by Neha Yazmin
Knowing where he lives, I don’t need to keep him in sight, and so I take a roundabout route to his house. I speed-run when no one’s looking. If anyone is around, I’m too fast for them to see. The light breeze my passing leaves behind is just a gust of wintry wind.
His house is a detached property in a quiet but homely street. His car is parked in the driveway, but due to traffic and parking issues in the City, he leaves it at home and uses public transport. Taking out his keys, he unlocks the front door.
Then it happens. My favourite part. A little girl named Veronica, but always called Ronnie, runs up to him and hugs his legs. She’s not much taller than his knees, with brown ringlets for hair and rosy, bulging cheeks. I know she’s a little older than her height suggests, but she must surely love being small for her age. Because he picks her up in his arms and twirls her around and around before giving her a kiss and asking, “Where’s mummy?”
“Kitchen,” says little Ronnie and together they shut the door and head for the kitchen at the rear of the house.
The small family eats in their wonderful kitchen, and as they do so, they talk about their day. He poses several questions to his daughter, asking for all the little details of her day at nursery. Then, when the child is worn out from monopolising her day, he turns to his wife Carol. From the expression on his face as he listens to her, I know her day doesn’t interest him a great deal.
But it’s not because he doesn’t love her, it’s just that she doesn’t do much. A lady of real leisure. After dropping Ronnie off at school, she spends all her day in a salon styling her fair hair, or in a beauty parlour getting facials for her creamy-coloured skin, or at a tea party with other housewives, or out shopping. Hardly gripping stuff!
Then they play with their daughter for a couple of hours. This is when he comes alive, really alive. Like he was born to do this. Not to be that fast-paced City worker, but a father. He is a really good dad.
Ronnie gets sleepy and tired around the same time every day and once she’s tucked up in bed, the adults retire to their room. The first time I’d watched them all, I had no idea they were going off to their bedroom, so I’d crept around the house until I found them. That’s when I realised that he was very much in love with his wife and they still had a good relationship.
I didn’t watch, of course I didn’t, what do you take me for? I turned around and made my way back to the train station. Nowadays, I just leave the moment Ronnie falls asleep.
I’m not proud of my stalking. Like I said, I decided after the first week that I’d leave him alone. But I can’t help it. I’m addicted.
Watching him with Ronnie, it just feels like… like living my childhood all over again. But with a loving, caring, wonderful father looking after me. Ronnie’s father looking after me.
But he’s not just her father. He’s my father too. Yes, that’s him, my real father.
David Ryan.
Chapter 7: Coming home
Well, that’s what usually happens…
Something different is happening today. Just as I leave the platforms to make my way to David Ryan’s home, my senses tell me he has stopped walking just a few yards past the station. I walk a little faster than my usual deliberate slow walk to see what’s happened.
He’s looking at the screen of his phone, perplexed. He usually checks his phone after leaving the station, when the signal’s available again, but he rarely calls anyone as he walks home.
Which is what he’s doing now.
“James, what’s happened?” David asks into his cell phone after a few seconds of holding it to his ear in edgy silence.
I lean against a tree on the sidewalk opposite the spot where he has stopped to make the call, my back to him. I can hear him as though he is standing right next to me. Every breath, every clearing of the throat, every sound he makes, creates a picture of him and his movements in my head. So I can see him too, even with my back turned.
“You finally got my text then?” a man’s voice says through the line. James. Yes, I can hear him as well as my father’s voice. If I was interested in James, I’d track all the sounds emanating from him through the phone connection and conjure up a visual of him in my head too.
But I choose to focus all my concentration on David.
“Yes, I got your message and I’m on my way home. But why are you texting to tell me to come home ASAP? You know I’ll be home soon.” David sounds a little irritable and at the same time slightly worried. “Is it Ronnie?” he asks panicked, and starts walking again. I decide to get to the house as quickly as I can. I monitor their conversation as I launch into a brisk walk. Well, brisk for me, probably power-walking for humans.
“No, it’s Carol-”
Some of the panic in my dad’s voice ebbs away as he realises his daughter is fine. “Is Carol hurt?”
“Not physically…”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you nearly home?” James asks apprehensively.
“Nearly, why?”
“I guess you’ll see for yourself.”
The line goes dead.
How odd. James, my dad’s neighbour from the house opposite his, is usually home. A freelance photographer, he’s frequently in his dark room, developing his clicks. Some of his work is rather good actually, I can see through his windows. He has them up all over the house. He’s home and knows something is going on at David’s house but won’t tell him because…
Because David’s going to see for himself.
See for himself that his wife has littered the area outside their house with all his belongings. Some are overflowing from untied black bin-bags, a few cardboard boxes with trophies and other solid objects are scattered about the front yard, but most of it is just lying on the pavement.
Passers-by are treading around the many white and light blue shirts, shiny black shoes and trainers, towels of various sizes. A few people are crossing the street to avoid the vicinity altogether. I can see a small group of schoolchildren have created a loose circle around the house and the mess outside it.
