‘No. It belongs to the shop and that’s exactly where it’s going,’ Eleanor told her fiercely. ‘Vanessa, how could you do such a thing?’ she added in shaky bewilderment. ‘Your father…’
‘Oh, you have to bring him into it, don’t you? I bet you just can’t wait to go running to tell him all about it. Well, it’s no big deal—everyone does it. It doesn’t mean anything.’
‘Vanessa, it’s theft!’ Eleanor protested. ‘Don’t you realise the consequences? And to just take something…’ Eleanor’s feelings overwhelmed her for a moment.
‘Yeah, it’s wrong for me to take something,’ Vanessa shouted at her, ‘but it’s OK for people like you, isn’t it? Only—’
‘What do you mean?’ Eleanor demanded. ‘I’ve never taken anything… stolen anything…’
‘You took my father,’ Vanessa told her bitterly.
Eleanor sat down on the bed, half unable to comprehend what she was hearing.
‘You… adults… grown-ups…’ Vanessa sneered. ‘You just do what you like, don’t you… take what you like, and then you turn round and tell us that it’s wrong? Well—’
‘Vanessa! Is that really what you think; that I’ve taken Marcus away from you? Your parents were divorced long before he and I met…’
‘Yes. But everything’s different now. You want to change everything. I bet you wish I was dead really, don’t you… dead or in prison? You pretend that you want me here but I know you don’t really. I’ve seen it all before. Some of the girls at school… they’ve got stepmothers. At first they’re all over them, giving them things, making a big fuss of them—that’s before they get married, but once they are it’s all different… then they start having babies and complaining about the noise teenagers make, about how disruptive they are… saying there isn’t enough room for them…’
Numbly Eleanor remembered what Tom had said to her about her and Marcus having children; then she had simply thought Vanessa was being malicious.
‘And Ma’s just as bad. She can’t wait to dump me on you and go to America…’
Eleanor watched her helplessly. Had she been her own child her instinctive reaction would have been to take her in her arms and hold her very tightly while she told her how much she loved her, how important she was to her and how she would always be a part of her life. But she wasn’t her child, she was Marcus’s, and it was his love and reassurance she wanted, not hers.
Besides, one look at her hostile, stiff body confirmed that the last thing Vanessa wanted was any display of physical affection or compassion from her.
Was all this emotion genuine or simply a means of deflecting her attention from the real issue? Either way, she couldn’t afford to take any chances, she recognised.
‘I’m going to have to take this dress back to the shop, Vanessa… When I have I—’
‘You’ll what?’ Vanessa interrupted her aggressively. ‘Report me to Dad? He doesn’t want me here any mo
re than you do. He never wanted me. I was an accident. They weren’t supposed to be having any children… Ma told me that, not that you’d know it to listen to him now. It’s always Tom this and Gavin that…’
Eleanor swallowed hard as she heard the frustrated anger and pain in her accusation.
‘Lots of people have children they haven’t deliberately planned, Vanessa. It doesn’t mean that they don’t want and love them. As a matter of fact I didn’t plan to have Gavin—’
‘Oh, come off it,’ Vanessa interrupted her, saying rudely, ‘Mrs Perfect, making a mistake like that? Well you might be perfect at everything else, but you’ll never be a perfect stepmother. I’d rather Dad was married to someone like Sondra.’
Perfect? Was that really how Vanessa saw her? If only she knew the truth!
‘I’m not a fool, you know,’ Vanessa carried on aggressively. ‘Ma pretends that there’s nothing she wants more than to take me with her to LA, but I know better… and you don’t want me here either.’
‘That’s not true,’ Eleanor objected.
‘Yes, it is. You can’t wait for me to leave so that your precious sons can have my room.’
‘Vanessa, you’re wrong. We are short of space here, and that’s the whole reason why we want to move, but…’
She stopped. It was Marcus she needed to talk to, not Vanessa… Marcus who could and must find a way of assuring his daughter that she was loved and valued.
* * *
Eleanor winced as the dress set off the shop’s alarms when she walked inside it. She asked to see the manager, mentally rehearsing her prepared speech, but when she gave it, avoiding her eyes as she explained that the dress must have slipped into her bag by accident, she could see that the girl did not believe her.
‘It happens all the time,’ the girl told her as she took the dress from Eleanor. ‘We do what we can to stop it, but it’s impossible to get them all. It’s a game to them, you see… a challenge. Most of them could easily afford to pay for what they take. Ask the police.’