What's a Girl Gotta Do? (4 page)

six

My parents were waiting for me when I got home. Sitting patiently, the very painting of serene. Though I could see Dad's inner turmoil from a mile off and knew Mum must've given him a talking to.

Mum stood up to hug me. “Lottie, honey. You're home.”

I stepped through the annoying beaded curtain and made myself hug her back.

“Hi,” I said, preparing for them to kill me with kindness – their favourite trick.

Dad sipped on his herbal tea, his lips all pursed, but he stood and hugged me too when Mum gave him a nod.

We were a family of huggers. Well, Mum was. Dad and I never had much say in the matter.

Dad pointed to a chair next to him. “Come, sit.”

It was like we'd never argued – which is how he always played it. Anger and strictness followed by niceness and
we're-only-doing-it-for-your-own-good
.

“You want a cup of tea?”

I nodded. “Do we have any of the special flowering ones of Mum's left?”

Dad pulled one out of the special pot we had for them on the tea tray. He poured hot water from our ancient teapot onto a jasmine flower and I watched it unfurl slowly as the water hit it. I never got bored of this posh flowery tea.

I slowly took a sip…waiting. Mum peered anxiously at me over her glasses. Dad kept running his fingers over the wrinkles around his eyes. He never wanted to fall into the pushy-parenting cliché; I think he thought he was above all that. He wasn't. It's like when it came to my education he couldn't help himself. Even with Mum balancing him out. I guess that's what it's like if you're a professor. Sometimes I wondered if he only wanted me to get into Cambridge and do well in politics because it would sound good in front of his elbow-patch lecturer mates.

“I'm sorry I grabbed my crotch at you and yelled ‘Meditate on this',” I opened, taking another small sip. “I'm still not sure what happened there.”

They both smiled slightly.

“We all lost control of our tempers,” Dad said. “And, yes, I'll grant you. It was original.”

“You can see why I was upset though, right?”

They looked at each other, and I could tell then that they'd already planned what they were going to say. They had a script and I didn't. All I had was a roundabout of emotions, and no inclination to let them bully me.

“We're just worried about you…your future,” Mum answered.

I crossed my arms. “We went over this. College said four A levels are more than enough to get me into Cambridge.”

“Yes. But in your interview, you have to talk about your extra-curricular activities…and we're worried this…Spinster Club may…well…it doesn't seem very Cambridge. Maybe if you just joined a debate team, or…something?” Mum's eyes looked so small behind her thick-rimmed glasses.

I levelled her stare. “I thought you raised me to want to make the world a better place?”

“We did.” Dad was talking now. “You know we wholeheartedly support your ambitions. They're our ambitions too… That's why we're having this chat. To try and work together to help you achieve them. And that may mean taking the more…umm…conventional route, so you can really change things later.”

The conventional route…

Here's the embarrassing thing… I want to be the prime minister. I know that's about as ridiculous as wanting to become a prima ballerina, or a professional footballer, or an astronaut or whatever – but think about it…
someone
has to be prime minister. Why can't it be me? I am smart enough. I am strong enough. And I really, honestly, want to take this shitty world we live in and use whatever strength, intellect and passion I have to leave it a little bit better off than when I found it. I don't just want to complain about the world, I want to change it.

The problem is…I'm still not sure exactly where to start, what route to take, how to get there. I went to a Labour party meeting and didn't like it. But weirdly my parents totally think I can be PM too – and they've drilled into me since before I can remember that prime ministers go to Cambridge or Oxford.

“Why does the conventional route mean giving things up I believe in?” I asked.

They shared another look. “We're not saying you should give up things you believe in. Just maybe sort out your priorities a bit?”

I stood up. “My priorities are to make the world better.”

“Which you're much better placed to do if you stick to doing five A levels to ensure you get a spot at Cambridge,” Dad insisted. “We already supported you when you decided to leave Heartly School, giving up an incredible once-in-a-lifetime scholarship, I may add.”

