Perfect Daughter

by Amanda Prowse

  Jacks scraped her chair back from the table. ‘Very funny.’

  Pete ran his hand over his face and pinched his nose. ‘Oh, and before I forget, Gina asked if you could meet her by the pier. It all sounds very mysterious. I said you’d be there by eight. You’d better get going.’ He smiled briefly.

  Jacks wondered what Gina wanted at that time of night. Especially as they’d seen each other earlier. But she was never one to turn down an opportunity to share what was bothering her with her friend.

  She decided to walk to the pier, hoping that ten minutes in the fresh air might help calm her a little. As she stepped out into the evening chill, her hands trembled in her pockets. It had been quite a day.

  Wandering along the Marine Parade, beneath the loops of lights hanging lamppost to lamppost, Jacks smiled. She had always loved the place at night. No matter how many times she had seen it over the years, it still felt almost magical as the pier glittered like a Christmas tree in the distance and the Weston Wheel shone against the dark night sky. The raindrops sparkled on the lights and with the fresh, salt-tinged breeze blowing off the sea, Weston held a sense of promise that was lost in the daytime, when the sunlight revealed it to be a damp, decaying resort of faded signs and faded glory that only cheap pints and even cheaper shots could transform into the seaside paradise its visitors had been hoping for.

  Jacks recalled the many times she had walked along the prom with her dad when she was little. One day in particular stuck in her memory. She had been wearing her pink padded anorak with the hood and matching mittens on a string that dangled from the cuffs. She had insisted on walking backwards while facing him, trusting him to tell her if she was going to bump into something. He had laughed as she lost her balance once or twice and turned to see what was behind her, fear of the unknown taking her confidence. He had bent down and spoken to her softly. ‘Do you know, Jacqueline, people who look backwards can’t see where they are going and are liable to get lost. You need to look forwards, look ahead and the path’ll be clear. Looking back will only get you into trouble.’

  Funny how she still remembered that. ‘I miss you, Dad.’ She spoke to the horizon. ‘Every day I miss you. I’m sorry I lost it with Mum yesterday. I know it’s not her fault. And what am I going to do about Martha? How can I make her see what she is throwing away?’ She rubbed the side of her face, realising it was streaked with dirt and the sticky residue of mascara.

  A snazzy red sports car was parked up. She paid it little attention, used to seeing such vehicles, usually owned by the Bristol elite, who liked to zoom down the motorway, pull over and take in the sea air whilst eating fish and chips in the comfort of their luxury interior. The passenger door opened. Jacks tutted and skirted to the left slightly to avoid it.

  ‘Jacks!’ a voice called from within. A voice she recognised instantly.

  She stopped in her tracks and listened, staring out to sea, wondering if she had misheard the name called in the wind.

  ‘Jacks!’ There it was again and this time she was certain.

  What on earth…? ‘Sven?’

  He climbed from the car and leant against the roof. ‘Please get in.’

  She stood, stunned and squinting, trying to comprehend that he was there and that he recognised her. ‘What do you mean, “get in”? Why would I get in your car? I haven’t seen you for a lifetime and when I did see you, you clearly didn’t recognise me. What d’you want?’ she snapped.

  ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘You want to talk to me? After all these years, you want to talk to me?’

  ‘Yes.’ He nodded.

  ‘What, about your mega-million-bucks boat and how many people you can fit in its kitchen? Cos I couldn’t give a shit actually – I’ve got one or two other things going on right now.’

  ‘Just get in the car. Please!’ He tapped the roof and shivered.

  ‘How did you find me? And what’s Gina got to do with this? I thought I was supposed to be meeting her.’ She looked towards the pier, confused.

  ‘I used her ticket details to track her down. It gave her mobile number and I got her to arrange this. I know it sounds devious and I’m sorry. I didn’t know how else to get hold of you.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted trip. I haven’t got anything to say to you.’

  ‘Please, Jacks.’

  ‘Please what?’ she shouted. ‘I don’t know what you want from me. I don’t know why you are here!’ She smacked her chest.

  ‘I’m sorry about how I treated you at the Boat Show.’ His eyes were wide, lips pressed, palms upturned. He looked sincere.

