The night before her first day at school, I laid out her uniform on the chair by her bed. I didn’t worry about waking her. Iona sleeps so deeply these days. She sleeps all the time. I went into her wardrobe and rifled through the yellowing bridesmaid dress from when she was eight, her coats, a pink fleecy dressing gown, a grey wool dressing gown, a lot of dressing gowns. I picked out a white shirt, still with crease lines from the packet. At my insistence, we bought new shirts at Marks and Spencer’s last week. She wouldn’t let me buy her a new skirt. She has one, so I pulled that out too. You might remember it: the black polyester skirt that we got years ago, with a gold buckle on the side. When we bought it, it was rather grown-up for a fourteen-year-old and a little too large. We thought she might grow into it one day.
I got out the wool blazer from the back of the wardrobe. The school let her keep the prefect’s piping around the sides from last year, although they said she couldn’t wear the badge. That annoyed me, but she didn’t care – which annoyed me more. I really ought to have gotten the blazer dry-cleaned; unworn for almost a year, it had a dullness about it that I didn’t remember.
She stirred in her sleep. I worried for a moment that she might wake but she didn’t. Just a peaceful sigh and a shift of her weight. I went to the drawers and pulled at the handles. The drawer scuffed out. I ran my fingers over the nylon of her new tights. I pulled one out, but it was longer than I expected, greater stretches of it emerging from the drawer like a clown’s handkerchief trick. I gathered the length of the tights around my fingers and wound it over and over again until I had a small black parcel. Tomorrow, they will be returned to me with a hole poked through one of the feet, as always. I didn’t choose her underwear for her. She would probably have viewed that as an imposition.
Then, I placed it all on the chair by her bed. Her head was so close to me that her breath tickled my arm as I moved about her. I put the shirt inside the blazer and hooked it over the back. I folded the skirt and left it on the seat, the neat package of tights on top.
Lastly, I took her tie from her dresser and draped it over the shirt. I stepped back. The sculpture made the vague impression of a schoolgirl. She was flattened and compact, reduced only to her essential components. I didn’t do anything as clichéd as watch our daughter sleep from the doorway and admire how her hollow cheeks were fattened up by the lamplight. I have done enough of that. Instead, I turned out the light, shut the door behind me, and went to bed.
When I came downstairs the next morning, she was at the table, toying with a spoonful of yoghurt and with a book propped open in front of her. The kitchen sagged with the hollow scent of instant coffee. She wore makeup, which is unusual, or it has been during this past year. Her foundation was a shade too dark, and she had done a terrible job filling in her eyebrows. I’ve told her before that she doesn’t need to fill in her eyebrows – that’s for fair-haired white girls and even then, most of them paint them on far too thick. She has my eyebrows, full and almost black – the only Chinese thing about her, as my mother laments. I decided not to say anything.
She was wearing her uniform as I had laid it out for her. My chair-girl had been filled out by bones and a little flesh.
‘Good morning!’
She didn’t look up from her book. Jane Eyre.
‘Mm. I didn’t much like that one,’ I said, bustling about her as I put toast in the toaster, two eggs in a saucepan for the boil. Still, she said nothing. ‘Hello?’ I ruffled her hair and she flinched at my touch.
She let her spoon clatter into the bowl and took up the book in both hands. ‘You probably just didn’t get it.’
The hob made a sharp noise as I raised the temperature. Bleep. Bleep. ‘Well, maybe I got it but just didn’t like it.’
She flicked to the next page. ‘If you got it,’ an eye roll was implicit in her voice, ‘you couldn’t help but like it.’
The eggs rattled against one another. One of them had a hairpin split down the side, so that just a wisp of white escaped, floating and dancing with the bubbling water. ‘Iona, you’re going to struggle in life if you go into every room thinking you’re the cleverest person there.’ She flicked to a new page. The chair creaked with her movement. The air shifted around her, I could feel it, even from the other side of the room. ‘Do you hear me?’
A breath. A bite of the lip. ‘I’m reading it for my dissertation. I think I’m going to compare it to Rebecca. You know, by Daphne du Maurier?’
I turned to face her. She was looking at me now, the book on the table. ‘That’s a great book.’ ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It’s better, actually.’
She glanced down at her bowl and churned the yoghurt and granola. I sniffed a small laugh. Her cheeks had reddened. The timer went off and I had to turn away from her to fish the eggs out. The chair creaked again. I sat next to her and for a while we said nothing. We let the kitchen hum with the mundane noises of a butter knife scratching against toast, the soft brush as one page was discarded for the next, the muffled squelches of saliva and macerating food.
‘Right,’ I checked the clock. Five minutes to spare. ‘Photo time!’ ‘Just use the one from last year,’ she shrugged.
‘New year, new photo. Come on through to the living room.’
‘Nah, I can’t be arsed. I don’t see why you’d want to document this.’
