‘There are relationships, but nothing serious.’
‘Is she?’
‘Who?’
‘Your ex-wife?’
I paused again. ‘Yes, I think so.’
‘You get on?’
‘With them?’
‘Yes.’
‘I try not to judge.’
He was back at his desk, chewing on a pencil. It was the kind of thing you did at school. I was right about him, though. He was thorough. I liked answering his questions. I imagined myself across from him in the dock, giving as good as I got.
‘I do that, too. It’s part of the job. Actually, it’s the hardest part of the job. I try to keep an open mind. I don’t like to be surprised.’
He stared at my fingers.
‘What about my daughter?’
‘We’re going to find her. A little girl like that, it affects us all.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I suppose so.’
‘There’s a counsellor, if you need one. She’s here now. She’s very good.’
‘Thank you.’
‘We’ll keep you informed of any changes. You can stay here, if you like. We asked your ex-wife in, too. We need you to make those statements.’
As I left, I had the feeling I was under suspicion. Maybe that’s a normal feeling when you’re around police. It wasn’t for my little girl. She used to go up to them and wave. I think it was their yellow jackets which attracted her, although with all the jigging and jiving that accompanied it, it looked more like pre-pre-pubescent flirting. For a second, their imposing faces cracked into smiles and you could see fathers and brothers and husbands behind the masks. I liked her to think of the police as being the good guys, although the slovenly guy who did Bunny wasn’t much of one. I liked her thinking there were people out there who looked out for her, who weren’t the child catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, who made sure you got home safely at night. Once, when she was tucked up safely in bed and I was reading her a bedtime story - which I always insisted on because it made me feel like a dad and made me the centre of her universe - she stopped me and said Snow White was always going to be okay because the police would look after her. This was a comforting thought but seemed to remove much of the danger from the story, so I said - well, I would, wouldn’t I? - this was a time when they didn’t have any police so she had to be more careful, and she said, ‘No, Daddy. Look,’ and she pointed to the seven dwarfs in their yellow tops. ‘They’re the police.’
My daughter had never done anything wrong, of course. Innocent people have that luxury. There are no sentences for taking your pull-up off and pissing on your mattress or defacing your bedroom wall, or spilling your food, or ruining your new shoes. Those are a given. I’m not saying they come without sanction; some parents treat them very seriously; but they’re rarely life and death. They’re not in the same ballpark as rape and murder and child abuse. Those are for us. I’ve never been one of those whose mouth wouldn’t melt butter, although I’ve tried very hard and have sometimes got away with it. Most of the time, I’ve done so because people were too stupid to realise - or maybe I was too stupid to realise they’d let me get away with it. I was like that with my ex-wife. Of course, I only knew that at the end when we talked. She was far cleverer than I and had known everything - that woman’s intuition thing. She had seen through me.
Now, I know better. She hadn’t seen through me at all. She’d seen through men. We were all the same. To really get away with it, you had to surprise people. The greater the surprise, the more likely that was. Just ask the police officer.
10
Counsellors are all the same. I’m not sure what gene they’re missing, or whether counsellor school turns them all out that way, but to me they seem to be largely missing the point. I don’t want them to listen; I want them to counsel. Hence, the name, right? All they ever seem to do is take notes and read them back.
‘Let me see if I’ve got this right.’
Of course you have. I’ve just spent the last hour telling you.
My ex-wife and I - I’ve got to think of another name for her - were sat on a small sofa staring at her. Or what we could see of her. When I arrived five minutes before, I had completely missed her.
‘Take a seat.’
‘Hello?’
‘Here.’
I’ve never been very good at disguising my feelings. I’ve always been more Othello than Iago. When she hopped off the seat and walked towards me, all I could think about were the other genes she must be missing. She wasn’t exactly straight from the pantomime, but she could have passed as a hobbit without much makeup. She smiled rather grotesquely at me, with her too bright red lipstick, and took my hand in her hoof. I wondered what the officer had meant - she’s very good. At what? Not smiling.
