The Stepmother(46)
I’d like to say he couldn’t have felt any worse than I did, but we all know that’s not true.
I was truly sorry. I didn’t sleep properly for months; I got thin, which was quite good, I felt shit, which wasn’t. I broke up with my then boyfriend – who I actually quite liked, for once.
What else can I say? I was young when I got my first job on the Star; my career was everything. I’d not gone to college – I’d begged a job on the local paper. I’d worked so hard. I’d worked and worked because I was addicted to it: the money, the buzz, the belonging to something.
It was a way out of the gutter. I loved it; I loved the thrill of the chase, of a good story.
But I proved I was no better than the guttersnipes I worked with.
The trouble with ‘fessing up’ was that, whilst I might have cleared my conscience an iota, I also became public enemy number f*cking one – and then Fleet Street’s scapegoat on top of that. I was an easy target for all the wrongdoings of my profession. I could have everything laid at my door by unscrupulous editors trying to save their own skins. Even though the majority of the tabloid journalists had been at it, they certainly hadn’t all owned up.
I was deeply unhireable for a while. At one point I looked at going to America; the National Enquirer would probably have welcomed me with open arms.
But I couldn’t leave England in the end – I couldn’t leave my family. Even though I hardly saw them, I felt tied.
So when I got the magazine job and then the other gig, through a sympathetic former sub-editor of mine, lecturing on the pros and cons of social media and the digital age of journalism, both were no-brainers.
At the same time, my appetite was whetted by the need to do good. After I met a journalist called Laila Shah at a gender and race conference, I started working with her and then on my own when she went out to Lebanon. I began looking into young Muslim girls in suburban secondaries being groomed by radicals. It wasn’t scary – it was vital.
Except even that wasn’t as straightforward as it first seemed…
Thirty-One
Jeanie
4 March 2015
8 p.m.
* * *
It’s cracking now: for real, this time.
How na?ve I’ve been – I’m so angry with myself for not seeing the truth. And for letting myself be caught out like this. I’ve been an idiot – an absolute and complete fool.
No surprise there, I hear my mother’s voice saying. You always were a bit wet, love.
Piss off, Mum, I surprise myself by thinking.
Mothers and daughters. That’s nearly always a tricky one in my book.
I listened to a radio phone-in earlier on mother love.
Unconditional, a woman was saying; a parent’s love is unconditional, naturally.
The psychologist disagreed.
I disagreed too. In your dreams, love, I thought.
Some mothers can’t do it. Some just aren’t up to it. Many can’t see past their own needs; they use their children as validation of something. As a mirror for what they need.
And some are too frightened; some – like Marlena – are too damaged to trust themselves, so they get out before the harm’s done.
* * *
11 a.m.
* * *
I feel motivated and energised this morning when I get up: I go for a run around the Common, and as I run, I realise exactly how excited I am about starting my new job.
But I get back from my run– proud that I’ve kept it up for a whole two months, practically a first for me – to find that white Range Rover in the drive, the noxious smell of that perfume in the hall – and the lounge door firmly shut.
Kaye, apparently: cosily ensconced with Matthew.
In the hall mirror, I see my hair is damp and plastered to my face, puce from the exertion and the cold, the top of my coral T-shirt ringed with sweat. Hardly the pretty woman Scarlett had promised her mother.
I creep towards the stairs – but too late. Matthew pokes his head round the door.
‘Come and meet Kaye, hon,’ he says. ‘She’s here to discuss the Easter holidays.’