Out!

by JL Merrow

  “Of course not. You don’t look a day over forty-five.”

  “I’m thirty-nine!”

  David looked momentarily startled, then flashed him a winning smile. “Figure of speech?”

  “Right. Anyway, I need to talk to Charles.” He strode off purposely, pretending he hadn’t noticed David had opened his mouth to say something. Mark might not have been having a midlife crisis before, but he was beginning to think that conversation was about to spark one. He knocked on Charles’s door for form’s sake, then walked straight in.

  Charles looked up with a dyspeptic expression. Too late to back out now, though.

  Mark plastered on a smile. “Charles? Have you got a moment?”

  “Do I have a choice about it?”

  Assuming the bad-tempered question was rhetorical, Mark grabbed a chair from the side and sat down on it in front of Charles’s desk. Best just to rip off the plaster—or, as David would no doubt put it, the waxing strip—as quickly as possible. “I’m handing in my notice.”

  Charles’s expression seemed to congeal. “Do I look like I’m in the mood for jokes?”

  “It’s not a joke. I want to spend some time with my family.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake. You’re not a Tory politician. No need to resign. Just pay the bloody rent boy off and buy the wife a bunch of flowers.”

  Mark blinked. “You do remember I’m divorced? And… Rent boy? Seriously?” Mark was more than a little insulted at the implication he’d have to pay for it. He’d never paid for it in his life. The fact that he’d never actually had it, if it meant gay sex, was, he felt, a minor detail.

  “So what is it, then? Drink? Cocaine? Gambling?”

  “It’s my fourteen-year-old daughter, actually. Florence has been having a…difficult time. She needs more of my attention than I’m able to give her at the moment.”

  Charles hmphed. “Drugs? Or boys? Just promise her a new iPhone if she gives it up, that’ll do the trick. Works with my girls, anyway.”

  Mark had always looked up to Charles, in a professional sense. He was beginning to suspect, however, that as a parenting role model, the man lacked a certain something. “No, I really feel this is something that requires personal attention.”

  “So take a week off. God knows it’ll be bloody inconvenient with Goldsmith’s year end coming up, but Norton has been pushing to get involved with their account. About time I gave him a chance to make an arse of himself.”

  Mark winced. Norton was an ex public school boy, all mouth and expensively tailored trousers. Chances were he would make an arse of himself. His certainty, already slightly dented by his conversation with David, wavered further. Could he really justify leaving all his clients in the lurch?

  Florence’s sweet, childish face, as portrayed by her final primary school photo, flashed into his head. Yes. She was worth more than all the multimillion-pound clients in the world. “No, my mind’s made up. I’ll work out my notice, of course, but with accumulated leave built up…”

  “You’ll be leaving the day after tomorrow? Bloody marvellous.”

  “Well, Wednesday week, actually, but close enough.”

  Charles’s expression, already sour, turned positively acidic. “Thank you for making my Monday complete. I was just thinking I needed another ulcer. I hope you realise what you’re doing. You’ve been with this firm all your working life and always been the one man I could count on. Never let your personal life get in the way of the job. Until now. I suppose this is the point where I’m supposed to say that I’ll be keeping your job open in case you have a change of heart? I won’t be. Now get out.”

  Mark swallowed and got out.

  On the whole, that had gone rather better than expected.

  Chapter Four

  Mark had perhaps not fully taken account of how his daughter might feel on the proposed upheaval.

  The weekend after the fateful telephone conversation, he gazed into Florence’s sullen face—still heart-shaped and plump from childhood, but now accessorised with thick black eyeliner and multiply pierced ears—and wondered exactly what had happened to his sweet little girl. And when.

  While he was at work, of course, his conscience told him. But… It wasn’t as if he hadn’t kept in contact. He’d seen her every other weekend—at least, as long as she didn’t have other plans, and there wasn’t something urgent at work to see to…

  Dear God, how many months had it been? He’d definitely seen her at Christmas. He’d dropped round to Ellen’s on Christmas Eve, taking presents… Except, Florence had been out with her friends, hadn’t she? And she’d cancelled on him the following weekend, saying she had a party to go to.

