Joanna Barnard's Blog, page 9

Notes from the Fallow Land: Reflections on dating (or not) in your late thirties

After a (mostly self-imposed) period of singledom, I’ve recently decided it’s time to get ‘out there’ again. The clues have been hard to ignore: for instance, I’ve taken to looking at random guys in the street, saying to myself (hopefully not out loud but I can’t be sure – I spend a lot of time on my own, and this happens) ‘ooh, he’s nice’ and immediately checking out his ring finger. Hmm.

But how and where to meet someone? These days, the internet seems to be the go-to place (as opposed to the Ritzy, as it was in my youth – simpler times). I’ve internet dated, on and off, for more than three years and I’m not here to argue for its merits or faults, although the facts that I’m still looking and that so many of these sites continue to do storming business probably tell you something.

A (male) friend of mine maintains that internet dating is great because you effectively get a tick-list up front: you already know your potential mate is an atheist / wants kids / likes sport before you even meet, so you’re unlikely to be confronted by a bible-bashing, baby-hating couch potato on the first date (unless they’re a pathological liar, of which dare I say there may be a few on t’interweb). It’s efficient, isn’t it? It saves everybody time. You know you’re 94.8% compatible before you’ve taken your first nervous bite of tapas.

But I can’t help observe that this ‘scientific’ approach is missing something: chemistry. One of the enormous charms of Graeme Simsion’s The Rosie Project is that it shows that even the most practical heart won’t be held to a tick-list. The heart wants the elusive butterflies, the logic-defying attraction that leads you to repeatedly fall for the same unsuitable…oh, wait…

Whatever the pros and cons, everyone seems to know at least one couple who met on match.com and are now married (not that I want to get married – been there, got the cynicism). So it seemed worth another go.

Now, I am 39. Internet dating can be one-dimensional, even brutal, but it gives you a good idea of What Men Are Looking For. Do you know what 39-year-old men are Looking For? 29-year-olds. Okay, 33 at a push. I routinely find myself ‘too old’ for men my own age and older. This poses some interesting questions, the main one being: Why? Is it firmness of flesh they’re after, or freshness of ovaries? I don’t know (it could be both), and I suspect it’s not polite to ask.

The annoying thing is, if it’s about the ovaries, I kind of get their point. I have one lovely child and I was, until a little while ago, hoping to have another. Notwithstanding the remote possibility that I could meet someone very soon, fall madly in love and have a bun in the oven by Christmas, I’m coming to terms with the reality that it’s unlikely to happen. Don’t get me wrong, I count myself VERY fortunate to have one happy, healthy, awesome boy (frankly, I’m not sure he can be topped anyway). But 39 does seem to be an odd place to be, dating-wise.

The men online who ‘like’ me tend to be a lot older than me. Nothing wrong with that, I know a lot of age 50+ men who are attractive, kind and not demonstrably psychopathic (most of them are married, though) and I don’t want to stand accused of the same kind of ageism I’m complaining about. I just feel that when it comes to a relationship I might be best suited to a guy who ‘gets’ my cultural references. I’m not sure it could work out between us if he was in his thirties when Ferris Bueller’s Day Off came out. But more than the age thing, my ‘admirers’ tend to be odd: you can tell a lot from someone’s profile name; witness ‘Conan the Librarian’ or, my personal favourite, ‘Jonny Angelsnake’ (who lived 230 miles from me, so I’m not sure what kind of relationship he was envisaging. One mostly conducted via Skype?)

There are other ways to meet men, of course, or so everyone tells me. Even when you’re a single mum who doesn’t get out that much, and when I do get out, well, I’m having fun with my friends, I’m paying too much attention to them, hopefully, to be ‘on the prowl’ (not that they’d mind, I’m sure – on the odd occasion I have, erm, ‘met’ someone, they’ve found it quite entertaining). So speaking of friends, what about that option: get set up with someone your friends know?

This is a tricky business. People are often reluctant to set you up with their singleton mates, presumably because, being their friend, they know the reasons they’re single and they ain’t good. And even when they say, in a confused way, ‘oh, actually, X is really nice’, the whole thing, for a stalwart of the internet dating generation, is painfully slow. There are no ‘winks’ or ‘likes’, you have to rely on body language, and conversation, and the back-to-the-playground business of hounding your friends with ‘Did he mention me? Do you think he likes me? Was I hideously drunk at the barbeque, because I can’t remember any of the conversation around the firepit once the port and cheese came out?’ (Just me?)

The other ‘way’ is the way of pure chance. Ah, fate, karma, serendipity. Bizarrely, I have recently met two men at train stations. Maybe not so bizarre as I love the whole Trevor Howard-Celia Johnson romance of trains and train stations, so I’m probably subconsciously seeking out encounters in that environment.

The first, at Waterloo, began with being asked whether I was wearing flat shoes because I was pregnant, and then being chased with an apologetic bag of Maltesers, so the auspices were mixed, to be fair. But the storyteller in me was a little bit captivated by this unusual beginning so I thought it would be fun if it led to something. We exchanged numbers and several messages, and he said repeatedly that he wanted to take me out, then inexplicably fell off the face of the texting earth. Perhaps by ‘take me out’ he meant he wanted to kill me, in which case probably a lucky escape.