Unable to help myself, I join the crowd of kids, pulling the hood of my grey fleece further forward to hide my face. This is just to stay anonymous - its winter and the sun is on a vacation so I don’t need to worry about sparkling.
As I wait for David to turn into his street and find his whole life’s on the pavement, I don’t want to second-guess what’s going on here. There are no conversations in David’s house to alert me about why Carol’s thrown her husband’s things out the door. It also seems that the neighbours have already discussed the probable cause of this episode and are just waiting to see how things play out when David arrives.
“What the-” he says as he finally approaches his doorstep. He throws a quick glance at the kids and the taller, awkward hooded figure standing amongst them before running to his door. It’s open so he puts his keys back in his pocket and walks in, calling out his wife’s name.
I’m pretty sure that I’m the only one who hears what unfolds behind closed doors - David and Carol keep their voices down - but everyone in the street seems to have a pretty good idea too.
Neighbours start murmuring to each other about how it was only a matter of time. A few people express pity for Carol and Ronnie, but everyone else seems to be enjoying the drama. Even James, the neighbour David is closest to, agrees with his partner Amanda that my father had it coming.
I am in total shock.
I thought I knew him, knew him better than anyone else, better than the man who brought me up.
I had no idea!
Six months I’ve been watching him, six months. And I didn’t have a clue who he really was.
I came down to London because my mother told me that’s where he lives. It hadn’t been at all tricky pinpointing his whereabouts and it felt wonderful finding him, getting to know him through his daily routine, his interactions with his family.
I was even beginning to contemplate the idea of approaching him one day. Ju
st to talk. I wouldn’t tell him that I was the unborn daughter he’d left behind. Or that I was a vampire now. Definitely not that part. But I longed to have at least one conversation with him. I’d been trying to pluck up the courage to go up to him for some time.
Now I never will.
I’ve lost all desire to see him anymore. Lost all my respect for him. Yes, I respected him, despite what he’d done to me and my mother all those years ago. He was young, I reasoned. I can’t judge him for what he did in his youth, before he had a chance to grow up and find the person he was meant to be. He was a different man now. A good man. A good father. A good husband.
He is none of those things.
“You are going to leave this house, now,” Carol is saying firmly. I can hear the quakes in her voice though, the tremble of her lips as she speaks, trying to be brave and unwavering. Trying to keep from crying. “Now David,” she insists, “before my sister returns with Ronnie. You’re going to pack your things from outside and get out of my sight before my daughter comes home. I will not let her see me, or the front yard like this.”
“This is my house Carol, and there’s no way I’m leaving it without seeing my daughter.”
“You should have thought about that before you started screwing your secretary!” his wife retorts. “And how dare you stand there calling this your house, you have such a nerve.” I totally agree with her. He should be begging his wife for forgiveness rather than claiming what is his. “Just get out. Get out!” I can hear her sob now, she is really upset. The screeching of a wooden stool tells me she just sat down on it, her knees going weak.
“Carol please,” he pleads in her moment of weakness. Quick footsteps approach the breakfast bar where his wife is. The clattering of cutlery tells me David is leaning on the counter, his hands brushing the metal objects strewn across it. “I swear she means nothing to me, Carol. Nothing. We can work it out. I won’t do it again, I promise.”
“You’ve said that before you liar!” she shouts. This time, her scream travels to the ears of the children outside. They start sniggering, particularly the girls. I imagine the boys are rooting for David to get himself out of this mess. One he’s obviously been in before.
A serial adulterer - how had I not seen this? Mind you, if you’re only watching someone get on and off the tube to work, and forcing yourself to stay away the rest of the day, you wouldn’t really discover that they were having an affair. And I wasn’t looking for the signs anyway. I just watched him for the sake of watching the father I never had and never would.
“I mean it this time, honey,” David says softly. He’s reaching for her hand but the sharp scratch of wood against travertine means Carol has jumped off her seat and won’t let him touch her. “I won’t do-”
“Yes you will, David. That’s what you do. This is the third family you’ve broken up. Ronnie will be the third child you never see again.” Fourth, I thought when she said third child. Ronnie will be the fourth child he will never see again.
The fourth child who will never see him again.
My mother was right about him. He’s not worth it. Whether or not she convinced him to stay with her all those years back. Whether she told me the truth long ago. Whether or not I tracked him down while I was still human. Every scenario would have ended in the same way. David would have always left her, left me. That’s what he does.
He leaves people.
I realise that the main reason I was angry with mum was not because she chose to lie about my biological father, but what I thought was her motivation behind her actions. I wanted a father who loved me, not the one who couldn’t bear to look at me most of the time, and she owed it to me to tell me I had another shot at a successful father-daughter relationship.
But she hadn’t.
And I thought it was to control me. She didn’t want to see David again, she didn’t want me to see him again, and so it wasn’t going to happen.
It’s clear now that mum was only protecting me from David Ryan, and from everything that could lead me to this sort of pain. The hurt I feel right now, the distress that Ronnie will feel later this evening when she comes home from her aunt’s and discovers her father has left.
