by Fiona Perrin
There was a brief moment while the lack of their own father hung in the room. Daisy always said that she was going to go and find Dougie when she was eighteen; Lily said that she ‘had enough family already, thanks’, but still I felt keenly that they’d been born into the world without a father. For a while, of course, there had been Ralph – and he’d done as good a job as he could – but both girls had distanced themselves from him as he’d disintegrated and, now, didn’t seem keen to re-establish that relationship. I’d tried to be parent enough for everyone, including Wilf, but in the end perhaps DNA counted more than love and support.
Shaking off these thoughts, I gave them a summary of what the lawyer had told me. Daisy thumped the table in anger as I talked. ‘I can’t believe Ralph would do this to us all,’ she kept saying.
‘Ralph can’t leave Wilf, because of Sylvia,’ Lily said. ‘I mean, he must imagine she’s looking down at him and telling him to get on with being a proper dad.’
I gasped inwardly at the acuteness of her insight. Was it this ability to feel so much that made her so worried about the world? She’d certainly hit the nail on the head about the reasons for Ralph’s ultimate breakdown: years of stored-up guilt about his poor wife dying so young that had crept up on him and eventually destroyed him.
‘Yeah. I don’t think it’s Petra. She’s only worried about what she looks like to other people,’ said Daisy.
‘What makes you say that?’ I asked, having been extremely careful to never ever diss Petra in front of the kids (only Marv and the AAs; I’m not that nice).
‘Well, there was the time she came to Wilf’s DJ thing.’ I remembered the sweaty school hall, the showcase of dance music, Wilf’s excitement about ‘releasing his track’. It was not long after Petra and Ralph got married and she’d started to appear at some school events, fiercely clinging onto his arm while beaming munificently about her.
‘So, she was properly bogus, then. Really nice to me and Lily in front of Wilf and Ralph, but giving you daggers.’
I can’t remember noticing; I was busy being nervous for Wilf in case something went wrong and feeling relieved that Ralph had turned up – still sober. My overwhelming feeling at the time had been gratitude. She was strange, sure, a bit of a corporate freak, yeah – but she’d also managed to make Ralph well again.
‘She can’t love him like we do,’ said Lily quietly.
‘I reckon Ralph’s said he’s not going without Bro and she’s thinking, Gonna lose my man or gain a kid; OK, let’s have the kid,’ Daisy went on. My only defence of her was that she watched a lot of American TV.
‘Look, Wilf’s going to come home soon—’ I said that word again: home ‘—and we have to be strong for him.’
‘We’re not going to fight at all?’ Daisy got up and strode to the back door. ‘Well, I’m not taking this lying down. I’m going to go down to the centre and see what Sunil says. He says there’s always action you can take against injustice.’ She pulled open the door in a heated rage. ‘There must be something you could do.’ Then she was gone.
Lily looked at me appraisingly as if she too was judging me for my inaction, pulled her hand across her face and ran out of the kitchen door and up the stairs.
Oh, that hurt. I put my face in my hands and cried too, helpless as my little family collapsed, like the house made of straw under attack from the Big Bad Wolf.
11
Wilf looked as if an earthquake had gone off somewhere deep in his soul as he came into the kitchen. I’d roasted a chicken and was pounding potatoes into mash – it was Wilf’s favourite dinner, the one he always called ‘Winner, winner’. This time, though, he eyed the chicken but said nothing, instead not meeting my eyes. I’d gone upstairs to try to comfort Lily, but she’d refused to open her bedroom door. She was blaming me for what was going on, and, while I understood it, it seemed terribly unfair. There’d been no sign of Daisy – probably off raging about stupid adults to Perfect Sunil.
I said, ‘How are you doing?’
‘Fine.’ He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his school trousers and looked at the floor.
‘You know, it’s the last thing I expected.’ I gulped back the lump in my throat. ‘And I meant it, you’ve always got a home here and—’
‘Yeah, but I’ve got to go with my dad,’ Wilf said. ‘Because you’re not my real mum.’
