by Ali Mercer
I could have said, At least he turns up on time.
I could have said, I’ve kind of got used to him being around. Because I had, in spite of myself. And yet I, of all people, knew exactly how easy it was for a man to disappear. The way Dad would, after this visit. The way he’d done for years.
So instead I just shrugged. ‘Seriously, what did you mean about him coming out of the woodwork?’
‘Oh, they’ll tell you all about that, by and by,’ Dad said. ‘I guess they’re waiting for their moment.’
Suddenly he looked completely crushed. This was the next stage after the Face of Compulsion: the Face of Defeat.
‘I’m going out for a smoke,’ he muttered, and grabbed his jacket and hurried out of the restaurant without looking at either of us.
‘He’s jealous, isn’t he?’ Ellie said.
‘Well, obviously it’s going to freak him out.’ What was I doing defending Dad? This never normally happened. ‘What was that all about, anyway? All that “Mark’s really nice, he gave me a big expensive present” stuff?’
‘But it’s true,’ Ellie protested.
‘Just because something’s true doesn’t mean you have to say it.’
Her eyes shone a bit: any minute now she’d cry, and everybody in the restaurant would stare at us and it would be embarrassing – even more embarrassing than Dad stumbling as he weaved round the tables – and I’d feel like a total bitch. Even though none of this was my fault. Her lower lip was trembling, and when she spoke it was in her most plaintive voice.
‘But isn’t it better for Dad to think that Mark’s OK than to think he’s horrible and we hate him? He’ll only worry about us.’
‘He’s not going to worry. He never does. I mean, he might, for five minutes, and then he’ll just go and have another drink. If you big up Mark, all you’re going to do is make tonight more awkward than it needs to be. Just play it down, OK? Chances are we won’t see Dad again till Christmas and by then Mark might have disappeared back where he came from, who knows?’
She looked at me, all wide-eyed and innocent. ‘But he isn’t going to disappear.’
‘How do you know?’
And that was it, like a switch being flipped. Suddenly she was looking at me as if she was about a million years old and had seen everything. Her eyes had gone very dark, almost all pupil, and her face was as still as a mask. There was a kind of power coming off her like when something radiates heat and it distorts the air. Like invisible lightning. She was scorching. I don’t know how else to describe it. She was my sweet little sister and about the least scary person in the world, but at that moment she was terrifying.
I’d never seen Ellie change like that. I’d never seen anyone change like that.
Then she looked down at the tablecloth and put her hand up to her forehead, and when she faced me again whatever it was had passed.
‘I just know,’ she said.
Dad came back, weaving, but only slightly. He sat down and said, ‘So I suppose Mark’s taken you all out, has he? Given you some special times to remember him by?’
He was smiling as if to imply that it was all fine with him, he didn’t care that much either way. Except it was obvious that he did care. Not enough to turn up on time to see us, but enough to mind when Mum seemed to be auditioning his replacement.
‘Please, let’s not talk about Mark any more,’ Ellie said.
She had gone so pale it was as if there was no blood left in her at all. She stood up and pushed her chair back and hurried out of the restaurant, as if an alarm had gone off and she was only reacting as any sensible person would do – except no one else, me included, had heard it.
* * *
Ellie felt faint, as it turned out. She wasn’t well. She wanted to go home. Dad sighed and grumbled and rang Mum, and said he’d bring us back.
‘We could still spend some time together,’ I said diffidently, but he pretended he hadn’t heard me.
It took a while for us to get a taxi, but once we were on the way, we seemed to get home in minutes. When we got to our street Dad paid off the taxi driver and said, ‘I’ll come in with you.’
I said, ‘Are you sure? I mean, you don’t usually.’
‘Your mother said to bring Ellie home. She didn’t say to drop her off,’ Dad said.
‘Maybe you should ask the taxi driver to wait,’ I said. ‘You don’t want to be hanging round outside waiting for another one. It looks like it’s going to rain.’
