by Adele Parks
‘I’m so staying,’ declares Millie, firmly. What can I do now? I look from my daughter to the door. I just want to get us both away from here. Away from Daryll.
‘I wouldn’t mind an early night, actually,’ says Daryll. ‘It’s been a busy week in the new office. How about we share an Uber back to North London, Daisy?’
I’m snookered. I’ve walked right into it. I make a quick calculation. I more or less have to leave the dinner party now I’ve made such a big thing about the darn hook-a-duck, and I won’t be able to extract Millie, since there’s the offer for her to stay over. I certainly don’t want to leave her here with Daryll. I’m not suggesting he’d kidnap her or anything wild. But. Well. I can’t absolutely rule it out. I don’t know what he’s thinking. I don’t know what he’s capable of. I realise that my best course of action is to accept the lift, get Daryll away from Millie. She’s safer here with Luke. And Connie too, of course. It’s just I know Luke is very calm and capable. He’d never let any harm come to Millie. I don’t want to be alone with Daryll but it’s obvious I’m going to have to face this situation. We need to talk.
‘OK,’ I nod.
Daryll checks his phone. ‘There’s an Uber just three minutes away. Come on.’
I notice that Connie looks pretty chuffed. I’m sure she thinks her little matchmaking stunt has turned out beautifully. I grab Millie and, much to her embarrassment, pull her into a tight hug and cover her head with kisses.
‘Alright, Mum. It’s a sleepover, not a trek to Outer Mongolia,’ she says impatiently. I recognise her phrase as one my mother uses, and it just makes me want to hold my daughter closer.
‘Go on now, go upstairs,’ I instruct.
She and Sophie grab packets of sweets and dash off. I’ve got her away from Daryll, at least. I’d thought he too might swoop in to kiss her goodbye. I can’t stand the idea of him touching her. Connie and Luke hug me. Jess and Kyle throw casual disinterested goodbyes my way, it’s clear they are indifferent about whether I stay of go and are keen to get on with eating dessert and drinking more wine. Peter waves casually, but doesn’t get up. Lucy, always well mannered, stands up and kisses me goodbye. Air kiss left, right, then left again. She murmurs, ‘Goodbye and take care.’ The usual platitude. Then adds, ‘So we’ll see you here at 9 a.m. sharp. If you are not here we’ll send a search party.’ Everyone laughs.
‘You’re coming to the school fair?’ I ask, surprised.
‘Well, it is Auriol’s old school. I ought to support, and besides, someone has to keep an eye on you.’ Do I imagine it? Did her eyes flick to Daryll? What is she thinking? All these innuendos and hints are mortifying.
Then all too suddenly, I’m outside on the pavement, alone with Daryll.
35
Chapter 35, Simon
Saturday, 15th June 2019
Connie had been wide-eyed when she’d first visited. A little shocked, a little high on the strangeness of it all. He’d watched her disorientation and wondered whether she would come back. Would one visit be enough for her? Or too much? He had been impressed that she’d returned, again and again, long after the novelty must have worn off. He had been drunk most of the time when he lived at home, steeped in the stuff, but he remembered enough to know that Saturdays – for any family – were hectic and precious. Connie was a mother of three. The visits to prison cost her.
Now, after two years of visiting, there was no sign of bewilderment or fear or thrill-seeking. When Connie visited, she behaved as though she was in a boardroom, school hall or a pub, just a place, nowhere in particular. It was remarkable what a person could get used to. The visitors’ room was a straightforward enough environment. There was a series of small tables that had barriers below the table top, to stop people trying to pass things to one another. One or two plastic chairs were set on the visitors’ side of the table, depending on how many people were expected. Always just one, in Simon’s case. There was a hatch with a tuck shop that sold tea and snacks to the visitors. A highlight for the prisoners.
