by Jo Kessel
“This came for you this morning,” he said. “It looks important. I had to sign for it.”
Claire had had enough of lawyers for a lifetime. She didn’t really want to open the letter. She wanted to dispose of it as quickly as possible, to toss it in the bin. Lawyers, courts, they all spelled bad news.
“It’s probably more rubbish from Anthony,” she pushed the letter away. “I don’t want to know.”
Jonah put the letter into her hand.
“I showed this to Benedict Pendleton this morning, just in case it was relevant. He said it had nothing to do with our hearing or Anthony whatsoever. So I think you should open it.”
Claire tried to open the letter, but there was a cannula inserted into a vein on the top of her hand and it was uncomfortable.
“Why have they put this in me?”
“Apparently you were dehydrated as well as exhausted so they’ve been pumping you full of minerals and liquids via a drip.”
Claire turned and saw a bag of clear fluid hanging from a hook behind her.
“You open the letter,” she instructed, handing it back.
Jonah tore roughly at the envelope and pulled out a cream sheet of paper. He started reading it to himself, his eyes widening as his eyes scanned along the lines.
“Stop that,” Claire barked, smiling warmly. “Either give it to me or read it out loud.”
Jonah cleared his throat.
Dear Ms Jackson
I do hope this letter finds you well.
I am the Executor of the final will and testament of the recently deceased Orlando Goodman. I am pleased to inform that you have been named as the beneficiary of the recently deceased’s maisonette in Kings Cross. I met with my client just a few days before his passing and he was keen that you, over all the other beneficiaries, should learn this news swiftly. He also wanted you to know not to feel compelled to live in the property. You are at liberty to rent it or sell it so that proceeds can best be utilised to enhance life with your soon-to-expand family.
My client expressed his immense gratitude for all you have done for him – he was most fond of you. Please do get in touch as soon as possible to let me know how to proceed.
Yours sincerely
Jonathan Finger
Claire held out her hand and Jonah placed the letter in it. She read it once again, to herself and a couple of rogue tears tumbled down her cheeks.
“Wow,” she said quietly.
“Don’t upset yourself,” said Jonah.
Claire shook her head.
“I won’t,” she promised.
This was so unexpected. She always had such a soft spot for Orlando and it moved her that he felt the same way. The blue curtains swished open and Miriam poked her head through.
“What’s that?” her daughter asked.
Claire folded up the letter.
“This is a gift from Willy Wonka,” she said, opening up her arms for Miriam to fall into.
“What, a golden ticket?” she asked, wide-eyed.
“Yes,” Claire replied, “kind of.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
ANTHONY
Why doesn’t this victory feel so sweet? That was the question which had plagued Anthony most of the weekend. True, there’d been one major hiccup en route which somewhat dampened proceedings. Watching his ex-wife collapse to the floor stirred mixed emotions within him. His first instinct was to run over to check that she was alright, but of course that would have looked a tad bizarre. Plus that dimwit Jonah was fawning all over her, preventing anyone else from coming too close, claiming that she needed ‘air’. Was he a doctor now or something? And then it had dawned on him, perhaps this was all an act to win over the Judge’s sympathy. Perhaps this had all been staged by their idiot barrister who he’d heard through the grapevine was famed for his maverick tactics. Stranger things have happened in court. Lord knows, he’d tried some of them himself.
When the ambulance arrived and Jonah left with it, Anthony half expected the case to be adjourned, but due to the urgency of the hearing, it continued. Strictly speaking none of the parties involved actually needed to attend anyway. And so the rest of Anthony’s fabulous photos had been played out like a slide show to a few select members of the press who appeared less interested now that the Applicant and her famous fiancé had departed. Part of the fun of the photos was to see the reaction they made on Claire and “dimwit”. Without them, their impact was greatly diminished.
At the end of the day the Judge scheduled judgement for the following morning at 10.30 a.m., same time, same place. When Jonah turned up alone Anthony freaked out, although he’d done his best not to let it show. He wanted to ask how she was and where she was, slightly concerned that perhaps he’d pushed things too far with his photos. But as a lawyer himself, he knew well enough to keep his distance. They were on opposing sides: ‘never the twain shall meet’. However, after the judgement was made and permission was not granted for Claire to remove Miriam from the jurisdiction indefinitely, Anthony tried to brush aside those barriers. He kept his expression impassive, not wanting it to appear that he was gloating. At least, if any expression were on show, he hoped he’d managed to display a soupcon of sympathetic commiseration. He sauntered over to Jonah, hand outstretched, hoping that they could let bygones be bygones and brush any misunderstandings under the carpet. They were grown-ups after all. Moreover, his training had taught him to shake hands with the opponent, win or lose. And damn it, Jonah’s training was exactly the bloody same. Tennis players shake hands over the net after a match, win or lose. Not dimwit Kennedy though. No. Dimwit Kennedy turned his back on him, ignoring his outstretched hand and giving him nothing but the cold shoulder. Maybe something awful had happened? Maybe Claire had lost the babies?