‘Ava, stop fussing,’ Dad said. ‘I promise you, this is going to be fine. Your mother will be perfectly happy to invite me in, under the circumstances. After all, she’s happy with somebody else now, isn’t she? So what has she got to be bitter about?’
No way. That’s just what you want to think. You’re kidding yourself.
I didn’t say it – how could I? I thought he probably had it wrong. But maybe, just maybe, I was the one who had got it wrong. Maybe Mum would want to see him. Who knew?
It was beginning to spit with rain as we went up the steps to our building and the taxi driver drove off. The door to the downstairs lobby opened and there was Mark, arms folded, looking like he wasn’t about to put up with any nonsense.
Mark said, ‘Hello, Sean. I’m afraid Jenny really doesn’t want you coming in.’
I didn’t often wish that Dad was different: I’d resigned myself long ago to him being the way he was. But just then a huge wave of longing rose up in me for that other version of Dad, the might-have-been sober version. He would have been terrific. Unbeatable. Mark would never have had a look-in.
As it was, Dad swayed as he attempted to square up to Mark. He was slightly taller, an advantage taken away by the fact that he was standing on a lower step. He looked Mark up and down, and all of a sudden the fight seemed to ebb out of him.
‘Mark. I suppose I ought to say welcome back.’
Mark stared at Dad and a muscle worked away somewhere in his jaw: I’d never seen someone’s face do that unless it was on TV. Then he turned to me and Ellie and said, ‘You two should go inside.’
‘Dad was thinking he could come up,’ I said.
‘Then he’s got another think coming. Ava, take Ellie up.’
‘Don’t tell me what to do.’
He didn’t like that. Not one bit. ‘Your mother’s been worried. You should go and speak to her. Put her mind at rest.’
Mark stepped aside to let Ellie through and she went past him into the hallway. I reluctantly followed, and Mark shifted so that he was blocking the entrance again.
‘Go home, Sean,’ Mark said. ‘And when you’ve sobered up, here’s something to think about. If you can’t behave yourself when you see the girls, you’re not going to see them at all.’
‘You don’t get to decide that,’ Dad said.
‘No,’ Mark said. ‘Jenny decides. And I will respect her decision. As should you.’
‘You go,’ I told Ellie, and ushered her up the stairs to the flat.
‘Don’t talk to me like that,’ Dad said. ‘Where were you when she needed you? I’ll tell you where. Nowhere. I may not have been perfect, but I was a lot better than nothing.’
I turned back just in time to see him give Mark a little shove.
‘Stop it, both of you,’ I yelled, but I already was too late and neither of them was paying me any attention.
It happened so fast there was no chance to put myself between them. One minute they were both standing there eyeballing each other and the next minute Mark was still standing and Dad was bellowing like a gored bull and reeling back down the steps, clutching his nose, and there was blood on his face and all down his shirt, as if he’d been caught in an explosion.
‘You bastard!’ I shouted at Mark, and shoved him aside so I could get to Dad. ‘Dad, are you all right? Your nose isn’t broken, is it?’
‘Don’t think so,’ Dad mumbled. It was hard to hear him; his hand was still covering his nose. ‘Bloody hurts, though.’
I hated him for
the way he looked up at Mark – resentful, beaten – almost as much as I hated Mark for looking down at us with such disdain.
‘You should come in so we can clean that up and give you some ice to put on it or something,’ I said to Dad.
Mark relaxed his fist and shook it out.
‘He’s not coming into your mother’s flat,’ he said. ‘Not tonight. Not any night.’
‘You are not the one who gets to decide that,’ I told him.
‘Neither are you. Your mother is. But it looks like Sean agrees with her. Look, he’s already gone.’
He was right. Dad was hurrying away down the street, one hand still pressed to his bleeding nose.
I ran after him. ‘Dad, come back! You don’t have to go like this.’
‘Ava, go home,’ he muttered.
‘Well, where are you going?’
‘To get a drink. Leave me be, Ava. It’s no good. I can’t do this any more. Why kid ourselves? I was never any good at it. The whole Dad thing. And now it’s over.’
