by Tom Ellen
Mum sighed through her nose and fiddled with her necklace. I remember it struck me then that she was the only person I could really talk to about this kind of stuff: frustration with work and the feeling that Daphne was leaving me behind or getting sick of me. I couldn’t speak to Daff about it, for obvious reasons, and I never found a way to broach it with Harv or any of my other mates either. Mum was my only real lifeline for this stuff. She always knew the right thing to say. But that night, I didn’t want to hear the right thing. I just wanted to lash out.
‘Work’s not going well, then?’ she said finally.
I responded to that by rolling my eyes and stuffing my mouth with chocolate.
‘Well, you just need to keep at it, and it’ll all come good. Or try something new. Remember’ – she raised a finger, mock-serious – ‘everything will be OK in the end. If it’s not OK, it’s not the end.’
‘Mum, you’ve gone into teacher mode again,’ I muttered. ‘Where d’you read that, on a fridge magnet?’
‘No.’ She half smiled at me. ‘Saw it on Facebook, actually. Rather good, I thought.’
She was trying to cheer me up, make me laugh, but I wasn’t in the mood. ‘Yeah, well, I don’t need meaningless slogans. I’m not revising for my bloody GCSEs. This is actual real life.’
I could feel myself degenerating into a sulky teenager – something I often did when I was back here – but I couldn’t snap out of it. I was pissed off and frustrated, and I wanted someone to take it out on.
Mum took a sip of coffee. ‘Well, what about your own writing?’ she pressed.
I stared at the kitchen table. ‘No. I’ve given up on all that. I wasn’t any good at it.’
She pinched the bridge of her nose, and then looked at me sadly. ‘I wish you could see yourself the way I see you, love. You’re so hard on yourself all the time. You’ve got so much talent. I just wish you had a bit more self-belief. You’ve got it in you to do great things, I know you have. But you give up too easily.’
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
Mum kept going. ‘I’m not talking about making millions of pounds or being world famous. I’m talking about doing something that makes you happy, that makes other people happy. Leading a good life.’
I said nothing again, but inside me, everything was churning and whirring. I felt we were suddenly on the cusp of talking about something we hadn’t properly talked about ever at that point: Dad.
He was on my mind already that day because I’d spotted something online about his new play, which was opening soon in New York. And now I could feel it all boiling up in my chest: the years of us avoiding the subject, the anger I felt at him leaving, at never making the slightest effort to get in touch.
‘I don’t know …’ I began. I could feel the words gathering pace in my head, and before I could decide whether I really wanted to say them, they were spilling out of me. ‘Maybe if Dad had stuck around, he might have rubbed off on me a bit more. I might have had a bit more ambition, I might have learned from him. I might have actually achieved something.’
Mum looked down at the table and rubbed the back of her neck. I couldn’t see the expression on her face.
‘But I guess there was something wrong with me,’ I added. ‘Or with us. We weren’t enough for him, in the end.’
She looked up at me then, her forehead wrinkled. ‘Have you ever considered that it might be a good thing that your father left?’ she said softly. ‘That maybe it’s better he didn’t rub off on you? That life might have been worse if he’d stuck around?’
‘I don’t see how life could be any worse,’ I muttered. And in eight days’ time, the universe would show me.
Mum sighed heavily. ‘When you were growing up, I always tried not to bad-mouth your father in front of you, because no matter what he’d done, he was still your father. But the truth is, Ben, he was a shit.’
The shock of hearing her use that word nearly snapped the anger right out of me. I almost started laughing. I don’t think I’d ever heard her say anything worse than ‘bloody’ before. But then she carried on: ‘All these years, you’ve hung onto this idea of him as this’ – she flapped her hands in the air, trying to pick out the right word – ‘great guy, who’s had all this success, but trust me, it’s a good thing you’re nothing like him. You don’t know him. Not really.’
‘And that’s the whole problem, isn’t it?’ I said, my voice rising as the resentment poured back into me. ‘I never got the chance to know him. When I was growing up, every time I wanted to get back in touch with him, you put me off. You always warned me against it.’