Could anything hurt more than those short words ‘not my real mum’? Wilf hovered awkwardly: ‘I didn’t mean that, you know… I didn’t mean it like that – just that’s what the law says, according to Dad and Petra.’
He wasn’t criticising me; he was just repeating what they’d told him.
‘Yes, I know, and we’ll really, really miss you,’ I said and went to hug him. He was nearly taller than me now and it occurred to me that I wouldn’t be around to see him through his next adolescent growth spurt. In a year, he’d be six foot and gangly. He let me hold him for a while.
‘It’ll be all right there, though?’ Wilf mumbled.
‘Hey, I’m sure Cape Town is really cool,’ I said as brightly as I could. ‘It’s supposed to be one of the best lifestyles on earth. And the course your dad was talking about sounds great.’
‘Yeah,’ said Wilf. ‘We looked it up and the school has got amazing studios. The kids looked OK.’
‘And you’re getting on really well with your dad now,’ I pointed out.
‘It’s all right when he’s not talking shit that Petra says,’ Wilf muttered. I was shocked: he rarely had a bad word to say about anyone.
‘Hey, come on, she’s… she’s great in loads of ways. She’s been really good for your dad.’
‘Yeah, I didn’t mean that,’ Wilf said. ‘It’s just that sometimes he seems to talk like her now, even when she’s not there.’
He was talking about the new anaesthetised version of Ralph, who seemed to have lost his capacity for irony along with his drinking habit. It had to be medication as well as Petra, of course. ‘He’ll become more and more like himself over time,’ I said. ‘He’s worked so hard to get better.’
‘I know you couldn’t stay with him, but I wish you had,’ Wilf said then, and I wanted to howl with guilt. ‘I’m not blaming you.’
‘Thanks, it was…’ But he hated talking about the past. He didn’t want to remember Ralph already in bed when he came home from school or, alternatively, rolling in after dinner, loud and pie-eyed after facing into the bottom of a glass for a few hours of blessed blankness. ‘Anyway, if you go—’ I was still thinking of it as ‘if’ rather than ‘when’ ‘—we’ll come and see you and you’ll come back here,’ I finished in a bright, false falsetto.
‘What did the girls say?’ Wilf asked then. It wasn’t as if they ever said out loud how much they loved each other. They expressed affection for each other by making the ‘L’ sign on their foreheads.
‘The truth is they’re gutted,’ I said. ‘Like me.’
He looked pleased for a moment and then there was the sign of tears in his big eyes. ‘I’m going to miss you all too,’ he said and stumbled from the room, because there was no way he would want any of us to see him crying. I grabbed the potato masher and pounded the mash harder and harder.
*
It was as I was putting the chicken onto the table and shouting, ‘Lily, Wilf, dinner!’ that the back door opened, and Daisy appeared with a man behind her.
He was Asian and tall, a thick head of black hair above a strong face, a neck wrapped in a dark scarf. His eyes were large and looking at me with sympathy, as if he knew I would be distressed. This was obviously Sunil, campaigner for local youth justice and general all-round hero to Daisy.
The problem was she’d forgotten to mention that he was utterly gorgeous.
‘Mum, this is Sunil,’ Daisy confirmed as I registered that my hair was in a rough ponytail on the top of my head, my face was puffy from anger and I was still wearing my really Mumsy work clothes, but now with a butcher’s pinny over the top. Not tha
t any of that really mattered but he was… well, at least the most attractive man who’d ever come into my kitchen.
I put down the gravy jug and went forward to shake his hand. It was warm and large. ‘Come in, come in,’ I said. ‘You’ve been such an inspiration to Daisy.’ Bodger sniffed him and looked suspicious.
His lovely face lit up in a big smile. ‘Hey, thanks, she’s a great kid and they’re a great group.’ He said kid, but he seemed so young to me; what had Daisy said – mid-thirties?
Daisy made a mock-barfing gesture. ‘So, Sunil said there probably wasn’t much we could do, but why didn’t he come round here and chat it through?’
‘I wanted to introduce myself anyway,’ Sunil said. ‘I thought it was right, what with driving Daisy to a rally in Westminster on Sunday week, if she’s allowed.’
