Our Father Who Are Out There...Somewhere

by AJ Taft

  It’s the early hours of the morning when they take Fiona up to Lily’s old bedroom. Jo opens the door and Fiona’s mouth falls open. The room is bare, apart from a single mattress on the floor, and a sleeping bag. The light bulb hanging from the centre of the ceiling doesn’t have a shade and the light it casts is too bright. Jo and Lily have nailed wooden planks they found in a skip, across the inside of the window.

  Lily turns to Fiona. “Shit, what were we thinking? I’m sorry.”

  “We didn’t know what to expect,” Jo says, as Fiona nods slightly, but doesn’t speak.

  “You can’t sleep here,” says Lily. “Let’s drag the mattress downstairs. We can all sleep in the front room.”

  Chapter 19

  During the night, Lily has crept so close to the edge of the mattress, when she wakes up her head is on the floor and her neck is so badly cricked she can’t move it. Whether she was unconsciously creeping closer to her sister or distancing herself from Jo’s gentle snores, only a psychiatrist could answer. As Lily tries to twist her head to look across to the single mattress, a slicing pain shoots down the right hand side of her neck. She holds her face in both hands as the realisation hits her. The single mattress is empty; the sleeping bag forms a heap on the centre of the bed.

  “She’s gone,” says Lily, turning her body over onto her stomach and hauling herself up by her elbows. “Jo, she’s gone.”

  Jo sits bolt upright, like she’s been switched on by a jolt of electricity. Her frown is deep, yet uncomprehending. Lily has often been unnerved by the vacant expression on Jo’s face in a morning; without her make-up, in those first few moments of the day, she looks childlike, bewildered, afraid. Not the Jo Lily knows and depends upon. “Shit,” says Jo.

  “I’m here.” Fiona appears through the door carrying a tray. She’s wearing Jo’s Billy Bragg T-shirt, the one that says, ‘Capitalism is Killing Music’. It’s about four sizes too big for her and hangs off one of her slender shoulders. “I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep. So I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve had my breakfast. I’ve made you some toast.”

  Fiona sets down the tray. Once it’s on the floor, Lily can see a plate of toast smeared with Marmite. The smell makes her gag. She flops back down onto the mattress, burying her face in the pillow, and offers up a small thank you to a God she doesn’t believe in. When she sits up, Fiona is sitting on the single mattress, her legs crossed in a yoga position, her knees flat against the bed. Her eyes look red-rimmed, the eyelids puffed and swollen, but she smiles at them both. The smile stays on her lips though, doesn’t make its way up her face to her eyes.

  “Do you want to go home?” says Lily. “You know you only have to say and we’ll take you.”

  Fiona reaches for the plate of toast. The shake of her head is so slight, Lily’s not sure whether she imagined it or not. “I think you should ring him,” says Fiona. “I want to know what he’s thinking.”

  “He’ll have got the ransom note this morning,” says Jo.

  “We need to see if he’s taking it seriously; whether he suspects Lily.”

  Jo pulls a face at the plate of toast Fiona offers to her, but reaches across Lily to take a cup of tea from the tray. She rolls a cigarette and inhales before speaking. “It doesn’t matter if he does. He still won’t know where you are.”

  “Doesn’t the Salvation Army have your address?” Fiona asks, reaching for a piece of toast once she realises no one else is going to eat it. “What if Dad rings them and tells them what’s happened?”

  There’s a moment of silence, punctuated only by the sounds of Fiona crunching toast.

  “Fuck.” Lily turns her upper body to look across at Jo, hoping for some quick reassurance. From the expression on Jo’s face, it’s clear it’s a possibility she hasn’t previously considered. Lily’s voice gets higher, more frantic. “What if he rings that old buffer at the Salvation Army? Shit.” She swings her legs from under the covers and stands up. “He’s probably on his way here now.”

  Fiona takes another bite of her toast as Jo crushes her cigarette in the ashtray, and throws back the duvet on the other side of the double mattress. She stands up, revealing a pair of startlingly white, dumpling-like thighs under her T-shirt, as she leaps across the room. The pile of newspapers they spent the previous afternoon cutting up catches her unawares, and she catapults forward, almost head butting the window. Lily appears frozen to the spot, her eyes fixed on Jo, waiting for her to say something. Jo recovers her balance and peers out behind the still drawn curtains, checking up and down the street. She turns back to Lily and shakes her head.

