Emerging from Baker Street tube late on Friday afternoon, I found myself walking along the road in front of a mother and her teenaged daughter. Their conversation went something like this:
Mother: “Are you sure you’ll be OK at home on your own?”
Daughter: “Yeah, of course.”
Mother: “Because you can come to Dubai with us if you like?”
Daughter: “I’ll be fine”. Pause. “Could I go to Reading, then, as you’re not around?”
Mother: “No. You’re too young to go to festivals.”
Daughter: “But you let Charlie go when she was 17.”
Mother: “And she came home after two days. No.”
Daughter: “But all my friends are going…”
The outcome appears inevitable: the lass heading to the festival knowing her absent parents could be none the wiser. The press photographer, capturing an image of dancing girls in the festival mud.
The father recognising his daughter on the front page of The Times. The telephone call, in which she’d deny having left the house all weekend. The shock when she realised about the photo; the dread (and guilt) consuming her as she awaited her parents’ return. Dinner on their first night home, in near-silence; his instruction at the end of it to go to her room and get ready for bed: “We have things to discuss; I shall come upstairs in a little while.” And the whipping, oh-so-hard with his thickest belt, as she touched her toes, that would result for her disobedience and dishonesty…
This is very much like the rather lovely dropping-off-to-sleep fantasy I had last night…