The next morning was perhaps the most awkward of his life. Actually, there was no ‘perhaps’ about it. It just plain was the most awkward moment of his life. It was his weekend with Miriam and he’d gone to pick her up as planned from Gladstone Road. Gone was the nice relationship with his ex-wife which he prided himself on. Before Gwyneth and Chris Martin had consciously uncoupled, Anthony felt that he and Claire were great examples of how couples could amicably separate and co-parent. But now, relations were clearly strained. Claire didn’t even do the hand-over. It was Jonah, who was courteous but monosyllabic. And then, to make matters worse, Miriam hadn’t even wanted to come with him. She cowered away from his advances, scurrying to cling to Jonah’s legs. “I don’t want to go,” she said. “Tell me I don’t have to.” Jonah wasn’t even her father! How could she favour the Dimwit over her own dad? Being attacked by a swarm of bees couldn’t sting any more.
The weekend with Miriam had gone from bad to worse. She seemed to have taken a dose of Jonah’s medicine, managing to last from morning till dusk being perfectly courteous whilst remaining irritatingly monosyllabic.
“What do you want to do today?”
“Don’t care.”
Well, ok, that was two syllables.
“Do you fancy going to Madame Tussauds?”
“Fine.”
Miriam had been pleading with him to take her to the waxworks for ages, so this should have elicited great excitement. There was even a brand new model of Katy Perry. Miriam adored Katy Perry. She was word-perfect on the lyrics to Roar, California Gurls and Firework. Anthony presumed that once they got to the museum she would perk up, and yet she walked around the place as if it was a funfair without any rides. Even the offer of lunch at McDonalds couldn’t cheer her up. She’d longed to go there because her nutrition-obsessed mother would never take her. But when he walked her through the golden arches and told her she could finally have a Big Mac and fries, she looked him in the eye and said “yuck”.
It wasn’t until much later in the evening that she strung more than one word together in a sentence and her first attempt wasn’t pretty.
“I hate you,” she said.
His skin prickled but he kept calm.
“You
are the most selfish man I’ve ever met,” she added.
Still he didn’t react.
“All you ever think about is yourself. You don’t want Mummy to be happy. She’ll never be happy if she stays here. You know that. You’re keeping her a prisoner in this country, just so that she can stay with me. And you nearly killed mummy’s babies. You’re horrid.”
Ah, so the babies were still fine. Nonetheless, her words slapped him in the face. Her mature grasp of the situation surprised him but he wouldn’t let on.
“Sweetheart,” he sidled up to her, stroking her back. “This is all very complicated and I wouldn’t have done any of it if it weren’t in your best interest.”
“My best interest is having a mother who is happy.”
And your best interest is having your father still in your life and not on the other side of the world. That’s what Anthony wanted to say but he didn’t. Instead, he stuck to condescending platitudes.
“Sweetheart, I don’t expect you to be able to understand all this yet. You will when you’re older.”
Miriam crossed her arms defiantly.
“I’m tired. I want to go to bed.”
It was only 7.30pm. She normally delighted in staying up late on the weekend, to watch a reality show or a family movie.
“If that’s what you’d like,” he said.
At 8.00pm Anthony had checked up on her. She’d fallen asleep on top of her duvet, an open book still gripped between her fingers. He gently prised the book from her grip, turned the bottom corner of the page and placed it on the bedside table. Then he scooped her into his arms, pulled back the covers and slipped her underneath, kissing her gently on the forehead. He stood watching her sleep for nearly half an hour whilst an internal dialogue played in his head. How had it come to this? It felt like only yesterday that this mature little girl was a tiny baby, barely bigger than the palm of his hand. If he could, would he rewind the clock back to when things weren’t so complicated, when all that mattered was changing a nappy and feeding her a bottle? You bet he would, even though, when she was a baby, he longed for her to be older, to be able to communicate with him, to tell him what she was crying about. Was he selfish? No, he was just doing what any right-minded father would do. Had he done the wrong thing? It wasn’t possible that wanting to play a proper role in your daughter’s life could be wrong. Would Miriam hate him forever? She needed time to get over it. She would get over it. They would all move on from this.
He went downstairs to join Ali who was watching TV whilst cradling Jasper in her arms. For once their son was fast asleep at a sensible hour.
“Everything ok?” she asked.
He sighed as he sat next to her on the sofa.
“Do you think I’ve done the right thing with Claire?”
He’d not dared to ask her this before because he didn’t want to be dissuaded from the path which he absolutely knew he had to follow. But now he needed an opinion and he prayed she could be objective. He didn’t want any of this to tarnish his relationship with his daughter or even Claire for that matter.
