Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [107]
“And it still depends.”
“On what?” Hannah was now bordering on belligerence. Her switch flicked easily these days.
“Do I still get my bacon sandwich before you go?”
She grabbed his sweater from the back of the chair, where he had thrown it the night before, and aimed it at his head.
Mark mock groaned and rolled over, pulling a pillow over his head.
Not for the first time in the last few weeks, he had the vague feeling that she was lying to him. She’d become a little closed off. A little belligerent. She’d started closing doors at lot. She was on the phone all the time.
He’d put two and two together and made what he was sure was five: it had started when she’d met that guy at the party a few weeks ago. When he’d asked about him, she’d brushed the questions off, making a joke of it, until he persisted, when she’d gotten sulky and spent the rest of the night in her room, whispering into her phone and listening to awful music.
He realized she was a masterful manipulator. She’d just deflected him with all this Jane stuff. Made him a much juicier topic for conversation than she was herself.
It wasn’t fair, shutting him out like this. He’d always been easygoing about stuff like that. Their house had always been full of her friends. Not like some parents. Barbara always said you kept them close and you kept them safe. He wasn’t some Dickensian papa.
Maybe he was worrying about nothing. Maybe she actually was out shopping and eating with her friends. Maybe his head hurt. Maybe he’d go back to sleep.
Hannah
That was the first really serious lie she’d ever told her dad. Fibs, of course. Half truths, exaggerations and stuff. But this was a big fat lie. Her chest was hot from telling it, but the feeling wasn’t all bad. Like when she’d been really young, like seven or eight, and her friend Cheryl had dared her to steal a Bazooka bubble gum from the newsagent. Taking it felt really bad, but kind of good, too. Exciting and daring. Like she was someone else just for a moment. Of course, she’d been caught with the Bazooka and frog-marched back to the shop to hand it back and apologize, and then she was not allowed to have Cheryl for tea ever again, or to watch television for a week, which hadn’t been half so bad a punishment as Mum’s disappointed, sad face. But that wasn’t going to happen this time. She certainly wasn’t going to be caught by Mum, was she? Besides, she’d been working really hard for these stupid exams. She deserved a bit of time off. Why shouldn’t it be up to her how she spent it?
She was going to Nathan’s house. Not to a film or for a pizza or to shop. Not with her friends. The bit about having her phone with her was true. But Dad hadn’t asked her if it was switched on.
She’d told Nathan to pick her up a couple of streets away, and he hadn’t protested. He wasn’t wild about parents, he said. His own were going to be out, and they would have the house to themselves this afternoon. Hannah was nervous. She’d never been alone with a boy in that way before. At the cinema, sure. And she’d done her fair share of slow dancing and snogging, at parties and things. She wasn’t a prude or anything. But this was something different, with someone who seemed older and more serious. The boys at school were still such colossal idiots.
But he was so sweet as well. He said the nicest things to her. He had since the first time they met, at Ruby’s party a couple of weeks ago. He’d been calling her and texting her ever since. On Valentine’s Day he’d sent her a card, and he’d signed it “Nathan” so that there was no doubt. It wasn’t one of those schmaltzy, sick-making cards, either; it was a postcard of a painting of a pre-Raphaelite sort of a girl, all Rapunzel hair and dreamy expression. He’d written Be Mine? with a question mark and signed his name. She’d never been so thrilled with an item of post and three words.
Nathan would be eighteen in September. He was doing his A levels, and he’d be going