The Flavours of Love by Dorothy Koomson Read Free Book Online

crocheted doilies; the slimy trail that is all over the rocket leaves, which have huge chunks taken out of them but not as artistically as the spinach; and the glistening trail that links the near-black earth between the rocket, spinach, watercress and cabbages.
    ‘Wow,’ Phoebe breathes. ‘They did this all in one night?’
    ‘One day and one night,’ I say.
    ‘
Wow
.’ She’s impressed, probably imagining what it’d be like to go to the human equivalent of such a party. ‘Wow.’
    ‘Do you have any idea what you want to do?’ I ask her now that I’ve impressed her and we’re on a neutral subject.
    The shutters around her immediately come down, whatever positive emotion she had towards me is whisked away in an instant. ‘Whatever you say,’ she mumbles.
    ‘This isn’t my decision,’ I reply.
    Phoebe starts to prod at the edge of the earth around the plundered tomato plant with the toe of her trainer, openly unsettled by what I’ve said. I watch her as she avoids touching the areas of dirt that glisten with slug goo. ‘I knew you wouldn’t care,’ she eventually says. ‘That’s why I didn’t bother telling you first.’
    I’m not going to bite at that. I’m not going to let her goad me intoshouting at her. ‘Do you know what I wish?’ I say. I extend my foot and prod at the earth, too. It’s pointless, but enjoyable. ‘I wish you’d come to talk to me before you did anything like that. I really thought we could talk about anything, Pheebs. Admittedly, I probably would have gone off at the deep end
at first
because I would have thought you were too young to have sex. Not your body, I’m sure you think your body is ready, and I’m sure you thought your mind was ready, but really, I would have liked to have discussed it with you. I didn’t even think this sort of thing was on your radar.’
    She bunches her lips up and continues to poke at the soil in front of her, but doesn’t interrupt what I’m saying so maybe she’s listening.
    ‘I would have loved to have found out what you felt about it. Who he was. If he was nice to you.’ I stop what I’m doing and focus on my daughter. She is so young. In my head she’ll always be that bigcheeked bundle of screams that was handed to me minutes after she was born. In my mind, she’ll always be the little girl who managed to lose her black shoe with the red bow on the way home from school and still to this day doesn’t remember how. She’ll always be the little girl sitting on the bed beside me crying because it’s finally hit her that her dad isn’t coming back. Phoebe will probably always be young to me, I don’t think she’ll ever be old enough to have sex in the nostalgia of my mind. ‘Was he? Was he nice to you?’
    She also stops jabbing at the dirt. She doesn’t move as she considers my question. With her lips twisted thoughtfully to the left she starts to chew on her inner cheek. Then: shrug. ‘I suppose.’
    ‘Did he pressure you into it? Or did you want to?’
Or was it ‘hooking up’?
    ‘I wanted to feel close to him, Mum,’ she says.
    ‘And you didn’t feel close to him before?’
    ‘Kind of, I suppose. I just wanted him …’
    ‘To like you.’
    ‘Yeah. I like him. I like him so much, and he makes me feel really funny in my stomach, and it feels really awful when I’m not withhim and sometimes even the texts aren’t enough. I just wanted him to feel the same way. Is that bad?’
    Bad? It’s
horrific
She’s having sex to make someone like her. Not because her body’s telling her it’s ready, not because she wants pleasure from it, not even because she’s curious what the fuss is all about, but because it’s currency. It’s to get something. ‘No,’ I reassure her. ‘It’s not bad. I completely understand, although it’s probably not the best reason to do it? I mean, it might have been better to do it because you felt he was as close to you as you feel to him, and with the both of you feeling so