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Generations
Apart
Chapter
one
As she stared down at the play park across the
street from the bedroom window of the three
storey London house, Gillian mused on the
children’s activities. In the park the
children played on, oblivious to onlookers,
intent on their current game. Three adolescent
girls were taunting a smaller girl mercilessly,
it seemed from afar. Gillian found herself
wondering why the smaller girl didn’t run away
from her persecutors. She realised she was
thinking of it from an adult’s perspective.
Things look very different to a teenager. As she
continued to watch the scene below, her focus
shifted, as the memories of her own teenage
years crowded the edges of her consciousness.
She
was interrupted from her reverie by the sounds
of her daughter arriving home from shopping. She
looked down to the girls in the play park,
surprised to see that, in her daydreaming, she
hadn’t seen them leave. She wondered how the
scene had unfolded, and how the girls had left,
together, or separately.
Her
daughter was making her way up the stairs to
find her. She entered the doorway to the bedroom
and stopped, taking in the sight of her mother
sat at the windowseat, staring at the
magnificent view of North London that was
afforded from this window.
At
thirty-six, Gillian was in her prime. Her
successful recruiting company had been well
established for the last five years, and her
self-assurance had grown as she, and her
company, had matured. Her looks seemed to have
improved as she aged, and she was now an
eye-catching, attractive woman. She exuded a
confidence that enhanced her attractiveness. Her
toned figure belied the fact that she was a
mother. Her long, flowing red hair, shot through
with natural blonde, was the first asset that
caught the attention, closely followed by the
piercing blue eyes. She had a smooth, creamy
complexion that she took pains to keep out of
the sun, with high, defined eyebrows, and a
full, generous mouth. She was not conventionally
beautiful; her bone structure was a little too
strong for that. Nevertheless, men found her
looks arresting.
From
her daughter’s perspective a lot of this was
missed. She saw Gillian, as most children
perceive their parents. To her daughter, Gillian
was simply the most important person in her
life.
Gillian heard the footsteps as her daughter
walked across the bedroom to the windowseat. She
turned with a smile on her face, pleased to see
her daughter.
“Imogen, you’re back sooner than I
expected!”
“The dress I wanted fitted me perfectly, so I
didn’t have to try on loads of things like I
usually do” Imogen replied. In her hand was a
shop carrier bag, she thrust it forward to her
mother “Do you want to see it?”
“ I’d like to see it on you, go and try it
on for me.”
Imogen smiled at her mother and rushed off to
her bedroom, downstairs on the first floor.
Imogen was thirteen. Her hair was a darker red
than her mother’s, and extremely curly. She
had started puberty, but was still a long way
from being a woman. She was going through a
particularly awkward stage, where she had become
quite plump as her hormones struggled to find
equilibrium. Imogen was finding this difficult
to cope with. She had never considered her body
shape before; it had never been an issue. It
seemed highly unfair to her that just when she
was starting to take an interest in her
physique, it changed out of all recognition,
into something monstrous.
Ten minutes later Imogen sashayed back into
Gillian’s bedroom, wearing the new dress, with
shoes, tights and make-up to give the full
effect. Gillian laughed at her daughter’s aped
catwalk movements. The dress was stunning.
Imogen was beginning to show voluptuous curves
to her figure, and the startling blue, sequinned
shift dress highlighted them magnificently.
Gillian caught her breath as she was forcibly
reminded by the vision in front of her that her
daughter was growing up fast.
Imogen caught the look of astonishment on
Gillian’s face and misinterpreted it. All of
the merriment left her face as she assumed that
her mother was thinking how fat she looked in
the beautiful sequinned dress. Her face clouded
over, her shoulders slumped forward and her hair
fell over her face. As she turned to leave the
room, her mother exclaimed “Oh Imogen, you
look so beautiful, my little girl is all grown
up!” Imogen turned her head back to look at
her mother to see the expression on her face.
What she saw was an enormous surprise,
Gillian’s face was shining with pride, her
eyes moist with tears of emotion. Relief surged
through Imogen’s body, she had been sure that
despite the weight she had recently acquired;
the dress was very flattering on her. She ran
over to her mother clumsily, forgetting that she
was wearing high heels. They sank deeply into
the carpet, leaving tiny imprints behind her.
She hugged her mother fiercely trying not to
show what that brief !
moment of doubt had cost her. Gillian was taken
aback by such a reaction. They had always been
close as mother and daughter, but such shows of
open affection had become limited in Imogen’s
adolescence. Imogen untangled herself from her
mother and went back to her room to change back
into her standard teenage uniform of jeans and a
skinny rib top.
Imogen and Gillian had lived on their own in
that house since Imogen had been three years
old. Her father, Matthew Martindale, had left
the family when his relationship with Gillian
fell apart. The problems with the marriage had
become apparent when Gillian started to be
successful in her professional life, in fact
more successful than him. Being compared to her
he always felt inadequate and this had destroyed
the relationship. He had completely exited
Imogen’s life. She now rarely thought about
her father. Imogen and Gillian were the only
family that each of them had, and as a
consequence they were very close. In fact
Gillian was particularly proud of the
relationship that they had. She felt that Imogen
could confide in her and that she, herself,
treated Imogen as an equal.
Despite this, Gillian had noticed that her
daughter had seemed to be less forthcoming in
recent months and that their relationship had
grown some distance. She knew that all teenagers
have difficulties adjusting their perspectives
of their parents during adolescence, and so did
not worry overly about it. She thought of her
own tortured teenage years, and wished that she
had been able to share her torment with her own
mother. Perhaps things would have turned out
very differently. |
