by Alexis Hall
“I’ve got a lot of faults,” said Jonas mildly. “But I wouldn’t think less of you over something like that.”
Nope nope. I wasn’t relieved. I wasn’t relieved because I didn’t care. It made no difference to me if someone whose contribution to my existence had basically been some sperm turned out to be judgey and homophobic and not proud of me at all. “Congrats on not being a bigot.”
“I’m not here to pressure you, Arden.” He adjusted his glasses by the corner—the gesture, habit, whatever it was, oddly disarming. And why the fuck did he have glasses anyway? Monsters weren’t supposed to wear spectacles. “But I’d like to give you my number. You don’t have to do anything with it.”
“Then why give it to me?”
“You can call me if you ever want to. You’re my son. I want to know you.”
That was when I realised just how little information I actually had about…about my father. Including the fact he’d been in the same city as me and I hadn’t had a clue. “Are you living in London?”
“No, I’m here for work. Leaving at the end of the week.”
I let out a breath. That was good, right? He’d never been close by, and he’d be gone soon.
“I travel a lot,” he went on. “I can always come back.”
“What even do you do?”
“I sell library software.”
Oh, come on. “Seriously?”
“It’s been a long time.” He gave me another of those tentative smiles. “I’ve changed.”
“So says every dickhead who hasn’t changed ever.”
The smile faded. “I hope you’ll give me a chance. But I’ll understand if you can’t.”
He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a business card, and offered it to me. I let him hang there awkwardly for a second or two—telling myself I really was conflicted—and then took it. After all, he was right: I could lose his damn card the moment I got home if I wanted.
“And”—words came out of my mouth before I could stop them—“if I don’t get in touch, you won’t come looking for me?”
“Never.”
“O-okay then.”
I hadn’t agreed to anything, really. Except I ended up feeling as if I had. Jonas gave me one last look, like he was trying to fix me in his mind, then turned and walked off. He didn’t glance back. Didn’t hurry or linger. It was amazing how quickly I lost track of him in the crowd. How he could have been anyone, my hand sweating around his business card. I shoved it into my wallet. Maybe I should have thrown it away. But I told myself I could do that whenever.
I tried not to think about him on the way home. Impossible not to, though. I’d had enough familial love to last me a lifetime, so it wasn’t as if I’d suffered for the lack of a biological father. But I couldn’t say I’d never…wondered? Wondered pretty intensely, actually, even making a fucked-up teenage attempt to find him before Hazel had brought me to my senses. It had hurt her badly, not only because she was scared for Mum, but because if anyone was my dad, it was her. It wasn’t about that, though. It was about the…not knowing. As if, in not knowing the man who had been partially responsible for making me, I might not know myself. I mean, what if I was like him? How could I tell?
I had memories, of course, not good ones, of a shadow on the wall, and secrets with Mum, and the sound of her crying when she thought I couldn’t hear. That long, long drive, all through the night, Mum’s fingers white on the steering wheel. I remembered the unpredictability of his comings and goings. The buzz of his voice in the next room but never the words. And the hush when he was home, as if the house itself held its breath.
Mum didn’t like to talk about him, and I didn’t like to ask. Hazel had told me he was a sociopath. And so I’d buried my not-knowing down deep and piled the years on top of it until I’d almost forgotten it was there—my little lockbox of doubt. But now it was neither buried nor little. In fact, it was wide open and spewing questions like the self-replicating charm in the Lestrange vault at Gringotts.
Fuck. That was my dad. I’d met my dad. And it had been…not how I might have imagined. But then, that sort of thing was unimaginable anyway. He’d been so…so ordinary. Average-looking, with a steady gaze behind those nerdy glasses, and a nice-ish smile. Thick hair for a man of his age, which surely boded well for me in the future, flopping somewhat waywardly across his brow. He hadn’t threatened me or pushed me into anything. He’d actually been fairly respectful, hadn’t he? Giving me the power. Promising to stay away if that was what I wanted. I knew the thing about sociopaths was that they didn’t seem like sociopaths but, well, he didn’t seem like a sociopath. So why did I feel all turned upside-down and emptied out?
