Unnatural Order. Liz Porter

      Chapter 1

      ‘Byron is alleged always to have carried a contraceptive in his top pocket,’ read Caroline as her aircraft droned away above the Mediterranean, ‘although it must be said that it was rarely a very effective one: his sword outwore its scabbard with inconvenient regularity.’ Frowning at the smug masculinity of the author’s tone, she took too large a swig of wine out of her little plastic glass, then winced at its rawness in her throat.

      She had spotted the biography of Byron in the Heathrow bookshop and bought it out of nostalgia. Perhaps reading it would take her back to her 16-year-old self, the girl who had burned with unformed adolescent passion at the mere idea of Byron: mad, bad and dangerous to know. The idea of being 16 again was looking quite appealing at this moment. At least it would get her out of her present predicament.

      But Byron’s contraceptive – probably some carefully crafted but well-worn piece of goatskin – made her think of her own little rubber diaphragm sitting squatly in its plastic case in her overnight bag.

      Oh God. Sex was the last thing she wanted to think about right now. Tonight, however, it would be an issue. In an hour’s time she would be landing in Lisbon, where Karl would be waiting. Yes, he had booked himself a single room in the Cintra Hotel, where she had reserved herself a room some months earlier. But he was sure to see this arrangement as a technicality.

      And why not, from his point of view? Hadn’t sexual attraction been the entire basis of their embarrassingly short acquaintance? And while he might not be expecting her to sleep with him tonight, the tone of his letter suggested that he anticipated moving on, sexually, from where they had left off in Mykonos. Anyway, hadn’t sex been on her mind a mere 24 hours earlier, when she had carefully washed her diaphragm, held it up to the light to check for holes and then put it in her bag?

      She picked up the Byron book again, opening it at a random page. ‘His “under-look”,’ she read, ‘made every virgin feel like a potential adulteress and every adulteress a vulnerable virgin.’ Caroline almost sighed aloud. She hadn’t appreciated her virginity when she had it, but how delightfully uncomplicated it seemed in retrospect.

      At a virginal 16 her only concept of a man’s penis had been based on dim memories of early childhood showers with her father, combined with the diagrams of male genitalia in the pamphlets from her school sex education class. At 17, when her first university boyfriend had pushed her hand down the front of his loose corduroy trousers, she was shocked to find the smooth pillar of flesh pointing upwards, instead of hanging down. It wasn’t until the next boyfriend that she realised the male organ could rise all the way up until its head could peep over the top of enclosing trousers.

      Yet, even in her ignorance, sex had been the source of her well-being. The textbooks said that adolescence was a troubled time after the carefree innocence of childhood, but the process had been the reverse for her. The discovery of boys, the simultaneous revelation that at least some of them liked her and the uncomplicated mindless pleasure of their kisses and adolescent fumblings had given her a release and a source of power that had transformed the anxious child she had been until the age of 13. Her interest in sex and boys made her the same as every other girl in the class: ordinary, average, accepted.

      She could remember arriving at a girlfriend’s house for a Saturday afternoon visit. She and Helen had been friends in primary school and had maintained contact, although they had been sent to different secondary schools. Helen’s father had opened the door with a flourish. Mr Benson was a bluff, red-faced, sandy-haired man who liked to tell jokes and go to the football, the opposite of her quiet, ironic, intellectual father.

      He probably hadn’t seen her since she was about 11, and now she was 14. She was still skinny; photos of her at both ages showed a face that had barely changed, although her hair was longer. But she must have had about her an air of self-possession and optimism that had been absent in her 11-year-old self.

      ‘Caroline, look at you,’ he had cried, so loudly that she was sure the whole street had heard. ‘Our ugly duckling has turned into a swan.’

      It seemed absurd to even think of describing a nine-year-old as a tortured soul, but Caroline could think of no better word for the nameless miseries of her life at that point.

      Her only close friend was their next-door neighbour, Zosia. Caroline had been confiding in her since she could talk. But Zosia was an adult, and Caroline knew that children were supposed to prefer the company of their peers. Accordingly, she had chosen Helen. Faithful, friendly, cheerful Helen. Precious afternoons with her were the closest Caroline ever came to acting out the carefree joys of childhood. Helen had a tricycle, a cubby house, two younger brothers and a joie de vivre as unselfconscious as the gurgles and smiles of Caroline’s newborn sister Jennifer. Caroline envied both of them without rancour. What would it be like to wake up without feeling a great lump of dread in your stomach?

      Later she had attempted to reinvent this childhood angst, recasting it as something bleak but romantic; a big black cloak. At the time it had felt more like the grey plastic mackintoshs her mother made her wear on rainy days: drab, all-covering, depressing.

      She had always been a fearful child. What, exactly, she had been frightened of was difficult to define. Mr Benson, who coached Caroline and his daughter at rounders, always accused her of shrinking from the ball when it was bowled. Perhaps he had been right – she was certainly physically timorous. The combination of an innate lack of physical aptitude and parents who, with the exception of their own golf games, showed little interest in sporting excellence had produced a child who was so unconfident of her physical self that she felt stomach-churning anxiety whenever she was faced with any kind of athletic challenge.

      How could other children display such glee as they swarmed over monkey bars or flew down huge slides? She looked at them in awe. They were proper children, uninhibited, fearless, careless of their own safety. She, on the other hand, was a small, worried adult trapped in a skinny child’s body. Other children intuitively recognised this in her, choosing her last for teams in games which required skill or daring.

      She was simply no good at being a child. She knew this with a sad certainty. She was a failure. She knew too much, understood too much, feared too much.

      The ultimate proof of her failure to be a proper child was her fear, almost bordering on dislike, of groups of her own kind. She could manage single encounters with skill, but the prospect of being forced to join an unknown group of children in the street filled her with horror.

      Helen’s family went to Queensland during the summer holidays in which Jennifer was born. Nine-year-old Caroline spent the entire period playing alone or with the new baby, refusing her mother’s urgings that she join a group of children who had started playing in the park at the bottom of their street.

      Hunched in her room over a library copy of Lord of the Flies, her worst fears were confirmed: children were not to be trusted. Adults could be relied on to like her; they thought she was clever. Children had her number. They could tell she was a fake.

      Central to her failure to be a child was the way her body continued to let her down, her stomach clenching with panic at activities which gave real children paroxysms of joy. On swings she didn’t like going high because she was scared of falling. She didn’t have a bike, and was too hesitant to catch on when Helen gave her a quick go on hers. She didn’t even have the knack of throwing a ball far enough to be useful at rounders. When others were watching, her clenched stomach seemed to extend as far as her arms, cramping them with fear.

      Only recently she had asked herself why she hadn’t ever confided any of these miseries to her parents. Had she known that her failings would have seemed like a reproach to them? Or was she just sure they wouldn’t have understood? ‘Never mind,’ her mother had shrugged once, when Caroline had bemoaned her failure to get into the school rounders team. ‘I don’t think we even had sport at school when I was your age.’