  “What are we going to do?” asks Lily, hysteria creeping into her voice.

  When Jo doesn’t answer, Fiona, still sitting on the single mattress, swallows her toast and clears her throat. “I’ve got an idea.” She pauses, long enough for Lily to feel she might try to shake the idea from her, if she doesn’t start speaking soon. Fiona looks first at Lily, then at Jo, then back to Lily again.

  “What?” shouts Lily, unable to stand the suspense.

  “We could,” says Fiona slowly, “go to Lancaster.”

  There’s a moment’s silence. “Lancaster? Why the fuck would we go to Lancaster?” says Jo as she pulls on a pair of black Lycra leggings.

  “My boyfriend’s at uni there. His name’s Stuart and he’s got a job in a pub, so he’s staying there over Christmas.”

  Jo pulls a long, shapeless jumper over her crumpled, black T-shirt. It hangs like a dress over the top of her leggings. “That’s going to be the first place your dad will look.”

  Fiona continues as if she hasn’t heard Jo. “He shares a flat with this guy, Andre, but he went back to France on Sunday and he won’t be back for ages, so there’s a spare room.”

  “Jo’s right,” says Lily. “Your dad will have thought of that.”

  “I know, but he’ll have rung him yesterday when I didn’t come home from school. And Stuart would have said he honestly didn’t know where I was. Then Dad will have got the kidnap note this morning, which will completely put Stuart in the clear. He’s hardly likely to ransom me is he?”

  “How do you know the French guy won’t come back?” asks Lily.

  “He’s gone home for Christmas, he’s been really homesick. Stuart and I were trying to think of a way I could visit him in the hols, you know, without Dad knowing. But…” she sighs heavily, “it’s impossible trying to get anything past Dad.”

  Jo smirks at Fiona, causing Fiona’s cheeks to redden. “All we wanted was to spend a bit of time together, not for, you know, just to spend some time together without Daddy breathing down our necks.”

  Jo screws up her face. “I think the lady doth protest too much. I don’t think…”

  “It’s the perfect place. And if you really want to get one over on Dad, he hates the fact I’ve got a boyfriend, especially one who’s eighteen.”

  “We can go to Leeds,” says Jo.

  “Tim and what’s-his-face will be in Leeds,” says Lily.

  “Do you know on our third date, Stuart and I went to the pictures together, and half way through the film I saw Dad sitting there on his own, right at the back. He made up some stupid story about how he’d always wanted to see the film, and he hadn’t realised it was the one we were going to. Stuart says he’s obsessed.”

  Lily is fully dressed and lacing up her Doctor Martens. She looks first at Fiona and then at Jo. “There’s no harm in ringing him. He might be able to tell us what Fiona’s dad’s thinking.”

  Jo weighs this up, her bottom lip protruding. “Ok, but if you get any sense your dad is there, hang up the phone.”

  Fiona dials the number sitting on the bottom step in the hall while Lily and Jo try to squeeze next to each other on the stair above. Fiona stops dialling and turns to them. “You’re as bad as my father.”

  “Sorry, we’ll wait in the front room.” Lily steps over Fiona and beckons to Jo to follow her. Jo pulls a face at Lily, but follows her all the
same. They close the door behind them, standing pressed against it, straining to hear the conversation.

  Fifteen minutes later, Fiona opens the door as Lily and Jo try to fling themselves across the room and onto the bed. “What did he say?”

  “Crikey.” Fiona sits down on the single mattress. Her cheeks are pink. “Daddy drove up to Lancaster last night. Stuart said he thought he was going to hit him. Stuart told him he hadn’t any idea where I was. Then…” she pauses to check she has the full attention of her audience, “the police turned up.”

  “Shit,” says Lily.

  “Stuart said he thought they were going to start lifting the floorboards. You know, looking for my body.”

  “Your dad must be going crazy.” Jo makes a clenched fist and punches the air. Fiona nods, and Lily can’t decide whether she’s appalled or at excited at being the centre of a police investigation.