I suppose she must have got that reaction a lot. It’s always worse for women, I know. I know because they tell me. Nearly every woman I’ve ever been with has told me this. I’ve gone beyond the age where I care what they think, if they think I’m sexist or a racist or a paedophile. Some of them have quite liked that, others have stared at me and wondered what genes I was missing. Women need to be beautiful. Or they need to be seen to be beautiful. Without it, they wither. They need the constant bolstering and ego inflation to compensate for the lack of collagen and silicone. Somehow, this is all men’s fault. Our expectations greatly exceed the supply. There simply aren’t that many pretty girls. There are a lot of reasonable looking girls - I’d go as far to say that most girls fall into this category - the ones who could, with a little bit of effort and expense and careful application of makeup, aspire to being beautiful, but they seem alternately disappointed and unhappy making the effort. Of course, with time, that effort only increases. I have seen middle-aged women, and even, heaven forbid, old women, sitting in front of mirrors with pins in their eyebrows and stitches in their cheeks, trying to hold back the years. They look exhausted. In the end, they have no choice. Nature takes its course and they re-join their ugly sisters. You can only play at being Cinderella for so long.
There aren’t that many ugly girls, although there are more of them than there are pretty girls. For them, there is a very steep learning curve. They know they’re going to get overlooked so find their compensation elsewhere, usually in something tragic like nursing or social services. Checkouts usually have their fair share of them, particularly the lower end stores like Aldi and Kwik Save, though it never strikes me that these girls are bothered in quite the same way. They have, I think, come to realise the great consolation for all women looking for a man - and just a quick scan of the shelf stackers and managers in their shops bears me out on this - that no matter how ugly a woman is, or thinks she is, there are far more ugly men in the world whose desperation is greater, who would bite their toes off for a sight of a real, ugly, flesh and blood girl in their bed, or in the store room. I know because I count myself among their number. Not that I understand why they would want a man in the first place - we are such apes - or why you’re seen as sad if you don’t have someone, but there you go.
I often wondered what my little girl would turn into when she was older. She’d already shown signs of simpering vanity and started picking up red lipsticks in shops. She’d got that from her mother, along with the fascination for big earrings. I didn’t really know what to say. It made her look like a tart. I told her it looked silly and she told me she thought it looked nice and that she was going to wear it all the time when she was older. I didn’t want her to do that but I think I was fighting a losing battle. I didn’t know what I wanted her to be - other than happy. I wanted to tell her none of the stuff she was going to worry about would matter, but that wouldn’t do any good, either. I guess she was going to be one of the reasonable girls - so far as I could tell, she looked more like her mother than me, which was only a good thing, and would spend her day poring over teen magazines with eighteen-year-old boys in them; she’d probably already started wishing she was that age. I suppose all fathers
say this but, to me, she was the most beautiful thing in the world. Even if it wasn’t true, it wouldn’t have stopped me believing it.
I watched a programme once about a father who managed his daughter’s modelling career. He attended shoots, nude or not, and accompanied her everywhere. He said he’d never trust another man to look after her, and neither would she. I thought he was sick watching her, staring at her photographs. He just couldn’t let go. Now, I have some sympathy. I look at nineteen-year-old girls who could well be my daughter and have no trouble at all staring at their photographs. I wank over them all the time - the pictures, that is; I had trouble getting a nineteen-year-old when I was nineteen - and am well aware that it’s someone’s daughter, someone like me, someone with an ex-wife and kid of their own. I try not to pass judgement at all. Of course, such talk for me is hypothetical. My daughter is no longer with me. I can’t let go, either.