I rolled my eyes.
This
again. “I didn't like it there,” I said – for what seemed like the eight trillionth time. “Why would I want to carry on going somewhere I didn't fit in?”

Didn't fit in
was the biggest understatement ever – I was the squarest of pegs in a school filled with round holes. Especially as I was there on a scholarship and therefore couldn't afford all the right “stuff” or to go on the two thousand pound Year Nine ski trip.

“Because you know they have an excellent track record of getting their students into Oxbridge, for one thing?”

I shook my head – so mad at them. They were such hypocrites. They drank herbal tea and Mum was a Buddhist, and they both volunteered to help with food banks, and we had freaking
crystals
all over the house…but the moment it came to me, their one and only child, they were willing to let a good few things slide to get me where we wanted me to be.

I wasn't ready to let
anything
slide. Not after today.

“I got sexually harassed today,” I said, to try and shock them. “These guys in a van blocked my way into college and shouted abuse at me.”

Mum was up, instantly at my side. “Oh, Lottie, honey. I'm sorry. Are you okay?”

I shook my head, shook off her hug.

“No. I'm not okay. And I won't be okay until stuff like that stops happening. That's why I'm in the Spinster Club. That's why I started FemSoc. I can't wait until I've decided which party I want to join, or I'm at Cambridge or whatever, before I change stuff. I have to do it now.”

Mum hugged me again; Dad looked unconvinced.

“Lottie, I'm sorry that happened to you, that sounds awful.” He paused, always unable to let go of a point once he'd locked down onto it. “But I'm struggling to understand why this is relevant.”

“ARGH!” I threw my hands up in the air. The tears from earlier threatening to respill. “Don't you see? It's all relevant! It's all linked.”

I pressed my fingers into the pressure points either side of my eyes, taking deep breaths. Despite everything that had happened today, I was still in the same argument as this morning.

I took another deep breath and looked up, fixing Dad with my best ever glare. The one I'd learned from him. “I've told you,” I said, my voice so much calmer than I felt. “Four A levels is enough to get into Cambridge, college said so. And, if my FemSoc activities put them off, well then, I don't want to go there anyway. I don't have to get into Cambridge to get into politics…”

Dad opened his mouth to interrupt.

“Yes, I know it helps. But, look, I've not even joined a political party yet. I'm only seventeen. I'm not ready to make my mind up about that – it's an important decision to get right. And I don't want to start compromising what I believe in before I've even properly started.”

We argued for another forty minutes, before I pleaded coursework. My magic word which always meant they left me alone. Mum went off to the centre to do her chanting, and it was Dad's night for Professors Down The Pub. That's what they actually called it – his colleagues' Tuesday evening drinks. Though Dad usually drank orange juice and drove everyone home safely at eleven. I wilted up to my bedroom – feeling like today had been much longer than regular days.

I had so much work to do. Four pages of art coursework, all the required reading for philosophy, an essay was coming up in politics and economics. It was almost nine already. It was going to be a long night. Luckily I've always been one of those people who can thrive on hardly any sleep – a secret weapon I'm terrified will disappear one day.

After an hour of gluing in a few collage-y bits for art, I started on philosophy, considering I'd been too out-of-it to concentrate at study group earlier. I flipped open my course book, and looked at a practice exam question.

A runaway train is heading towards a fork in the railway tracks. The tracks are set so that the train will veer left and kill five people stuck on the tracks. You have access to a switch that will cause the train to veer right, killing only one person stuck on that side of the tracks. Do you hit the switch?

Explain what deontologists and utilitarians would decide, based on their methods of thinking.

I stared at it for a long time…

I knew I didn't have to decide what I would do, that wasn't the homework. I knew what to write to pass the exam (well, to do more than pass, to get an A). Deontologists wouldn't hit the switch. They would call it murder; they would say you could never justify letting one person die, even if it saved the lives of five others. Whereas utilitarians would hit the switch in a second – one person dead is a lot better than five people dead. If the overall outcome was better, what's a few moral sacrifices along the way?