I stopped in my tracks. ‘Of all the pitiful, pathetic things to say…’
‘There’s no point being angry with me,’ he said. ‘I’m done.’
He kept on walking and I stayed where I was. Then he turned the corner of the street and disappeared and I turned and trudged back towards Mark. He was waiting in the doorway and looking on in satisfaction, as if he’d just seen off an interloper.
As I approached he made a slight move as if to lay a hand on my shoulder to soothe or placate me, and I flinched away.
‘You’re very loyal to him, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘In spite of everything.’
‘He may be a drunk. But you’re a bully,’ I said. ‘Mum may not be able to see it. But I do. Dad said you’d come crawling out of the woodwork because you were free. Free from what? Where have you been?’
I’d never seen him angry before. It wasn’t pretty. He was cold angry, not hot angry, and it made his face look as hard as a skull. But he made a real effort to control it, and when he spoke he sounded almost as charming and reasonable as usual.
‘I was married when I first met your mother years ago, and now I’m not.’
‘You never said.’
‘You never asked. It’s not a secret. It was a clean break and it’s all over and done with, and it’s none of Sean’s business. He’s jealous and he’s trying to stir up trouble, and that’s all there is to it.’
‘You’re the one who’s jealous. You just hit him, and he barely even provoked you.’
He didn’t like that. Not one little bit. But what was he going to do, thump me the way he’d just thumped Dad? That was one thing Mum would never have forgiven him.
‘I’m sorry you had to see that,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry you felt you had to drive him away. Anyway, it didn’t take much. He’s already given up.’
I went upstairs into the flat. Mum and Ellie were in the kitchen, and Mum was making tea: whenever either of us was unwell, that was Mum’s first line of defence.
Ellie still looked pale, and she started guiltily as I stuck my head round the door.
‘I’ll be in the bedroom,’ I said.
Mum said, ‘Where’s Mark?’
‘I expect he’ll be up in a minute. He just punched Dad. You might want to ask him about that.’
I withdrew and shut the bedroom door. I could hear the sound of conversation going on in the kitchen – it was Mark and Mum talking – but not what they were saying.
Maybe that would be the end of it. Maybe Mum would dump Mark now she knew he was capable of lashing out like that.
I had a feeling she wouldn’t, though. That was one of the problems with having been married to someone like Dad; you got used to making allowances.
Seven
Jenny
I had never been the kind of woman who goes to hotels in the afternoon to have sex, whatever kind of woman that is. A rich and busy woman having an affair, or one whose lover is rich and busy, I suppose. Not me, the divorced single mother-of-two who was always working and never had any money, who hadn’t got involved with anyone since her marriage fell apart.
But what were the alternatives? Mark travelled constantly for his work as an IT consultant, but his home – which I’d never seen – was in the Oxfordshire countryside, and my flat wasn’t much of a love nest. Even when it was empty, the girls’ presence lingered: the smell of Ava’s shampoo, Ellie’s books and notebooks. It wasn’t nearly anonymous or private enough. We had neighbours all around; they didn’t have to be nosy to notice a sudden new visitor – sound travelled, the entrance to the building was shared, and it was difficult to avoid picking up details about each other’s lives.
I couldn’t begin to see how Mark and I could recreate, in my single bed, the kind of freedom we found in rooms that we paid for so we could use them for an hour or two, and never see them again.
We paid for? He paid for. That was another attraction. He always settled the bill.
I knew it didn’t reflect very well on me to enjoy that as much as I did. But I’d spent so long scrimping and saving and watching the pennies, and making small, practical, dispiriting decisions so as to be able to cover the weekly food shop: bananas or apples that week? Tinned chicken or fresh? It was just so nice to be taken care of. I’d spent years fantasising (now and then, when I had the energy) about looking pretty in lingerie for a rich and masterful man who would find me irresistible. Well, now I had him, and it wasn’t a fantasy.
It was a miracle that I still managed to cut people’s hair, cook the dinner, clean the flat and settle the bills. I was so distracted I was like an amnesiac. It was as if I’d had a knock on the head that had displaced all the usual, sensible, day-to-day stuff, leaving me with erotic obsession and not much else.
