For Better for Worse

‘Vanessa…’ She could hear the harshness in her voice, feel it tearing at her throat. ‘Didn’t you hear me calling you? What’s going on?’

She could see Sasha smirking at her and cursed herself for the banality, the predictability of her reactions, but how could she explain to Vanessa how afraid she was, how shocked not just by her behaviour but by her own inability to predict it, to protect her from the consequences of it? What if she had not found them… what if those boys…?

She shuddered, visualising herself going back to tell Marcus that Vanessa had disappeared…

Out of the corner of her eye she saw the smoke curling up from the cigarette Vanessa was still holding awkwardly in her hand as though unfamiliar with the act of smoking it, unlike Sasha, who took a deliberate lungful of smoke and exhaled it with casual expertise, challenging her… daring her to say or do anything.

The boys, less aggressive and dangerous than she had first feared, were already melting away. As she saw the vulnerable, almost panicky look Vanessa gave their disappearing backs, Eleanor felt her own heart soften in quick sympathy, but when Vanessa turned back to look at her the resentment and loathing in her eyes quickly reminded Eleanor of reality.

‘Vanessa—’ she repeated quietly, but she wasn’t allowed to continue.

‘You can’t tell me what to do,’ Vanessa interrupted her hotly. ‘I wasn’t doing anything wrong, anyway.’

Nothing wrong. Eleanor looked pointedly at the cigarette Vanessa was still holding.

‘I don’t think your father would agree with that defence, do you, Vanessa?’

‘Oh, trust you to bring Dad into it. I’ll bet you just can’t wait to tell him, can you? I hate you and I wish he’d never married you, but you can’t stop me doing what I want. Tell Dad if you like, I don’t care. It was you who made us come here. Boring, dull place.’

Her face was flushed with anger and defiance now, the hot colour overlying the greenish hue it had had earlier.

How long had she been smoking? Only recently, Eleanor suspected. Surely she knew the dangers of what she was doing? She couldn’t not, she was an intelligent girl—and as for the other danger…

Eleanor looked round the small, enclosed place trying not to ignore the images her imagination was creating. Two girls on their own, vulnerable and provocative… those boys… her skin felt clammy and cold.

‘Have you any idea of what could have happened?’ she demanded, unable to hold back her feelings any longer. ‘Those boys…’

‘We were talking, that’s all,’ Vanessa told her.

‘You had no right to arrange to meet them without asking me,’ Eleanor countered. ‘I may not be your mother,’ she added, anticipating Vanessa’s familiar protest, ‘but while you’re with me you are my responsibility. Have you any idea how I would feel if I had to go back and tell your father…?’

‘Oh, yes… that’s all you care about, isn’t it? What Dad thinks. You don’t care about me at all, really. Go on, admit it—secretly you’d love it if I just disappeared… if someone did murder me.

Well…’

‘Vanessa, that’s not true!’

‘Liar,’ Vanessa taunted her softly, throwing down her cigarette and adding angrily, ‘Well, go ahead. Tell Dad what you like… I don’t care.’

Eleanor closed her eyes, warning herself that there was no point in provoking Vanessa into a full-scale row, especially not in front of Sasha.

Was it that, she asked herself tiredly, or was it more that she simply felt too overwhelmed to tackle all the issues Vanessa’s behaviour had raised…?

What would she have done, said had Vanessa been her own daughter? Or did she secretly believe that her own child would never have behaved in such a way?

As she turned back down the path, shepherding them in front of her, Eleanor wondered what was worse: their deliberate deceit or the fact that, despite her intelligence, Vanessa was apparently either unaware or uncaring of the damage smoking would do to her health? And added to that was the spine-chilling cold shock of very real fear Eleanor had experienced when she had first seen them.

No doubt the boys were harmless enough, for all their unappealing physical appearance. They had certainly, unlike Sasha, showed no inclination to force any kind of confrontation when they saw her; but what if things had been different… what if they had been more worldly… more aggressive? Was she being hyper-cynical in feeling that it hadn’t just been for a cigarette and a chat that they had followed up on the invitation which either Sasha or Vanessa or both had issued to them?

She did not for a moment believe that Vanessa had had anything sexual in mind, but that was the whole point. From the look on her face after she had thrown her cigarette away, the greenish pallor of her skin, Eleanor suspected that the smoking had been more out of bravado and peer pressure than anything else.

Just supposing another kind of peer pressure had been put on her—or, even worse, actual physical force?

Her stomach churning with anxiety and with guilt as well, Eleanor didn’t notice the tangle of roots until she tripped over them.

As she put out her hand to steady herself she saw Sasha and Vanessa turn round to watch her, and heard Sasha sniggering at her as a rough tear was added to the existing damage to her clothes.

The drive back to London was completed in a silence that was only broken when Vanessa demanded challengingly, ‘I suppose you’re going to go running to Dad now. Well, we weren’t doing anything wrong. Just talking… It must be true that middle-aged women get all hysterical about things,’ she added insultingly.