‘Please, Iona, I just want a photo. It’s important to me. Plus,’ I couldn’t help myself, ‘we’ve got to document those eyebrows.’
‘What the fuck, Mum!’ She erupted from her seat and started washing her mug, making aggressive splashes in the water.
‘Don’t use language like that with me. It’s vile.’ I fiddled with my work bag, needing something to do with my hands. No matter how many times Iona has sworn at me, something tightens to hear her speak like that. She knows it too.
She finished washing the mug and stormed through to the living room. ‘Let’s get this fucking over with, then.’
Dutifully, she sat on one end of the couch with a sweeter-than-sugar smile and glassy eyes, although not before swiping at her furious, too-dark eyebrows. It did improve them. I grasped my phone and snapped one, two photos. She had upped and left before the end of the second flash. The house flurried with her movements, up the stairs, then back into the hall as she pulled on her boots, her bag falling over her head.
‘I’m going to the car,’ and I heard the rattle of keys followed by the slam of the door. A quiet stillness that unsettled me more. I soothed myself with the languid clacking of my heels on the floor as I moved from room to room. I got my own bag from the kitchen and tipped the last tepid sip of my tea into my mouth. I exhaled, but the house did not exhale with me as it does with her. Just before I clacked out the door, I glanced down into the sink. In her rage, she had chipped her breakfast bowl, but there were only a few oats plastered to its sides. We were good to go.
The car was freezing. She sat hunched in the passenger seat, scrolling through her phone. She angled herself away from me so I couldn’t see what she was looking at. ‘Cold in here,’ I said, fiddling with the heater. She hummed in response.
I drove out the cul-de-sac, over the hill and onto the main road. The sky glowed with the last gasp of summer, but, with that particularly Scottish wry wit, the air was struck with an undeniable chill.
‘Are you nervous?’
‘No,’ she said with too much disdain.
‘That’s good.’ Then, a thought hit me. ‘Did you pack your lunch?’
‘Oh no,’ she placed a flat palm over her mouth in innocent disbelief. ‘What a tragedy! I must have forgotten it.’
That quickening, tightening feeling again, now behind my eyes. I peered over the steering wheel, trying to find the best place to turn. ‘Well, we’ll have to go back and get it. Or, you can go to the canteen. But can you go–’
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, bending over her bag and returning with the large lunchbox brandished in her hand. She smirked at me. ‘I’ve got it.’
‘Not funny.’
‘I thought that was a good one.’
I loosened my grip on the steering wheel and steeled myself to say, ‘Can you take a picture of it before and after you’ve finished it?’
‘Absolutely not. There’s no way I’m doing that,’ her voice was strained. ‘Everyone already thinks I’m a fucking nutter. I’m not going to be seen taking pictures of my food and sending them to my mum.’
‘No one thinks you’re a nutter.’
‘Yes, they do,’ she said emphatically. ‘They definitely do.’
‘Everyone will have forgotten. And it’ll be all new people you’re with.’
‘It’s not new people. It’s the year below. And the whole school had an assembly about me.’ ‘It wasn’t about you, Iona.’
She guffawed. ‘Yeah, a “Basic Body Image for Troubled Teens” assembly the week after our resident nutcase drops out. Strange coincidence, that.’ She wrung her fingers and dropped her eyes to her lap. ‘Hannah said everyone kept staring at our table when they gave it too.’
‘Okay,’ I said. We were nearing the school. She put her lunchbox back in her bag and zipped it up. Slumped in her seat, she stared out the window. Blazered adolescents shuffled their way towards the entrance like ants following a scent. They were all so shiny, with flashy haircuts and polished black shoes for the new year.
I pulled up beside the school. ‘How are you getting home?’
‘Hmm, I was thinking of a light jog via Edinburgh, Inverness, then back to Glasgow?’ ‘Can’t you turn it off, for just a second?’
She smiled tightly. ‘Bus, probably.’
She put her hand to the door handle but seemed in no rush to leave. ‘You want a picture of me on the bus too?’
‘You’re alright.’ I tried to look at her deliberately, to say something that would only sound futile or saccharine aloud. All my simple tongue could manage was, ‘It’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.’
‘Ugh, gross,’ she said with a breathless laugh, opening the car door. I called ‘Good luck!’, but I’m not sure she heard, and watched as her stockinged legs spun their web into the school. I thought she might turn and wave, but she didn’t. Only once I was sure that she was there and not here did I turn my key in the ignition.
I returned from work to find the house embalmed in a pleasant vanilla smell, buzzing with girlish laughter. Iona was standing at the kitchen counter piping icing onto cupcakes with her friend, Hannah, sat across from her.
‘Hi, Mum,’ Iona said cheerily as I entered. ‘Hannah gave me a lift home.’
‘Oh, that was nice of you. How are you?’
Hannah placed her phone down on the table, ‘Yeah, I’m good.’ She nodded, holding one of those wide, closed-mouth smiles that teenagers use around adults they’re slightly afraid of.