The second ‘brief encounter’ began on the way home from London to Farnham (not on the same night as Malteser Man – I’m not that prolific) and ended with him saying (twice) that he ‘hoped’ he’d see me again. But he didn’t take my number, and in a town of roughly 40,000 inhabitants this seems to be leaving an awful lot to chance. A friend suggested I start hanging around outside the train station at night, but I’m pretty sure there’s a name for women like that, besides which, my heart sank a little bit when I told him I’d just come from watching To Kill A Mockingbird at the Barbican and he replied ‘that was a book as well, wasn’t it?’ That single comment may be the reason I didn’t ask for his number.

Which brings me to my last point: maybe I’m single because I’m too choosy. This might be true; the possibility is infinitely more comforting than the alternative (that I am fundamentally un-fanciable and the best I can hope for is a Conan Angelsnake amalgam) and, whilst I believe in compromise in relationships, this is one characteristic I’m not willing to change.

Because after all, who wants to be with someone who isn’t choosy? Who wants to be in a relationship and know that the other party is mainly thinking ‘well, you’ll do’? A very good, wise friend of mine once said that in a couple, both people should wake up every day thinking ‘wow, I’ve done well here’ and I believe that. I won’t settle for anything less.

I’d rather be on my own. I’m pretty good at it.

But sometimes, just sometimes, late in the evening, when I’m settled on the sofa…it would be nice to have someone to put the bins out.

The Myth of the Nymphet: Why I Wrote a Book about a Pupil-Teacher Relationship

When people find out what Precocious is about, or when they read it, the first question they ask is usually: ‘is it true?’ By which they mean, of course, ‘did it happen to you?’

There’s more than a hint of the ‘nudge, nudge, wink, wink’ in the question. The topic of pupil-teacher affairs is one people usually find intriguing, and some find salacious. Two otherwise intelligent, sensitive, grown men have looked at the book and attempted to ‘flick forward to the sexy bits’…to which I usually reply that if you find the idea of a 28-year-old man having sex with a barely-15-year-old girl exciting, you should probably have a look at yourself.

I’ve been writing this book for some years and I always found it hard to explain ‘why’ I wrote it. Then earlier this year, judge Joanna Greenberg QC inadvertently articulated my reasons far better than I could.

In December 2014, Religious Studies teacher Stuart Kerner was found guilty of two counts of sexual activity with a child by a person in a position of trust. He had sex with a pupil who was 16 at the time (he was 42). Sentencing him in January, Greenberg gave him a suspended prison term on the basis that ‘it was she who groomed you, (and) you gave into temptation’.

This leads us to the nymphet myth. It has echoes of Lolita and Humbert Humbert’s protestation that ‘it was she who seduced me’. While many of us, recognising Humbert as perhaps the ultimate unreliable narrator, don’t take this comment at face value, it seems some do: Robert McCrum, writing about Lolita in The Guardian’s 100 Best Novels, says, ‘Although we see him drugging the love object of his dreams, Humbert is hardly debauching an innocent.’ Erm. Why drug her, then?

I know that teenage girls are sexual beings. I was one. I know hormones abound, I know girls mature quickly and often don’t find boys their own age appealing. Sexual experimentation at that age is not only natural, I’d argue it’s essential – but ideally it should be with a partner who is also doing exactly that: experimenting. Otherwise there’s a massive power imbalance, between experimentation and experience.

There are those who argue with reference to the Kerner case that 16 is the age of consent, therefore this was two adults having consensual sex and Kerner was only criminalised because he was a teacher. But the distinction is important: there is already a power imbalance inherent in the student-teacher relationship, and no amount of ‘stalking’ or ‘grooming’ on the part of the girl can redress this.

That’s what Precocious is about, really: power. When we imbue victims of abuse (and that is what these ‘Lolitas’ are) with power, we also encumber them with guilt. We’re saying they’re complicit in their own abuse.

It’s not about physical readiness to have sex. It’s not about how old the girl (or boy, let’s not forget it does happen the other way around – funny though, when it does, it’s often again the woman who’s vilified) is or how old she acts. It’s about emotional readiness. How many 16-year-old girls are emotionally ready for a sexual relationship with a 42-year-old (married) man?

I’m also learning, as I’m currently training as a psychotherapeutic counsellor, how formative those early sexual experiences are, and how they can affect all areas of later life, impacting not just on the sex life but on wider areas of self-esteem, confidence, trust.

So when people ask me why I wrote Precocious, is it important to go over the rumours that were rife at my school (they abound at most schools, I suspect)? The instances of pupil-teacher friendships I know for a fact went further than propriety should allow? My own youthful obsessions with older men? It sort of doesn’t matter if it’s my story or not – the point is, it’s someone’s story. It’s too many people’s story.

When I Grow Up

joannaibarnard:

Brilliant post by Lou Morgan on the all-too-common impostor syndrome…

Originally posted on Lou Morgan:

I was watching an interview on YouTube a few days ago; an interview with an actor who is my age. There might be a year or so in his favour, but put it this way: we’d have been in close enough classes at school to have known each other.

He was – as many actors I know are wont to be – very serious about his work, his profession. His craft. Passionate about it, believing in it, expecting others to take it equally seriously.

A cog started to turn somewhere in my head.

Yesterday, my son’s drum tutor rolled out that phrase we tell children to make them keep going when they don’t want to. Success is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. Work hard. You want something? Be prepared to do what it takes to get it, to give what it takes. It won’t fall into your lap. Earn it. A…

View original 645 more words

The boy who cried love

Once upon a time, a boy met a girl.

Lots of stories begin like this, so we think we know how they will end.

