The Flavours of Love by Dorothy Koomson Read Free Book Online Page A

close, that was the natural next step.’
Is this the right time for this?
I wonder as I speak. It seems a bit like locking the stable door after the horse has not only bolted but has made it to the other end of the country in a clear, unhindered run. ‘I can’t tell you what to do in any way that will stop you having sex, but I think it’d be great for you if you could promise yourself that you’re only ever going to do it because you want to enjoy it. Not because everyone else is doing it, not because you want someone to like you, not because you think you have to after someone’s nice to you, but because you want to feel the pleasure from it. OK?’
    ‘But …’ she begins.
    ‘But?’ I ask.
    ‘Nothing,’ she says, shaking her head. She buries her hands deeper in her pockets, hunches her shoulders over as she resumes digging at the slug earth with the toe of her shoe. ‘Can I have my phone back?’
    You didn’t say, please
, I want to point out to her.
I spent years teaching you to always say please and thank you
. ‘What contraception were you both using?’ I ask to stall her. I suspect the second I hand over the little silver and black box of circuits and buttons I have in my apron pocket, I will not get anything else out of her.
    She shrugs briefly and dismissively with both shoulders.
    In Phoebe-shrug speak, this reply causes my stomach to turn over right before my heart does the same. I rotate on the spot and look at her. When she continues to stare downwards, I take her shouldersand force her to look at me. ‘You did use contraception, didn’t you?’ I ask.
    ‘You don’t need to the first time because if you’re a virgin then you can’t get pregnant.’ She shrugs me off.
    Nervously, I unscrew the bubble wand from its bottle. Then screw it on again. Then unscrew it. I promised myself I wouldn’t let this happen. That I wouldn’t let my daughter become like me: too scared to talk to my mother; too terrified to tell my mother my periods had started (and only did in the end because I needed money from her to buy towels); too ashamed of my body and what was happening to it to ask for help when I needed it most. I promised myself that I would always be there for my daughter, and I’ve let this happen. I’ve managed to blink, to close my eyes over the period of losing Joel, and open them again to find I have missed the most important time of my daughter’s life. And I’ve missed the chance to not turn into my mother.
    ‘Did he tell you that?’ I ask her, still anxiously unscrewing and screwing on the lid of my bubbles bottle.
    She nods. Her eyes, mouth, forehead, chin are set with pure defiance as she challenges me,
dares
me to tell her he was wrong. Even though her body has proved that all by itself, she would still believe anything he said.
    ‘Well, it’s not true.’ There should be some comfort, I suppose, that it was her first time. That the ‘hooking up’ talk was all for show.
    ‘But he said—’
    ‘Sweetheart, come on now, you’re a clever girl, you know where babies come from and how they’re made. You know that every time you have sex you take the chance of getting pregnant except if a person has had a tubal ligation, or a vasectomy.’
    ‘But—’
    ‘Pheebs, you’re pregnant. Your own body has told you it’s not true.’
    She scrunches up her face in rage, like a six-year-old told there’ll be no Christmas this year because Father Christmas isn’t real.
    Something occurs to me as I face her silent wrath: ‘If you reallybelieved what he told you, why did you use the test so early? Surely you would have waited until two periods had passed.’
    She sighs. ‘Cos I thought I’d better be doubly sure so I got the morning-after pill.’
    ‘And when you were late you knew it might not have worked?’
    She nods. ‘But that doesn’t mean it’s not true,’ she adds, quickly.
    ‘Erm, obviously it does.’
    ‘I need my phone back.’
    I need my Joel back
. He’d know