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Chapter 8

Margot

‘You are not wearing those bloody awful things to school,’ I object as Frankie reaches the bottom of the stairs.

‘What’s wrong with them?’ she asks, defiantly folding her arms.

‘You know perfectly well. They’re not part of the school uniform.’

‘But they’re black.’

‘They’re Crocs, Frankie.’ I’m always willing to put myself in someone else’s shoes. But not if they’re wearing rubber crimes against couture. ‘The letter your head of year sent you home with last time says school shoes only.’

‘And did you always do what you were told when you were at school?’

‘Of course,’ I lie.

As it happens, I had my eyebrow and nose pierced and was sent home every time I refused to take them out. But once again, the truth will not serve.

‘They’re unflattering and make you look like a boy,’ I continue.

‘So what?’ she snorts. ‘You still don’t get me, do you, Margot?’

She stopped calling me ‘Mum’ on her sixth birthday. Nicu was more concerned by it than me.

‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Wear what you want. But if they say you have to come home and take them off, don’t think you’ll be lounging around here all day.’

I leave her so I can finish unboxing my new Sage Oracle coffee maker that was delivered yesterday. It’s a more up-to-date version of Liv’s antiquated 2024 model. I haven’t told Nicu we have it, as I know he won’t approve of me spending so much money on something that makes a drink he doesn’t even appreciate. If it was up to him, we’d be spooning our coffee from a glass jar.

Earlier this morning, as I watched him leave the house, I couldn’t deny there’s still an attraction there. He’s as handsome as he was when we first met in that rehearsal room. His twenty-something leanness has transformed into thirty-something muscle, and those salt-and-pepper streaks at his temples only add to his appeal.

We’ve been together eleven years now, married for ten. Would we still be together if I didn’t have this ring on my finger? The one I paid for myself? I can’t be sure. I’m also uncertain if either of us really wanted to get married in the first place. But back in that dark, dark period, that was what we were ‘strongly urged’ to do by the damage limitation experts we paid a small fortune to for advice.

Before I read the coffee machine instructions, I swallow a couple of painkillers for the headache that’s been stalking me like a charity worker rattling a can in the high street. Then I hear the schlepping of the crime-against-fashion footwear behind me.

‘Why don’t you respect me?’ Frankie asks, relatively calmly.

‘I don’t really know why we must go through this again,’ I groan. ‘You don’t identify as a girl, I get it.’

‘No, you don’t get it, because if you did get it , you’d know I don’t identify as either a girl or a boy. Why’s that so hard for you to understand?’

I sink into the chair next to the kitchen table and rub my cheeks with my palms. ‘Because it doesn’t make sense to me. Biologically, you’re born one way or the other, and if you feel nature’s made a mistake and put you in the wrong body, then you fix it when you’re old enough.’

‘So if you accept trans people, why can’t you accept non-binary people who don’t identify either way?’

‘Because you have to be ... something .’

‘Says who?’

‘Says the world!’

‘But I’m part of the world and I’m telling you what I am. You won’t listen. You don’t have to understand something to accept it. You don’t know how a rocket flies into space, but you accept that it does.’

All right, that’s a new one. I can hardly argue that point. But I can move on: ‘Can’t you just be a lesbian or bisexual and have done with it? That’s where this is heading, right?’

‘Jesus, Margot! I’m no more a lesbian than you are.’

‘You know that I wouldn’t care if you were gay. Your dad and I have been surrounded by LGBTQ blah blah blah people for our whole careers.’

‘He still has a career. You don’t.’

She can be such a bitch sometimes.

‘And whose fault is that?’ I say pointedly.

She knows who I’m referring to. Immediately, I know I shouldn’t have said it.

‘Look, you’re not even thirteen yet,’ I push on. ‘When you cut that beautiful blonde hair short, I didn’t say anything. When you stopped wearing anything other than greys, blacks and blues, I let it pass. But this is too important for me to just go along with because it’s the trendy thing to do. You’re too young to change your identity.’

She opens her mouth to argue and I know what she’s about to say next. ‘And before you ask, I am most certainly not going to ask your school to use non-binary pronouns,’ I add.

For an uninvited moment, I return to who I was at her age, and my skin prickles. My desperation to fit in and to surround myself with people who understood me came close to ruining my life. Frankie is the opposite, and perhaps I resent her for thinking she knows who she is when I didn’t. Regardless, I can’t backtrack now. Frankie is a girl and it’s as simple as that. I’m not budging. And she needs to be reminded who the parent is here.

I turn my back on her. I’ve lost interest in trying to fathom how the coffee machine works. I search for some capsules instead with the strongest possible blend, to use in the old one. They’re not in the cupboard where I left them yesterday. I open a few more doors before giving up my search and finishing the half-empty glass of warm white wine by the sink instead.

Frankie drives me mad sometimes. I never wanted children, and then suddenly, I was lumbered with a one- and a two-year-old. I knew immediately that nothing was going to be the same again that night Nicu brought them home. But to be his wife, I had to be their stepmother too.

By the time I return to the hall, Frankie’s Crocs are lying in the middle of the floor. She’s left them for me to put away. So I do as she wants, opening the back door and putting them away, only in the recycling bin. Now they’ve been put away. It’s collection day tomorrow. Let’s see if she finds them in time.

The clattering of the letterbox distracts me. A brown padded envelope lands on the doormat. It’s addressed to me, and a chill runs through me when I recognise the printed label. I tear it open in the kitchen and remove the box inside. It’s a doll effigy of me, one I haven’t seen in years. They were mass-produced when I was in the Party Hard Posse. It’s only when I take it out of the box that I realise its head has been severed.

I throw it in the cupboard under the stairs alongside the rest of the similarly anonymous gifts, and slam the door shut.