Dangerous Affection

Chapter Nineteen

Val

Val watched as her granddaughter threaded pink, lilac and yellow beads onto the new bracelet she planned on wearing to her dance class on Tuesday night.

She jumped when Alexa’s voice rang out, reminding Maisie that her favourite television show was due to start in fifteen minutes.

Emma and Shaun had bought her the Amazon Echo contraption last Christmas and Maisie loved it, used it for lots of important tasks, such as remembering her homework and television schedule. She’d even brought it over with her to Val’s. The kids of today. Honestly!

‘Alexa’s my friend, Gran,’ Maisie had insisted when Val expressed reservations after reading an article about how the new electronic personal assistants listened to everything being said around them and reported back to the big corporations.

‘You don’t really need another one, darling.’ Val rolled her eyes. ‘One thing you’re not short on is friends.’

The child had so many that she categorised them into ‘school’, ‘dancing’ and ‘celebrity’ friends, and used Alexa for keeping track of all their birthdays.

The slightly worrying thing for Val was that Maisie seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time following all her favourite celebrities online.

‘Seeing their real-life photographs really makes you feel like you know them,’ she told her grandmother one day when Val queried the amount of time Maisie spent online.

Maisie’s favourite, Ariana Grande, would put all sorts of pictures on there. Family snaps, photos of her as a child, recording in the studio, on holiday… Maisie felt as if she knew everything about her.

Val thought about her own crushes as a ten-year-old girl in the late sixties: you might get a fleeting glimpse on television or in a magazine, and very occasionally the chance to attend a concert, but that was it. Buying their records was the only way to feel like you were closer to them.

Her concern was that this social media thing was all false. From what she could see, mainly over Maisie’s shoulder, it consisted of people cutting and pasting all the best bits from their lives and leaving out the ordinary stuff.

Maisie purred like a cat when she perused Katy Perry’s fairy-tale existence and Val would smile tightly, not wanting to lecture her granddaughter and spoil her fun, but feeling concerned that Maisie bought into this skewed version of reality so readily.

Everyone knew it was vital that young people needed to learn that life was all about the highs and the lows, the triumphs and the failures – and understand that you could survive through all of it.

Nobody’s life resembled a fairy tale, no matter how much money they had in the bank, yet Maisie and millions of other young girls were growing up thinking it could be achieved at the drop of a hat.

When it was Ariana’s birthday last year, Maisie told Val that she had posted a message on the pop star’s page and Ariana had LIKED IT!

Maisie’s face was a picture; she was so validated by it.

‘When I told everyone at ballet class, they all cheered and even Miss Diane looked impressed,’ she said happily, her face shining.

‘That’s nice,’ Val said, hoping to acknowledge Maisie’s enthusiasm without overly encouraging it.

‘You should have seen Piper Dent’s face, Gran.’ Maisie grinned. ‘It crumpled up like someone had shoved dog poo under her nose.’

Maisie knew her gran didn’t like to hear her being unkind about people, and Val suspected that was why she hadn’t said much more about it. But Maisie’s mood was upbeat and bouncy, as if a sweet warmth had spread in her chest and stayed there all day.

Maisie loved dancing, TV programmes and listening to music, and she even liked school, most of the time. She enjoyed reading and writing stories, but she wasn’t keen on maths.

The one thing she would really adore, but hadn’t got, was a dog. Val was pleased that Emma had said it wouldn’t be fair on the animal because there was nobody home all day, which Maisie had grudgingly agreed with.

Val noticed her granddaughter sigh as she began to pack the beads away so she could command the big flat-screen television.

‘What’s wrong, love?’ she said softly. ‘Is everything OK… at home, I mean?’

‘You mean the weird stuff happening between Mum and Dad?’ Maisie said, her bluntness startling Val for a moment. ‘They think I’m a little kid, like I’m still five years old.’

‘I’m sure they don’t,’ Val said gently.

It was difficult as a grandparent, being in the middle of it all. Val often wished she’d made a better job of mothering Emma all those years ago, but… well, you did the best you could at the time, didn’t you? Life had been far from easy back then.

Privately, Val knew that Emma and Shaun were having problems. But even if Emma hadn’t said as much, Val wasn’t stupid. She’d seen the secret looks that flashed between them like sparks. It was clear to anyone that trouble brewed under the surface. ‘What do you mean by weird stuff?’

‘I dunno.’ Maisie shrugged. ‘Dad is sleeping in the spare room, but when I asked about it, Mum’s eyes blinked really fast, like she was trying to think of something to say.’

‘I think the central heating makes your dad snore,’ Val said, repeating what Emma had told her to say. But Maisie would not be dissuaded from her theory.

‘Andrew Carpenter in my class, his mum and dad split up in the new year. He cried in front of everyone but wouldn’t go to the office, and Miss Lambert had to stop the lesson until someone came to fetch him.’

‘That’s sad,’ Val said.

Maisie nodded. ‘Before he went home, he told the whole class he knew something bad was going to happen because his parents had started sleeping in separate rooms.’

Maisie’s parents thought they were being clever hiding stuff from her, but behind their smiles and the extra time she now got to spend on her own with her dad, the child knew something had changed.

Val had tried to speak to Emma about it, suggested they sit Maisie down and tell her the truth. But Emma waved her away.

‘She doesn’t need to know, Mum,’ she said. ‘She’s too young to realise what’s happening.’

But Val knew she was wrong about that.

Maisie was very aware of all of it.