Her voice rose to meet mine. ‘Because I didn’t want you to get hurt! It broke my heart in the year or so after he left, when you tried to arrange to meet him, and he always cancelled or couldn’t be bothered. You were eleven, twelve years old, Ben! It shouldn’t have been you making the effort. It should have been your father.’
I shook my head, my throat tightening and my cheeks getting hot. ‘I don’t know … He was still my dad, and it always felt like you were trying to keep us apart. Maybe we could have had a relationship, if you weren’t always getting in the way.’
I regretted it as soon as I said it. Of course I did. It was stupid and spiteful and I didn’t mean it in the slightest. But I said it anyway.
Mum put down her coffee mug on the table, and I’ll never forget the way she looked at me. Straight in the eyes, her smile dissolving slowly as the shock gave way to sadness.
She ran her hand gently across her forehead, as if she was trying to soothe a tension headache. And I wanted to take it back, to walk straight round the table and hug her, but I didn’t. I still don’t know why. She shook her head and picked at some fluff on her sleeve. When she spoke again, her voice was so quiet I could barely hear her. ‘Well, if that’s the way you feel, then … I’m sorry.’
That’s what she said: ‘sorry’. When I should’ve been the one apologising, she said ‘sorry’. That will always stay with me.
And that was it. It didn’t end dramatically. It wasn’t some EastEnders-style bust-up, doors slamming and plates smashing. It just ended with me standing up and saying, ‘Look, I’d better go,’ and Mum saying, ‘Yes, OK, all right.’
We didn’t hug at the door. I thanked her for dinner and we both just mumbled goodbye. And that was the last time I ever saw her.
As I walked back down the path, I thought: fuck it. I’ll call her later and apologise.
I didn’t call her later. I let eight days slip by without calling or seeing her. And then she was gone.
Chapter Thirty-Three
I finish telling Daphne all this and find that I’m suddenly exhausted.
It’s as if the secret has been holding me upright these past two years: woven right through me like the stake in a scarecrow. And now that it’s out, it takes all my concentration not to just flop limply into a heap.
I slump back against the bench, my eyes still fixed on Mum’s gravestone, and expel a deep breath. Daphne studies me carefully for a second or two and then pulls me forcefully towards her. ‘Oh, Ben … I’m so sorry,’ she whispers.
I pull back and look at her, confused. ‘Sorry? Did you not … Daff, I’m the one who should be sorry. The things I said to her …’
She shakes her head and smiles at me sadly. ‘It was just a fight. We all have fights. They don’t mean anything. You fight and then you make up. That’s what happens. But you didn’t get to make up.’ She cups my face in her hands and kisses me gently. ‘And I’m so sorry for that.’
I feel something buckle inside me, and wipe a hand across my eyes. ‘I never got to tell her that I didn’t mean it.’
‘Ben, look at me,’ she says firmly. ‘She knew you didn’t mean it. Blurting out a few stupid, hurtful things when you were feeling down can’t possibly undo everything you went through together. You must know that. She was your mum, for God’s sake. She knew you loved her. Of course she did. Nothing you said that ni
ght could possibly have changed that.’
‘You really think so?’
‘I know so.’
I close my eyes, and feel the relief flow through me like water. I’ve kept the secret of that night locked in my head for more than two years, letting it gnaw at me, make me hate myself a little more each day. And now, hearing Daphne say those words … it’s like being washed clean. I’ll always regret that that was the last time I saw Mum – always – but Daff is right: it doesn’t have to define the rest of my life. I don’t think Mum would have wanted it to.
Before I can properly bask in this thought, though, my mind snags on something else.
‘But what if …’ I clear my throat to stop my voice trembling. ‘What if the stress of the fight – the stuff I said – what if it caused what happened? She might still be here if I hadn’t said those things to her.’
