Page 22 of Cuckoo

As soon as I heard the door close behind him in the morning, I felt a change in the air. My body tensed, ready for an altercation, and sure enough I heard Mother’s footsteps charging for my bedroom. I braced myself. She flung the door open, strode over to me quickly and slapped me across the face. It took me by surprise; I’d thought I was going to get a telling-off. She rarely hit me, but when she did I found it somehow easier to handle than her words. I gasped, bringing my hand to the hot sting of my cheek.

‘You disgusting, jealous little slag!’ she hissed. ‘To eventhinkany man would be interested in you. You’re pathetic, an embarrassment. No one will ever find you desirable… you’re repulsive,’ she seethed, leaning in so close that her spittle flecked my eyes and I had to blink it away. ‘You will never be loved by anyone other than me,’ she said, and with such certainty that I felt it in my very core.

I had believed she was right. After all, I was nothing like her. Men fawned over her glamorous elfin featuresand buxom curves. Her extravagant costume jewellery and tippy-tap heels. Her quick wit and outgoing banter. She was nothing like me, so it stood to reason that no man would ever desire me.

Until Noah.

Noah had changed everything. When we’d made love for the first time it had been magical.There was nothing clichéd about it, no fireworks at the window, no flickering candle flames dancing across shadowed walls. Just me, him, and the feeling that this was how my life was supposed to be. That this wasright.

I look down at the profile photograph he’s chosen. He stares back at me from the screen, and I imagine him with the blonde again. I reimagine the night I lost my virginity to him, but instead of me with Noah, it’s her. It’s not my floral Brazilian briefs he’s removing, it’s a black lacy thong. It’s not my gently sloping hips he grips with desire, it’s her lithe, defined waistline. It’s not my bouncy chestnut hair he runs his hands through, but her long blonde tresses.

I feel sick.

I’m also conscious of my spiralling thoughts, that I’m leaping to conclusions, and that I have only seen one photo. So I begin trailing through all his recent photographs. Without being his friend, I’m limited to very few, and I’ve seen most of them yesterday with Sukhi, so I do what I have to do.

I find a photograph of some random woman on Twitter and set it as my profile photo. She’s not pretty, but not ugly either. Unmemorable. I then begin adding random peoplefrom London as friends, to try and make my profile look legit. I fill in the ‘About Me’ section with rubbish and write a few generic statuses so my page is full within half an hour. According to my bio, I’m a vegan caffeine addict who works in accounting and runs half marathons. Noah has a soft spot for animals and loves to run, so I’m hoping it will pique his interest enough to accept.

Then I take a deep breath and send my fiancé a friend request.

I know that it’s unlikely he’ll reply, so I force myself away from my laptop and, after checking my phone for the thousandth time for any call or text from him, I have another glass of water and wait for my friend request to be accepted.

Chapter Nineteen

13 November 2024

Dear Diary,

I honestly never thought this day would come, but it’s happened. I lost my virginity. I mean, honestly, I was on the brink of being a thirty-year-old virgin. It feels embarrassing even writing it down, it’s something that I should have been writing about a decade ago, gossiping about with school friends. Instead, I have nobody to tell and just feel relieved that it’s finally happened, that the societal stigma of still being a virgin is wiped away, finally.

But anyway, it happened with Noah. He was round here recently. I told him about that time with the hairy guy and Mother– he always listens when I open up about my childhood, which is one of my favourite things about him– and he was really understanding. I still find that memory very difficult to talk about; my body reacts viscerally, even if my emotions are switched off to it. I still get tense and jumpy just thinking about it for too long, remembering how scared I was. Even thinking of Jack Daniel’s makes me want to vomit. The spicy, honeyed musk. I hadn’t spoken to anyone about it before, I still held a lot of shame over it, still felt as though perhaps some of itwasmy fault somehow. I know it sounds ridiculous, that I was only fifteen and the responsibility was on Mother to protect me, but those feelings of everything being my fault are embedded so deeply within my being that it’s my instinctual reaction whenever I am upset about something.

Noah was really kind and helped me navigate the entire memory. I spoke and cried and he held me. It made me feel so close to him. ‘I’m sorry you had to go through that, Claire,’ he murmured. And it was such a contrast to how Mother had been that I was caught in confusion, unsure if I even believed him. But after I’d relieved myself of that secret, I felt a weight lift off me. I stopped feeling like it was my fault, and I felt ready to become intimate. To trust that a man could want me. And so today it happened.

Noah did not push me, this was all my decision. I instigated it and I told him I was ready– because I was.

And it was perfect. In hindsight, I’m glad I waited this long. I don’t think I could have found a better guy. He was very gentle and understanding and kept checking in to make sure that I was okay the whole time. It was a bit uncomfortable at the start, as I knew it would be, but we found a rhythm eventually and it started to feel much better.

Initially I’d been self-conscious. I know he must have so much more experience than me, have seen so many bodies, and I began to worry about how mine compared to the others. But his eyes had hooded over and his hands had roamed gently and I could tell in that moment that he was definitely not thinking about anybody other than me. I’d felt empowered, and attractive, and wanted.

I’m quite relieved, to be honest– the longer I stayed a virgin, the bigger a deal it felt. I didn’t think I’d ever meet a man who would understand my fears around intimacy and be so patient with me. Before now, I couldn’t even be in a bed with a man without being reminded of that revolting, fleshy body I’d woken to find beside me. I feel like a new woman, as clichéd as it sounds, and I do believe that it’s less to do with the sex and all to do with the closure I got from speaking about that particular trauma. I have Noah to thank for both.

Claire

Chapter Twenty

It takes barely any time for him to accept.

I have thirty-five more ‘friends’ than I did when I last checked Facebook, and scroll through the random faces hurriedly until I breathe a sigh of relief when I spot the one I have been looking for. Noah.

I immediately click onto his page and am pleased to discover that my hunch was correct– now that I am ‘friends’ with him, I have access to many more posts than before.

I start on Noah’s page. He hasn’t updated it since last night, but I go through all his photos until I find another one he uploaded of himself with the beautiful, dimpled blonde. It looks like it was taken on the same night as the first picture I saw, judging by their outfits. Other photographs from this night out show a flurry of faces I don’t recognise.

I click onto the photo of Noah and the blonde and see that while he hasn’t tagged her, someone has mentioned her in a comment below, giving me access to her full name.

Lilah Anderssonlooking fab as always! Xxx

My nose wrinkles and I click onto her page, ready to absorb her life into my brain. Born in Sweden, one year younger than me. Of course she’s Swedish– with her beautiful honeyed skin, golden-blonde hair, sparkling blue-greeneyes. Her mother was a model according to a photo of Lilah and an older, very similar-looking woman tagged as Maja Andersson with the caption Hot Mamma model mum A quick scan of Maja’s page and I can see the resemblance instantly. Lilah has inherited those sickeningly sweet dimples framing her full lips, and that pert little upturned nose. For a split second, an invasive thought enters my mind.Why couldn’t I have inherited more of my mother’s looks?

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