Anyway, even if he wasn’t acting in good faith, and wanted to get to know me for sinister reasons of his own, it was hard to see what those reasons might be. He was only in town for a week. What if I did go for coffee with him? To satisfy my own curiosity, more than anything. What could he do to me? How much harm could that cause? On top of which there was another possibility to consider: He could very well have been sincere. In general, parents were supposed to care about their kids. Was it so totally outlandish that my own father could care about me? After all, I wasn’t exactly anyone’s dream child: short, skinny, kind of weird, average student, borderline incompetent at a lot of things, semi-regularly in the tabloids for scandalous behaviour, incredibly queer. And he’d still come looking. Still said he wanted to know me. That he was proud of me.
Obviously what he’d done to Mum had been super super super wrong. And he’d admitted that. I mean, I think he had—he’d said something about regrets, anyway. I couldn’t quite remember. But maybe he really had changed. Was it right of me to punish him for shit he’d done when he wasn’t much older than me? Or would it be betraying Mum if I didn’t? Probably I should have spoken to her, but I was afraid she’d freak out. And Hazel just would tell me not to do it. To not even think about it.
And…and I wasn’t ready to be told that. My father had given me the choice. So I wanted the choice to be mine.
Chapter 30
I met Jonas for coffee a couple of days later. I wasn’t sure I would, right until I walked in through the door of Starbucks, but I also knew if I hadn’t gone, I would probably have…not regretted it exactly, but questioned myself for probably my entire fucking life. So yeah. I texted him. Arranged to see him. And surprise surprise, it was fine. He looked the way he had before, bewildering to me in his normality, with those heavy, dark-framed glasses and the messy hair, and the big, dimply smile that came much less hesitantly now. In fact, he looked positively lit up when I came in. Which, honestly, was kind of nice.
He bought me a muffin, and a hot chocolate, and it was awkward at first because we had something that felt as though it ought to be a connection but zero actual relationship. It got easier, though. And talking to Jonas was…no chore. While I still couldn’t tell if he’d meant all that stuff about getting to know me, he was doing a ridiculously good impression of wanting to. Asking me lots of questions and whatever. And while I wasn’t all that forthcoming at first, it turned out that you could get used to someone being interested in you pretty fucking quickly. Especially when they were, y’know, your dad. And being interested in your kid was meant to be part of the job description, right?
I mean, don’t get me wrong. We weren’t hugging and crying and having Kodak moments. I wasn’t going to be popping round to his place on Christmas Day anytime soon. But I guess I could maybe picture taking a call from him occasionally. Meeting like this every now and again. Was that so terrible?
“I’m really glad,” said Jonas, in the lull of me talking about me in order to think about me, “that you decided to come.”
“Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“I wouldn’t have blamed you.”
“Well, don’t get too comfortable.” I prodded the remains of my muffin defiantly. “I can leave at any time.”
“Of course you can.” When I’d first met
him, I’d thought his eyes were like mine, but they weren’t really—there was a light to them, an intensity that wasn’t quite warmth, especially when he was looking at right at you. “But I hope you won’t. I’m enjoying spending time with you. Getting to hear a little bit about your life.”
I wasn’t ready to admit I was enjoying myself too. Besides, I wasn’t, at least not exactly. He’d done nothing to worry or upset me, but I couldn’t shake a lingering unsettled feeling, and I had no idea why. Maybe it was just the newness of the situation. Or the fact it ran so abruptly contrary to every story I’d ever been told, which was doing an Orwell with my brain because, surely, one of these narratives had to be wrong. Unless they were both right simultaneously and we’d always been at war with Eurasia.
“I still don’t know anything about your life,” I pointed out.
That got me dimples. “Oh, I’m not very interesting.”
“Bore me, then.”
“Well, I…I don’t really know what to say. I travel for work a lot, and talk to a lot of librarians.”
“Doesn’t that get kind of tiring?”
“The travel or the librarians?”
“I see what you did there. Both. Either.”
“Sometimes I get tired from the driving and one too many Holiday Inns. But I like meeting new people.”