  ‘What do you mean, “how you treated” me?’ She was confused. ‘You’re not to blame. It was a stupid thing to do, jumping on a bloody train and wasting that whole day. Why did I think you’d remember me? It’s not as if we’d kept in touch, and we were just kids, right? It was all a very long time ago. Let’s just pretend it never happened.’ She turned to walk away.

  ‘I am to blame.’ His voice was level. ‘And I need to tell you something.’

  ‘What? What do you need to tell me? Tell me quickly because I’ve got to go.’ She stared at him.

  ‘I never forgot you. Not for one second.’

  ‘Why are you saying that? Don’t tease me, Sven. I feel humiliated enough as it is.’

  Jacks felt her tears threaten once again. She turned and set off at a rapid pace along the sea wall, keeping close to the edge, as far from him and his flash car as she could manage.

  Sven ran to catch up with her. She heard the double beep as he locked the car and then the sound of his soft soles treading the pavement.

  Oh God! Go away! I can’t cope. Don’t talk to me, don’t touch me!

  He caught up, grabbing her by the top of her arm.

  ‘I mean it. I didn’t forget you.’

  ‘You didn’t?’ she whispered.

  Sven shook his head. ‘I wish I had. I wish I could.’

  Jacks suppressed a smile. Her heart swelled with something close to relief, but that quickly turned to anger as she realised what he had done. ‘Hang on a minute, so you pretended you didn’t know me?’

  ‘I know.’ He hesitated. ‘It looks bad, but I also know that you came all the way to London to find me and that tells me something. Is there any chance you could still maybe have feelings for me? I know it sounds ridiculous, but do you?’

  ‘Feelings for you? Yes, I’ve got feelings of pure rage right now! How could you do that to me, make me feel like shit! Like I was nothing! How dare you? How could you take the piss out of me like that?’

  ‘Just give me half an hour, Jacks. Let me talk to you and if after that you don’t want me to contact you again then I won’t, I promise. But just give me half an hour.’

  Jacks looked up and down the Marine Parade to make sure she hadn’t been seen, then made her way to his car. She slid into the soft leather seat, liking the warmth and quiet it offered; it was a bit different from her little Skoda.

  Sven smiled at her and switched the engine on. The car warmed almost instantly.

  ‘You’re not kidnapping me, are you?’ she asked with a flash of excitement in her eyes.

  ‘No. Gina knows where we are.’

  Jacks smirked. ‘Mind you, don’t think my lot could afford much by way of a ransom.’

  Sven laughed. ‘You are still funny.’

  ‘Funny weird,’ she said, recalling the events of the last thirty-six hours. ‘I can’t believe you’re here. I can’t believe I’m in your car! This time last night I was lying at the top of the Avon Gorge with my face in the dirt, wondering why everything has to be so bloody difficult.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be,’ he replied.

  ‘Maybe not in your world. But in mine…’ She felt her lip tremble. ‘Oh God, all I seem to do these days is cry. I don’t know why. I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s okay. Do you want a tissue?’ He produced one from a pocket in the car door.

  ‘Actually, I do
know why I’m crying.’ She sighed.

  He raised his eyebrows in enquiry.

  ‘I’m crying because I know that even if I didn’t have my family, even if I had all the time in the world to do my thing, I would be just as stuck as I am now because I don’t know what my thing is. I don’t.’

  ‘That’s sad.’ He seemed genuine.

  ‘Yes. It is sad, bloody sad.’ She nodded vigorously. ‘I can’t remember the day I woke up and realised that my life was never going to change. In fact I don’t think it was one day, it was more a gradual process, like getting fat or going bald, I imagine, where you get used to the gradual shifts in how you look until it’s just how you are. I suppose it was like that. Just like every kid, I used to spend hours dreaming about all the things I might become. But you don’t necessarily think about how you’ll get there, do you? You just picture yourself having arrived, giving an Oscar speech, chatting to Lorraine about your latest adventure.’

  Sven laughed. ‘I didn’t just picture it. I made it happen. I knew what I wanted to achieve, I visualised it and I went for it.’

  Jacks blinked at him. ‘Well, good for you! Aren’t you the lucky one.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that. That sounded boastful and I’m not like that.’

  ‘No, it’s okay. It’s probably true. I didn’t make it happen, didn’t make anything happen and that’s my fault, right?’ She sank back into the soft leather, which seemed to cushion every part of her body. It was lovely. ‘I have a little life, but it’s a good life in a lot of ways. I know that I make everyone else happy. But it’s like there’s no room for what makes me happy, no time for me.’