This boy ran from the woods crying ‘I love you!’, which sent the girl all upside down with fear and excitement, until she noticed there was nothing behind him. No love chased him out of the trees, nipping at his heels.

The second time the boy cried love, the girl believed him again, so she followed him, wild with her own desires. For a long time she trusted it would be real, a love alive with passion, joy and truth. But no matter how hard she looked in the boy’s heart, she found nothing but shadows.

The third time, the girl found her trust had dried up. She turned away and refused to look at the boy’s eyes, his empty hands. She closed her ears to his pleas and protests and walked in the opposite direction.

Eventually the girl lived quite happily, thinking of the boy from time to time but otherwise quite content. She had great friends and a fulfilling life, and she knew how to recognise love, now.

In the end, the boy was left alone.

His gnawing heart probably ate him up from the inside out.

No-one really knows what happened to him because, after all, he was alone.

Bath Novel Award: One Year On

It’s a year to the day that I received the happy news that I’d won the 2014 Bath Novel Award.

I’ve written at length elsewhere about Precocious’s path to publication so I’ll keep this brief and try not to repeat myself, but it feels impossible not to mark the anniversary of the day when, really, my life changed.

When Caroline Ambrose called me a short time after the announcement was made, I was still in a slightly disbelieving state of giddiness (I’ve not moved on much from that state in twelve months, to be honest). I remember her telling me that at Bath Novel Award HQ they were toasting me with whiskey. I was toasting myself with a cup of tea. I confessed I’d had so many rejections I was amazed I’d won. Caroline told me Juliet loved the book and I wouldn’t have to worry about that any more. It all felt very surreal. I hadn’t dared hope for this prize; an agent, and a publishing deal, still seemed a distant dream.

Now I’m writing my second novel, the book that’s been in my head for over four years, the book I didn’t previously have the confidence or, in a way, the permission to write. I never felt I could get going with it until something happened with the first book, so I kept tinkering away at Precocious instead, and kept sending it out into the world. Thank goodness I did.

In a couple of days, the shortlist for the 2015 Bath Novel Award will be announced. To all the longlistees, I am sending a virtual hug as I know how you are feeling right now. Tons of luck. To Caroline and Dionne: thank you (for the gazillionth time!).

Four weeks from now, Precocious really will be out in the world. Gulp. Wish us luck.

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When Rosa Disappeared

It was Wednesday morning when Rosa first realised she didn’t exist.

To be accurate, we should say ‘no longer existed’, because she had existed previously, she was fairly certain.

She first noticed the lack of herself when she looked in the bathroom mirror and saw a reflection of the tiles that should have been obscured by her head. The tiles were odd, for a bathroom: they were a dirty beige colour, and every third or fourth square featured a painted bottle of wine and joint of ham. Presumably the landlord had bought them in bulk for very little money.

Rosa looked down and observed that, although she felt as though she was there, there was no physical evidence to support that feeling.

She walked back to her bedroom and carefully shut the door, noting with some interest that at least she could still do that. She looked at the wood, at the brass handle, searching her memory for what they were supposed to feel like: were they soft, cold, prickly, hard? She was aware that when she had touched things yesterday they had moved, just as they did now, but there had been a feeling of some kind on her part. She just couldn’t recall what that was. She wondered what to do next. It seemed unlikely that anyone else in the building could confirm or deny her existence, since the residents had very little contact with each other.

The place Rosa lived was an old Army town with many ugly buildings, but a few streets were occupied by grand Victorian villas like this one. Its red bricks needed re-pointing, held together by crumbling sand, its roof was missing tiles here and there, but it was still a beautiful, proud house. It was now what they call a house in multiple occupation, as were many that surrounded it. In Rosa’s building there were five bedrooms and the residents shared a kitchen and two bathrooms.

One of the men who lived there was ex-Army and walked around wearing a vest and a permanent scowl. His strange, wide-legged gait used to make Rosa wonder if he’d been injured, but it was merely the way he wore his masculinity.

Another resident was a jolly, round-faced man who would say her name in a sing-song voice every time he saw her, but never anything beyond that. She didn’t remember ever telling him her name, but supposed she must have. His mother visited often – every two days or so – but, unlike him, always looked sad.

Then there was the drunk woman who screamed at the birds every morning, and the fifth room was vacant for the time being.

Rosa decided to call her work and let them know she wouldn’t be coming in today. But an odd thing happened: she moved her lips, and she thought she could hear her own apologetic words, but from the other end of the line all that came was ‘Hello? Hello? Who’s there? What the-?’ and an exasperated sigh and then a click as the phone went down.

She looked around the room with the vague idea that she was looking for clues, but everything was the same as it ever was. ‘Everything’ was not very much at all, really. A futon bed, a small wardrobe, a threadbare rug. A stack of items that didn’t belong anywhere else – a couple of books, boxes of pills for headaches, pills for other, more amorphous types of pain, empty photo frames – served as a precarious bedside table for an anglepoise lamp. Rosa had once read a story about a man who gave away all his possessions and said he felt ‘liberated’. But moving into this room with just a couple of boxes, she had not felt that way. She’d felt cut adrift.

She told herself that when something went wrong, when you were sick or injured, there was always a cause: the slightly undercooked seafood you shouldn’t have eaten, the too-sharp turn you took on your bike. So Rosa started to roll the last few days over in her mind, sifting through memories, searching for anything different that had happened that might have landed her in her current predicament.

