Dot (Araminta Hall)

this. I mean I had no idea you felt this way.’
    The whole situation could have been funny if it hadn’t really been completely bloody tragic and disgusting. I wanted to get away from him as soon as possible, but I didn’t know what to do or say, so I stayed quiet.
    ‘I take it you’re not really interested in the piano,’ he said. ‘But I’d love it if you still want to come on Mondays. Sandra always goes to Asda on a Monday afternoon. She goes by bus so it takes her hours.’
    ‘Why don’t you drive her?’ I asked, for something to say as much as anything else.
    He looked shocked by this suggestion. ‘I have to work. And anyway she doesn’t do anything else. I think it’s pretty much the only time she leaves the house all week.’
    Life is strange. Probably I don’t need to tell you that as if you’re prosecuting me no doubt you’ve lived a bit. But I’m starting to realise this more and more and it makes me wonder if I do want to grow up and have a relationship and all that stuff. Even when you think you know people you don’t, probably even the person you share a bed with for fifty years could be a stranger. I wondered why people don’t move on more often like my dad. And I wonder why when they do it’s always so devastating.
    I stood up and straightened my clothes. He hadn’t even removed my knickers and there was an odd metallic smell coming from them. I think I said something moronic like, ‘Well, I’d better be going.’
    Gerry stood up as well, zipping his horrid pink penis into his trousers. He followed me downstairs and I willed him not to touch me again in case I was sick.
    ‘So,’ he said at the front door, ‘will I see you next Monday then?’
    The door was open and my exit was clear. ‘Ah, well, probably not.’
    ‘Probably not?’
    ‘It’s all a bit too weird for me, so … But thanks, anyway.’ I really said that.
    ‘You weren’t a virgin, were you?’ asked Gerry, suddenly looking all concerned.
    ‘God, no. No, not at all.’ This, I had decided, would never count and so, by that reckoning, I am still a virgin.
    ‘Oh, right, well – good.’ He laughed lasciviously. ‘I know what all you girls are like nowadays.’
    I left after that and went straight to the Co-op that serves us all even though they’ve known us since we were babies and must be able to work out our ages and bought two WKDs and ten Marlboro Lights. (Della served me if you want to verify this and she remembers everything as she has no life and likes to gossip.) I cut back down past Mavis’s estate to the bluebell wood. I hadn’t been there for years although I know most of our class go there every weekend to smoke and rut like animals. I used to go with Mum when I was little to pick bluebells. I was always struck by how beautiful they are, but also couldn’t believe how short their life was. They’re only here for two weeks, I used to repeat as we walked and picked and she would nod and laugh at me. But now I think two weeks of glory sounds like quite a good deal, especially if you can lie dormant for the rest of the year.
    Of course I’d missed their short slot and the air was putrid. If you haven’t smelt a forest of rotting bluebells then don’t bother, you’re not missing out. And it’s not only the smell, they also look so sad, falling over like dying soldiers. But still I trudged through them because it was the one place I could be sure not to run into Mavis or anyone else I knew.
    I was a bottle of WKD and five fags down when I was hit by the reality of the situation. My mother has never told me who my father is, ergo she is highly unlikely to have told my father about me. Which leads us to one conclusion: Gerry Loveridge is still the most likely candidate for ‘person who supplied half my genes’. And I had just slept with him. I was sick immediately after this thought.
    I stayed in the forest for as long as I could, but in the end I realised that I was going to have to go home. I was almost enjoying the smell coming from between my legs by then, it seemed disgustingly fitting.
    By the time I got home I was hot and angry and went straight upstairs to run myself a bath. I like hot baths, but this one was scalding. I lay in it for ages, watching my skin turn pink and wondering if I might pass out and save everyone the bother of explaining anything to me.
    In the end I had to get out because, really, what else is there ever to do but carry on like you did before? There was no way