Victor with his worldly-wise demeanour having the balls to negotiate with some weasel-faced bloke than Phoebe. I just couldn’t see my daughter, who still slept in a furry onesie and loved a soak with a fizzy bath bomb, passing over cash to some grubby little scumbag in a woolly hat. When I said as much to Patrick, he snorted with amusement.
‘You’ve been watching too much telly. You’ve only got Jasmine’s word that it’s the bloke at the market. She probably grows marijuana in her back garden and supplies him.’
I didn’t laugh. ‘You’re just as bad as everyone else, judging by appearances.’
He threw up his hands by way of apology. ‘Sorry. I was just having a joke. I’d still put my money on the kids ordering drugs online and getting it delivered in a neat little package to a supermarket dropbox.’ Patrick stretched and swung his legs out of bed. ‘Shall we divide forces? You try and have a calm conversation with Phoebe to get to the bottom of it and I’ll talk to Victor.’
Again, I felt that stab of irritation that Patrick elected to tackle Victor rather than attempt to fathom out what was going on with his own daughter.
He didn’t seem beaten the way I was. He looked every bit the man who saw this as a difficult stage of life, not ideal, but something well within his grasp to deal with. I, on the other hand, was trying to stop myself being swept away by a wave that no one saw coming but really should have predicted.
‘What if this is just the thin end of the wedge though, Patrick? What if dope, weed, is just a diversion and they’re actually taking stuff that’s so much more dangerous?’
Patrick picked up his towel from the radiator. ‘There’s no point in getting carried away until we know what the score is.’ He held out his arms to me. ‘We’ll get through it. I promise.’
I really wanted to believe that.
Chapter Thirteen
I hoovered the whole of the downstairs in an effort to control a tiny bit of my environment while I prepared myself to do battle with Phoebe. By the time she emerged, I was channeling all my good mothering skills. When she moaned about the little cut near her hairline, instead of snapping, ‘You were lucky you haven’t got a great big scar right across your face,’ I said, ‘Let me just pop a bit of antiseptic cream on that, it’ll be gone in no time.’ I made her American pancakes and the barely warm, notch-one toast she loved. I didn’t comment, though it nearly killed me, about her scrolling through her phone while she was eating. I did worry that she would actually lose the capacity to focus on anything more than a foot away. I started well, with, ‘You must have been really frightened last night when Helaina crashed the car.’
She spoke through a mouthful of food. ‘Yeah.’
I gave myself a small pat on the back for at least getting her to agree with something I said. I plugged on. ‘I feel’ – large pat on the back for remembering not to leap in with ‘You always…’ – ‘that you’ve lost your way a bit at the moment. Is there anything I could help with?’ I left off the next bit of the sentence, ‘Like hunt down the lowlife supplying you with drugs.’
She shook her head. ‘No. Just got to survive school so I can get to university and get out of here.’
‘Is it really that bad? Are we that bad?’ I was nearly bursting with the effort of not listing everything we did for her: the running around carting her to parties in the middle of nowhere, paying for her phone, organising our family holidays around every must-attend, can’t-possibly-miss music festival that then didn’t even happen but left us with last-minute flights at exorbitant prices.
Phoebe closed her eyes as though the awfulness of our family was obvious to everyone apart from me. ‘It’s just so booooring here. You and dad banging on about working for my A levels and getting a Saturday job. Dad even suggested a paper round! Who does a paper round these days? It’s like living with a couple of Tudors. And if I bring any friends round, you put on a stupid posh accent and start getting out napkins while making out you’re a cool parent and anything goes. It’s just really pathetic.’
Tears prickled at the back of my eyes. ‘I’m sorry you feel like