I took my place on the sofa and the counsellor returned to her seat. She’d done her best to counter my look of shock, and started sifting through papers on her desk to make us both feel better. I wondered whether I’d need to bite any toes off to have a chance with her. Not that I’d want to; short people fascinate me in a circus freak show kind of way, not carnally. But I wonder what it must be like. Many years ago, I had a Mexican friend who spent his time hanging round a troupe of female, Mexican dwarves. He said he was a film director and wanted to make a film about them. He said he had the lot of them, singly and collectively, and it was the best sex of his life. I asked him how come and he said it made him feel big, like he was one of those guys in porn films. Maybe I should have tried it.
When my ex-wife came in, it was quite some relief. She hadn’t slept, I think. I recognised the look in her face. She flashed me a look that said everything. She wanted to know where her baby was. The counsellor gave her a sympathetic look and my ex-wife reciprocated. It was neatly done. I’ve said before that my ex-wife was better than me at most things and faking it was one of them. She just seems to get into part immediately. She should have been an actress, although having another one in the house would have been unbearable. My ex-wife has given command performances the like of which I’ve never seen, most recently in front of the judge when she took everything I had, and in bed, when she put Delilah and Dido and Cleopatra to shame. Later, she told me with great relish that she’d faked every orgasm I thought she’d had. I believed her. It seemed scarcely plausible that I came anywhere near Caesar’s greatness. I think it annoys her, though, that I’ve seen her naked and been with her. She can’t take that away from me. Or maybe that, too, was an act, and the seven years, or however many it was, were a dream.
Despite her tiredness, my wife looked pretty that morning. She was wearing a summer dress that fell to her calves, all tidied in the middle with a red belt. When we were together, I know a lot of men fancied her. I know this because she told me. They would chat her up at parties we threw and wink improprieties across the dinner table. She didn’t like lying to me and holding it back. I appreciated this a lot. I knew they must be doing something because I was doing it with their wives. My wife wouldn’t have appreciated that, but maybe she knew that, too. Maybe she was doing it; she was just more discrete. When you’re young, all that stuff seems perfectly acceptable. It’s what you’re meant to do. When you’re middle-aged, it just seems seedy - or worse, sad. Now we’re separated, they all have the chance, of course, but I know they won’t take it. The magic has gone. A single mother with a child is a whole different balls game.
‘I know this is really traumatic for you. I’ve dealt with many cases like this and I want you to know that there is no right or wrong way to feel. You just have to focus on what you can do. I’m here for you. We’re all here for you. The vast majority of the time, these things resolve quickly and end well.’
The hobbit was doing well, too; far more pro-active than I’d expected.
‘You think she’ll be okay?’
My wife was reaching across to her, clutching at anything.
The hobbit paused, measuring her words out carefully. ‘I hope so.’
My wife looked at me. ‘Have they heard anything?’
I shook my head.
‘I can’t bear this, you know. I think I’m dying.’
The hobbit asked us if she wanted her to go; she could come back in a bit. My wife nodded. She didn’t want an audience.
I never understood that about her, how she could function so well without one. There has been nothing in my life without public approval, without the slow handclap of strangers. Ambition has been an albatross round my neck, and fame and wealth my white whale. Only my little girl lifted them from me. She gave me joy, and only that, I know, because she put me back in the spotlight. Even now I can feel its glare and I hate myself for what I’ve done.
When the hobbit had gone, my wife put her head in her hands and sobbed. I knew I should have done something - put my arms round her, comforted her - but I couldn’t bring myself to move. I was thinking of all the command performances she’d given in her time, and my little girl, and how I couldn’t fake it at all.
11
It’s time to come clean. I hate my ex-wife. I hate what she did to me. I know people will say it’s all my fault and I deserve it after all the things I’ve done, but they don’t see the things she did to me. Especially her women friends. They huddle together and gossip about me; or at least they did when it all happened. Now, I’m just part of the past, one of those mistakes you learn from. Their disapproving looks have become indifferent ones. I don’t mind that; most people have been indifferent to me. I have never stood out. Whenever I tried, my anxiety levels got the better of me and I made a fool of myself. Some people would rather have that, I know, but for me, it was death. That’s why I went into acting. I wanted the attention but I didn’t want the fallout. If I fell flat on my face, it wasn’t me. Unfortunately, everyone has seen through that now.