The only thing she could think of that was different from any other week was that she had spoken to The Bag Man.

****

During the six months she had lived here Rosa had seen him almost every day, from her first floor window or as she bustled past him on her way into town, standing on the corner. He held plastic bags in both hands and was always alone. She often thought he resembled a bear, with his height, his rounded shoulders and the impression that most of him was covered with grey-brown hair. His eyes were small, almost black and seemed to glitter. He wore a long coat.

On Monday she had been folding herself into her car, in a hurry, when he tried to engage her in conversation.

She was rushing to her job, a thankless job as a receptionist at an old folks’ home (although no-one calls them that any more). She liked the residents, mostly cheerful embodiments of how her own parents might now look, had they lived, but she hated the staff. They insisted on keeping her behind the desk.

There had been wind, and the car radio had clicked on, so she couldn’t really hear him properly, could just see the movement of his lips behind his matted beard. He spoke in confused monologues that didn’t seem to require a response, necessarily, so she cut him off mid-flow with a wave of the hand and a ‘see you later’.

****

Rosa decided to walk into town, noticing how easily her non-existent legs carried her. She felt a bunking-school sort of freedom, a sense that she could do anything now. She’d told herself that surely she would wake up – the next morning, or sooner, startled out of what must be a dream – and things would be just as they were. So she may as well enjoy the fact that for once, things were different.

‘I could walk around naked,’ she said aloud, and as she did so she realised that she wasn’t feeling the cold, even though it had started to snow.

She queued up in the newsagents with nothing in her hands, just because it was her morning habit. People repeatedly stood in front of her – well, they would, as they couldn’t see her – and at first this made her laugh, a barking sound which she heard but no-one else responded to. Then she reflected that this had happened before. There had been other times when Rosa had felt as though she didn’t exist, but she had never seen (or rather, not seen) the evidence quite so clearly. This time, she did something she hadn’t done before.

‘Get out of the way,’ she hissed, ‘it’s my turn.’ Nobody looked around.

When the queue died away and she was facing the twenty-something boy at the counter, the one with the wavy hair and kind eyes, she said,

‘You are beautiful. I think this every day. I hope you have happiness and love in your life.’ Then she turned and left the shop.

She walked some more and in the course of the afternoon found her non-self standing in front of two former homes: those of her parents (long dead) and her husband (long re-married). There were new curtains, different plants flanking the front doors. Unfamiliar cars outside. Everything that used to be Rosa was here in this town, yet seemingly so distant.

****

On the Monday evening, Rosa had hurried from her car and up the path with her head down to keep the hammering rain from her eyes. When she reached the front porch she found it almost completely filled by the Bag Man’s shivering bulk.

‘I was keeping dry,’ he said and made no effort to move, so she had to sidle next to him to get her key into the door. In the small space she was overwhelmed by his smell: stale sweat, damp clothes and something else, something underneath. It was acrid and base, in the way that faeces are, and old urine, and dried vomit, but it was none of these things, or it was all of them. She gave a tight smile and tried to hold her breath but the odour crept into her nostrils nevertheless. She pushed open the door and leaned into the hallway with a gasp. Still he stayed in the porch.

‘It’s very cold,’ he observed, ‘Any chance of a cup of tea?’ Rosa stared at him then gave a quick nod, closed the door on him and hurried to the kitchen.

Her space in the crockery cupboard was kept very neat. When she moved in she had made a little sign that said ‘Property of Room 2B’, drawn a smiley face and sellotaped it carefully to the front of her shelf.

She was careful not to use any of her best mugs for the Bag Man’s tea. Of course her absolute favourite, hand-painted for her a lifetime ago, she kept in her bedroom, wrapped in a towel, at the bottom of her wardrobe. It had her name on it, and flowers.

She went back to the doorway, half expecting the man to be gone, but the rain was still coming down and he was still there. She handed him the cup (in the end she had chosen a plastic one, the kind you use for camping, that she had forgotten she owned. It had been a long time since she’d been camping) and he jostled his bags into one hand so that he could take it.

‘You said “see you later”,’ he said, bringing the cup up to his lips. Rosa blinked at him, confused. After a moment she said, ‘It’s just an expression,’ and closed the door on him.

The next morning she had found the empty cup in the porch, and on Wednesday she’d woken up and found herself not really there.

****

The snow was coming down more enthusiastically when Rosa made it back to the house, and the street lights were sputtering into life. It was the kind of snow that makes people say things like ‘I think it’s going to stick’, and children were already trudging up the street dragging their sleds to the park. Rosa remembered being that age and opening her mouth, tilting her head to the sky, to wait for the dancing flakes to land and melt into liquid on her tongue.

She glanced toward the corner, but the Bag Man was not there. She had been thinking that this time, she would give him a proper mug and would stand out on the porch with him for a few minutes.

Inside, she passed the round-faced man but he didn’t say ‘Ro-sa’ in his musical voice today.

She shut the door to her room and switched on the little lamp, which cast a disc of white light onto the wall. She heaved open the sash window, causing a whoosh of air and a flurry of snowflakes to pour in, and sat and looked out at the sodden grey sky. It was nice not to feel the cold – not to feel anything – but she pulled the duvet off the bed anyway and wrapped it around the place where her self would normally be. She fell asleep watching the empty street corner and wondering whether either of them would be there tomorrow.

