It Sounded Better in My Head - Nina Kenwood Page 0,58

and also for myself, because, when you really think about it, she would only think she’s deficient as a mother if she thought there was something wrong with her child. Sometimes last year I used that very thought to motivate myself to study more and study harder, which is probably psychologically unhealthy but it worked pretty well.

Right now, though, I am motivated in the opposite direction. ‘You can just add it to the list of things you should feel bad about. Which includes lying to me for a year, ruining your marriage and destroying our family,’ I say. I can see from Mum’s face in the mirror that I’ve hurt her, and I quickly get up to leave.

‘How did I raise such a horrible daughter?’ she says as I walk out of the room, which hurts me, so now we’re even.

I lie on my bed with my door shut. After a while, Mum comes and stands outside the door but doesn’t open it.

‘Bye, Natalie. I won’t be home until late. Call me if you need anything.’

I say nothing. There’s a long pause, but I know she’s still there.

‘I love you,’ she says.

I continue to be silent.

‘I’m sad too, okay? Your dad moving out is hard on me too. I’m trying to do something to cheer myself up, that’s all.’

Still, I say nothing. For all she knows, I might have headphones in. For all she knows, I might be dead.

She sighs and walks away. I hope she feels bad and I hope that feeling bad ruins her night.

God, I am a horrible daughter.

After I hear the front door close and her car start and drive away, I wait to see if I’m going to cry. I feel like I want to cry but tears don’t come. I scream into a pillow, which feels good the first time I do it but very over the top the second time.

23

Unsent

I spend a lot of time that night drafting text messages to Alex and then not sending them.

— Hey

(too serious)

— Hi!

(too eager)

— Hey…

(too suggestive)

— Hi [smiling face emoji]

(completely desperate)

— Hey what’s up

(trying so hard it takes my breath away)

— Yo

(utterly, utterly ridiculous)

— Hello Alex

(a robot would sound less formal).

Alex and I last saw each other yesterday lunchtime when we all left the beach house. He said, ‘Talk soon,’ and I nodded. One of us should have contacted the other by now.

I need to stop thinking about him. I can’t stop thinking about him.

I am considering photoshopping my face next to Alex’s, and comparing it to a photo I found deep in someone’s Instagram history of Alex and Vanessa, just to see if Alex and I are a comparably cute couple, but I quickly abandon that idea when I picture a scenario where Alex somehow stumbles across this photoshopped image. The thought is so horrifying I want to wipe my laptop completely clear of all images I have ever saved and immediately get hundreds of hours of therapy.

I spend the rest of the night trying to distract myself by reading theories about celebrities who might be in secret relationships, writing down a list of all the evidence I might have missed that my parents fell out of love, and being mad at Zach, who I have also not heard from since our fight in the car.

Mum comes home from her non-date date and I ignore her and pretend to be asleep. Then, when she is in the shower (a couple of years ago, Mum became the kind of person who showers at night and Dad remained a shower in the morning person, and really, now that I think about it, there might be no stronger indicator of impending divorce than this), I take being a horrible daughter to the next level. I sneak into her room and look at her phone, feeling mostly like a psychopath but also a little bit like a really cool spy.

There is a series of text messages between her and a man called Eric. They’re not sexy texts. I’m not completely sick, I would not read sexts between my mother and a stranger. They are barely even flirty. In fact, Eric seems very polite. He invited my mother to play golf and he also sent her a promo code to use to get 20% off when buying printer cartridges online. I don’t know which is worse—the thought that this was related to an actual conversation they had, or that he sent the codes unprompted. Eric has the personality of a