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I use the bathroom and then come back and sit on the edge of her bed. ‘What’s going on, Lottie?’ I say, my tone brisk. ‘You’ve been looking forward to this wedding for months.’
‘I don’t like Marc any more.’
‘Since when?’
Her scowl intensifies. ‘He touched me.’
Nothing, butnothing, in more than ten years of friendship, has ever given me cause to doubt Marc. Not by a glance, insinuation or chance remark has he suggested his tastes run towards children. But when your daughter tells you a man hastouchedher, you take it seriously.
‘What do you mean?’ I ask sharply. ‘When?’
‘Last night. I didn’t like it.’
My mouth dries. I can’t believe Marc wouldever, but then it’s always the ones you least suspect.
Lottie has many faults but I’ve never known her to lie. Her default position is to tell the truth and shame the devil. The thought that anyone may have touched her,hurther, is enough to ignite a murderous rage in me. I would go to the ends of the earth to protect my daughter.
‘Where did he touch you?’ I ask, as calmly as I’m able.
‘I’m not telling.’
I want to grip her by the shoulders and shake the details out of her, but she’ll simply refuse to talk to me if I pressure her. Her longest retributory silence to date lasted three full days, when she punished me for trying to establish what she wanted for her third birthday. She wasn’t the one who caved to end the standoff.
‘OK,’ I say, getting up again.
‘He was veryrude,’ she says.
‘What sort of rude?’
‘He squeezed me!’
‘Squeezed? You mean, like a hug?’
‘No!’ She gathers a fistful of her ample belly in each hand. ‘Here! Like this! He said I wasgetting chunky!’
I’ll deal with the fat-shaming aspect of this clusterfuck later. Right now, I’m just relieved I don’t have to accuse my best friend of molesting my daughter on his wedding day.
‘He’s only saying that because he’s marrying an ironing board,’ I say.
‘Shedoeslook like an ironing board,’ Lottie agrees delightedly.
‘You should feel sorry for him, really.’
‘All right. I’ll be his flower girl.’
‘Good,’ I say mildly.
The wedding rehearsal starts at six tonight, an hour before sunset, the same as the actual ceremony tomorrow. It’s still not yet seven in the morning, which gives me eleven hours to fill without allowing Lottie to eat herself sick, drown, get sunstroke or cut off the hair of any of the other four bridesmaids (quite within the realms of possibility; there was a rather disastrous incident with the paper scissors her first term at nursery school).
I’m not optimistic.
