Dammit. I’m not busy. I grab a cloth and get to work. My mum is telling me about the village her and my father want to visit in Hampshire when I hear the buzz of a text message coming through and reach for my pocket. But my phone isn’t in my pocket, it’s on the bench. Next to where my mother is standing. I see her glance at it, absently, and then her face freezes and she turns white.
I snatch up my phone and read the message. Oh, god. It’s from Rufus. Daddy.
How’s daddy’s little fucktoy?
Oh, crap. I look from my phone to my mother. She’s staring at me, but then looks over my shoulder for some reason. And then her face clears a little, like she’s mentally shaking herself, though she still looks like she’s seen a ghost.
“It’s just—” I start. But what do I say? “Rufus—” He likes it when I call him daddy. Oh, god, oh, Christ, I can’t say that.
She holds up a hand. “No, no.” And then she turns away, shaking her head, and goes back to what she what she was doing. Her shoulders are up round her ears and her hands are fluttering from one stack of crockery to another. Then she stops what she’s doing and walks out of the kitchen without looking back.
I try to keep tidying up the kitchen, hoping my mother just went to the bathroom. My hands are shaking and there’s a sick feeling in the pit of my belly, and after ten minutes I realize she’s not coming back.
I have to make this better. This isn’t supposed to be how things turn out, not when I’m so happy. I go upstairs and find her in their room, at the window. She’s staring out the window, one hand over her mouth. She hears me behind her but doesn’t turn round.
“I’m trying to imagine the Rufus I have met saying those things to you. Calling himself your... He seemed like a decent young man. How he had us fooled.”
“He is a decent young man. He’s a wonderful person.”
She turns. “Does he talk to you like that all the time?”
“Of course not.”
She holds out her hand for my phone. “Show me.”
I quickly catalogue our text conversations.
You look so pretty with daddy’s cock in your ass.
Daddy wants to give you a good hiding. I haven’t heard you squeal and beg for mercy in too long.
Daddy’s going to choke you as you come.
And then there are the photographs that he’s sent me. Arty, black-and-white shots of women tied up in elaborate bondage. Women with large, veiny male hands wrapped around their throats. Behinds pink from spankings.
Mixed in with all the depraved missives are sweet ones, but even they are kinky.
Have you been a good girl for me, princess?
Daddy loves his babygirl.
I clutch my phone tightly. My mother drops her hand. “I thought so.”
“They’re just text messages. You can’t know what he’s like from text messages. He’s sweet and kind—you saw that for yourself. That wasn’t an act. That’s him.”
Her lip curls like I’ve said something disgusting. “How can a man talk to his girlfriend like that? I was worried from the start that he would take advantage of you and I was right.”
I grit my teeth. Once my mother gets on the “I was right all along” train it’s hard to get her off it.
“You were always vulnerable, Abby. You’ve always been like a little girl, oblivious of the real world. He’s seen that in you and he’s...using it. He’s a pervert. He must be a sociopath as well to hide it all so well.”
“Mum, he’s not. Don’t say that about him.”
She looks me hard in the eye. “Has he ever hit you, Abby?”
I must look like a deer in headlights. Her face crumples. “Oh, Abby.”
There’s a buzzing in my ears and I’m chasing words and phrases all over my brain, struggling for the right thing to say.