I could see that—he gave every impression of being incredibly approachable when he wasn’t popping up out of nowhere to be all Luke, I am your father at you. “And you rock selling that software to librarians, huh?”
“So I’ve been told.” He resettled his glasses. Which was one of those gestures I just couldn’t quite process—it was vulnerable, somehow, offering this flash of his naked eyes. “I certainly seem to have been successful at it.”
“Uhh…” Why had this suddenly got difficult? I guess I wasn’t as good at talking to people as my dad. “And, like, it’s what you want to be doing?”
Flash of a smile again. “I’m not sure anyone entertains a childhood dream of working in sales. But I’ve tried very hard since—I’ve tried very hard to build a worthwhile life for myself. I have a job, I have a house, I don’t drink anymore. From where I started, that means quite a lot.”
“Where you…started?”
“I wouldn’t want you to think I’m looking for sympathy, Arden. My life was in a bad place. Now it isn’t.”
“You mean”—I swallowed, highly aware there was an emotional viper pit directly under my feet and I was about to plunge straight into it, but utterly unable not to—“with Mum and me?”
Jonas shifted in obvious discomfort. “I don’t think we think should talk about that. I don’t want to keep anything from you, but I don’t think it would be right.”
Yes. I agreed. I very much agreed. What the fuck was wrong with me? Why had I even asked? The thing is, I didn’t actually want to know. But I guess I…I…did? Mainly so I could reassure myself he wasn’t still obsessed with my mum, and in talking to him now, I wasn’t being the worst son in the world. “S-sorry,” I mumbled. “I don’t…that is…it’s not my business.”
“It was complicated. I was drinking too much. I behaved terribly. But”—he gave a tight little shrug—“I was young, I was messed up. Iris was the only woman I’ve ever loved and I was losing her.”
“O-okay.”
“It was a long time ago.”
I nodded, relieved. “Are you seeing anyone now?”
“I have a lady in Manchester I’ve been on a couple of dates with. It’s early days.” He folded his hands around his cup of tea and took a deep sip. “What about you? There’s definitely nothing with your friend from the article?”
“Definitely nothing. I mean, I’ve got a few casual things going on but”—I sighed—“I’m kind of just out of a thing. Well, not just out. It’s been months. But it still feels just, if you know what I mean.”
“I do, I absolutely do. Want to tell me about it?”
I’d blithered on about Caspian to everyone I knew—up to the point that I’d had to make a conscious decision to stop because I was sucking on the energy of my friends and loved ones like a ginormous parasite. So I don’t know if I was just desperate to get my whining about my ex-boyfriend fix or I’d inadvertently turned boring people about my breakup into a habit. But there I was, telling Jonas, “He dumped me.”
“I dislike him already.”
That made me laugh, if slightly guiltily. “It’s…complicated.”
He nodded. “These things tend to be.”
“He’d gone through some stuff, like some pretty horrible, fucked-up stuff, which made him feel we couldn’t be together.”
Jonas made a sympathetic noise.
And honestly, I’d talked about Caspian with way less encouragement. “It messes with my head because…I don’t know…I’d hate it but I’d get it if he just didn’t love me or want to be with me.” Oh wow. Was I going to cry in Starbucks twice? Thankfully, I managed to keep it to messy sniffles. “But it’s this other thing. Basically, what it comes down to is I lost my boyfriend for reasons beyond my control that have nothing to do with me. And that’s…I know this sounds pathetic, but it’s not fair.”
“I agree. It’s very difficult.” Jonas let out a long, slow breath. “And I’m sorry for whatever your ex went through.”
“So am I. I’m sorry for everything.”
“It’s not your responsibility, Arden.”
I sighed. “I get that. It’s still a rubbish reason to have broken up, though. Because of something someone else did.”
“I can see where you’re coming from.” There was something about the way he was looking at me, with that steady, softly glowing gaze, which—in that moment—made me really believe him. And it was a powerful sort of rush: feeling not just nebulously sympathised with but fully understood. “I know,” he said, “how painful it is to be forced to live with someone else’s decisions, particularly when those decisions affect you directly but you’re prevented from participating in them.”