‘And what are you up to these days?’
She blew a raspberry with her lips, ‘Nothing really. Just waiting for college to start. I’m going to train to be a hair and nail technician.’
‘Oh, wonderful! We’ll know where to go to get our nails done then.’
Iona exhaled sharply and tilted her chin towards Hannah. She was laughing at me, although I didn’t know why. You won’t be sorry to have missed this bit: your children treating you like an intruder, constantly bumbling between their embarrassment and your foolishness. Hannah’s eyes flashed between the two of us.
‘How was school?’
Iona brought the cupcake closer to her, her face intensified by a new concentration. ‘It was fine.’ She would not say any more on the subject, apparently.
‘What are you making?’
‘Banoffee cupcakes. They’re based on those ones we had in London.’
‘They’re amazing,’ Hannah chimed in, ‘She’s done all this stuff I’d never even think to do.’
Iona finished icing the cupcakes. Lined up in straight rows across the countertop, they looked like exemplary soldiers, each adorned with a swirl of buttercream. Iona didn’t acknowledge Hannah’s flattery and busied herself with a block of chocolate. She drew a large, flat-edged knife from the drawer.
‘What are you going to do with that?’ I said.
‘I’m going to make chocolate curls. Like a banoffee pie?’ she replied. ‘Can I do it?’ I tried to keep the tide of nervousness in my voice at bay. Iona scrunched up her face, ‘Come on, Mum, I’m a starver, not a slasher.’ ‘Iona,’ I reproached, as a mother would.
‘You would have laughed if Hannah wasn’t here,’ and Hannah shrivelled in her seat like she was willing it to be so. She held the knife’s blade to the chocolate and I watched its sharp edge closely. In all honesty, I don’t like seeing Iona with knives for the simple fact that she’s not very good with them. A knife always appears ungainly in her grasp, too large, too violent.
She made an indent in the chocolate and pulled the knife towards her. Once. Twice. Again. And out sprouted spirals of chocolate, just like those on a banoffee pie. Growing in confidence, she started to do it
faster, making more and more curls, until suddenly, the knife fell back too quickly, and slipped out her hand to fall at her feet, the tip coming to rest just millimetres from her bare pinkie toe.
‘Whoops, close one!’ she said as she skipped to pick it up. She sprinkled the curls on the cupcakes. ‘Bon appétit!’ she pushed one towards Hannah and another to me, looking at us hungrily.
Hannah seemed relieved to have something to do with her body and bit into it. ‘Oh my God. This is delicious!’
I peeled back the paper and sunk my teeth into the cake. It was moist, soft, the delicate banana flavour complemented by the buttercream. As I reached the centre, a burst of caramel slipped across my tongue, sending a shock of sweetness over my palate. Yet, it wasn’t overwhelming, there was, again, that refreshingly organic banana flavour laced through the caramel, and just a whisper of salt to balance the sugar. It was perfect.
‘Yes, very nice,’ I said, replacing the half-eaten cupcake on the counter. Iona leaned back, ‘Do you not want to finish it?’
‘I’ll leave it for after dinner.’ ‘Is it not good?’
‘It’s so good,’ Hannah urged, but Iona ignored her, remaining focused on me.
‘It’s very good.’ I wiped my hands on a tea towel. ‘Right, I’ll let you girls get on. Hannah, are you staying for dinner?’
The room held its breath. Iona gathered the stray chocolate curls in her hand. Hannah played along, ‘Oh, no thank you. My Dad’s making tea tonight.’
‘Oh, lovely, another time,’ I said, feeling the icing-sugar dust swirl about me again. ‘Yes,’ said Iona, giving up on tidying as quickly as she began, ‘that would be nice.’
Dinner was fine. Afterwards, I went to her in the sitting room. She was sat, her knees close to her chest and a blanket pulled up to her chin, watching some sitcom that consisted of a bunch of Americans running in and out of rooms shouting at one another. Canned laughter blared from the television speakers, but Iona didn’t laugh once. The show’s colours flashed over her face. I sat at the opposite end of the sofa and started to peel a clementine.
After dinner, Chinese people eat fruit. This confused you. You never wanted fruit after dinner, not unless it was with lashings of cream, and I used to keep the fridge well-stocked with all your pre-packaged trifles and chocolate desserts. There are none there now, but perhaps I should get some. I liked to have one occasionally, not after dinner, but sometimes on a Sunday afternoon.
I peeled the clementine in a single swirl, my finger inching itself from one pole round and down to the other. The sharp citrus smell burst into the room and intensified with every movement. Carefully, so as not to rip the thin membrane, I separated it into two halves and held one out to Iona. Without looking at me, she took it. She peeled one segment from the rest and, using her nail, she split the segment down the middle and turned it inside out, revealing a hive of orange teardrops within. One by one, she picked at the droplets and placed them in her mouth.
She ate. We ate. A peace offering.