What would hitting the switch mean in my life? I started to think.

Like Dad said, getting into Cambridge meant I was statistically more likely to become prime minister, or even just an MP. In theory, I could use Cambridge to become someone who has the power to change things. Make things better in the long run. Is that worth giving up FemSoc for? Flick the switch? Let the train career into people like Megan while I wait to help more people further down the line?

I stood and made my way over to my window ledge, hurling myself up onto it and against the glass – watching the sleepy street under me. After a while Mum came home and barged in, all high from her chanting, to tell me she loved me. Dad got in a little later, knocked gently on my door and sat on my bed briefly.

“Sorry, Lottie. You know I don't like to fight with you. It's just you only get one future. And I only push because I care about you.” I gave him a half-smile from my ledge. “I trust you'll make the right decision,” he said, with meaning. Undoing all his apology. But it was too late to get mad, so I smiled again until he left me and went to bed.

My stomach hurt, my head throbbed. I knew then, looking out at the orangey glow of my little road, that I was on the cusp of a choice. One of those big choices. One of those choices that makes you.

Maybe most people get to delay a decision like this. But those men today, Megan today, everything today, had made me realize that, for me, I was out of time.

What sort of person do you want to be, Lottie?

What sort of compromises are you willing to make, Lottie?

Are you going to hit the switch, Lottie? Are you going to wait to change things, and accept a few casualties in the meantime? Or are you going to start changing things
now
?

I was exhausted from being angry. I was angry about being exhausted.

That exhaustion – it had stopped me talking back to those men.

It had stopped me calling Mike out for stealing my point.

And, directly or indirectly, I just knew – somewhere deep inside of me – that those moments, those glimmers of time when you're supposed to shout about something you see that's wrong but you don't… They somehow lead to something like what happened to Megan.

I knew then what I had to do.

The decision ballooned inside me, trickling through my guts. The energy of clarity cascaded through my limbs, filling me up till I felt golden and light.

I got down from the windowsill.

With a decision.

With a plan.

I wasn't the sort of person who would flick the switch.

seven

I dressed carefully the next day.

A tiny pair of shorts that had shrunk in the wash, worn over fishnets from a fancy dress party. A cropped jumper I rolled up even higher. My kick-ass knee-high heeled boots that I usually only wore to parties. No coat. Even though it was freezing. I backcombed my dark hair even bigger, and shoved extra eyeliner on around my green eyes.

Just before I left for college, I applied a second coat of red lipstick.

I'd rummaged in Mum's top drawer that morning and nabbed her old mobile phone. We'd bought her a new one for her birthday but she didn't understand how to use it. I'd only receive nonsensical text messages saying things like
GARDEN COMING ALONG NICELY
and
IT WILL BE COLD OUT COAT
.

It was colder than yesterday – all grey and cloudy – with no sunshine to even trick you into thinking it was warmer. My stomach was freezing – and my breakfast hung out below my crop-top, my belly spilling over the top of my shorts.

Would this attract unnecessary attention? Yes.

Did I care?

No. Today I did not.

I strode with purpose, my scarf flapping behind me in the wind. It was a gamble – assuming the builders would be parked in the same place, assuming, if they were, that things wouldn't get out of hand.

I was going to gamble though.

I turned a corner onto the road they were on yesterday, and paused for a second. There, there was the van. And the same two men were in it, sharing a Thermos of tea.

I punched 999 into my mum's phone, and shoved it into my shorts pocket, my thumb hovering over the dial button.

I closed my eyes, took three very deep breaths and started walking towards them. I saw the younger man spot me and nudge his friend through the smudged windscreen. He looked up, surveyed me, my outfit, and they both grinned at the same time.

The van door opened, but I strode straight towards them.

