Unbearably soon, she heard the thumps of someone pounding up the stairs. Liam pulled back just as the door opened. He turned on the overhead light and Jane spun away, replacing her glasses. So that was it. The moment was gone, crushed by rude light and by Daphne.
‘Oh? Hello.’ Daphne appeared to hardly take in that they were there, let alone that they’d been in the dark. She sounded wretched. Nobody spoke again until Jane went to the record player, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and blinking with bewildered disappointment.
‘We were just going to put on some music,’ she said dumbly. How was it possible to move from one state to another, like extricating oneself from a car crash, and pretending nothing had happened?
Daphne didn’t say anything. She didn’t ask, ‘Where’s Theo?’ Nor did she appear to spot the glaring evidence of an intrigue, or she would have started teasing with talk of snogging or tonsil hockey. Maybe she didn’t give a shit, thought Jane as she put on Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. Liam smiled at her appreciatively.
‘Did Ralph leave?’ Jane couldn’t think what else to say.
‘Mm,’ answered Daphne, with a low tremor in her voice as if she might cry.
‘OK, I’m going to find Theo.’ Liam was awkward now, as if he’d been caught hanging around with kids. ‘See you.’
‘OK, see you later,’ Jane said, bereft as someone waving her sweetheart off to war. She didn’t see him after that. The two boys went out for a drink and then Liam went home. Within a day or so they’d left for university.
The girls lay on the floor in Daphne’s room, listening to records and not talking much. Jane thought about Liam, her abdomen still tight with the thrill of what had happened, her skin warm with the secret. When she turned to look, Daphne was crying silently, viscous tears sliding slowly down her cheeks, each drop pausing briefly on her chin before falling to the floor. She wasn’t making a noise or sniffing. A weeping statue.
‘Hey?’ She reached over and gripped her friend’s shoulder. ‘What happened?’
‘I want to die,’ came the reply.
‘Why? What happened?’ Jane repeated, more urgently.
‘There’s no point in anything, in being alive. Ralph’s leaving for America. I hate him.’
‘Then forget about him.’ Her mother used to sing ‘I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair’ around the house.
‘But I also don’t hate him.’ She looked distraught.
It was years before Jane told Daphne about Liam, and even then she didn’t admit it was her first kiss. Hard to disclose that yet another of Plain Jane’s initiations had been enacted on the stage of Barnabas Road.
They stood before the old house waiting for something to happen. There was an unfamiliar sterility to the place.
‘Probably belongs to a banker now,’ said Daphne. ‘Such a different atmosphere.’ She peered over into the corner of the front garden. ‘Do you remember the sculpture we all made?’
Jane nodded. ‘It was so mysterious and beautiful. I’d never seen anything like it. I couldn’t believe it all came from rubbish out of the river. It was like a heathen god standing in the corner of the garden. Your family was so unusual – such an inspiration.’
‘Maybe our family looked exotic, but it didn’t feel like that on the inside. If you think about it, we were a mess. Even then, before Ellie…’ She didn’t finish the sentence. ‘That’s how I see it now. I always used to think all that freedom was a privilege. That image of us running free, flinging off our clothes, walking barefoot around the streets – like urban Mowgli girls finding our own tracks through the jungle. But now I think of that jungle as dangerous. I didn’t really know what I was doing.’
Jane understood that the other side to the fascinating teenager was the skinny girl who was half-foreign, whose mother was unreliable and often absent and whose father was living out fantasies of the literary life with his pretentious clothes, posh car and young girlfriends. As they looked up at the house, a shadow moved behind the gauze curtains on the first floor. Daphne turned away decisively, as though shaking off the memories, and they set off down the road.
They were inside the park before either of them spoke again, walking along a line of elephantine plane trees by the river. Daphne stopped and leaned against the railings, looking across the water at the luxurious green of the Hurlingham Club on the northern side. Nearer to them, a cormorant balanced on a wooden post, sunning itself, wings splayed like a scrawny eagle atop a totem pole.
‘Janey, there’s something I wanted to ask you.’
‘Fire away.’
‘It’s something to do with Libby. Or no, actually I think it’s more to do with Ralph.’
Jane stiffened. ‘Has Ralph done something with Libby?’
‘No, no. God. No.’ Her wide-eyed shock relaxed into a faint smile at the absurdity. ‘No, I haven’t even seen Ralph for ages – years. No, it’s more something inside me that changed. As if I suddenly saw all the same experiences differently. Like when you walk up a hill and understand the shape of a landscape you’ve been lost in. I realised I’d been remembering my thing with Ralph from a child’s point of view. I mean, I know he wasn’t a paedophile or anything. He wasn’t chasing around molesting little kids. But the truth is, it looks different from a parent’s perspective.’
It was tempting to yell, ‘Finally! Why did it take you so bloody long?’ but Jane gathered her composure. ‘Do you know what changed that?’ she asked neutrally.
‘Yeah, it’s funny really, or maybe it’s obvious.’ Daphne’s brow contracted. ‘It might sound silly but it all started with Libby and her friend Paige dancing.’ She smiled at the incongruity. ‘Just before she went away to Greece.’ She flicked a glance at Jane and then away again across the water that was pushing its way upriver with the incoming tide. ‘They were all done-up, with heels and tarty make-up, and then they started dancing – lots of thrusting and pouting. I suppose it might have been funny if it wasn’t grotesque. They seemed to understand what they were doing while not really understanding. Does that make sense?’
‘Completely.’ Jane remembered the ugly mess of teenage years, when none of them really knew what they were doing.
‘And then I saw the peculiar disconnect that happens when young girls play with sexiness. I do realise it’s normal – what they all do – what we all did. But it’s like a game, like practising before the real thing. And I thought about me at eleven or twelve and about Ralph. And sleeping with him when I was only thirteen. And it was like being punched in the stomach. I mean, Libby’s going to be thirteen soon.’ She shook her head and the clip holding her hair fell on to the ground, provoking a spill of Medusa-wild locks. Gathering up her curls and fixing them in place once more, she continued, ‘It was such a strange sort of shock – the sort you’ve known about all along but haven’t understood.’
Jane remained silent.
‘I thought that if an older man did to Libby what Ralph did to me, I’d…’ Daphne stopped and then said very simply, ‘I’d kill him.’
The flood of relief was like bathing in warm water. Warm, scented water that relaxed and invigorated. Like a hot tub! After all these years, all the recent waiting and hating and hopes for justice, and finally Daphne could see things as they really were. Randy Ralph, the old perv, the self-righteous, rapist arsehole was going to pay for his crimes.