Today, Connie sat down and, as usual, immediately started talking about her week. She’d had her hair highlighted but she was unsure about the colour. It disguised the grey that was peeking through, but she thought it was a little too blonde, maybe not quite dignified at her age. What did Simon think? Simon didn’t have an opinion on her hair, but he mumbled that she looked lovely. She flashed a fast, appreciative smile his way and then got to the part of the visit he liked best. She gave him some news about Millie. Apparently, she’d been presented with her artist badge at Brownies last week. She was still hoping for a kitten. Talked of little else. She was at a school summer fair today. Not her own school but the one Craig taught at. The whole gang were going along.
‘Sorry you’re missing out,’ he mumbled.
Connie shrugged. ‘I did pop by for a short time, but as it happens I’m quite well stocked with jam and poor-quality jewellery made by delusional, bored mothers,’ she said with a smile. ‘Millie was pretty excited about it though.’
‘Still, at her age? Isn’t she over such things by now?’ Simon asked. He didn’t want her to be. He didn’t want her to grow up too quickly, but he was realistic.
‘Well, there will be cheap sweets and hair braiding. Both still winners.’
He drank up the news, any snippet. Grateful for Connie’s willingness to risk Daisy’s wrath by passing these nuggets on. She’d once told him it made her feel like a spy, a traitor. But she’d continued to give him the news regardless. She wasn’t choosing his side, she was just doing what she wanted to do, what she thought was right. Connie was more complex, subtle and deep than people imagined. He never considered what she might want to do for Daisy. What she might think was right.
‘So, has there been any news about your on-licence release? When will you hear the decision?’ Connie asked.
Simon expected to hear by the beginning of next month. If it went well, he might be out of prison within a month. But if it went badly, he had another three years to serve inside. He couldn’t bear the burden of Connie’s optimism.
‘Not sure,’ he lied.
‘I’m certain it will be through soon,’ she said, unperturbed. She always believed if she wanted something enough, it would be granted. That hadn’t been Simon’s life experience. ‘And then have you thought about what’s next?’ Connie stared at him, but he didn’t want to meet her gaze. He faked an interest in the table top.
‘Next?’
‘Where will you live? What will you do about employment?’
He shook his head. ‘There are schemes to get crims back into work,’ he reassured her. She looked doubtful, as well she might.
‘You can stay with us.’ He could tell the offer was impulsive, fuelled by pity and desperation but he grabbed it anyway.
‘Really?’
‘Yes, for a while, until you find your way.’
‘Have you OK’d that with Luke?’
‘No, but he’ll be fine with it,’ she replied dismissively.
Simon doubted it. He had once thought of Luke as his friend, his best friend, but now he knew him for what he was. His biggest enemy. Simon had had time to think about Millie’s parentage. Time to reason, soberly, about who Daisy had conceived their child with. He still thought of Millie as their child, he couldn’t stop himself from doing that. Even though she wasn’t. But, after three years, he hadn’t changed his mind. He believed Millie was Luke’s, biologically. It all fitted together. He was an idiot not to have seen it until he did. Millie was tall, slim and blonde – like Luke. She looked quite a lot like Connie’s three daughters. They all had a similar build. They were all equally pretty. But it wasn’t just thinking about Millie’s physicality that had convinced him, it was thinking about Daisy, knowing her like he did. He thought about the people they had mixed with around the time of Millie’s conception. They were a tight group. Always had been. They never seemed to need anyone, other than each other. It was always Daisy, Connie, Rose and their partner
s. Sometimes, if Daisy couldn’t wiggle out of it, it was Daisy, Connie and Lucy and their partners. Often, it was just the four of them, Daisy, Simon, Connie and Luke. But Connie worked long hours and wasn’t always around, even when there was a plan in place. She blew them out at the last minute, told them she’d catch up, to start without her. Promises she rarely made good on. And Simon? Well, often, he was drunk; passed out in the corner. Leaving Daisy and Luke, alone.