Daphne looks at me with her mouth set firmly and her brown eyes blazing. ‘Ben. Listen to me. The doctor told us this was completely random. This wasn’t about stress or unhappiness or her worrying about some stupid fight you had. It was about a weak blood vessel in her brain. That’s all.’ She shakes her head again and squeezes my hand. ‘It’s a terrible, terrible thing, but it wasn’t your fault. You mustn’t think that.’
I lean forward and touch my forehead to hers. ‘I don’t think you’ll ever understand what it means to hear you say that.’
We stay like that for a while, forehead to forehead, as the afternoon wind whips around us. It’s so strange to feel good – happy, even – on today of all days. I just wish so badly that I’d had this conversation with Daphne the first time around.
I wrap an arm around her and she nestles into my jacket. ‘I’m glad I told you that,’ I say.
‘Of course. You can tell me anything. We’re a team, remember.’
From the clock tower above us, a bell rings. Daff pulls out her phone and sighs when she sees the time.
‘Come on, we’d better get over to your uncle’s. They’ll all be wondering where we are.’
‘Yeah, you’re right. Let’s go.’ I stand up and give my eyes a final wipe, feeling just about ready to go through the wake all over again.
We walk out of the churchyard hand in hand, and I take a last glance back at Mum’s gravestone on the way. It feels like we said goodbye properly this time.
We step through the iron gates to find that the street outside – which was previously chock-a-block with friends’ and relatives’ cars – is now pretty much deserted. There’s only one car left in sight: down the far end of the street, a dark red estate, half hidden beneath a huge overhanging beech tree. Behind the windscreen, I can make out a figure in the driver’s seat – a man, I think, his head bowed so that his face is hidden.
I feel something spasm inside me. Panic? Maybe even excitement? Because I’m pretty sure I recognise him, despite the fact that I haven’t seen him in years.
I step off the pavement, into the road, to squint harder at the red car. To make sure.
‘Who is that?’ Daphne asks.
‘I think …’ I say, feeling my heart begin to hammer, ‘I think it’s my dad.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
‘Your … Shit, Ben, are you sure?’ Daff is staring at me, wide-eyed.
‘Pretty sure,’ I say, although I am now completely positive.
‘He wasn’t in the church, though, was he?’ Daff says. ‘I mean, you didn’t mention seeing him.’
‘No, no. He wasn’t there.’
My mind is throbbing with questions. He must have been here, on this street, the first time around, too. It’s not difficult to work out how I missed him then: I hurried straight out of the churchyard as soon as the funeral was over, when the road was still full of cars, and stormed off in the opposite direction.
What’s more difficult to work out is why he’s here. Why would you bother coming to a funeral if you weren’t even going to show your face in the church?
Daff looks at the car again, and then back at me. ‘So what do you want to do?’ she asks. ‘Because whatever it is … I’m with you.’
I run a hand through my hair and shrug. ‘I’ll go and speak to him, I guess. But I think it’s best if I do it on my own, if that’s OK?’
She looks at me, her forehead wrinkled with concern. ‘Yeah, of course. If you’re sure?’
‘I am. Definitely. You head over to Simon’s, and tell them all I’ll be there in a bit. You can just say I … went for a walk or something. Needed some time to myself.’
‘OK.’
I give her a hug, and when we break off, she says, ‘Are you sure you’re all right with this?’
‘Yeah, honestly, I promise. I’ll see you there. I love you.’
‘Love you too.’ She smiles.
I start heading slowly towards the car, watching as the man at the wheel becomes gradually clearer through the glass.
I can hear my heart pounding in my ears. I have no idea what to say to him. No idea what he will say to me. I haven’t seen him since I was – what, thirteen years old?
After he moved out, I’d still visit him occasionally, spending the odd awkward weekend at the flat he shared with Clara, the woman he’d left us for. But these trips dwindled with every passing year, until – just before my fourteenth birthday – he told me he was moving out of London and up to Norfolk.
He promised to keep in touch, but there were no calls, no surprise drop-ins. Throughout my teens, despite Mum’s muttered warnings, I tried in vain to arrange trips up to see him, but they’d always be knocked back or cancelled at the last minute because he was too busy. Eventually I gave up trying.
