Gripping Paige so her wobbling heels would not betray her, Libby switched the television on to a channel with pop videos. An American singer in satin underwear and fishnet drapery was twisting and grinding, the camera angle aimed at her crotch. The video was filmed in a club where the performers had mocked up a druggy party: rough-looking men were locked pelvis to buttock with girls covered in tattoos and piercings. The dancers were fast and slick, cupping their genitals, thrusting and cutting through explicit imitations of the sex act. There was nothing ambiguous. Libby and Paige took up the beat and began dancing to the music. They knew how to do it. There was little Libby, flicking and twisting her hips, lowering herself parallel to her friend until they were almost squatting, then writhing up again. Daphne found the sight mesmerising and awful.
The previous evening, Lib had begged her mother to watch a DVD of The Lion King – her favourite cartoon since babyhood. She had actually sat on Daphne’s lap, entwined in her arms, which she gripped at the scary parts. They’d both sung along with the familiar songs. Yesterday Libby had been a child. A baby. Today she was… well, it was hard to say a woman. It was more as if she was veering violently and uncontrollably between one state and another.
It was only too clear that Libby was being swept along by natural forces. Attempting to prevent it would be pointless. And yet there was something alarming about the scene playing out in their sitting room. ‘What would you do if a man made Libby love him?’ She shuddered. The shocking question had abruptly become more plausible.
The song on the television changed and Libby and Paige abandoned their improvised dance floor, ankles quivering. Libby’s cheeks were pink-sheened, her eyes brilliant blue. She was taller than Daphne in these shoes. There was a steamy gust of sweet perfume as they swayed and grabbed each other, giggled and made their way through to the kitchen to get some water. Daphne followed, half-horrified, half-fascinated, unnoticed by the girls who were laughing at the red lipstick imprints they left on their glasses.
‘So, Libby, what time should we leave for the party? And when does it end? Shall I collect you at eleven?’
‘No way eleven! Mum! At least midnight. Oh come on. It’s the holidays. Nobody will leave before twelve.’
Daphne might have enjoyed these age-old parental negotiations in other circumstances, but after witnessing the girls dancing, it felt as though the rules had changed.
‘OK, eleven thirty. But that’s my last offer.’ She didn’t like the sound of her own voice. She had never spoken to Libby like that before.
When she returned home after dropping off the party girls, the block of flats seemed even quieter than usual, as if everyone else was out on this beautiful July evening. The fourth-floor corridor looked bleak and bland and, yet again, she experienced the disconcerting sense of entering Aunt Connie’s home rather than her own. A wave of Saturday-night loneliness drenched her for a moment as she opened a bottle of wine, poured a glass and sipped it while inspecting the fridge. Methodically, she picked at the remains of lunch, extracting a few olives, some bread and cheese and a tomato. Pleased by this efficient means of completing her supper, she took the wine to the sitting room and looked out at its view of her past.
Threading her needle, Daphne began to sew the elements for the Thames. Instead of flat water, she was creating twisting textile tubes, stuffed so they looked like snakes or bulging entrails – a living river. Taking some gulps from her wine, she tried to understand why she had been so shaken by the dancing girls, by Libby’s sudden transformation. It wasn’t that she hoped to prevent Lib from becoming a sexual being – far from it. But from her perspective, it was obvious that her daughter and Paige had been performing a game of sexiness. It was not supposed to be taken seriously, not so dissimilar to boys engaging in war games. But you wouldn’t give them live ammunition. With girls, however, the painted lips and shiny shoes look like the real thing, rather than the equivalent of toy guns. Of course, the sexual awakening was true too – she’d never deny that. But she now saw with clarity how adolescent awakening cuts both ways, between new bewildering longings and the playgrounds of childhood.
As Daphne made minute stitches on her writhing river, she thought about herself at Libby’s age. It was impossible not to compare her own experiences to her daughter’s. She’d never deny that she loved Ralph, but a bright spotlight now gave that era a different appearance. She had been far too young to understand what was happening when she was swept into the deep waters of a love affair. Unlike Libby, Daphne hadn’t used the props of make-up or stripper’s gear for her game but, looking back, she could see that twelve or thirteen or even fifteen are not ages for being taken seriously by men of thirty. And certainly not for being taken into their beds. Who had been there to protect her?
She often wondered what it would have been like to have Ellie around later – when her daughter was born, when she had an exhibition, when she’d nearly given up. Losing her mother had changed so much, it was hard to imagine how it would be if Ellie had been there to make her study, to get her to university, to scream and shout about the marriage to Constantine. Ellie would have dragged her by the hair to get her out of the clutches of Constantine’s family. Or perhaps she would just have repeated her old adage, ‘Learn your own lessons,’ and that would have been enough to open Daphne’s eyes. Ellie might not have been the mother waiting at home each day after school, but she was unwaveringly loving. She was also an example of a powerful woman pursuing what she believed was important. Daphne hoped she had passed on these priorities to Libby: make your own way, never rely on a man, go out and see the world.
After Ellie died, Daphne took her jewellery from the leather box in her bedroom. ‘She’d want you to have it,’ said Ed, but she saw he was miserable when she wore almost everything at once, piling necklaces until they hung heavy on her neck and adding the bangles and bracelets to her own, so she clanked like a prisoner. Most of it wasn’t valuable – lots of Indian beads and turquoise earrings – but there were a few precious items, including a diamond ring from Ellie’s grandmother and a gold bracelet Ed had bought in an extravagant mood. Within a few years, Daphne had lost the lot. Several of the necklaces broke at a party and there were too many drunk people dancing to scoop up all the beads. She didn’t even know what happened to the ornate, Byzantine-style bracelet her father had given her mother; one day she merely couldn’t find it.
The end of Ellie’s jewels had been like another, more minor bereavement – a reminder that there was nothing left of her mother. Nothing tangible or solid. Not even a gravestone. The only comfort was the idea of Ellie’s cells continuing – she often saw reminders of her mother when she caught her reflection by surprise. And of course, Ellie was also there in Libby.
Ellie’s diamond ring fell off when Daphne was swimming in Greece with Constantine. She’d met him two years after her mother’s death. They were on an Olympic Airlines flight from London to Athens and she spotted him before they boarded, interested in the unusual mix in his handsome face of potential for danger and lazy indulgence – a panther resting. Later, she thought of him more like a snake that would devour you whole and then rest quietly for days while the digesting took place. When they were airborne he came to find her, having arranged that she could sit next to him in the business section. She changed her plans, spending the summer on the Cycladic island of Andros, where his family had a magnificent villa, surrounded by flowering gardens and groves of lemon trees and olives.