But that day I wasn’t just thinking about sex with Mark. I was thinking about the future. The glorious future. My head told me it wouldn’t be plain sailing, but my heart didn’t care. My heart had decided to believe in happiness.
I went back to the flat after the last appointment of the day to get changed, and put Otis Redding on to get me in the mood – that was our music: ‘Dock of the Bay’ was our jukebox song. I had it on quiet, though – one of the nurses upstairs might be sleeping off a nightshift. Quiet worked fine, anyway.
I had new lingerie, new lipstick, I was in love, I was beloved, I was almost certainly about to have sex, it was spring and the sun was shining and a whole new life was opening up in front of me. What more could any woman want?
Even Ava didn’t strike me as being that much of a problem.
We just needed to talk to her – to both the girls – and explain what was really going on. This was the only bone of contention between me and him: I thought we should do it sooner rather than later, and he was holding back. He was nervous. Terrified. Well, that was only natural. I was doing my very best not to pressurise him: pressure from me was the last thing he needed.
Mark wanted it all to be perfect; he didn’t want to risk any of it slipping through his fingers. He wanted to control it. But keeping control of anything was impossible with Sean around. You were always up against the power of his appetite for booze, which was pretty much boundless.
I’d talked everything over with Sean before he took the girls out for dinner, and he’d promised me – promised me – he’d keep his mouth shut and behave himself. I should have known better. I should have known that his promises were worthless.
Mark had warned me, but I hadn’t wanted to believe it – I’d wanted to give Sean the benefit of the doubt. I’d said to Sean, If you want this all to work out, don’t rock the boat. Naturally he hadn’t been too happy about it, but that was Sean all over – always thinking about himself.
Mark had just said, Are you sure we can trust him? And I’d said, Yes. He’s kept quiet for years. He just has to keep quiet for a bit longer.
And then, after all that, Sean had got stupidly drunk. Mark had told me he’d let something slip. Some th
rowaway comment about Mark having come to find me once he’d got his freedom.
Sean had told Ava that Mark hadn’t been there when I needed him. Which was true. But she needed to know why, and that was what I was afraid to tell her. Because what if she couldn’t forgive me?
Anyway, I couldn’t think about all that now.
I examined my reflection in the mirror, turned sideways, struck a pose. Sex was all about confidence. That was the conclusion I’d come to since my long drought had ended. You couldn’t just tell yourself someone wanted you, or at least, I couldn’t. You had to feel that they wanted you. You had to believe it. So much of everything to do with love and sex was about having faith.
Time had been kinder to Mark than it had to me, at least in terms of appearance. I was in my thirties and I’d had two children, and I could hardly claim to look good from all angles. But he loved my stretch marks, my episiotomy scar. He really did.
And Sean never had. Given the choice between the old, unscarred, taut-bellied, smooth-skinned me – the one who’d never been pregnant – and the woman I was now, Sean would have chosen my younger self in a heartbeat.
Which I could understand, in a way. But that was the thing about youth – nobody got to keep it, not even the richest, best-preserved Hollywood stars. And when you did have it, you didn’t quite realise what you’d got – or I hadn’t, anyway. I hadn’t understood that it was a kind of power. I’d never tried to use it the way other women did, to get things that they might want later. Things they could keep.
Sharing a house with Ava, I was presented with a vision of youth and beauty day in, day out. Even if she was tired and fed up and had pimples in her hairline, Ava looked lit up. She was astonishing, really. Even when I’d been young, I’d never had that kind of beauty – the kind that stops people in the street.
I didn’t resent her. I’ve never understood mothers like that, who are envious of their own daughters. After all, it wasn’t her fault that I was getting older. Though in a way it was. Having kids does wear you out. Especially if you’re doing it pretty much on your own. But anyway, the point was that I didn’t feel old on the inside, at least not yet. My body still worked in the exact same way. If anything, it was even more responsive. It might not look the same, but Mark worshipped it.