He still sent birthday cards – glossy and expensive, depicting New Yorker magazine covers or Jackson Pollock paintings. They had cheques tucked neatly inside, and were always signed Patrick, never Dad. But they stopped arriving when I was in my early twenties. I suppose when I hit twenty-one, he figured his job was done.
Over the years, I could never escape the feeling that all this was my fault. I wasn’t good enough somehow. It was as if he could already tell, even at thirteen, that I was a failure: that I wasn’t worth bothering with. It sounds stupid, I know. But whenever things went wrong later in life, it never felt like a surprise, because I knew deep down that I was destined to become a screw-up, just as my dad had predicted.
I’m about thirty feet from him now. As I step towards the passenger side of the car, he finally looks up and spots me.
His face twitches with shock, and I realise that he hasn’t simply been staring downwards – he’s been crying.
I stand there for a second outside the car, my heart pumping as we watch each other through the glass. And then he scrubs a hand across his eyes, and reaches over to open the door.
I slide into the passenger seat. The car smells strongly of cigarettes and sharp, minty air freshener. It’s so powerful, so overwhelmingly familiar, that I’m instantly nine years old again, in the back seat of our Volvo, watching the road signs fly past as Mum and Dad hiss at each other up front.
This car smells of him. How can you recognise someone’s smell, but still feel like they’re a total stranger?
He coughs roughly into his fist, and then sniffs. ‘Ben.’ He blinks at me and shakes his head. ‘Jesus Christ. Look at you. You … you’ve changed.’ He gives a quiet, unhappy laugh. ‘Sorry, that’s …’ He tails off and turns his head to look straight ahead through the windscreen. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he mutters.
If he’s shocked by my appearance, I’m just as surprised at how different he looks.
Whenever I’ve seen his photo in magazines, he’s always been clean-shaven and smartly dressed. Right now, though, he’s sporting a greyish-black stubbly beard and a ragged-looking woolly jumper and jeans. His hair is much greyer, too, and he seems thinner, the skin hanging more loosely around his neck. He looks about a million miles from the grinning, confident world-beater I remember as a kid. He just seems … tired. Defeated.
The radio is burbling quietly between us, and he fiddles with it to switch it off. ‘I didn’t know whether to come in … whether I’d be welcome,’ he mumbles. I can hear the self-pity in his voice. ‘Christ, Ben. I’m so sorry.’
He looks round at me and I have the sudden urge to say: Sorry for what? Sorry for Mum dying? Sorry for leaving us? Sorry for never once making an effort to be a proper father?
But then that old, awkward formality I felt around him as a kid creeps back in. It’s like I’m twelve again, round at his and Clara’s flat, sensing instinctively that I shouldn’t rock the boat or cause any trouble. Otherwise he might not invite me back.
So I just shrug and mutter, ‘That’s OK.’
He stares down at his hands on his knees. ‘I just got in the car this morning and started driving,’ he says. ‘I was going to come into the church, honestly I was. But then I got here, and I …’ He flaps a hand aimlessly. ‘I couldn’t. I don’t really know why I’m even here,’ he adds. ‘It still doesn’t seem real, all this. I’m supposed to be in New York right now, for the show. We’ve had to push the press night back and everything.’
Anger pulses through me, and I suddenly want to rip through that old, suffocating formality. I suddenly very much want to rock the boat. I look him straight in the eye, and before I lose my nerve, I say, ‘No one asked you to be here.’
His mouth hangs half open for a second, and then he nods, scratching at his stubble.
‘You’ve got every right to be upset,’ he says finally. ‘To be angry at me.’
‘I’m angry because my mum’s gone,’ I say, feeling my vocal cords start to constrict and my voice to crack.
‘You know, she meant something to me too, Ben,’ he says. ‘We were married eleven years. She was a big part of my life.’ And the earnest, self-pitying, almost actorly expression on his face causes something inside me to snap.
‘This isn’t about you, Dad. This has nothing to do with you.’
The word ‘Dad’ dangles awkwardly in the air between us.