by Maria Goodin
A tear slips from her eye.
“Perhaps we should have told you, I don’t know. But we all agreed…”
“I don’t… he’s what?”
“Your dad knows. I mean, Richard. He knows. He’s always known. And we all decided – the three of us – that it would better if we just carried on—”
A strangled sound escapes from her throat. She removes her glasses and wipes at her eyes.
“God, I know this must be a shock—”
“I don’t… I… what? I mean… What?!”
All of a sudden the ground feels like it’s spinning beneath my feet. I lean forwards and put my head in my hands, nausea washing over me. The pigeon pecks at my shoes and I kick it away fiercely, sending it flying, wings flapping in alarm.
“What the fuck?” I whisper.
“I know it’s a lot to take in.” She places her hand on my shoulder and I shrug her off.
“How…? I don’t understand. How can he be…?”
“We had a very brief affair,” she says hastily, as if getting it out quickly will somehow lessen the torment. “When I found out I was pregnant, I knew it was Jack’s baby and I told your dad. I even told him I’d leave if that’s what he wanted, but he didn’t want me to. He didn’t want to lose Laura. He didn’t want to lose me. Jack didn’t want children – I told you that before – and Richard was willing to raise you like his own child—”
“So hang on,” I say, hunched over and digging my fingers into my scalp, “all three of you agreed on this?”
“It just made sense all round. Jack didn’t want a baby. And he certainly didn’t want the responsibility of Laura. That was never what we had in mind. It wasn’t what anyone wanted. I wasn’t looking to break our family up—”
“Oh my God,” I groan. “Does Laura know?”
“Of course not.”
I shake my head in disbelief. I can’t get my thoughts straight. My dad. My life. All of it a lie.
“We never expected to have to tell you—”
“So why are you telling me now?”
“Because he wants to see you. He’s dying and he wants to talk to you—”
“About what?”
“To make his peace with you, I suppose.”
“His what?” I laugh.
“He might not have been there, but he’s always kept a close interest in you.”
“A close interest in me? He hasn’t seen me in years!”
I try to understand what’s going on, but I feel oddly detached from the situation. I try to feel something, anything, just so I know I’m really here and this is actually happening, but I can’t. There’s nothing there. I’m hollow.
I laugh quietly, bitterly, pieces of the jigsaw suddenly falling into place.
I remember asking why I was the only one in the family with blue eyes and being told it was a generational throwback to my grandmother. I remember everyone saying I’d grow to be six foot three like my dad, and later being vaguely surprised when I ground to a halt three inches beneath him. I remember wondering how my parents could have possibly found the money to pay private-school fees. But they didn’t, did they? It was him.
I stand up and start to walk away.
“Where are you going?” my mum asks.
“Home,” I say, numbly.
But then I stop, turn around.
There’s something that Laura’s always suspected, and I’ve denied, but now, finally, I want to ask her. Because what is there to lose now? Why don’t we just say it all?
“Did you know that dad was getting sick?” I ask. “Is that why you left when you did?”
She shakes her head but doesn’t look shocked. “No. I didn’t know. And that’s not why I left when I did. I just couldn’t do it anymore. It was just time.”
I study her lined face, her watery brown eyes behind her glasses. I desperately want to believe her, but I feel like I don’t even know who she is anymore.
Over the years, I’ve tried to see things from her point of view. I know now that parents are flawed and imperfect. I know now what it’s like to fall for someone despite your better judgement. And I know how hard it is feeling trapped by responsibility. I understand that at sixteen I was no longer a baby, that it wasn’t her job to deal with the fallout of my mistakes, and that I had to own up to the consequences of my actions.
But I also know that’s all bullshit. It’s just what I tell myself to reason away the hurt and the anger.
Because if Josh ever found himself in the situation I was in – scared, overwhelmed, life careering off track – it wouldn’t matter if he was sixteen or sixty.
I will always, always, be there for my son when he needs me.
“Christ, what’s up with you?” asks Laura when she opens her front door, searching my face with a look of mild horror.
She’s wearing a little black dress and a lot of make-up, clearly heading out for the evening.
“I need to talk to you,” I say, pushing past her.
“Err… firstly, bit rude. And, secondly, I have a date.”
“With who?”
“Mark. The guy who owns the garage.”
“You said he was a dick.”
“Yeah, but he’s a hot dick with tickets to this club I want to go to.”
“Well, cancel.”
“I’m not gonna cancel just ’cause you’re obviously in the midst of another crisis,” she says indignantly.
But clearly she sees something desperate in my face. Her expression changes from annoyed to wary to concerned.
“Okay, I’ll call him,” she says, nervously, “just go and sit down.”
After the shock comes the understanding.
“You know, for all those years I wondered why you were the favourite one,” Laura muses, staring at the whisky in the bottom of her glass. “You, Mum, Dad – you all used to tell me that it was in my head, that I was imagining it. But I wasn’t, was I? I was right. She favoured you because you were his.”