The Year of Trains

I’ve been spending a lot of time on trains lately. Here I am again, Styrofoam cup of lukewarm cappuccino procured from the station, overnight bag on the shelf above my head, notebook in front of me, scenery (if you can call it that – currently mostly high-rises, factory roofs and a couple of cranes) whizzing by. So because my subconscious today seems to be wired to ‘the bleeding obvious’, my current train of thought (sorry!) has led me to reflect on this, probably my favourite means of travel.

Why so many recent rail journeys? Well for one thing, I’m now bereft of one of the great benefits of corporate life, the Fuel Card. Pretty sure that’s what Joni Mitchell was referring to when she wrote ‘you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone’. So for the first time in my adult life (*shame-faced*) I am aware, on a pretty much daily basis (as opposed to every now and again, when driving a hire car or filling up in France or something and dimly noticing it’s cheaper there), of how sodding expensive petrol is. Also, the car is mine now, not The Company’s, so the wear and tear are mine, too (I know, welcome to the real world).

I’ve also had a bit more time to travel around seeing friends (if I haven’t got to you yet, but have promised I will, sorry, I will, and please nag me to do so). This is lovely – socialising becomes more important when you don’t have an office to go into and spend all day talking only to the people in your head.

I work on trains, too, so unlike hours spent in traffic jams, it never feels like wasted time. Quite the opposite, in fact – I work really well on trains. I’ve considered just buying some sort of season ticket and travelling up and down the East Coast railway, never actually stopping anywhere, just to get this book written.

There’s something hypnotic about the rhythm of the carriage. There’s the lack of distraction, especially on a quiet train. And when it’s not quiet, well, as they say, ‘all human life is there’: squabbling children, snogging couples, snoozing old men, all conveniently providing material. Most writers are inveterate people-watchers, and trains are a people-watcher’s paradise.

I think it’s something to do with having to sit still. For me, and for them, the other passengers (who – hopefully – don’t know I’m watching them). I’m fascinated by what people choose to do when they’re in a confined space and have to be still for a period of time. Here are some things that people do on trains and what I think about them.

Doing nothing, just staring into space – what are they thinking about? (also: haven’t they got a book?)

Sleeping – why are they tired? (Or do trains just have the same soporific effect on them as planes, bizarrely, have on me – I’m usually asleep before even leaving the runway, although I get very cross if I miss my meal or the chance of a ‘free’ gin & tonic)

Headphones / Ipad – what are they listening to / watching?

Reading – I love this one, obviously. I’m nearly as nosy about strangers’ reading habits as I am about their front rooms (look, if you don’t want me to look through your curtains as I walk past, close them). We’re told not to judge a book by its cover but don’t we all secretly judge a person by their book? (Just me? Oh dear) Of course, if I ever see someone on a train reading Precocious, I will probably implode with happiness. Or go to the buffet car and buy them a cake, or something.

Working – pah. Bit boring, and often involves:

Making phone calls – why? You know you are going to lose signal, go into a tunnel, etc., and then you will be forced to shout the immortal cliché ‘Sorry, I’m on the TRAAAAAAIN’. Ugh. I have a theory people choose train journeys to make the calls they really don’t want to make, so they have the perfect excuse to cut it off if it gets uncomfortable.

Talking to friends – on a recent journey to Durham, I sat next to two guys (I’d say they were in their fifties) who were obviously at the start of a holiday touring the North East. One was clearly more gregarious (talked non-stop) and had done all the planning, which encompassed an overwhelming circuit of churches, castles and eateries around Newcastle, York and Durham. After about an hour of eavesdropping on their itinerary I was torn between wanting to join them and needing to lie down.

Talking to strangers – on the above trip, the woman opposite me, overhearing the guys’ plans, chipped in with some top restaurant tips because she was from the area. We all had a lovely little chat.

Today I saw a grown man reading a picture book: turning the board pages, opening the flaps, following the (few) words with his finger. It was moving, and intriguing, and when I’m moved and intrigued, stories are born. You don’t get that if you don’t go anywhere.

I wrote another 2000 words of the novel, wrote this blog and had a little snooze. You probably shouldn’t do any of that in a car. Trains – love ‘em.

In These Shoes

Vicki

I wanted them to go to a good home. Fifty quid is a lot of money for a pair of shoes, even if I didn’t pay for them and even if they are just about the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.

I have to hiss, describing them. They are silver sparkly slingbacks. Sss. They look like they are made of glass (like Cinderella’s slippers) or diamonds. They don’t really fit and they keep slipping off, a bit like the man who bought them for me.

(I say ‘man’, he’s a boy, really.)

That’s what he said to me, too: ‘you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’ Weird, that he called me a thing, now that I think about it. But I was just made up, cos no-one had ever called me beautiful before (except my mam, but that doesn’t really count, does it?)

We went out on New Year’s Eve. I wore the shoes (sss) and a gunmetal dress, and he kissed someone else at midnight.

So. My Mam’s is about the best home I can think of. We’re the same size so share clothes sometimes, although she’s pear-shaped and I’m an apple, all boobs and belly. But obviously shoes fit OK.

So.

Angie

The date was disastrous. There’s a reason they call them blind. It’s all fumbling in the dark, for words, and for each other.

I knew he would hurt me, Vicki’s dad. I just didn’t know how he would do it.

The drink, I thought. He’ll be at the pub every night and he’ll come home and he’ll knock me about a bit. He’ll piss the housekeeping money up the wall, like my sister’s fella. Maybe spend a bit too much on the horses.