The pain of being left behind. Cheated. Betrayed. Deserted.
Whether or not he loved me, thought of me as his own, my adopted father Jake did take care of me and provide for me. He didn’t leave us. He stuck by us.
As I turn to leave the scene, the house that David has exited to gather up his things, I feel something heavy slipping off me and falling to the pavement. A burden. The burden of anger.
I’m not angry at mum anymore. I understand her better now than I ever did as a human. I see her point of view. Yes, I’ll never agree that she had a right to be so overbearingly overprotective and possessive of me, but I get why she felt like she had to do that.
Perhaps if she hadn’t always had her eyes on me, Christian or some other vampire would have found me much earlier. Earlier? Yes. Strange I know, but it feels like I was going to be a vampire all along, but my mother delayed the moment for as long as she could.
What a weird thought. Me, destined to be a vampire!
I said many things to my mother the night I left, and one of the things was that I would never forgive her. Well, I didn’t know as much as I do now, know me as well as I do now, and so it seems I’d been wrong about that. I guess I do forgive her, forgive her for almost everything. The other thing I said was that I was never coming back, and it seemed I was going to be right about that. What with me becoming a vampire and all that.
But now… I don’t know… It feels like I have to see her one last time. See her with understanding and forgiveness in my eyes rather than fury and betrayal. She can’t see me though. I can’t go up to her and tell her we’re cool now, but it won’t be closure if I don’t see her.
So I will return to Reading for a final farewell. What an unexpected stab of fear and anxiety the thought brings with it.
Coming home.
Chapter 8: What the hell is going on here?
The town of Reading, in the county of Berkshire, is around 40 miles west of London. An hour’s drive, more or less. Though I never got a driver’s licence or took driving lessons, I’m sure I can drive. Drive pretty well, actually, since us vampires are really good at everything.
But I shall restrict my thievery to donated blood; I’ve never stolen anything in my old life, and I won’t steal a car to revisit it. Walking home will apparently take up to 14 hours. Hah! Not for me. I could run there in under 10 minutes, maybe less. I should totally time myself.
Being an underground vampire however, I decided to take the subway from the tube station near David’s house to Paddington, and then get the last train to Reading. It’s just one stop and takes less than half an hour.
And yes, I did pay for the tickets. As soon as my mother told me about David, I knew I would come to London to look for him after my exams. So I left home with all the cash I had stashed away in a shoebox under my bed and one of the first things I did after leaving Christian’s apartment as a newborn vampire was deplete both my current and savings accounts. I knew I would need all the money I had. It was enough to bring me to London and there was enough leftover to get me back home.
I spent the commute wondering whether my family still consider me missing, or have they concluded that I am dead by now? They’d be right, sort of. Human Ellie is dead.
Vampire Ellie however, is currently strolling in the shadows towards the four-bedroom terraced house she grew up in. Its real dark now, the black moonless sky such a contrast to the light jade one I saw the last time I was here.
Suddenly, I see myself staring back at me from every tree and lamppost lining the road outside my old home. ‘Have you seen Ellie?’ are the words I read. There are flyers stapled everywhere, with my face on them. Some look freshly printed and mounted up, others are tearing at the edges.
I’m taken aback by the phone number written on them. Not my
sister Heather’s. Not my mother’s. But her husband Jake’s mobile number. I don’t need a closer look, but I run down the pavement, quick as a flash, smelling the scent coming off the tattered papers stuck to tree-trunks and metal posts. It’s his aftershave on all of them. When I stop at the newest-looking of the flyers and inspect it closely, I don’t smell anything of my mum’s on it.
Just Jake. He’s the one who’s still putting these up, still searching for me.
Did my mother give up after a few months of looking for me, the flyers she put up washed out by the rain, blown away by the wind, cleaned up by the bin-men, dissolved by time? Or has it always been Jake?
I find that I can call him dad again. I reach out and touch the digits printed below my photograph and whisper, “Thanks, dad.”
Sticking to the shadows, I approach the house opposite ours and prepare to appraise the property I’d been avoiding since I arrived. Still a teenager at my core, I sort of want the dramatics that go with that first glance at my former home.
My hood is pulled close to my face, my hands in the pockets of my grey fleece that’s over my white T-shirt which is barely obscuring the studded black belt holding up my faded denim jeans. My eyes are on my dirty white trainers with fraying laces. Knowing I am directly opposite my bedroom, I take a deep breath and lift my head up slowly.
The window of my room is black. It’s the only room which hasn’t had the curtains closed. Neglected.
I cast my eyes down. The living room light is on. I hone in on the TV in it and realise its playing the last segment of a football show. Dad always liked to watch the after-match analysis. I can make out easily that Heather’s in her room, clicking and tapping away on a laptop.
Mum is in her room, the one next to mine. I see her silhouette on the illuminated curtains, a black, curled shape surrounded by a yellow glow. Bedside lamp on, she’s sitting on the bed, staring at something on her lap. A book? She’s silent. All I hear is her slow breathing, her heartbeat.