We’re sitting on her lounge floor, slumped against the front of her sofa, the lights down low. Josh is staying at Sam’s house. It’s gone two in the morning and we just can’t stop talking about it.
“I always felt guilty,” I tell her, “for the way she treated me. Like I was somewhere to pin all the hopes and aspirations, while you… I dunno, I think you did always get the raw deal.”
Laura shrugs. “Yeah, but then I could see she put you under a lot of pressure. It must have been hard for you, having her pushing you all the time. And I didn’t exactly make things easier for you.”
I lean my head back against the edge of the sofa cushion and close my eyes, growing drowsy.
“Nope. You could be a prize bitch at times.”
I can feel myself slipping into sleep, but a change in Laura’s breathing besides me makes me open my eyes. She sits forward and hugs her knees. Is she crying? Laura?
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” I mumble.
“I really was such a bitch to you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I sigh, exhausted.
“Of course it fucking matters! I mean, I told you so many times I wished you weren’t my brother and now…”
“Now what?” I ask, suddenly wide awake and sitting up. “Now what? I’m not your brother anymore? ’Cause you’ll always be my same pain-in-the-arse sister. As far as I’m concerned, this changes nothing.”
Laura wipes at her eyes, smudging her mascara across her cheeks. Her sparkly earrings were long ago discarded on the carpet and she’s picked so much at a thread in her tights that she now has a ladder running from thigh to ankle.
“I wouldn’t even blame you if you didn’t want to be my brother after the things I’ve said to you in the past,” she says, shaking her head sadly.
“Shut up,” I say, putting my arm around her. “What the hell would I have done without you over the last fifteen years? How would I have managed?”
She rests her head against my shoulder.
“I do love you reall
y,” she tells me, her voice cracking.
“Christ, now I know you’re pissed. You’re gonna regret telling me that in the morning.”
She laughs through her tears. “You won’t even remember I said it. You’ve got a memory like a sieve these days.”
I butt my foot against hers.
“Least I haven’t got weird chimp feet,” I say, referencing the fact that her second toes are longer than her big ones.
She slaps me hard on the stomach.
I swear and then give her a squeeze, before resting my head back on the sofa and closing my tired eyes.
“I love you too, you crazy moo,” I mutter.
As he slumbers in his armchair, I hold my dad’s hand, feeling the grey hairs of his knuckles, the dry, calloused pads of his long fingers. These capable hands that have spent decades fixing and tinkering.
Brenda places a mug of tea beside my chair.
“You can wake him, if you like,” she says. “Silly man keeps falling asleep in the afternoons and then doesn’t sleep at night.”
“No, I don’t want to wake him,” I say quietly. “Let him rest.”
I take in the white stubble of his chin, the lines around his eyes, the slack skin around his neck. I remember riding high on his younger shoulders, racing those long legs across the park, being pulled in for a hug by those strong, wiry arms. It never bothered me that my dad was a little older than everyone else’s. I knew he was fitter and sharper than any of them.
Brenda sits down on the sofa with a sigh. She’s older than my mum – much closer to my dad’s age – and so totally different. She’s quiet and unassuming, insistent on good grammar and exemplary manners, but she’s also as tough as an ox, a no-nonsense kind of woman who gets things done without complaining. Even this new revelation – that my dad raised another man’s child – hasn’t fazed her. He’ll have had his reasons for not telling me, she said.
I don’t know how she’s managed with my dad for so long – his tempers and wanderings, his demands and emotional outbursts. But recently the cracks are starting to show. She simply can’t cope with this anymore, and we’re going to have to make choices. For the last few months, we’ve been trawling through websites and leaflets, speaking to doctors and social services, visiting community centres and respite homes. All of us – me, Laura and Brenda – all know some big decisions need to be made. But none of us wants to make them.
“Are you sure you don’t want something to eat, love?” asks Brenda. “I could do a toasted sandwich?”
I shake my head. I can’t eat today, just like I haven’t been able to eat for the last three days since meeting with my mum. I feel wobbly inside, and my breath feels strained and tight. Every time I try to eat something, I get heartburn. And I’m so, so tired, although I can barely sleep.
“When did you know you loved my dad?” I ask, my eyes fixed on his face.
I hear Brenda swallow a mouthful of tea.
“I don’t think there was single moment,” she says, “he just sort of grew on me. A shared word search in the staffroom, a shared packet of Jaffa Cakes… I finally looked forward to going to work just for that time together. But I knew he was married. I never imagined we’d be anything other than friends.”
“But how did you carry on like that, day after day, when you were secretly in love with him?”
“Well,” she sighs, “for me it was that or nothing. I was resigned to the fact that he had a wife and family. And anyway, I never would have imagined he’d be interested in me, romantically speaking. So, friendship was better than nothing.”
I think about Libby and I wish I could feel like that, but I just don’t. I’m tired of struggling with my feelings for her, trying to keep them in check. I don’t want to be her friend anymore. I just want to be free of her.