‘Please, sit down,’ I said, gesturing towards the table. It was, however, clear from the plates and cutlery that we’d been about to eat.
‘Hey, you’re going to have dinner,’ Sunil said. ‘I won’t stop. I was just wondering if there was anything I could do to help with the situation with Daisy’s brother, but another time.’
‘Will you join us?’ I asked politely while I internally wrestled with myself. I looked awful and the kids didn’t need a guest for dinner tonight. But, on the other hand, God, he was gorgeous – and maybe he did have some sort of miraculous solution.
‘Oh, no, but thanks,’ Sunil said with a big smile. ‘Look, I know some family lawyers and stuff through my work.’
‘There must be someone.’ Daisy put her hands on her hips.
‘From the advice we’ve had so far, I don’t think there is,’ I said as gently as I could. ‘And I know that’s hard.’
‘It’s a tough one.’ Sunil turned to Daisy. She looked up at him in open admiration. I joined in. He had an empathetic air, and did I mention the overall gorgeousness? My body had a reaction that felt quite alien after all this time: a hot flush and a faster beating heart. I’d completely forgotten that a stranger could walk into your immediate surroundings and your first reaction would be, ‘OMG, I want to jump your bones, right now.’ I tried hard not to let this show in my face.
But in addition to being gorgeous, he was a man who understood teenage brains. He might not be able to help me with Wilf, but resilience was precisely what he and Lily needed right now. ‘I’d love to talk to you more about your work.’
Lily came into the kitchen then, her eyes avoiding mine. Sunil said, ‘Woah, two of you.’
‘My twin, Lily,’ Daisy confirmed. ‘This is Sunil from Resilient.’
His eyes flicked from her to me. I sometimes thought you could feel and smell Lily’s vulnerability when you were in the same space as her; Sunil certainly seemed to get it in a moment.
‘Hey, Lily,’ he said. ‘Any time you want to come and hang out with us, let me know.’
Daisy was clearly annoyed about this potential invasion of her space; Lily nodded non-committally. ‘Maybe after the exams,’ she said.
‘So…’ He looked at me as he turned to go.
‘Callie,’ I heard my voice squeak.
‘Callie, shall I give you my number, in case you want to chat, or anything comes up about the rally?’ I nodded slightly too keenly and he held out a card. I took it and resisted the urge to look at it too much. He was just being a professional youth worker. That was all.
‘Thanks,’ I squeaked again as he went out of the door.
*
‘Mum, you were, like, so grafting* on Sunil,’ Daisy grumbled, sitting down at the table.
‘What does that mean?’ I turned to pick up the gravy.
‘Like coming on to him,’ Lily said. ‘It’s from Love Island.’† They’d both glued themselves to the telly for hours the previous summer to watch a series of girls in very small bikinis flirt with and kiss a bunch of boys with biceps the size of small mountain ranges.
‘I was not coming on to him or whatever you call it.’
‘He’ll really mug you off, you melt,’‡ said Daisy, quoting more Love Island at me. I looked at her but knew better than to encourage it. ‘He is quite hot for an older dude, I suppose,’ she went on when she didn’t get a rise out of me, grabbing the plate of chicken from me before I could even put it on the table. ‘A DILF.’§
‘Daisy!’ I was outraged. ‘That’s very sexist. He can’t be older than thirty-five.’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ she agreed, stuffing a piece of chicken skin in her mouth. She obviously wasn’t a vegetarian today.
I went out of the door and yelled up the stairs to Wilf.
‘I think he was crying,’ Lily said quietly. ‘I could kind of hear him.’
‘Don’t say anything about that,’ I hissed as I eventually heard his lope down the stairs. ‘We need to be supportive, while letting him know how much we’ll miss him.’
‘Winner, winner,’ Wilf mumbled as he sat at the table and we all smiled in relief. I sat down too and then got up again. It was Monday, certainly not a designated wine day, but there was half a bottle of wine in the fridge and I knew I needed a big glass of it.
‘South Africa: there’s wild animals and everything,’ said Daisy.