Maybe eventually there’ll be another woman, maybe drugs. He had it in him, I thought, that look, that shine in the eyes like a camera flash, ready to wink at and follow any new experience, any distraction.

I was chuffed when he married me, mind you. He was meant to go to London. For a big job. It’s written all over his face in the wedding snaps: ‘shouldn’t be here.’ Him not looking, me grinning like a bloody idiot, bunch of roses held over my tell-tale tummy. Him a cornered fox, might snarl any minute.

But he never snarled, he just laid down. He never drank, hit me or messed me around.

In the end he hurt me with silence.

With space.

With waiting.

Not what I expected, really.

He killed me with the wait. Waiting for a hug, a compliment, a smile. Twelve years.

My sister said I was lucky.

He did crosswords ‘to keep his brain active’. Cut the prize crosswords out of the paper week after week and never posted them.

He should’ve been at his big job in London. Instead he ended up with me and Vic and a terrace a hundred yards from his mum and dad’s. He got the factory, the line. Piece work. More boxes you fold and tape up, more money you take home.

In the end, we could neither of us look the other in the eye. Truth is, I missed the shine. I felt really bad for taking it away.

I wore a really nice blouse for the date, and tight jeans, because Vicki says you can always dress up jeans, and look smart, without looking as if you’ve made too much effort. Why is it we all talk about clothes? You’d think working in a place that makes them, we’d be bored of them. We sew up skirts for M&S. Pick the stitches from the faulty ones and sew them again. But that’s all any of them wanted to know, the next day: ‘what did you wear?’

Now, I’ve got my sister, and the girls at the factory. They all say I’ll find someone. Better luck next time.

I took the shoes to the Sue Ryder shop. Call it superstition if you like. Mutton dressed as lamb, he would’ve called me, if he’d seen me, if he’d said anything at all.

Corinne

The things I can do now, here. I can make a mess. I can read.

I’d never been to a ball before, barely even worn a dress. Now I’m a student I thought I’d better keep it cheap so I went to the charity shop. ‘Vintage’ is all the rage these days, apparently. I would’ve just called it second hand! But no, Jen and Flo and Harriet say you just have to wear ‘a vintage piece’. I suppose they know more about fashion than I do.

You learn more at university than what’s in the lectures. I have learned two things already:

I can lie to my parents quite successfully. The Sports Science degree I was supposed to be taking has somehow morphed into European Literature. We now have a silent agreement that they will pretend not to know this, will never ask how my course is going (only how my running is going), and in return I will not spend any of their money.
The feet can blister in three ways, as a result of three different types of footwear:

Trainers: heels, little toes
High heels: fronts of toes, ankles
Bare feet: balls of

He wanted a boy. He wanted a scientist. Scientist Athlete Boy. I dreamed of the boy I should have been, tall, wiry, strong: Jack. I cut my hair and I ran until I looked less of a girl. I lived in trainers and trackies. And Father was always there at the finish line, and my time was always good, but never great.

Now I want to read; sit still for a minute.

My narrow feet, bony and almost pretty apart from a black toenail, stung like crazy. I felt clumsy and out of place, until Tim picked me up. On his back, skitting through the snow, I laughed my newly smoke-filled lungs out.

Then a skid, screech, thud, and I’m on my back, still laughing. Tim has fallen and taken me with him. The ice is both injurer and anaesthetic. At about fourteen stone, he lies on top of me, his back to my front, gasping, breath forming clouds. Then he rolls over, and I try to roll too and slide out from under him but he’s quick and grabs my wrists and pins my hands over my head and it’s a night for firsts as he kissed me. My coccyx is burning. His stubble tickles.

After he skates off, I skip back to the halls, barefoot.

Simon

Finders keepers.

They fell into my possession under a table, along with a disposable camera, a bow-tie, an earring and a used phone-card.

It’s no fun sweeping up posh kids’ detritus.

In my room I have a mattress and a TV and a full-length mirror. And a cardboard box for my finds.

It has a tiny strap that snakes up my leg. My ugly stubbly ankles are embarrassed by the sparkle. A twist, a glint, and I almost cry, but I’ll keep them on a bit longer.

God Knows

The door locked behind her. Not noticing or perhaps not caring, she dumped her bag and flopped onto the bed. She could have done without the receptionist being so snooty with her, looking her up and down and saying ‘Mrs Mason?’ Emma herself had been pretty annoyed to find he’d booked her in as his wife when it would have been so much more feasible to say she was his daughter, but now the mistake was made she didn’t need to have it pointed out to her by some stiff-lipped, sour-faced, grey woman who knew nothing about her or Alan.

She exhaled heavily and closed her eyes. Calm down, she told herself, lowering one hand protectively to her belly, getting upset would be no good for the…her eyes flew open and she sprang up as the clock over her head chimed eight o’clock. He’d be leaving Sarah now, kissing her at the door, getting into the company Mondeo, clutching his tan briefcase as a scapegoat. Waving to her as he reversed skillfully off the drive. Work, he’d be mouthing to her with a rueful shake of the head. And she’d be standing in the light of the doorway, smiling and not believing him.