He could imagine how their affair went. A slow build. A tragic, difficult thing. They would both have been sick with guilt. It wouldn’t have been easy for them, and yet they had inched closer to one another. Late at night, one glass of wine too many, one accidental brush of the hands, one lingering look. Daisy would have been motivated by what? Loneliness? Desperation? He was kidding himself, Luke was hot, a catch. Daisy had always had a soft spot for him. She probably jumped at the chance. And Luke? Well, Luke must have felt put-upon. Resentful. Those countless occasions when Connie would text, saying she was running late or not able to make the planned date after all. Had he wondered if she was up to her old tricks? Connie had form. That must have bothered her husband. There must have been trust issues. Maybe he just thought, fuck it, he was owed a go. And Daisy was there. All gentle, domestic and understanding. Not Luke’s usual type but perhaps a refreshing change to Connie. It killed Simon that he’d handed his wife over on a plate.
It seemed unlikely to him that Daisy had ever gone out and struck up a conversation with a stranger in a bar, embarked on an affair that way. She was fundamentally shy, and it took her years to trust someone, to call them friends. He just couldn’t see her throwing caution and her pants to the wind. There were no opportunities to meet a lover through work for Daisy. As a teacher in a primary school, nearly all her colleagues were female. He knew the few men that had ever worked with Daisy; he’d considered them and dismissed them. One was gay, one was twenty years older than Daisy, the other was fifteen years younger. She conceived when she was in her late thirties, he just couldn’t see her cradle snatching at that stage in her life. Any stage really. He had thought back to that time. For hours and hours, he’d crawled around his own head, poking and turning over the patchy memories. Had Daisy behaved strangely? Had she gone out more frequently? Did she attend an evening class or visit the gym regularly around then? Where had she found the opportunity to have an affair? He couldn’t identify an opportunity. He was convinced it had happened under his nose. But that was what happened, wasn’t it? Nearly every man inside this place had a story about some bitch who had done the dirty on him. Admittedly, he didn’t believe all the stories were absolute gospel, but there was certainly an identifiable pattern. Lots of women had affairs with their husband’s best friend.
They were brazen. They’d managed to carry on as though nothing had happened. Daisy had insisted that Luke and Connie were godparents to Millie, even though it put Rose’s nose out of joint. Thinking about that now killed him. What he couldn’t be sure about was, had they continued to see each other? Surely not. They’d have been caught out, at some point, after all this time. But would they? By whom? Connie was a shrewd person but an exceptionally busy and trusting one; would she ever suspect St Luke of having an affair? Unlikely, she thought he was devoted to her. It wasn’t vanity as such, just confidence. Misplaced confidence, as it happened. And Simon had mostly been too pissed to notice if his wife was in the room, let alone whether she was sneaking off into someone else’s bed. They might have got away with it continuing. Or they might have called it a day. He didn’t know. He might never know.
The one thing he felt pretty sure of was that Luke was very unlikely to want to take Simon in as a lodger. Simon would no doubt end up in a bedsit above a shop or a laundrette somewhere. A place where damp crept up the walls instead of art work, and the smell of greasy kebabs and diesel fumes from buses snuck in because the window wouldn’t close; jammed open, even in the winter. Without a job he couldn’t expect better. And who would employ him? His life was a mess. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
‘And what about Daisy?’ Connie asked. He jolted at the sound of her voice. He’d drifted inside his own head. He wondered what she’d been saying, what he’d missed.
‘Daisy?’
‘And Millie,’ Connie pursued. ‘It’s been a long time since you went away, Simon. Things change.’
He shrugged. Connie looked as though she was on the verge of saying more but she didn’t because at that moment the bell rang, announcing the fact that visiting time was over.
Connie squeezed his hand. ‘Hang in there, buddy.’
He shrugged. ‘What else can I do?’
‘Nothing,’ she admitted.
He’d always admired her honesty.
36
Chapter 36, Daisy
When the alarm goes off, I reach to silence it. It didn’t wake me because I haven’t slept. Not at all. Unrested, I ache. Slowly, I unfold my body and swing my legs out of bed. As soon as I sit up, I drop my head into my hands. How has this happened, again? I’m so ashamed. So weak.
I slowly walk into the bathroom. I notice the mouldy grout, the smudges of toothpaste on the basin unit, the hard water marks on the shower door. The pretty, colourful soaps and bodywashes that Millie and I adore can’t cut through the chaos and filth. I turn on the shower and nudge up the temperature as high as I can tolerate, and then a degree or two more. I want to wash it all away but the water pools around my feet as Millie’s long hair has clogged up the plug hole again. It’s a disgusting job clearing it out, but I set about it, because who else will otherwise?
