on, then,” she said. “Quickly.”
Laura rang her father’s next. She listened to the phone ring a few times, her hopes soaring as the call connected, only to be immediately dashed as she heard Deidre’s voice. “Hello? Hello? Who is this?” Laura hung up, meeting the officer’s inquisitive look with a shrug. “Wrong number,” she said.
* * *
The police officer took Laura to a tiny, stuffy room with a table at its center. The officer gave her a glass of water and said someone would bring some tea in a minute, but the tea never materialized. The room was overheated and smelled of something strange and chemical; her skin itched, her mind felt muddied with exhaustion. She folded her arms and laid her head down upon them and tried to sleep, but in the white noise she heard voices, her mother’s, Deidre’s, Daniel’s; when she swallowed she thought she could taste metal, and rot.