It was an accident that brought us together. A lucky accident? Maybe. A dreadful, unwanted, appalling accident? Certainly.
Her parents were my best friends and my neighbours, and when I heard about the crash I went to her house to see if there was anything I could do. It was a matter of luck that she was not in the car, with the rest of the family. She was getting ready to go out to a concert with a friend, a present for her 18th birthday.
She was distraught of course, and could not sleep alone in the house. After a dreadful night I needed to get some sleep myself, and she did not want to be alone, so she came next door with me. I found her later, when I got up, asleep on my couch. She stayed there for the next few days, while I arranged the funeral, and was there when the solicitor's letter came for me. I was surprised to learn that I was her parents' executor, and at the Solicitor's office I was even more surprised to find that all their property was in trust for her, and I was the trustee until she was 21. If she had been under eighteen I would have been her guardian. I was humbled by the confidence they had shown in me.
A few days later I was humbled by the guilt of a momentary betrayal of the trust my friends had placed in me to care for their child. She didn't want to stay in the house her parents and sister had so recently and suddenly been ripped from, so she had gradually moved some of her things over to my house, taken over the spare room, and bit by bit brought her clothes and possessions to it, and of course there was no en suite, so she used the shared bathroom. When I caught a glimpse of her, wrapped in a towel, flitting back to what I now thought of as her room, I had an instant of curiosity and arousal. Her bare legs and shoulders, her damp hair curling around her face and neck, darker with the water on it than her natural brunette, her slim feet with a flash of red at the toes, all registered in my mind along with a fleeting desire to see what the towel concealed.
I stood in shock when I realised what I had just felt. I was embarrassed, although she had not seen me, and could not know how my heart had suddenly lifted. It was an inappropriate thing to think, a bad thought. I tried to reject it, but I am too sensible not to realise that to do so is silly, (no matter how odd or unwelcome it is to be turned on by something, you have to admit that you were turned on by it) so I tried to rationalise it away (no big deal, she is young and pretty and nearly naked, and you are after all a man, even if you are nearly old enough to be her father, and have known her since she was a kid, you have to admit that she isn't a kid any more, so don't be surprised, but do be careful).
Even so, it nagged at me. For days afterwards I would glance at her and unwanted thoughts would fleet across my mind – she was eighteen now, and had been living in my house for a couple of weeks, and even though the disruption and grief of her sudden loss was beginning to subside, and she had decided to go back to school, there had been no boys calling round to check up on her.
Why not? Her girlfriends had been over. So she didn't have a boy at the moment? Had she ever had a boyfriend? Had he ever had her? (bad thought) Is she a virgin? (Bad thought.) A lesbian? (Bad Thought) could that blonde girl who has been over three times this week and I saw kiss her on the cheek and hug her at the funeral be a Girlfriend, not just a girlfriend? (very Bad Thought) Or maybe she is Bi? (Very Bad Thought, especially when thinking about the cute blonde and a three-way fling potential).
I found her one afternoon asleep on the sofa, curled up in her school uniform, tie loosened and top button undone, hair tumbling in red brown curls across her face, beatific smile upon her lips. It was the happiest I had seen her for weeks. Her legs were curled up and I realised that if I walked around the other end of the couch, say, to go to the kitchen, and glanced back I might be able to see her panties. (Very, Very Bad Thought).
A week later, she bent over to pick up a piece of tomato that had slipped off the chopping board in the kitchen one evening as we prepared dinner. Her jeans were tight and smooth and the shape of her thighs and ... (Oh So Very Bad Thoughts)
Time passes and reality sets in. My obsession lifted, as custom staled her less than infinite variety, and her sorrow and anger and bitterness and aggression played themselves out. It was a strange relationship. I wasn't a parent or really any kind of authority figure so she had nothing to rebel against, but I wasn't a confidante or friend either. Yet we were more than flatmates, or mere acquaintances. I suppose I offered her continuity in a world that had been utterly torn apart. So when the "A" level results came out and she got the grades to go to to the university of her choice (surprisingly good really given the disruption of her studies and mental state) I was there to congratulate her when she opened the envelope. At which point she burst into tears, and flung herself at me.
She was in floods, and almost collapsing in grief, and clinging to me for support as the words tumbled out. "It just isn't fair, it just isn't fair. Why did she have to die?"
I hugged her and hushed her, and cradled her as she wept and sobbed, "Why did Tilly have to die after I was so mean to her?"
It was the first time she had spoken of her sister since the crash.
Suddenly her unspoken feelings were being released. It was a deluge of words and sobs."I called her horrible names because she was snide at me before they went out. I said she was a slut and a whore because she suggested I might get to go back stage at the concert and snog the boys in the band for my birthday, but she was only joking, and anyway what does it matter that she had slept with all those boys? If I had been in the car with her and I died would it have mattered that I have kept myself this way and never let them do those things she did, and I never, I never... I never lived, but she did, she had fun, she had a real life! And then it was over, and she was gone and.. At least she lived before she went. And here I am still the same, living on without having a life, going to University and knowing nothing, too proud to be kissed, too busy getting a career to have a boyfriend, and for what? To be wiped out tomorrow by a lorry with a broken brake, like them? Oh I wish I could take it back, I wish I could have been like her and snogged those boys and taken them to bed, and done all the things she did, and never said those things to her."
I was not sure what to say. I was shocked at the revelations, the power of her feelings, the trembling struggling body in my arms, clinging to me. So I muttered some banality about it being alright, and she stiffened in my arms and pushed her head back to look me in the eyes and spoke in a voice that was dreadful to hear. "It isn't alright, I said those things but I didn't mean them. I was jealous and spiteful. I wanted so much to be brave like her, to be able to get close to a boy, to be pretty and attractive and to be able to take my chances, but I never was and I still can't do it." She burst back into tears at this point and sagged against me. I hugged her again, but this time I had something to say, since I could easily deny some of the things she said.
"But you are pretty and attractive, you are beautiful and clever and fiery and wonderful, and brave as anyone I know. I can't believe that the boys aren't throwing themselves at you."
Through sobs I could make out her reply "But I don't know what to do, I don't want to be like her and let them use me, but I feel so, so..." she broke off in a shuddering frustrated gurgle. She moved a little back then, her hands came round from my sides, and gathered against my chest, her head was down. For a moment I thought she was about to push me away, and I loosened my hug to let her go, but her head snapped up and she looked at me fiercely as her hands gripped the front of my shirt.
She kissed me.
It was a hard lipped, fierce kiss that took me by surprise. I didn't have time to think, and I didn't know how to respond, and she pulled away suddenly, and looked furiously at me.
It was startling, the look in her eye, something searingly soul deep. Anger, fury, but not hate, something painful. It froze me.
Then she did it again. It was the most unloving and vicious kiss I had ever had. A hard pressure of lips and teeth against mine, almost painful. I let my jaw relax, my mouth open a little, pulled back to seek a comfortable position, but it was like being attacked. She pulled back again suddenly.
"Damn it!" she yelled and pushed away from me, flinging herself across the room and out the door, running up the stairs and slamming her bedroom door.
I really didn't know what to do.
Except of course to fall back on the old maxim that built an Empire, as my mother used to say: when in doubt make tea.