Smoothing imaginary creases in the ivory linen, Emma took a good look at her surroundings. The wallpaper was pale cream, embossed, expensive; the curtains heavy mulberry velvet with matching pelmet. When she pulled them closed they blocked out light and all other signs of life so successfully that they made the windows seem even more impenetrable than the walls. She unlaced her shoes and sank her bare feet into the lush, rose-coloured carpet, feeling a little out of place in the ancient teenage uniform of blue jeans and white teeshirt, a man-size plaid shirt over the top (she never wore a coat), but thinking she might start to enjoy herself all the same. Certainly this was a far cry from her experiences of family holidays with Catholic aunts and leery uncles in huge Butlins hotels with names like ‘The Grand’ and ‘The Metropole’ and rooms like dormitories. Those hotel rooms were asexual places, except on those occasions involving Uncle Bill’s beer-breathed advances dismissed by her stupid mother as ‘harmless’ and even ‘affectionate’.

‘What is it with me and older men?’ Emma said aloud, trying to sound flippant and to pretend that her ‘relationships’ so far had been anything like normal. But there was a crack in her voice.

What could she do for the half-hour it would take him to drive over here? She tried the TV but somehow knew it wouldn’t be working, even before it was proven. This seemed to confirm the sense that here was a place where people came specifically and solely to have sex. It seemed ironic that she and Alan were meeting here only at this late stage, sex the cause but not the purpose of their rendezvous. This was the kind of place – pink-hued, softly lit, plush – Alan could and should have brought her to, long ago, because even a hotel room with all its illicit connotations would surely be less seedy than the car seat after babysitting. She tried to laugh. At least I’ve got experience looking after his baby, she thought, that’s handy.

Convincing herself she was calm, she got up to make coffee with trembling hands. As the water boiled and she toyed with the biscuits, her eye was drawn to the rosewood cabinet resting in the corner of the room. With a little encouragement its door came open like a fairytale drawbridge. After the exotic promise of the delicately carved exterior, Emma was disappointed to find a couple of polished tumblers and only six miniatures. Still, she felt reassuringly adult as she poured herself a Malibu, which she had seen her mother drink with Coke and sometimes pineapple.

The terrible impersonality of hotel rooms hit her as she wandered around, sipping delicately from her glass, and looked for something for read. Accustomed to her own room’s scattered magazines and Sunday newspapers, she was irritated by the accusing presence of the solitary blood-coloured Bible at the bedside, a small but effective and Godly admonishment to the room’s illicit inhabitants. She picked it up and with real force tossed it under the bed.

When 8.30 arrived and Alan didn’t, she decided to risk the wrath of the disapproving receptionist and wait for him in the foyer. The overwhelming pinkness and creaminess of the room was starting to make her feel nauseous. She tried the door and when it refused to yield, realised or remembered that it had clicked snugly into place behind her. She couldn’t recall having been given a key; certainly the door had been open when she’d got up here. She rubbed her eyes. When he arrived, they’d give him a key and he’d let her out, so that would be alright. She waited. But he wouldn’t let her out, of course. What a stupid thing to think! she told herself, don’t be so dim. The point of coming here wasn’t to just go again! They were meeting here to talk, as he’d said gravely on the phone in the adult, businesslike tone that always excited and overwhelmed her.

Emma as fifteen and naïve but by no means stupid. She knew that Alan’s idea of ‘talking’ was telling her what he’d decided, which she knew meant getting rid of it. Her face contorted involuntarily as the words flickered through her mind (he would not use those words, of course: he would probably pat her head and say softly, ‘I’ve arranged for you to see someone tomorrow. He’s very good,’ or something similarly ambiguous. And yet terribly unambiguous). Tomorrow? Yes, it would probably be so soon. Maybe he’d organised it for tonight, even in this very room; had she been brought here under false pretences, to a well-disguised clinic where they authorised the killing of babies by their married fathers?

She felt fuzzy as she drained the Malibu and slammed the glass down, incensed by the thought of Alan planning her and her baby’s future. She leapt up and hurled herself at the door, half trying to escape and half making sure it was locked securely enough. Next she hammered the walls with her small fists, like a surveyor gone frantic, the desperate beginnings of a sob rising and catching in her throat. Her hands grasped the curtains and tugged and tugged until finally, her hands balled into fists, she sank to her knees and began to pummel her own abdomen.

By ten o’clock, still alone and still locked in, she looked like someone about to do a spring clean: sleeves rolled up, hair scraped back, and air of efficiency. Thick curls of steam drifted in from the pearl-coloured bathroom with its gold-plated taps and fluffy towels. She stood at the minibar and picked up the bottles one by one, studying them as someone who’d never had a drink before (certainly her experience was limited), then putting them down again. Eventually she unscrewed the Smirnoff and downed it just for luck, then picked up the two gin bottles and proceeded to the bathroom. Two bottles of gin was good. She remembered the things her mother had said. Considering Catholics were meant to be strictly anti-abortion, her mother and aunts certainly knew all the tricks. She tried to laugh as she started to peel layers from her boyish figure. This way, of course, it wouldn’t be abortion as such, would it? More like a miscarriage. Something she could mourn without shame. Best of all, it would be over by the time Alan arrived, and they wouldn’t have to talk, and he wouldn’t have to decide for her. But it was 10.30 and she knew he wasn’t coming.

Would 10ml be enough, though? Of course not, logically, but by now Emma was starting to embrace wholeheartedly the mythic qualities of the gin, and the hot bath, paying little attention to logic. At any rate, she thought gleefully, pouring, it can’t do me any good! She stopped. But then…if it didn’t work and she was to have the baby anyway, she didn’t want it to come out deformed, like the babies she sometimes saw on TV, the babies her mother turned over. The baby in her mind’s eye was already fully and perfectly formed, even wearing a babygro and bootees that, God knows, her mother won’t have knitted.