“Yes.” I bobbed my head as eagerly as a cartoon dog. “That’s it exactly. One minute there was an us, and we were working through things, and the next there wasn’t and we weren’t, and I didn’t even get a say.”
“The thing is”—Jonas broke off with a sweet, almost sheepish look—“well, I’m not the person to be giving you advice about relationships, but in my experience, when people are reacting to things within themselves, all you can do is let them.”
He was right, of course, and I hadn’t needed him to tell me that. But I guess it helped hearing it out loud. “It kind of feels like there’s me, and there’s what he went through, but that’s the only thing that counts. Except now it sounds as if I think it’s a competition.”
“It doesn’t sound that way to me.”
“I honestly don’t. I just wish I could be as real to him as his pain.”
“I expect this will come across as a platitude”—Jonas stirred the dregs of his tea—“but time can make a huge difference when it comes to things like this.”
Considering what had happened at the Laine Matthäus Gallery, or more particularly in its fire escape, I was sceptical. “It hasn’t so far.”
“It’s been months. Try years. There will be a point when things are better. For both of you.”
“Really?”
He put a hand to his heart. “I promise.”
We talked about other things after that—or I did, anyway. Simple stuff like work, friends, books I liked, my time at university, both of us edging carefully round the past. He did ask me a couple of times if I remembered anything—the weekend we’d all spent on the Cornish coast or the time he’d read me The Iron Man—but I was too young. Nothing but blanks. Except for a disconnected sense-memory of the widest, bluest sky, which I kept to myself.
It was only when Starbucks started trying to close around us that I noticed how late it had got. Hastily, we packed up and made for the street. Paused on the pavement in the halo of greeny-gold lig
ht that spilled out with us.
“So,” I said, swinging my bag onto my shoulder in what I hoped was a nonchalant manner, and accidentally whacked a passerby. “That was a thing we did.”
Jonas resettled his glasses. “I would like to do it again. If you would.”
Did I? Well, why not? It had gone fine. Nothing terrible had happened. I mean, I still wasn’t ready to roll out a welcome mat to my life, but he wasn’t asking for that. And probably it was better to have a dad whose existence you were vaguely aware of instead of a dad who was lurking in the shadows like a spider under the sofa. “Maybe. Sure. Yeah.”
“I’ll be back down south in about six to eight months.”
“Six to eight months?”
“I can text you. I’ve got your number.”
“Okay.”
“And obviously”—a glimmer of a dimple—“I’m here ’til the end of the week.”
“Any plans?”
“I’ve got some people to see. What about you?”
“Work, nothing major.” I toed at the pavement. “If you’re not busy…since it’s going to be a while…we could probably meet up again before you leave.”
He got that glowy look. “I can do Friday?”
“Yeah, okay. Same Starbucks, same pack-drill?”
“I’ll see you then.”
To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure why I’d suggested it. Only that it had felt right at the time. And, afterwards, I wished I hadn’t—despite the fact I had no concrete reason for being uncomfortable. He’d behaved exactly the way you’d want your abusive absentee father to behave if he’d appeared out of nowhere, claiming to want to be part of your life. Besides, I didn’t have to meet Jonas again if I didn’t want to. Although cancelling or standing him up would have been shitty. Especially since he hadn’t done anything wrong.
Well. Anything wrong to me.
Chapter 31
Friday fucking sucked. Not in a dramatic, interesting way. My hair wouldn’t get its act together. The Circle line was subject to “minor delays across the service,” which meant everything was stuck. I knocked my Diet Coke over in my drawer. Accidentally hit DO NOT SAVE CHANGES after editing an entire article on the twenty-seven best pedicures in London. And REPLY ALL in a moment of mental abstraction. Not disastrously. But it still made me look inept in front of two hundred people, one of whom was my boss. Go me. And then, of course, I ran into further “minor delays” on the way to meet my dad. Leaving me to charge into Starbucks grumpy and sweaty, with stupid hair, and there was Jonas waiting for me at the same table we’d had last time, with a muffin, and a hot chocolate that had clearly gone cold. Which made me feel extra bad for wanting to ditch him.