Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [139]
“She’s lying. Mark’s just said so.”
“I said I thought she might be.”
“She can’t be allowed to do that. Then you really have lost control.”
He was sitting in an armchair contemplating his control, or lack thereof, when Hannah appeared. Her entrance had been heralded by forty-five minutes of toing and froing from the bathroom to bedroom, and back, and by the buzz of the hair dryer, followed by, blissfully, the Red Hot Chili Peppers being turned off. Every sodding song sounded the same, and they all made him want to put cushions over his head. Or polythene.
He swung around in the chair as she came down the stairs, trying not to look too much like a Bond villain. And then trying not to look too shocked. Your child’s phases of development never seemed to happen gradually—they were always, somehow, shocking. Long hair. Second front teeth—the ones that are always a little too big for their mouth. The ability to stand on two feet. And now, breasts and hips. It seemed to him that Hannah had gone skipping upstairs to bed five minutes ago, in a floral-sprigged nightdress and pigtails, and come down now transformed into a white Beyoncé. All curvy. It was utterly disconcerting. Hannah was wearing long skinny jeans that buttoned at least four inches below her navel, and a tight stripy top four inches above. The midsection, a very slight layer of flesh on top of obviously strong muscle, drew your eye immediately. Until you noticed the eyeliner, applied in the Bardot method (if Bardot had been drinking meths and no longer had a very steady hand). The effect might have been comic, if it hadn’t been so scary.
Barbara might have tried to send her straight back upstairs to wash her eyes. Might have suggested a thermal vest to bridge the gap. Might have threatened to lock the front door and send the ride away. He’d seen her do it with Amanda. He didn’t know what to say.
Hannah’s eyes—what little he could read of their expression—challenged him.
“Am I allowed to know where you’re going?”
The other night, they’d fallen out about something insignificant. Hannah had told him she was old enough to move out and live on her own. Over sixteen—“practically seventeen.” Which meant driving a heavy goods vehicle was out, but almost everything else was acceptable, apparently. He’d managed to bite back any comment about what she might live on, and he’d won that little argument, whatever it was; he couldn’t remember—there seemed to be so many of them these days—but the “old enough” argument felt like it was getting harder to win. Still, he hadn’t meant to start so aggressively.
“Out.”
He sighed. “Hannah—don’t be so bloody rude. I asked a perfectly civilized question. I deserve a proper answer.”
“Sorry. Yeah. You do.” Flashes of the daughter he recognized. “I’m going out with Alice and Phoebe.”
He knew both the girls. They were nice girls. They didn’t, so far as he knew, wear eyeliner that looked like it had been applied with a wax crayon.
“Really?”
“Really! If you don’t believe me, you can call either of their mothers and ask them.” He hated the defensive, aggressive tone. And his own anger. This wasn’t how he wanted to talk with his little girl.
If she was calling his bluff, she was doing it well.
“And where are you going?”
“I’m taxi-ing it to Phoebe’s, we’re all meeting up there, then there’s a sixth-form party, down her road, so no one’s driving. And I’ll get dropped back—probably by Alice’s dad.”
“By when?”
“By one?”
“Those two are allowed to stay out until then, are they?”
She looked at him as though he had suggested something absurd.
“Doh. Of course.”
Mark wasn’t happy about it, but before he had the chance to say anything else, the taxi driver pulled up in the drive, honked impatiently, and Hannah was gone, giving him a quick peck on the cheek and responding to his request that she take a coat with a giggle (not a coat).
He thought about calling Phoebe’s mum for about a nanosecond. He didn’t know these people—not well. He didn’t want them to know he didn’t trust his own daughter. Even if it was true.
Christ, life moved fast.