But she couldn’t think about that, she had to be organised, be as mature as Alan had told her she was, when he first took her home and spoke in that silky, older voice. She grimaced and unpacked the paltry contents of her bag, arranging them neatly on the bathroom chair. A toothbrush, a clean pair of cotton knickers and a fat, expectant sanitary towel. Perhaps she had known all along.

She sank into the bath, humming to herself, and felt the water turning her body livid pink. She knocked back the gin, feeling the mind and her room, no, her mind and the room, turn furry grey, whose mind? Whose room is this anyway? Whose life?

The Irresistible Attraction of the Unreliable Narrator

Ah, the lure of the unreliable narrator. That delicious moment in a book when some twist or trickery makes you sit up and say ‘hang on a minute – I trusted you!’

It seems there has been a slew of them recently, especially of the female variety. Gone Girl, Apple Tree Yard and The Girl on the Train, to name just a handful, include flawed female protagonists whose versions of events are, for different reasons, called into question.

It’s not a new phenomenon in literature, of course. From Huck Finn to Holden Caulfield, The Great Gatsby to The Secret History, authors have given us characters who alternately seduce and mislead us, through limited understanding or deliberate misdirection or something in-between.

Probably the best-known and greatest example of the unreliable narrator is of course Humbert Humbert in Lolita. I could rave about Lolita for hours (I won’t, though): it’s beautiful, disturbing, comic, compelling and my favourite book. Humbert is charming, by his own admission guileful, and his spin is so convincing that even today, 60 years after the novel first appeared, some people still buy into it.

In The Guardian’s 100 Best Novels, for example, Robert McCrum has this to say:

Although we see him drugging the love object of his dreams, Humbert is hardly debauching an innocent. In a twist that makes for uncomfortable reading in the context of contemporary anxieties about child abuse, Nabokov establishes that Lolita is sexually precocious already. When it comes to the moment when she and Humbert are “technically lovers”, it was, in Nabokov’s brilliant and clinical reversal, “she who seduced me”.

When I saw this, my reaction was ‘really? You believed that?’ (For an alternative view, which is somewhat closer to my own, see http://www.mommyish.com/2011/11/16/lolita-novel-sex-rape-pedophilia-541/2/ Draw your own conclusions around the fact that one reading of the book is from a man, one from a woman…guess which is which, folks!)

I would have thought that considering the information Humbert chooses to leave in (e.g. withholding the fact of Dolores’s mother’s death from her until after the ‘seduction’; thinking about drugging her so that she’ll be oblivious to his advances; I could go on), most readers might wonder what he’s not saying. Most readers might infer pretty early on that it’s Humbert’s all-consuming self-delusion that causes him to paint his ‘relationship’ with his step-daughter as romance, or to insist that she, the twelve-year-old, was in some way the predator (even though he, in other parts of the book, recognises himself as a monster). Most readers, but not all, evidently.

Anyway. Unreliable narrators are a bit close to my heart as I’m trying to write four of them at the moment. Between them they’re telling the story of Book 2, and if I get their voices right they’ll be convincingly unconvincing. They all tell lies and keep secrets. It’s also been interesting to me that a lot of people have described Fiona from Precocious as unreliable. I don’t think she’s wilfully so. But then (as with Humbert), self-deception is every bit as powerful as other kinds. Haven’t we all met, or worse, been lied to by, someone who seemed to believe their own confection? And the lies we tell ourselves – the versions of ourselves we construct – to make our realities more palatable are particularly convincing.

Why, then, are unreliable narrators so much fun to write, and to read?

As an author, I want to achieve two things: to create believable characters, and to keep the reader turning the pages. People ‘in real life’ are complex, and most people are liars (it’s been said we tell 10 lies a week on average – the most common being ‘I’m fine’) so an unreliable narrator gives the story, paradoxically, an element of realism. Writing a flawed character is always more fun and more challenging than the ‘perfect bore’…I have the chance to explore my own darker side and continually ask the ‘what if?’ questions that I think drive a lot of fiction. What if I found myself in this situation? What if I had a choice between x and y? What might I do, and what would happen next?

The second goal on my writing wish-list is a bit more nebulous; if only any of us held the key to what keeps readers turning pages. It can be great plot, beautiful poetic writing, compelling characterisation, a combination of all of these or more. What the unreliable narrator does for the reader is keeps them engaged as they want to discover the ‘truth’ (what is truth in fiction, anyway? – this brings me to the subject of a future blog…). It’s why detective series like Broadchurch are so popular, maybe – as readers or viewers we like to be kept guessing, to build up our own theories, it involves us in the narrative – but we also like to be wrongfooted, we feel cheated and disappointed in some way if we ‘get it right’ too early on.

Fiction is a ‘safe’ place to be deceived, and we can enjoy it in a similar way to how we enjoy a rollercoaster: being hurtled around in an actual out-of-control car hundreds of feet in the air might be a touch stressful. Being lied to in real life is not much fun.

I write a lot about relationships and it’s a sad truth that it’s often the people we’re closest to who bear our greatest deceptions. Perhaps the biggest appeal of unreliable narrators is that we recognise ourselves in them. The tales we tell ourselves; the glossy picture we sometimes paint of our lives to present to family, friends and social media; the fantasy versions of our partners we create to suit our own ends…in life, and especially in love, we are all unreliable narrators.