“Look who it is,” the younger man said. He blocked my path again, but I didn't care today. My thumb was still poised over 999, while my own phone was in my other hand.

“Red lipstick girl. I like what you've got on today, red lipstick girl.”

“You've got lovely curves,” the older man said, getting out and walking around the bonnet. Like it was all okay. Like they hadn't made me run away in sheer terror only the day before.

I held out my phone ostentatiously, and took a picture of them. The loud clicking sound filling the air between us.

“Hey, what you doing?”

I didn't reply. I just punched in the phone number plastered across the van with shaking fingers, and hit
call
. Praying, praying to God even though my parents tried to raise me a Buddhist – praying it wasn't their company…

And thankfully, it wasn't their phone that rang. I felt a small trickle of relief, though my hands still shook.

“
Hello?
” said a gruff voice down the line.

“Hello?” I said, staring the builders down with the stinkiest of stink eyes a stinky eye could muster. “Is that U&T Scaffolding Ltd?”

The whites of both their eyes doubled in size.

“What you doin', lipstick?” the younger one asked.

“
It is
,” the phone echoed.

I took a step forward, even though everything in my body told me to take a step back.

“Can I speak to the manager, please?” I said.

The moment the words were out of my mouth the older man kicked into action, putting his hands up. He yelled “Hey hey hey, come on. Whatcha playin' at?” The hand in my pocket quivered uncontrollably over the 999 button, but my voice didn't break.

“
You're speaking to him.
”

I took one more step forward, so I was almost chest to chest with both men. Our breath mingling in the frosty air. I wanted to talk fast, to get it over with, but I resisted. Speaking as slowly and confidently as I could, I said, “Two members of your staff are sexually harassing me every time I walk past their van.”

“Hang on a minute!” the older guy protested.

I ignored him again. “I'm just trying to walk to college,” I continued. “But they're blocking my path and pestering me. Now, do I need to call the police or are you going to discipline your staff?”

“You little bitch,” the younger man muttered, almost to himself.

I shook my head at him menacingly. “One of them just called me a bitch.”

There was a pause on the phone, a sigh… I wasn't safe yet; I was so far from safe.

Then the voice said, “
I think I know who you mean… What's the number plate? Can you see? Are you okay, love? Or are they threatening you?
”

I read off the number plate while they stood there, open-mouthed.

Another pause. Then, “
Tell them they need to come into Head Office this afternoon.
”

“No, you tell them,” I replied. “And if they ever speak to me again, I
will
call the police.”

I hung up and looked at them both squarely. Their faces furrowed. Like they were waking up from a dream, they shook their heads. Now was the most dangerous time… right now.

“Come on, love, we were only joking. There's no need to take it so far.”

“It was just a compliment,” the older one added. “Ring 'im back and tell him it was just a compliment.”

“You can take a compliment, can't you?”

I put my hands on my freezing-cold hips and stood strong.

“It wasn't a compliment,” I said. “It was sexual harassment. I should be allowed to walk down a road without some men I don't know letting me know whether they find me attractive or not. I should be allowed to wear whatever I want and walk wherever I want without being threatened or objectified, or even just bothered.”

“Fucking whore,” the younger one muttered.

“Careful,” I shouted, holding up the photo of them on my phone. Just as I did it, the older man's phone started ringing. “You don't get to make me, or any other girl, feel like I did yesterday ever again. Gotit?” I said, almost growling.

He looked genuinely scared. It tasted amazing, the victory on my tongue. He was finally feeling how I felt yesterday – scared, helpless, confused as to why this was happening to him. He answered his phone.

“John? John?” He turned away and signalled for his colleague to do the same. “John, no! She's just some crazy bitch who can't handle a compliment…”

I dodged past the open van door and walked away, leaving them behind me.

“Come into the office, why? What? Are you being serious?”

Every part of me wanted to run. To put as much distance between me and their anger as possible.

But I didn't run down the road.

I walked.

And I smiled.