Never Tell A Lie

by Gail Schimmel

  ‘Right,’ I say. ‘Right.’

  Except that it isn’t right at all. She didn’t slip on the tiles. She fell up the steps. It’s a totally different story.

  Chapter 30

  I am bursting to tell Joshua about my strange conversations with Leo and April, but when I phone him, he can’t speak. He’s working on a big case – a defamation matter where he is defending a woman who posted during the #metoo uprising, showing a picture of her ex-boss and simply hashtagging: #metoo #himtoo.

  The boss is quite a high-level businessman, and the tweet got a lot of traction. She has refused to take it down. But one of the strangest aspects of the whole case is the man’s objections. He has objected, as I understand it, not because the #metoo hashtag implies that he is a sexual predator, but that ‘even worse’, the #himtoo hashtag implies that he is a victim of sexual abuse.

  When Joshua talks about it, he gets really, really worked up about this aspect. ‘Even worse?’ he says. ‘Bloody arsehole thinks that it is worse to be the victim than the perpetrator. Well, if that isn’t proof that she’s telling the truth, then I don’t know what is.’

  The whole thing goes to court tomorrow, so Joshua isn’t available to chat, and I still haven’t told Stacey about April’s situation because it feels disloyal to April, and there’s no one else I can really talk about this with. I tell myself that it can wait, I can talk to Joshua when the case is over.

  And then the bottom falls out of my world.

  My dad moved back to his own house, with a bit of relief and a bit of sadness from both of us, about three weeks after the fall. I’d enjoyed having him around and looking after him, and Django loved it. But there’s no doubt that it cramped my style a bit, and there were a few occasions where we started bickering over stupid things, like how brown toast should be and whether Pointless is a better quiz show than Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. So when he went back to his own house there was a sense of calm. And, of course, Joshua could stay over again – because neither of us had been comfortable with my dad in the house. But Dad phones every day to reassure me that he’s okay. These phone calls are always to the point and quite grumpy. He’ll say things like, ‘Checking in with my probation officer’ or ‘Haven’t fallen off a roof today’ as soon as I answer. Then he gets back to fixing cars and flirting with his customers.

  So I know that something is wrong when my dad phones today. For a start, he asks how I am, and then when we have done the niceties, he doesn’t seem to know where to take it. We’re both silent for a bit.

  ‘Daddy, is there something you need?’ I say eventually. ‘I have to go get Django soon.’ I pause. ‘Is it your hip? Are you coping?’ I say. ‘Do you want to come stay again?’

  ‘No, that’s not it,’ says my father.

  ‘Well then, what is it, Dad? I can’t guess.’

  My dad sighs. ‘Go fetch Django,’ he says. ‘I’ll come over for a cuppa later maybe.’

  My father is not one of those old men that you worry about being lonely. He has all those girlfriends, and quite a number of friends. I don’t have to worry about him like some people worry about their parents. But now I find myself worrying about this uncharacteristic behaviour. First, he falls off the roof into the azaleas, and now he phones for no reason. And offers to come over for a ‘cuppa’. This can’t be good.

  I’m on edge waiting for my dad, and almost jump when the doorbell finally rings. Django looks at me strangely.

  ‘It’s just Granpops,’ he says. ‘Nothing to worry about. He’s never bad news.’

  I nod, and let my dad in, hoping that Django is right.

  But he’s not.

  First, my dad fusses about tea. He stands watching me make it, criticising how strong it is, how much sugar I add and how much milk I add. Then the biscuits aren’t to his liking. Too crumbly, apparently. At this point I crack.

  ‘You’re lucky I have biscuits at all,’ I tell him. ‘I only got them because Stacey said she might pop round. I wasn’t expecting you. I thought I could quietly work this afternoon. So spit it out: why are you here?’

  ‘Oh Lord, let’s sit,’ says my father, and I follow him to the table outside, carrying both cups of tea and the crumbly biscuits balanced on a plate. Django takes a biscuit and goes to his room to do homework.

  We sit across from each other at the outside table.

  ‘I got an email while I was staying with you,’ says my father.