My dad stirs in his chair. For a second he opens his eyes and looks at me. I smile, but there’s no recognition there, and he quickly closes his eyes again, falls back asleep. What breaks my heart most are the times he gets angry and agitated about me never visiting, telling Laura that his son never comes to see him.
I’m always here, Dad. Always.
Suddenly I remember Laura’s phone call on the night of Josh’s birthday, how she told me Dad had been distressed, saying he never should have lied to me. Was this what he was talking about? The lie about my parentage? Laura thought he was talking nonsense. She would have told him to quieten down, have a nice cup of tea.
I wonder what it took for him to raise another man’s child as his own, knowing the biological father of that child was the true keeper of his wife’s heart. What did it take for him to allow that man to visit his home, speak to his wife, see his child, year after year? What did it take for him to allow that man to pay for his son’s education?
I know what it’s like to be offered money to help raise your child. My life – Josh’s life – could have been so different if I’d accepted the money Hellie’s parents were willing to give me. Maybe I was wrong, maybe I was being selfish, but surely every man wants to be able to support his own child. At twenty-one, whether I like it or not, Josh will have access to a trust fund he doesn’t know exists. He’ll be a wealthy young man. But until then it’s my job to support him. It takes a bigger man than me – a man like my dad – to shelve his pride.
“I should go,” I say quietly, but I can’t let go of my dad’s hand. I feel like I’ve already lost him once.
I hear Brenda take another sip of her tea.
“You stay as long as you need to, sweetheart,” she says. “This will always be your home.”
Chapter 18
Empty
I remember…
…
…nothing.
My mind is blank. I feel empty, spaced out, detached from reality.
Everything that went before feels like a lie.
I feel like a lie.
The memories stop. My thoughts stop.
I
Feel
Nothing.
Chapter 19
Secrets
I haven’t told Josh the truth yet.
It’s already been so hard for him, watching my dad decline. He makes a joke of it when his grandad can’t remember his name or can’t recognise his face, but I know it breaks his heart. How will he feel to find out his real grandad’s a man he’s never met? I don’t know. I don’t even know how I feel.
I have a sense of being numb, outside of myself. I can’t think straight. I can’t focus on anything. All the thoughts and memories that have been streaming into my brain for the past few weeks have vanished, leaving nothing but white noise. I’m functioning on autopilot, going through the motions of the day without anything registering. I just feel hollow.
But I have to tell Josh. Better to get it over and done with.
I get up from the sofa and head towards his bedroom, when suddenly he comes crashing out into the hallway.
“Why didn’t you tell me?!” he snaps.
For a moment I wonder how on earth he knows. Who would have told him? Laura? Michael? But why would they?
“Why would you not tell me that my mum wants to see me?!”
Ah. That’s the other thing I haven’t told him.
“I saw the emails!”
My brain scrambles to catch up, but then I realise with horror that I said he could use my laptop after he somehow managed to drop a can of baked beans on his brand new one and killed it. I was so busy ranting about his carelessness and how much the damn thing had cost me (and so startled that he was actually going to do some work on his music project) that it didn’t even occur to me that the increasing number of emails I’ve been exchanging with Hellie via my phone would be accessible on my laptop.
“Why were you looking at my email account?” I demand, knowing full well this really isn’t the point.
“I wasn’t! I was just trying to log you out so that I could log into my email account!”
I run my hand over my head.
“Look, I wa
s going to talk to you about this—”
“When?”
What am I meant to say to that? When I felt sure that she wasn’t going to lose interest in you again after five minutes? When I felt certain she wasn’t going to break your heart with her selfishness?
“When were you going to tell me she wanted to see me, Dad? When you’d persuaded her not to bother? When you’d put her off the idea completely by telling her how damaging it would be for me?!”
“Hang on, that’s not what I was trying to do—”
“Really? Because from what I read, she wants to build a relationship with me, and you have been trying to convince her not to!”
“You can’t be serious! If that’s how you’ve read it, then you need to read it again because—”
“I have read it!”
“Then you’ll know I was not trying to put her off! I would never do that! I was trying to look after your best interests—”
“How the hell do you know what my best interests are?!”
“Because I’m your father!”
“And she’s my mother!”
I clench my jaw. I want to snap back, No! No, she’s not! She gave you up! She gave up her right to be your mother!
“She got in contact over two weeks ago and you said nothing! Nothing! You should have told me! It should have been my decision what to do next! Instead, you decided it might be best if she gets back in contact after I’ve finished school?!”
I pinch the bridge of my nose and sigh.
“Josh, that’s not what I said. I just wanted a bit of time to sort things out with her—”
“Why did you tell her that seeing me would screw up my GCSEs?”
“That’s not what I was saying! I was trying to make her see that now might not be the best time. You’ve got so much going on—”
“That’s literally all you care about, isn’t it? How I do in my precious GCSEs! You are always on my back…”
“Because I want you to fulfil your potential!”
“…pushing and pushing…”
“Because I don’t want you to waste your life!”
“Like you did? Because you had me?”