I’m glad that I have Craig’s school’s summer fair to attend. Something to focus on, something to stop me crawling back into bed, pulling the sheets over my head and hiding from the world. A school summer fair is my sort of thing. I can keep busy and not think about last night, not think about what might be next.
I pull on the first thing that I find in my wardrobe, a summer dress. It’s a warm day but I am chilly. I grab my denim jacket and throw it over the dress. This makes me look a bit trendier and, importantly, stops me shivering. I button it up to the neck.
Rose is pleased to see me. Craig is being kept busy at the makeshift stocks, where children pay 30p to throw wet sponges at him. He’s a good sport and there’s a long queue so I don’t suppose we’re going to see much of him today. Rose, who thinks of herself as a sort of First Lady of the school, dashes around from one stall to the next, ‘Just checking everything is under control’. Once she establishes that it is – that the mums and dads who are manning the stalls are doing a fine job – she grabs a book of raffle tickets and suggests we try to drum up a few last-minute sales. I nod, but my head isn’t in the game.
‘You OK?’ she asks on noticing that I haven’t made a single sale.
‘Fine,’ I force myself to smile. If she was looking at me I think she’d notice it’s not a very real smile, but she’s scanning the playground, looking for people who might part with a quid for a five hundred to one chance of winning a box of Milk Tray.
‘Late night at Connie’s?’ she asks.
‘No, I left early, but I didn’t get much sleep.’ I blush and turn away from her, just in case that is the moment she decides to catch my eye. I love my sister but there’s no way I can tell her what happened last night and certainly not here on the tarmac of a primary school, in the middle of candy floss and face painting stalls.
‘Oh look, there’s the gang.’
Connie, Luke and Lucy are walking towards us. I’m not surprised Peter isn’t with them, he’ll be playing golf. Sometimes I’ve thought his determined pursuit of his hobby was selfish, today I feel oddly sentimental about the consistency of the fact that Peter always plays golf on Saturday. The world should have some certainties; it shouldn’t be chaotic and surprising all the time. I really hadn’t thought Lucy would make good on her promise to come along, I’d assumed she’d offered after a glass or two of wine and that this morning she’d shun the early star
t. But here she is.
I scan about for Millie and spot her and Sophie at the stall where you must guess how many sweets are in a jar. They are giggling and self-contained. Usually, I wait until Millie comes to find me, because I don’t like to appear over-protective, but today I can’t stop myself; I dash over to her and give her a hug. She allows it, but only because this isn’t her school and she doesn’t know anyone other than Sophie. If I’d attempted the same at our school, she’d stop speaking to me for a month. I inhale deeply, breathing her in, my beautiful girl, my miracle. She smells lemony, an unfamiliar shampoo or body wash that she’s used this morning, she’s wearing Sophie’s clothes, as a result of the impromptu sleepover, and yet she is one hundred percent known to me. She is mine. She is home, and goodness, and all things right in the world. I feel better for seeing her. Being a parent is mind-blowing. The way you love a child is different from any other sort of love. It’s more intense and absolute, more demanding. More healing. Friends and lovers come with conditions, parents come with responsibilities, self-love is always butting up against self-loathing – at least that’s been my experience – loving Millie is pure and total. Comforting.
I force myself to break away from her, greet the others. Connie is practically bouncing on her toes, effervescent even by her standards. ‘So, how did it go last night?’ She nudges her elbow into my side. I rub my rib, disgruntled. I should have expected this.
‘What are you on about?’ asks Rose, aware that Connie is sniffing out gossip and wanting in on it.
‘Daisy left mine early last night. With Daryll.’
I hate myself for colouring, but have never had any control over my blushes. My reaction causes Connie to squeal and Rose to smile. Lucy looks on, not bothering to get overly-involved.
‘Delicious Daryll?’ asks Rose. We only know one Daryll.