  ‘So you are the sacrificial lamb? Giving up on your dreams so your kids can achieve?’

  Jacks shook her head. ‘Not really, no. That makes it sound terrible and it’s not like that.’

  ‘Really? Doesn’t sound like it.’ He was almost scoffing.

  Jacks looked at him and realised, aghast, that she was crying again. ‘I have a family. And they’re not perfect, but they’re all I have.’ Without thinking, she reached into her bag and pulled out a photograph of Martha and Jonty, sitting on the sea wall in the summer, Martha looking straight into the lens with her hair plaited on one side and Jonty sticking out his tongue. She handed it to Sven. ‘My kids, my heart. I could never do anything that would make them see me in a bad light, do you understand that?’

  ‘I do.’ He stared fixedly at the picture before handing it back. ‘But they’re not babies and you need to think about your life too.’

  Jacks shook her head. She was confused enough without adding this to the mix.

  ‘Don’t cry, Jacqueline, please.’

  Jacks nodded at him. ‘I can’t help it. My dad died and I still haven’t got over it. I’ve got a lot going on at the moment.’ She wiped her runny nose on her damp tissue. ‘And I’m crying because you’re a let-down, Sven.’

  He looked at her. ‘Am I?’

  She held his stare. ‘I wish I’d never come to find you, because after I’d seen you it was like a big wake-up call. You’ve rubbed out my silver lining, blocked off the light at the end of the tunnel, burst my bubble. And that means that now, when I’m elbow deep in shit-covered laundry and so knackered I can’t remember what I climbed the stairs for, I don’t have your face, your beautiful boy’s face, in my mind any more, willing me on. Instead I have to think of something else to drive me forward. It’s not you. Not any more.’

  He stared at her quizzically. ‘You were pregnant, weren’t you?’

  A stunned, heavy silence followed. Both of them physically sagged in their seats.

  ‘What?’ Her voice quavered.

  ‘When I left with my parents to go to Boston, you were pregnant.’ He studied her eyes, looking for a clue.

  She stared at him, open mouthed. ‘How…?’

  ‘I knew it, Jacks. I remember you couldn’t eat anything, felt queasy, had that metallic taste thing going on. And you looked different, blooming. I knew.’

  ‘You did?’ she gasped. She pictured her eighteen-year-old self, sitting in her parents’ lounge. ‘He doesn’t know, Mum! He’s not like that. It’s not his fault – I never got the chance to tell him. I’m sure that if he did know, he’d be right here…’

  ‘What the fuck!’ She placed her head in her hands and leant forward. ‘What the fuck! Oh God!’

  ‘And then, a few months after I’d left, I called and spoke to your mum and she told me you were married – to Peter Davies.’ He curled his lip as he tapped the steering wheel with his index fingers.

  ‘You spoke to my mum?’ Her voice had gone up an octave.

  He nodded.

  ‘I feel sick. I’m going to be sick!’ She fumbled against the door in the half-light, looking for a means to open it.

  He pressed a button and the window whirred down.

  She gulped deep breaths of the fresh air that whipped around the car, then turned to face him. ‘But… but that means you abandoned me! It means you knew and you abandoned me! All that bullshit about coming with you and you just left! You fucking bastard! How could you do that to me?’

  ‘I was so young, too young…’

  ‘You were? And what about me? I didn’t have the option to bugger off, did I?’ She stared at the horizon, thinking about Pete, who had been there, just like he had been there ever since. She fumbled with the door once again, finally locating the handle. ‘I’ve got to get back to my family.’

  ‘I loved you, Jacks.’ He reached out to touch her arm.

  ‘Don’t you touch me! You don’t know the first thing about love. It’s when you stick around and show support, not run away at the first hurdle, that’s not love! Fuck off, Sven. Go back to your beautiful glass-fronted house in San Francisco and your forty-million-pound yachts. There’s nothing here for you, there never was.’

  He looked hurt. ‘I want to give you this.’ He unfurled a rectangle of paper from his top pocket and handed it to her.