“What makes you think you haven’t?” she asked.
“Miriam hates me. Claire hates me. Jonah hates me. What if all this hate never goes away?”
Ali was silent for an age. For a while he thought that perhaps she was more absorbed by the programme on the television in front of her than in his dilemma but she’d clearly just been cogitating. She turned to him and placed a hand on his arm.
“Darling, I know this is hard and I know you don’t want to hear it. There’s no right or wrong. I can absolutely understand where you’re coming from and perhaps if I was in your shoes I would have done exactly the same. But seeing as you’re asking for my opinion, I’ll give it to you. I was really impressed with how you and Claire had moved on following the divorce and now, all this bitterness, I’m not sure that it’s worth it. There must be another way. It’s not like you will never see Miriam. And it could be worse. It could be New Zealand or Australia. America’s not around the corner, admittedly, but it’s easy to get to. There’s holidays and lots of them. There must be some arrangement you can come to that will be better than storing up a lifetime of bad feeling which will be unhealthy for everyone’s relationships?”
Now he remembered why he hadn’t sought Ali’s opinion. She was staying stuff he didn’t want to hear. How could there possibly be another arrangement that could work for them? Clearly Ali was incapable of being impartial. Miriam was becoming a problem and it would be convenient if she could be got out of the way. Isn’t that why Ali was saying what she was saying?
-----------------------
With a heavy heart he called Claire early Sunday morning. What he needed to do had come to him in an uncomfortable dream which made him toss and turn and dampen the sheets. He wasn’t due to return Miriam till the end of the day but this needed to be sorted out now. Procrastination would only be his enemy. He was surprised when she picked up the phone to him. She hadn’t bothered the day before.
“We need to talk,” he told her simply. “Is it alright if I bring Miriam back now and we go somewhere neutral?”
Claire hesitated on the other end of the phone.
“If we must,” she said.
That was better than a ‘no’. Her generosity was already putting him to shame. He deserved to be blanked. Miriam didn’t ask any questions when they rolled up at 77, Gladstone Road. Far from it, she seemed delighted by the early return and when Jonah opened the front door she ran into his arms. Jonah chose that precise moment to finally look Anthony in the eye, delivering a glassy, stony glare, as if to say: “Look what I’ve got buster. I’ve got something that’s yours and I’m not giving it back.” In the absence of not being invited into the house, Anthony hovered on the doorstep uncomfortably. Claire rescued him, coming to the door jangling keys in one hand as she fought to slip into her jacket with her other. She bent down to kiss her daughter and whispered something in her ear which Anthony couldn’t quite work out. Whatever it was seemed to satisfy Miriam, who nodded sagely and whispered “bye”.
“I thought we could go to World Cafe?” Anthony suggested.
It was a café round the corner which served superior cappuccinos and brunches.
“How about we go to the park instead? There’s a kiosk there for drinks.”
Whatever she wanted was fine by him, and perhaps staying in the open would be preferable to being cooped up in an artificial environment.
“Do you want me to drive?”
He thought he should offer, seeing as she was pregnant. She cast him a weird look.
“It’s a two minute walk away. I think I can manage it on foot.”
He wondered if it was best to start vocalising his ideas en route to the park. Why wait after all? But then Claire asked him what he’d done with Miriam over the weekend and he allowed banal chit-chat to continue until they reached the kiosk, where they ordered two polystyrene cups of tea and settled down on a bench. They were side by side, but a cavernous space divided them, as did awkward silence. She was waiting for him to speak.
“I’m really sorry about everything,” he began.
Claire nodded, not turning to look at him, preferring instead to concentrate on a dog chasing a squirrel. She would not speak though. And she certainly wasn’t about to forgive him. Why should she? He was trying to ruin her life.
“And I really hope we can work through this and move on from this. I don’t want you or Miriam or even Jonah for that matter to hate me for the rest of your lives,” he continued.
Claire remained impassive, transfixed now by a toddler who was chasing the dog who was chasing the squirrel. He knew what he had to say next but was he really sure? It was going to change the landscape of his life forever. He took a deep breath and swallowed sharply, downing a gulp of tea for courage.
“I’ve been doing some thinking.”
His body was turned to Claire’s. He wanted to tell her to look at him and not the damn dog, so that she
could see he was serious, but he wasn’t in a position to issue commands. He took a deep breath.
“I’m going to let you go to America,” he said.
Now she turned to him.
“Sorry?” she asked, as if she’d misheard.
“I want you to go to America and take Miriam with you, if that’s what you want. That’s not to say that I want you to go but I’ve come to the decision that it’s wrong of me to prevent you from leading your life, especially with your two little babies on the way.”
Claire leaned forward, fussing with her right arm, raising it a little. For a moment he thought she was going to hug him but in the end her hand found her ringlets instead, fingering them agitatedly. Her eyes glistened.