  With a jolt like a thousand volts hitting him straight in the conscience (it appeared to be located directly beneath his sternum and, moreover, excessively tender), Mark was suddenly aware of what an appalling father he’d been. How had he let this happen? He hadn’t meant it to happen. He’d gone into fatherhood with a steely determination that no child of his would ever want for anything.

  How had he managed to forget that in a child’s eyes, a very big part of anything was an actual, physically present father?

  He was going to make it up to her, Mark told himself, stricken. He was going to make it all up to her. He smiled at her hopefully.

  “Florrie—”

  “Don’t call me that. I hate it.”

  “Florence, then,” he conceded with good grace.

  “I hate that too. It’s a stupid name to start with, and Dad, I’m not thick, all right? I worked it out. Born nine months after you and Mum went to Tuscany?”

  Mark nodded.

  “You named me after the place you had a shag, didn’t you? Have you got any idea how gross it is being reminded of that all the bloody time?”

  Mark winced. Now he came to think of it, he wasn’t all that happy at the constant reminder of sex with Ellen either. “So, well, what should I call you then?”

  “Fen. It’s what all my friends call me. Well, what they call me now, anyway. Before you drag me off to the butt-end of nowhere and I won’t be able to see them anymore.” She folded her arms and glared, looking disconcertingly like her mother. She’d inherited Mark’s brown eyes and dark hair—now made several shades darker with dye—but that was very definitely Ellen’s chin.

  Fen. Mark supposed it made sense, for a girl he and her mother had (lovingly) named Florence Esther Nugent.

  “Okay…Fen,” he said in a tone he hoped would make him sound reasonable and conciliatory, rather than a total pushover.

  The glint in her eye suggested he hadn’t succeeded in that endeavour. Mark broke the silence hastily, before she could start demanding motorbikes and sleepovers with boys. “It could have been worse, you know. You were very nearly Siena Isabella, until we realised we’d got the dates wrong, and that would have left you with the initials SIN—”

  “Daaa-aaad!” Florrie—Fen—had her hands over her ears.

  He shut up, which gave her the chance to go back on the offensive.

  “Why do I have to go and live with you anyway? Why can’t I stay with Mum?”

  Mark hesitated. He had an instinctive feeling because she can’t cope with you any longer wouldn’t go down well. “Don’t you think it’s fair we should share parental responsibilities?”

  “I s’pose.”

  “And don’t you think it’ll be nice to spend some time together?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Flor—Fen?”

  “S’pose.”

  “Well, then. Why don’t you take a look at some of the houses I’ve found—”

  “But it’s not like you ever wanted to spend any time with me before.”

  Mark’s conscience appeared to be on the move; it was now wrapping itself painfully around his intestines like a boa constrictor with a grudge. “
I was working. You know that.”

  “Yeah, and what’s it going to be like when I move in with you? If I move in with you. You’ll just be working all the time again.”

  “Didn’t your mother tell you? I’ve given up my job.” Mark smiled, his conscience relaxing its hold on his digestive organs and slithering away, presumably to bide its time for his next big parental cock-up. “We’re going to spend all our time together, when you’re not in school.”

  For some reason, Florence—Fen—didn’t look as delighted as he’d expected.

  * * * * *

  It took another couple of months, but eventually Mark found both a house that would suit them and—this being the more difficult task—a school that would accept Florence, and might even be the making of her. Saint Jude’s was a former grammar school with old-fashioned values and discipline. It even had a Latin motto and school song. School uniform rules were strictly enforced—the visit to the school outfitter’s provoking another outburst of epic proportions.

  “It’s all pink!” Florence wailed as she stepped out of the changing room in her matching kilt, sweater, blazer and school tights.

  “Ah… I think they call it maroon,” Mark said cautiously. She might just possibly have a point, but there was nothing they could do about it now.