‘Lions and tigers and bears and things,’ added Lily. It was a saying from The Wizard of Oz – a film they’d all loved as children. Now they all quoted it in hushed tones, in exactly the same way as they’d done when they were young children, gradually getting louder and louder.
And I was back all those years – the same kids, the same house, the same family sayings we all knew. Except it would never be like this again.
*Sorry, new one on me too.
†The biggest cultural phenomenon for teenagers, like, EVER. Where have you been? Obviously not watching ITV2 all summer.
‡Generally useless person.
§Dad I’d Like to Fxxk. I apologise again for my daughter.
12
Eli called me into his office and looking down, mumbled, ‘Any issues about all that woman stuff from yesterday?’ and I’d wanted to laugh and tell him that a bit of everyday sexism in the workplace was the least of my problems. Instead I just told him I would up my focus on gender balance, which pissed him off.
Daisy and Lily had study leave, which made Daisy lie around watching videos on YouTube and pick up her books when I came into the room and Lily sit upright at her desk, a look of outright terror growing in her pale face. I did everything I could to support her, but it didn’t feel enough.
There was silence from Ralph. Wilf went round there after school as usual, but said very little. I spent a few hours at work, pretending I needed quiet time to write a report and taking myself off into a meeting room, where I obsessively stalked Petra on Facebook (wholesome, gushing and cheesy; obsessed with clean eating; not that many friends) and Twitter (just gushy), and trying to find out more about Cape Town (very beautiful) and my rights with regard to Wilf. Ralph’s solicitor sent me an email halfway through that day inviting me to a mediation session with Mr and Mrs Colesdown. I ignored it – what was the point of a talking shop when the outcome was a foregone conclusion? And I wasn’t sure I could sit in a room with sanctimonious Petra without punching her. Ralph? It was as if he’d stamped on all the years we’d spent together trying to be a family.
And all the time, GCSE start day was getting closer.
I’d thought, with the absence of food parcels and texts, that Patrick had assuaged his guilt. That was if I thought about it at all. I didn’t have time to worry about men or being invisible to them and if I had, well, I’d certainly have used my brain space on thinking about gorgeous Sunil. I mean, Patrick certainly wasn’t bad-looking but Sunil was a whole different ballgame – he knocked every other man out of the park.
I mean, yum.
Just yum.
I wasn’t used to it at all – that unexpected churning feeling of being attracted to someone – and overall it made me a bit hot. I don’t mean I suddenly became really attractive to others, I mean
it made my body heat up so that I wanted to take off my coat.
The next night, though, there he was – not in my kitchen but in front of me on the local TV news. There was a special focus on Resilient and the role it was playing in campaigning for more funds and Sunil, much to Daisy’s obvious glee, and my much more surreptitious viewing delight, was the central spokesperson. His lovely face shone from the screen as he told the journalist, very earnestly, that he would fight the impact of government austerity on teenagers in an ‘unceasing personal war’.
‘Oooooh,’ said Daisy.
‘The government must understand the impact they’ve had on a generation; I will always use my public platform to campaign for justice,’ Sunil went on.
‘Ooooh,’ I said and then tried to pretend that my stomach wasn’t doing a disco dance at his obvious ardour. Imagine, said the much-underused sex synapses in my head, if that passion were directed at you. Then I told myself off for being a stupid, deluded middle-aged wreck of a woman who should know better and told Daisy to get off to bed.
Earlier that evening, I’d gone to see Mum and Dad so that I could tell them about Wilf. Inside their kitchen there was a faint smell of rotting vegetables, but it didn’t look too catastrophic. Mum was sitting at the kitchen table wearing a blue boiler suit, which she considered a very practical garment for every day.
‘Hello,’ I said in the loud voice she needed to hear me.
‘No need to shout, Callie.’ She sniffed. She’d obviously got her hearing aid turned on for once.
My dad came into the kitchen and smiled at me. ‘I can’t wait to show you Seymour House,’ he said. ‘We’ll make an appointment.’
They were both more upbeat than I’d seen them in a while – it was usually the way as they got involved in a new passion or project. Now I was going to have to make them miserable again.