  ‘Okay?’ I say, helping myself to a biscuit and dipping it into my tea. I’m not sure why he’s telling me about a mail he received weeks ago. I hope he hasn’t been swindled in a scam. ‘You didn’t give anyone any money, did you?’

  My father laughs. ‘Like one of those Nigerian princes? Don’t be silly. I may be old but I’m not a fool.’

  ‘Well then, who was it?’ I ask.

  As I put the biscuit in my mouth, my dad answers. ‘Your mom,’ he says. ‘Apparently you told her to get in touch.’

  I choke on the biscuit. Not like, ‘Oh ha ha, I choked’; I actually choke. A piece goes down the wrong way and I can’t breathe and I don’t think I can dislodge it. I desperately try to make it shift, thinking that I’m going to die and never find out more; and my mother will be told that I died when I heard she’d contacted us. The worst is that my father doesn’t seem to have realised, even though I’m thumping at my chest and waving.

  ‘I know,’ he says. ‘It’s a shock.’

  Finally, desperately, I put my hand into my mouth and halfway down my throat, and I manage to dislodge the biscuit. I spit it out; gasping and half-vomiting.

  ‘Jesus, Dad,’ I say. ‘I just choked. Like actually choked.’

  ‘That’s what happens with those crumbly biscuits,’ he says, like this was an absolutely inevitable outcome of eating the biscuits and nothing to do with his shock announcement. ‘Told you.’

  I take a gulp of tea, slightly burning my mouth, and then sit down.

  ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Now that I’m not eating anything, say that again.’

  ‘Your mother contacted me.’

  My brain is buzzing with all the questions; I barely know how to get them out in order.

  ‘How did she find you?’ I eventually ask.

  My father looks at me like I’m mad. ‘Haven’t gone anywhere, have I?’ he says. ‘She’s the one that left.’ He pauses and looks at me across the top of his teacup. ‘She says that a friend of hers saw something on Facebook. Something about you looking for her.’

  ‘I was going to tell you,’ I say, knowing that I sound defensive.

  My father waves my words away. ‘I knew you’d find her,’ he says. I can’t tell if he is pleased or upset. ‘From the moment you knew, it was a one-way ticket to having Lorraine back in our lives.’

  ‘But why didn’t she contact me?’ I ask. ‘I gave my email address in the post. I didn’t mean for her to bother you and hurt you. I wanted her to email me, and then I could decide what to do.’

  ‘Ah, well, that’s harder to answer, love.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well,’ he says slowly. ‘The thing is, for a number of reasons, she isn’t sure that she wants to see you.’

  Chapter 31

  My father’s answer makes my head buzz and I can’t quite catch my breath.

  ‘Why wouldn’t she want to see me?’ I say. It’s like everything that I have suspected deep down inside me is true. She left because of me, and she stayed away because of me, and now she doesn’t want to see me. Stupid bitch, I don’t need her anyway.

  ‘She says that she’s hurt you so much just leaving like that, and she doesn’t deserve to see you.’

  Oh.

  That’s a bit different.

  ‘Does she know that you lied to me?’

  I would have phrased it more gently if I wasn’t so upset, but my father seems to understand.

  ‘I explained about how things panned out,’ he says, as if none of it was really anything to do with his actions. ‘She was
upset, but she thinks maybe I acted for the best.’

  ‘She thought it was best that I thought she was dead?’

  ‘She said it was better than making a child feel abandoned. Said I’m a good man.’ He looks quite proud of himself. ‘She said that if you want to meet her, it will make her very happy. But that she thinks she’ll bring you nothing but pain. So the ball’s in your court.’

  I feel like I should know what to tell him. But I don’t. Now that we’ve found her, I don’t know what I think about meeting my mother at all.

  After my father leaves, I feel like I’m going to have a panic attack. I need to talk to someone. I can’t possibly unleash this on Django, who has settled in front of the TV, darting me anxious glances. Nelly is also a non-starter; I need someone who knows my story. I don’t want Joshua to see me in this state, but April knows about my mom, so I call her.

  The phone goes to voicemail. I don’t leave a message. Instead, I WhatsApp her.