  “He’ll be out of his mind with worry,” she says with confidence. “But I don’t think the police are. Stuart says they started asking if he thought I could have fallen out with mum and daddy, and Stuart said he thought it was a possibility. Stuart thinks Dad is far too protective. He told the police we’d been trying to work out a way for me to go up there, for a couple of days over Christmas.” She pauses for a moment as the consequences of what she’s just said weigh upon her mind. “I hope they don’t tell Dad that.”

  Lily feels a surge of irritation. She’s looking at prison time for kidnapping a minor, but God forbid ‘daddy’ should find out his little darling was planning on visiting her boyfriend. She squashes the feeling down and reaches for a cigarette.

  “Anyway,” Fiona wrests her mind back to the present. “Stuart said that the police didn’t appear too concerned. They said to give me forty-eight hours to show up. Stuart said he was expecting me to ring. I told him I was coming to stay with him, and I was bringing my sister and my sister’s best friend, and he didn’t even ask what sister?” She giggles, her face having returned to its normal colour. “He said ‘Really? You’re going to stay overnight?’”

  Jo and Lily exchange a look, each trying to work out what the other is thinking. Lily’s neck is aching.

  Fiona fingers the ends of her short hair at one side of the base of her skull. The right plait is still in place. “Has anyone got any mousse?”

  “What do you think we should do?” asks Jo to Lily.

  “Dad’s already been to the police,” Fiona reminds them. “If he tells them he’s got a ransom note this morning, and he suspects it’s something to do with you, the Salvation Army will have to give them your address.”

  “Let’s go,” says Lily. “I’ve never been to Lancaster.”

  Fiona leaves her school uniform in a heap at the end of the single mattress. Jo lends her some of the clothes they brought back from Kirby. They are all in the Mini less than ten minutes later, Jo driving, Lily in the front with a scarf round her neck trying to keep the icy December air off her stiffened skin. Her neck and shoulders feel like a cage inside which her body is trapped. “We could do with some cash,” says Jo. “I’m nearly at my overdraft limit.”

  “I can get us some cash,” says Fiona, picking up her school bag and rummaging through it. A moment later she holds up a cash card triumphantly. “It’s for emergencies, but hey, I’ve been kidnapped. If that isn’t an emergency what is, for heaven’s sake?”

  Jo regards her through the rear view mirror. “You mean that’s a card to your parents’ account?”

  Fiona nods.

  Jo lets out a low whistle. “I’m impressed. Jeez, there’s no way my dad would ever have trusted me with a card to his account. How long have you had it?”

  “Not that long. A year.”

  “Any you’ve never used it?”

  Fiona shakes her head, “He made me promise, emergencies only.”

  “God, I would have cleaned it out within days. Which is probably why my dad never gave me one,” she concedes as an afterthought.

  They stop at a motorway service station and cross over the footbridge, so it appears they are heading to Burnley, rather than Preston to join the M6. Fiona withdraws five hundred pounds from her father’s account.

  Jo claps when she sees the wad of notes Fiona has in her hand. “I like your style.”

  “Well I thought, I’ll need to buy some clothes. I can’t keep borrowing yours.”

  Lily wonders how long Fiona is imagining her kidnap will last, but Jo is leading them all into the general store to stock up on essentials, and the question never makes it to her lips.

  Fiona has only visited Stuart once since he started university, in the October half-term, when her father drove her up for the day and spent his time wandering round bookstores, while Stuart showed her around the Students’ Union and they spent ages kissing round the back of the duck pond. “You have to park the car first. There’s a car park round the back.”

  The three of them walk from the car onto the main street through town, where Stuart lives in a flat above an antiques shop. As they near the shop, Fiona shouts out, “There he is,” and Lily notices a tall, thin man, with a mop of black, curly hair, pacing the street. Stuart looks up as he hears Fiona shout, and starts running towards them. He embraces Fiona, throwing his arms around her shoulders and pulling her tightly against him, bending his head to say something to her, which Lily can’t hear. Fiona reaches up towards him and the pair kiss, as Jo and Lily stand like two lemons on either side of the them. Stuart breaks off the kiss as Lily starts to feel like a voyeur. She notices the veins on his hands as he cups Fiona’s face and stares at her. “God, I hardly recognised you. Are you ok? And what did you say on the phone? You’re an only child.”

