Free The River House by Margaret Leroy Page B

deprivations: the mermaid trying to walk
     on the beautiful legs that cut her, the curve of Gerda’s white throat and the scratch of the robber girl’s knife. Everything
     was animate, full of sex or threat, every petal, every tree root; tendrils of ivy clutched like greedy, caressing fingers,
     the flowers had lascivious smiles.
    Nothing much happened to start with—she sold the usual few thousand copies; and then it was chosen by children’s BBC to illustrate
     a series of fairy tales read by celebrities, and suddenly everyone was buying it. Not just children either, for her books
     inhabited that sought-after terrain—books for children that adults also enjoy. One drawing was even reproduced in
Vogue
, in a piece on the New Romantics—the picture of the Little Mermaid that I have in my kitchen, the one Molly found so troubling
     as a little girl. I remember when Ursula visited, just after the arrival of her first fat royalty check. She looked different.
     Still hardly any makeup, and her hair severely tied back, but with a new coat of the softest buttery suede. Though it wasn’t
     just the money. There was a new certainty about her: She knew what she was for.
    My phone rings. It’s Molly.
    “Sweetheart, how are you?”
    “Well … my pimp beat me and then I got raped and I’ve started shooting up. …” She can’t quite suppress a giggle. “Fine otherwise.”
    “Tell me what’s happening.”
    The Freshers’ Fair was great, she says—she’s joined at least thirty societies. Even the Blond Society—you don’t have to be
     blond, they just go around all the cocktail bars. And can she have a long denim skirt and some shot glasses for Christmas?
     And thanks for the alarm clock, but she didn’t really need it, she’s using the clock on her cell phone.
    “Molly, are you eating OK? Can you manage all right with the cooker?”
    “I don’t cook much really,” she says. “If I miss a meal I have Pringles.”
    I question whether Pringles are a satisfactory meal.
    Molly sighs extravagantly.
    “Mum, d’you ever listen to yourself? You been on one of those parenting courses or something? Look, I’m fine, OK? I’ve just
     joined thirty societies and I’m fine.”
    “Have you got everything you need? D’you want me to send you anything? I could send you some echinacea.”
    “OK, Mum, if you want to.”
    “Are you making plenty of friends?”
    “They’re really nice in my corridor. We’re going out for corridor curry tomorrow.”
    “Any men you like the look of?” I say tentatively.
    “Just don’t go there, Mum, OK? Anyway, half the guys in my college are gay—that’s why they have such nice sneakers. … Look,
     my phone needs recharging,” she says. “I’ve really got to go.”
    I finish the room. I box up the rest of the books, and strip the bed and take the linen down to the kitchen to wash.
    It’s raining more heavily now; there’s a thick brown light in my kitchen. I make a coffee and sit at my kitchen table. Suddenly,
     after talking to Molly, I feel ashamed; the things I’ve been thinking astound me. All the desire has left me. I can’t believe
     I considered getting involved with this man, this stranger: took it seriously, half imagining it would actually happen. My
     family and their needs are all that seem real to me now: Amber, struggling with schoolwork, needing stability; Molly, just
     starting out, eager but brittle, tense with the newness of everything, joining thirty societies; Greg and the Celtic anthology
     that he works on with such diligence, for which he has such hopes. How could I have imagined I would put this life at risk?
    I make plans. I shall put more energy into my home, my family. I shall get a private tutor to help with Amber’s maths and
     one of those French courses she can do on the computer. I shall hold a dinner party; if Greg won’t take me out to dinner,
     then I shall ask people here: Clem and Max, perhaps—they might get on well together. I shall