  Please call me. Really need to chat.

  Two ticks. Not blue. Delivered but not read.

  I wait.

  Two ticks. Blue. Read.

  She should call soon. I wait.

  Nothing.

  Ten minutes. Fifteen. My brain feels like it’s going to implode. I can’t wait. I try calling again. No answer.

  I try Stacey. She answers.

  ‘Do you have ten minutes?’ I say. ‘I really need someone to talk to.’ I’m holding back the tears, but Stacey must hear something.

  ‘Give me fifteen minutes,’ she says. ‘I’m coming over.’

  ‘You don’t need to,’ I say, desperately hoping she will.

  ‘You have never, ever told me you need to talk before,’ says Stacey. ‘So I’m guessing this is big.’

  I sniff. ‘It is,’ I say.

  ‘Wine or biscuits?’ she asks.

  I laugh. ‘Both?’

  ‘On it,’ she says. ‘See you in fifteen.’

  And fifteen minutes later she arrives with a bottle of wine, a packet of Romany Creams and a box of tissues.

  As she arrives, I look at my phone again. April still hasn’t responded, but I can see she’s online. Then I remember the morning, and her bruised face. Oh God, I hope she’s okay. But I can’t think about that now. I need to tell Stacey about my mom.

  As I talk to her, I realise that Stacey is actually the perfect person to understand this. She knows my dad well, and my life. She understands how it’s been for me without a mom, and the strange devastation of finding out that she is alive.

  ‘I can’t believe this,’ she says, when I finish. ‘I still can’t believe that Sean has kept this from you in the first place. I haven’t got my head around that, let alone that she’s now back. He’s the most honest and upright guy. He never lies. And then it turns out, actually, he’s just let you live a complete lie. You have no precedent for this from him.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I say.

  Except that isn’t the truth. I do know that my dad can lie. Proper lies.

  Travis didn’t hit me, but he did abuse me. He undermined me and insulted me and kept me from my friends. It’s like every story of abuse you’ve ever heard – charming at first, adored me, couldn’t believe how lucky he was to have me. And then the slow undermining. My top was too low, my friends were terrible, I wasn’t clever, I was lying to him. He hated me being better than him at anything, and the problem was that Travis was basically a loser – I couldn’t see it then, I thought he was right, but I was basically better than him at anything. So he was always angry at me, always undermining me, always needing to convince me what a main man he was and how useless I was.

  Of course, I already knew that I was useless, deep down. I’d never had a mom to show me how things worked. I always got things slightly wrong. The fact that Travis recognised this about me actually made me think more of him, not less. I thought that under all the bluster and meanness, he was the only person who could see me and knew the truth. For some reason, I thought this was a point in his favour.

  When I got pregnant with Django, things were briefly better. I thought maybe a baby would be the thing that saved us. Travis felt like a king that he had got me pregnant – it’s unclear why he thought it was such an achievement; it happened the first month I went off the pill – but maybe that added to his idea that he must be an extremely fertile and therefore masculine man. But shortly after Django was born, things got bad again; worse. Travis was not cut out for interrupted nights and sharing my attention and me looking after anyone except him. He started going out all night, coming home drunk, barely speaking to me except to tell me that if I was a better mother, the baby wouldn’t be so annoying. I thought that he was probably right. After all, I had no conscious memory of my own mother. What did I know about how to do this?

  Slowly, he started turning all his rage and blame on to the baby. Our lives were better before the baby, we had more money before the baby, we had more fun before the baby, my body was better before the baby, I was better before the baby, the weather was better before the baby. Everything was Django’s fault. He then somehow convinced himself that having a baby hadn’t been a mutual decision – that I had tricked him like evil whores have been tricking good men like him since time began.

  He still didn’t hit me, but he treated me like dirt. And he basically totally ignored Django. Until he didn’t.