  “It’s not maroon. It’s fuc—” She caught Mark’s frown and checked herself. “—fuchsia. I look like a Disney princess.”

  “You used to love dressing up as a princess,” Mark reminded her.

  “When I was three. This is horrible. Why do I even have to wear this? The boys’ uniform is so much better.”

  The boys’ uniform was utterly unlike the girls’ and consisted of black trousers paired with a grey tweed blazer that looked like it had been made from an old horse blanket that’d been left out in the rain. It even smelled like that. Nevertheless, Mark would have to concede that, once again, she had a point. “I think you look very nice,” he lied smoothly.

  “I hate you,” she muttered, and disappeared behind the curtain once more.

  The boot of the BMW was packed full of carrier bags by the time they left the outfitter’s, and Mark was reeling from the expense. Why exactly did his daughter need two PE kits? If gym skirts (with matching maroon over-knickers, presumably to spare the girls’ blushes on windy days) weren’t suitable for all activities, why not just let them wear the shorts from the other kit for all sports lessons? Were maroon tracksuits essential equipment? Mark was quite certain the girls at his school had, like the boys, just toughed it out in T-shirts on winter days. The lacrosse stick, however, he found strangely comforting, even though he was only familiar with the sport from the pages of his mother’s old 1950s girls’ school books. St. Jude’s is far too elite to play common games like hockey, it seemed to say.

  He made the mistake of mentioning this to Florence—Fen, damn it. Apparently to her, it just said, Ha, you thought you were crap at hockey? Here’s another sport you’ll be even worse at ’cos everyone else has done three years of it already. But Mark had every confidence in her.

  If all else failed, there was always the option of private coaching.

  “And I’m not gonna know anyone. It’s going to be horrible.”

  “You’ll soon make friends,” Mark promised her. “Just…join in some clubs or something.”

  “Like you’ve joined anything since we moved here. God, what are you even going to do all day? Just sit around and watch daytime telly in your underwear?”

  “Oh, don’t you worry about that.” Mark beamed, pleased to get the chance to talk about his new pet project. David’s concerns about him having nothing to do while Fen was at school had sparked some serious thinking on Mark’s part, and he flattered himself he’d come up with the perfect solution. “I’ll be writing.”

  “You? Writing? Like, what?”

  “A book. I’m going to call it The TAX-idermist: Telling HMRC to Get Stuffed.” He was rather proud of that one.

  Fen’s kohl-rimmed eyes were that curious mix of confused, irritated and pitying he was coming to know all too well. “That’s just so lame. What’s HM-whatsit even mean?”

  “It’s short for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.” Her look remained blank. “The tax man?” he tried. “I suppose I could put it in full, but it’d make for a rather crowded cover. And I wanted to avoid having tax in there twice.”

  “Dad, it’s already lame. You’re not gonna make it any worse.” Her frown deepened. “I thought you worked for them, though? Like, doing taxes and stuff?”

  “Well, more or less—except I’m on the other side. Poacher, not gamekeeper.” He smiled.

  “Isn’t that against the law?”

  “Only if you don’t do it properly,” Mark said firmly. “Tax avoidance, not tax evasion.”

  “Whatever. That’s like saying stealing’s not a crime if you call it, I dunno, extreme borrowing, or something. So instead of watching telly all day in your underwear, you’re going to sit at a computer all day in your underwear. Big difference.”

  “The difference, young lady, is that watching telly achieves nothing, whereas writing a successful book can make a great deal of money.”

  “What do you even want more money for? It’s not like you ever spend it on anything. Mum said you’ve got loads in the bank, and it all just sits there ’cos all you ever want to do is work. God. Could you be any more of a sad old loser?”

  “Ahem. Excuse me, madam, but I happen to have spent quite a lot of money recently. And all of it on one rather ungrateful young lady.”

  “On what? On that stupid uniform for that stupid school you’re making me go to?”

  “Well, houses don’t exactly grow on trees!”