  She opened it carefully. It was a cheque. A cheque for a quarter of a million pounds. Jacks stared at him, her fingers shaking. She held it in her hands and thought about the motorbike it would buy Pete, the extra bedroom it would mean for Jonty and the crappy lampshade in their bedroom that needed replacing. She then pictured the shreds of a note that she had flushed down her mum and dad’s loo all those years ago. She folded the paper and ripped it into tiny pieces that she threw at him like confetti.

  ‘You can’t buy me as if I’m one of your fancy accessories, that’s not how things work. And you can’t make up for being such a shit by giving me this. I don’t need your money and I don’t need you! I never did. Stay away from us.’

  At Sunnyside Road, Jacks put the key in the door and was met by darkness. The only light came from the kitchen. She walked in and found Pete sitting at the table. He was strumming his fingers lightly on the table.

  ‘Everything okay? Mum all right? Kids?’ she asked nervously, her face scarlet as if he could sense her deceit.

  Pete nodded. ‘How was Gina?’ he whispered, his voice thick and croaky, as though he hadn’t spoken for a while.

  Jacks walked straight to the sink and ran the tap, staring at the steady flow, anything other than look him in the eye and lie.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Yes, I thought she looked good when I nipped round earlier to see if you wanted a lift back. I thought you might appreciate that after your escapade earlier. I was worried about you. So, as I say, she was a bit nervous maybe, surprised to see me, but generally good.’

  Jacks tried to interpret the edge in his voice. She turned off the tap and slowly faced her husband, leaning against the sink with her arms folded across her chest. What had Gina told him?

  ‘Look at you, you’ve been crying. You’re all flustered.’ Pete looked her up and down. ‘What happened?’

  Jacks thought about the posh car and its driver, who would now be heading back to a life that was never hers to have. She swallowed and looked at
her hands, as if they might be stained with guilt. ‘I… I let things get a bit messy.’

  ‘So I heard.’ He pointed at the chair opposite. ‘Sit down.’

  She sat. ‘Pete, I…’

  ‘No. Just listen. How long have you known me, Jacks?’ he asked.

  ‘What? Don’t be daft! You know how long I’ve known you.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not daft. Just answer the question.’ There was a tone to his voice that she’d rarely heard.

  She shook her head and thought. ‘Since I was eleven.’

  ‘That’s right. Twenty-five years. A long time.’

  She nodded. It was.

  ‘And married eighteen years,’ he added.

  She nodded again.

  ‘In that whole time, Jacks, I have only ever put you and the kids first. I’ve worked as hard as I could to make a life for us.’

  ‘I know that,’ she whispered.

  ‘Do you think I didn’t have dreams?’ he asked.

  She looked at him, unsure of how to answer.

  ‘Do you think when I was younger I saw myself lugging wet turf around on muddy building sites with an aching back?’

  She carried on staring at him, her heart pounding.

  ‘Because I can tell you, I didn’t. You know I wanted to be a footballer, everyone knows that, but when I knew that wasn’t going to work out for me, do you know what I wanted to do?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I wanted to go to college. I fancied the idea of putting a suit on and working in an office. Did you know that?’

  ‘No.’ She looked at her hands.

  ‘No,’ he repeated. ‘But I couldn’t go to college, couldn’t learn a skill or get trained in computers or anything because I had a wife and a baby, a little girl who was more precious to me than anything and I had to earn money to pay the mortgage to keep a roof over your heads and to put food on the table.’

  ‘I know, Pete, and I’m grateful for how hard you work.’ She was sincere.

  He raised his finger to quiet her.

  ‘Every day I get in the van, put the radio on and blast my feet with hot air, trying to store up some heat for the day ahead. I hate being cold. I hate it. And every day I drive past men in suits and boys in suits, all reading the paper or watching the world go by with fancy haircuts and clean shoes and I wonder how you get to be one of them blokes who wakes up and puts a suit on and sits behind a desk, shovelling paper instead of soil, answering the phone instead of the yell of a site foreman. I sometimes think that might have been me if things had been different. That’s my pipe dream, Jacks, to be a manager. I know how funny that must sound, but who knows, if I hadn’t fallen in love with a girl so young…’ His voice was now thick with emotion. ‘And that girl… I watch her now, watch her shrink away from me as her jaw tightens every day with irritation if I eat noisily or don’t put my boots away or any of the million other things I do to annoy her and I have to stop myself from reminding her that I’m tired too and that I’m only human, I’m going to make mistakes sometimes.’