  Django, for his baby and toddlerhood, didn’t seem to entirely notice Travis’s existence. He called him Dad, and learnt to avoid him. Travis was seldom home when Django was awake – coming home late to shout at me and then sleep, waking up after I took Django to crèche. Even over the weekends, I would take Django out or – on those occasions that Travis wanted my company – I would leave Django with my dad so that Travis could have my full attention, as he wanted. Then when Django was about four, my dad went on a European holiday with one of his lady friends, for three months. And suddenly, I didn’t have anyone that I could dump Django with regularly without explanation. And in those three months, Travis went from pretending that he didn’t have a child to enjoying needling Django. He would invite Django to play with him, and then criticise the game or call Django names, and when Django objected, he’d tell him not to be a cry baby, a mommy’s boy. Then Travis realised that the one thing that hurt me more than his snide constant critiques of me was if he said them in front of Django, and got Django to collude with him. So suddenly, a nice daddy emerged, who gave gifts and played, but accompanied it all with a constant stream of criticism of me.

  ‘Aren’t we playing nice races, Django?’ he’d say. ‘Pity mommy is too slow and clumsy to run.’ And Django, delighted to finally be the centre of Travis’s attention, would laugh and repeat what he’d said.

  I didn’t know what to do. Allow Django to enjoy the attention, and not let him see that I was upset? He wasn’t hurting me on purpose. Or tell Django that I was hurt, and that you don’t talk to people like Travis does? The last thing I wanted was to raise another abuser. I vacillated wildly, sometimes ignoring, sometimes having a word after and sometimes saying something as soon as it happened. Sometimes my tactics upset Django; they always upset Travis – neither silence nor speech seemed to be what he wanted.

  The day that Travis hit Django started with an argument about him taking his car to my father to have the brakes checked. I told him that I could check the brakes no problem, and then he wouldn’t have to be without a car all day. I don’t even know what possessed me to suggest this. I knew that Travis hated – hated – that I could fix cars and he couldn’t.

  ‘Pity your mom can’t cook as well as she can tinker with cars,’ he said, nudging Django with his elbow. Django looked at him, a bit unsure of what was going on. ‘But listen, mate, I think we’ll let the men look after my car, right?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Django, going back to his breakfast. ‘Granpops fixes cars all the time.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Travis. ‘He knows what he’s doing.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘
Just wanted to help.’

  ‘Don’t try so hard, Mary,’ said Travis. ‘You’re useless.’

  Django didn’t say anything, but I noticed that he stopped eating.

  ‘Hey, buddy,’ said Travis. ‘I won’t have a car today, so I’ll call in sick to work. We could hang out.’

  ‘Django has school,’ I said. I did not like the idea of Travis spending all day with him.

  ‘Nursery school, Mary,’ said Travis. ‘It’s not like he’s learning anything. You know that we only send him because you’re too lazy to look after him yourself. Spending my money on unnecessary things.’

  ‘I pay,’ I said, softly, so he wouldn’t hear, just to remind myself about reality. ‘Well,’ I said, louder, ‘we don’t want to waste your money by not sending him, do we?’

  Travis looked a bit caught by this.

  ‘I guess your mom’s a big spoilsport, buddy,’ he eventually said to Django. ‘Dad would’ve let you miss school, but horrible Mom is making you go.’

  ‘I guess that’s how it is,’ I said.

  ‘Okay,’ said Django. I wasn’t sure, but he seemed as relieved as I was.

  I took Django to school, then drove to fetch Travis at my dad’s shop. Travis was impatient, twitchy. He didn’t like spending any time with my father. I waved at my father but didn’t stop to chat like I would if I was alone. My dad smiled and waved but didn’t come over. He knew how it was with Travis.

  I dropped Travis at home and told him I had to be at a meeting. I didn’t, but I didn’t want to be home with Travis, so I went to work from a coffee shop. At midday I left to get Django, and then we both went home.

  ‘Your dad hasn’t phoned yet,’ said Travis, as soon as I walked in. ‘Hasn’t he finished my car?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ I said, putting away Django’s bag in the hall cupboard and gently pushing him towards the kitchen. ‘But if he hasn’t called, I’m guessing not. Looked quite busy this morning.’

  Travis followed us down the passage to the kitchen. ‘And because I am family, he leaves me to last.’ He said this angrily.