Tess Evans - Book of Lost Threads

‘He’s changed a lot,’ he warned her.

‘I never knew him, so it won’t matter to me,’ she replied with a shrug. ‘As I said, I’m only looking him up because my family used to know his family, and Granny would like to get in touch.’ She was surprised at her own glibness.

Finn was appalled to learn how easy it was to find him and angry with Phil for revealing his whereabouts. ‘So old Phil keeps track of me, does he? Never could mind his own business.’ Seeing the hurt on Moss’s face, he continued more gently. ‘So what started you looking?’

‘The contract. I found the contract.’ Moss was being evasive. In fact, she couldn’t really articulate her motives because she didn’t fully understand them, preferring to sidle up and consider them obliquely. Initially, there was the simple fact that she was different. None of the children she knew had two mothers. The teasing at school had ebbed and flowed as the bullies and their satellites were diverted by newer victims. In primary school it was masculine, sporadic and almost ritualistic. ‘Lezzos!’ the boys would shout, and Moss would run to the shelter of the girls’ toilets. Her friends would then cluck and cluster around, enjoying the drama. The little girls were not sure what ‘lezzos’ were, but knew they had to band together against the boys.

At high school, though, the girls were the predators, in particular the pretty queen bee, Jessica, who tormented her with such refined subtlety that Moss longed for the predictable cruelty of the boy gangs. The other girls milled around behind Jessica and her three cronies. It was better than being out front in the firing line. Moss met the taunts stoically but wept secretly in her room at home. By this stage she had no friends and spent lunchtimes in the library.

In childish desperation, Moss decided to buy Jessica a present, hoping to win a reprieve from the bullying. She saved up her pocket money until there was enough to buy what all the girls in her class coveted-a Magnetique Supa Gloss lipstick. She agonised over the colour and told the salesgirl it was for her big sister who was blonde and blue-eyed. She had it giftwrapped, and the next day she waited until home time, edging up to Jessica as they rounded the corner from the school.

‘I’ve got something for you. A present.’

Jessica raised her eyebrows as she took the parcel. ‘A present? Let’s see. Come over here, everyone. Miranda’s given me a present.’

When her audience was large enough, she struck. ‘Yeech! A lipstick! She’s a lezzo like her mothers. Yeech! She wants a big red kiss.’ And amid screams of laughter and exclamations of revulsion from the other girls she grabbed Moss’s tiny breasts and kissed her full on the lips. ‘Where else do you want to be kissed, Lezzo?’ she asked with a sly smile at her audience. ‘Come on, girls, who’s next?’

Moss turned to run, but her arms were pinioned. The crowd began to slink away, but not before two more girls had kissed her and another squeezed her breasts painfully. Then Jessica opened the lipstick and wrote something on her victim’s forehead, before stepping back to admire her handiwork.

‘Quick! Miss Webb’s coming.’ The remaining girls melted away as the teacher turned the corner. She stopped and put her arm around the weeping girl who was rubbing a red smear on her forehead.

‘Miranda, what on earth’s the matter?’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Was it Jessica?’

‘It’s nothing, Miss Webb,’ Moss gasped between sobs. ‘I just don’t feel well.’

For several days, Moss was granted a reprieve. With Miss Webb hovering protectively in the background, Jessica lay low. Pale and peaky, Moss crept into class and scurried to the library in her breaks. The other girls kept their distance, and Moss felt sick and hollow and somehow dirty. She was ashamed of her mothers and ashamed of herself for feeling that way.

These thoughts were too painful to leave lying around unattended. She might come upon them at just the wrong moment and they would trip her up, sending her sprawling helplessly as the contents of her head poured out into the unforgiving sunshine. Her face became watchful and grim, the effort to control her feelings begetting a stubborn will for survival. Moss was only thirteen and felt an aching need to protect her mothers. Nevertheless, action was required.

‘I have to change schools,’ she announced abruptly one night at dinner. ‘The teachers are picking on me.’

Her mothers looked at her with concern. ‘Picking on you? The teachers? Which teachers?’

‘All of them. They hate me.’ And she burst into tears. The two women looked at each other as she jumped to her feet, knocking over her water glass.

‘I’ll go,’ said Amy, and went off to her daughter’s room, where she tapped on the door. Ignoring Moss’s ‘Go away,’ she entered and sat on the bed beside the sobbing girl, who finally blurted out the whole story. Amy sat stroking her daughter’s hair until her sobs subsided and her breathing became deep and even. She pulled up the covers and went back down to the dining room, unaware that Moss, who had been feigning sleep, had padded down after her and was listening at the door.

‘She’s being picked on because of us,’ Amy told Linsey.

‘Those little bitches. I could kill them! With my bare hands.’

‘She wants to start afresh at Bradfield and…’

Linsey’s voice was dry. ‘I think I can see where this is going.’

‘I’m sorry, Linny. She doesn’t want the new school to know she has two mothers.’

‘Well then. I’ll have to become her aunty,’ Linsey said bleakly.

‘We can discuss that later.’ Moss heard the pity in Amy’s voice. ‘It could be me-the aunt, I mean.’

Linsey’s words were brisk but her voice was husky. ‘Don’t be absurd, Amy. Of course it will be me.’

At thirteen, Moss had little notion of what this offer might have cost Linsey. At the time, her predominant emotion was relief. Only in later years had she come to realise that, in all her relationships, Linsey had always been the lover. For Linsey, the beloved always came first.

Six years after Linsey’s departure, when Moss turned twenty-one, Amy had finally told her about the odd circumstances of her conception. She was startled by the truth; while understanding her mothers’ relationship, she had assumed that Amy had conceived in the usual way. She had had no inkling that they’d taken so much trouble to find the right father.

‘All you need to know is that he was a good man, but the agreement was that he play no further part in our lives. We must respect that, Miranda.’ Amy still called her Miranda when she needed to impress her with the seriousness of the matter at hand.

‘I didn’t make any agreement,’ Moss retorted. ‘What if I want to meet him?’ She had a sudden moment of comprehension. ‘I suppose this was all Linsey’s bright idea.’

‘Well, it was Linsey’s…’ Amy began.

‘I knew it. I knew she never thought I was good enough. She tried to make me something I’m not, and I wasn’t and somehow I’m to blame. She experimented with me.’ She stopped and glared at Amy, who was processing this convoluted speech. ‘You know what I mean.’

Amy opened her mouth to protest, but gave up and shrugged inwardly instead. She didn’t want to get involved in a dispute between these two passionate souls. It was true Linsey expected a very different child from the one Moss had been. Besides, while their separation was reasonably amicable, old wounds still festered in Amy’s breast. No-one could ever measure up to Linsey’s absurd standards , she thought petulantly. And that’s a fact.

But Moss brooded. If Linsey had a particular child in mind-a child who was beautiful like Amy and clever like her father-she, Moss, was obviously a disappointment. She glared at her reflection in the mirror. She was clearly not the tall, clever, blue-eyed blonde of Linsey’s imagining. Small of stature, she had the wiry brown hair and gamine features of her Grandmother Sinclair. Her saving grace was her blue eyes, darker than Amy’s but with the same long lashes. Aside from this, she saw herself as a failed experiment. Not to Amy, of course. Moss had always been sure of Amy’s love and approval but perversely valued her praise less than the exacting Linsey’s. Now, mortified to discover that she was a designer baby gone wrong, she realised she could never live up to Linsey’s standards so there was no point in continuing to try. She felt a terrible hollow in her sense of herself. She needed to lash out. Place the blame squarely where it belonged. She would confront Linsey and then cut herself off from her entirely. After that, she’d find another parent-her father-to take her place.