  The black canvas trousers she borrowed from Lily cling to every centimetre of Fiona’s long legs, emphasizing the swell of her hips. Jo’s oversized jumper hangs off one of her shoulders, exposing a lacy bra strap. “Not any more, I’m not. I want you to meet my sister. This is Lily, and her friend Jo.”

  Stuart looks suspiciously at Lily. “Pleased to meet you,” he says, but Lily’s not sure he means it. “I think we better go inside.”

  He unlocks a chocolate brown door by the side of the antiques shop, and the four of them enter a dark stairwell. Fiona goes first and leads them up the stairs and into the first floor hallway of Stuart’s flat. A tailor’s dummy stands in one corner, wearing a hat and a with a couple of coats draped over it. Lily looks at a framed photograph of a woman talking into a microphone, obviously some kind of reporter, with a flock of hungry Africans in the background. Stuart leads them past a second flight of stairs going up to the second floor, and into the kitchen, where there’s a coffee percolator dripping hot coffee into a jug. He sits them down at a red, Formica topped table. “What happened to your hair?”

  “Long story.”

  “Would you like a drink?”

  Lily’s first thought is of the bottle of vodka they bought from the service station, but she accepts the cup of coffee Stuart hands to her. Fiona skips round the kitchen, opening cupboard doors. “Any chance of some food? We haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

  Stuart laughs and catches Fiona, using his arm like a crook around her neck, pulling her in for a kiss. Lily can’t help staring. “You are always hungry,” he says. “How about a Spanish omelette? You probably should have a decent last meal, coz your dad is going to kill you when he gets his hands on you.”

  While Stuart chops up onions and whisks eggs, Jo and Fiona compete to fill Stuart in on the past twenty-four hours. Lily marvels at the rack of herbs and spices that hangs on one wall. There must be thirty or forty different types, and Stuart seems to know which ones to use. When he puts down a triangle of perfectly fluffy omelette in front of Lily, fifteen minutes later, she worries she might be sick over it. Luckily no one seems to notice, because the other two barely pause for breath, as they eat and fill Stuart in on the details of the kidnap at the same time. “I didn’t realise you were snatched,” he says.

  “Do yo
u mind if we smoke,” asks Jo, after she’s finished the last mouthful. “That was delicious by the way.”

  “Good, you can smoke in the front room,” he says, taking Jo’s empty plate. “Are you not hungry?” he asks Lily.

  She tries to shrug her shoulders, but the upper half of her body seems almost totally rigid. “I, I’m not feeling very well, but it was nice, thank you.” She jumps up after Jo and follows her into the front room.

  As soon as they leave the room, Stuart turns to Fiona. “How do you know this is true, Fi? I mean, I’m not your father’s greatest fan, but I can’t believe he’d abandon his own child.”

  “I know. I couldn’t believe it either at first, but look.” She unhooks her school bag from the back of her chair, and pulls out Lily’s birth certificate and the letter from the Salvation Army. “And I’ve seen photos of their wedding day; dad’s and Lily’s mum’s wedding. Did I tell you, when Lily tried to contact him, he didn’t give any explanation as to why he didn’t want to see her? He didn’t even ask how she was. What if it had been the other way round? What if I’d been the daughter he’d left behind? Would he have said the same to me?”

  Stuart glances at the birth certificate before starting to read the letter from the Salvation Army.

  “I was there when he got that letter,” says Fiona. She stands up and goes to lean against the worktop. “He opened it in front of me. He looked like he’d seen a ghost. And do you know what he said when I asked him what it was?”

  “What?”

  “He said, “It’s just another begging letter from some bleeding heart charity concerned about waifs and strays.” They were almost his exact words.”

  “What are you going to do?” asks Stuart, the birth certificate still in his hand.

  “Whatever Lily wants.”

  Stuart wrinkles his nose. He’s about to speak but Fiona doesn’t let him. “I like being with her.”

  “But…”

  “She’s had nothing her whole life. Her mum just died two months ago. And you should see their house, where she grew up. It’s a complete hovel.”