  “Yeah, like this house is all for me. And anyway, Mum said you must have made loads selling your flat.”

  Mark was beginning to wish Ellen had been a little more taciturn on the subject of him and money. “Anyway, the point is—”

  “I mean, you don’t even go on holiday anymore. Not, you know, like you ever did holiday stuff even when we used to go away. I remember that time in Corfu when I wanted you to go on the waterslides with me, and you were all yes, darling, just as soon as I’ve made these phone calls, and I waited and I waited and you never came.”

  Oh God. He’d wanted to play with his daughter. Of course he had. But that idiot they’d had on secondment from Manchester had made such a god-awful mess of things, Charles had been about to burst a blood vessel, and it had only been supposed to take half an hour… He’d taken her out on a speedboat trip the following day to make it up to her and thought it had all been forgiven and forgotten.

  He’d been wrong.

  Telling himself firmly he was in the process of making amends, Mark rallied. “And that’s what this is all about. You and me, together. And that’s why I’m not working now, so I can focus on you.”

  “I’m not a baby. I don’t need you watching me all the time.”

  Mark blinked. Hadn’t she just been telling him he hadn’t spent enough time with her? “I thought we could do something fun together.”

  “Like what? There’s nothing to do here.”

  “We could go bowling. There’s bound to be somewhere near—”

  “Nobody goes bowling with their dad. That’s just so lame.”

  “Well… There’s the cinema.”

  “Boring. There’s nothing good on. They show all the good films at Christmas, and then it’s just crap until the summer.”

  “Language, young lady.” Mark brought out the big guns. “All right, what about shopping? For clothes. Fun clothes, I mean.”

  For a moment, she looked tempted… Then the shutters closed again. “No. You’ll only try and make me buy stuff that looks pretty.”

  “Free choice. I promise. Within a set spending limit,” Mark added hastily at the beginnings of a glea
m in her eye.

  “I suppose.” Fen heaved herself to her feet as if the weight of the world were upon her narrow shoulders. “It’s not like there’s anything else to do.”

  The shopping trip, Mark considered, went remarkably well in the end. All he had to do was close his eyes to his daughter’s purchases and remind himself firmly that black was a good, serviceable colour that didn’t show the dirt. And he made sure she was stocked up on all essential toiletries—at least, she disappeared into Boots the Chemist with an unlikely amount of money and strict instructions to Mark to “Wait here. I’m not buying this stuff in front of you,” and came out with a laden carrier bag, so he hoped she was now well supplied.

  Ellen had always handled this sort of thing before. Mark wondered if she’d had to kick her heels out in the cold while Fen stocked up, or if female sisterhood extended as far as mothers.

  From the way Ellen had been at her wits’ end with her daughter, he rather suspected not.

  Once they returned, however, Fen disappeared to her room with her phone, leaving him with her bags full of Goth chic and unmentionables, leaving Mark feeling somehow more alone than he’d ever felt in his London flat. Her room in the new house, in fact, appeared to be the one thing about her new life his daughter did approve of, at least judging by the amount of time she spent in it.

  The house Mark had chosen was at the end of a modern terrace right in the centre of the village, set back from the High Street in a cul-de-sac opposite the church. It was a three-storey town house with a postage-stamp garden that consisted mainly of patio, which was Mark’s sort of garden. The sort a man could relax in, rather than being nagged at to labour in on a rare day off. After all, if he or Fen wanted anything bigger, they had the whole of the surrounding Hertfordshire countryside to play in.

  It had three bedrooms and two bathrooms—the estate agent had warned that with a teenage girl in the house, an extra bathroom would be less of a luxury and more of an essential, at least if he ever planned on showering again. The ground floor was spacious, with a well-equipped kitchen and a light, airy open-plan living room-cum-dining room that faced the garden, plus a study and a small cloakroom. It was, Mark had considered, as close to perfect as he was likely to get. Not so large that he and Fen would be rattling around in it, but not so small they’d be tripping over one another all the time either.