Once, I was seen as quite a catch. Yes, I know that’s hard to believe, but it’s true. I overheard one of my wife’s coven say it.
‘You’ve got a good one there. I’d keep good hold of him.’
I never liked her friend, save in that casual fancying way a man has for all his wife’s friends, but she grew in my estimation after that. I spent hours deliberating what a good one was, and how I fitted the bill. Whenever she came round, I did my best to live up to it. I would smile and demonstrate great and selfless acts of husbandry, hoping she’d make further comments, but she never said anything. She might have seen through me, of course. Or just gone off me. Worse than that, maybe she wasn’t even talking about me. That thought has occurred to me many times since.
Whatever my track record was, it’s true to say that I don’t have it now. Or, to be more precise, I do. I have a stained one. I have trumped every trick my wife ever played on me. All the good has come to nought. I have become like every other man, all the chavs and chav nots: the window cleaners, joiners, insurance salesman and university lecturers. We are all the same cheating bastards. I resent that. I resent the way it’s all my fault and the fact my wife has got off scot-free. Does she think I don’t know what she and her friends got up to? There’s something odious about a woman who cheats. I mean, I’m not saying the same isn’t true of a man - we’ve all done it at one time, and even those who haven’t, have thought about it: even the good ones, like I was. We’re all sinners. But a woman is much worse.
One of my wife’s other friends made a habit of it. She cheated before she was married, then cheated after she was married: thirteen weeks after, to be precise. She was having it away with someone at work. I’m told this is quite common, and indeed, de rigueur in some offices. The husband didn’t know that. He thought they were in love. She merrily paraded him in front of them. When my wife told me about this - we were still on good terms then, and used to swap anecdotes about the sad lives of our friends, before realising ours was the saddest of all - I asked her if she was going to say something. She lo
oked at me like I’d lost my mind, which I probably had.
‘Why?’ she said.
‘Because you’re her friend.’
‘It’s not my business.’
‘Wouldn’t you want to know if I was having an affair?’
‘Are you?’
‘No.’
‘Then I wouldn’t need to.’
‘Don’t you think she’s doing wrong?’
‘I suppose.’
‘You suppose?’
‘You know what’s it’s like; it’s the classic case. Should I, shouldn’t I, get involved?’
‘She’s giving blowjobs to a guy behind her husband’s back. Don’t you think, as a friend, you have a duty to say something?’
‘Why are you getting so hot under the collar?’
‘I’m thinking of him.’
‘Maybe you should tell him?’
‘Maybe I will.’
I remember the look she gave. It’s like I’d betrayed her. We stopped talking for about a week. I didn’t hear any more about her friend till much later. Her husband was in the papers. There was a picture of him tucked away beneath an advert for a tooth whitening product. He looked pretty much like every other guy I’ve ever met: nothing special, but not awful. He’d got into his car one night and filled it with petrol and pumped it full of fumes. He died of a broken heart. They called it suicide.
Now I’m pretty sure this kind of shit has happened to plenty of women, and heaven knows they have my sympathy, but the shit that guy had, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. He found out, of course - when the scales finally fell from his eyes - he found out the lot. He caught his wife kissing someone after an office do; saw their shadows dancing on the walls. His whole world just collapsed. The truth came out, little by little, of all the tawdry things she’d done to him. She tried to cover it up - what would anyone do? - but the truth doesn’t lie buried for long. It buried them both. It’s not what killed him - though the thought of my wife sinking to her knees and giving another guy a blowjob behind my back gives me variously an erection, it is mainly a feeling of death - it was the humiliation. Every guy in that office knew he was cheated on, every one of his friends. He lost his standing. When a woman is cheated on, you can guarantee her female friends will be there to bolster her ego and trot out the usual list of platitudes: men are to blame; he didn’t deserve you; you’re better off without. When a man is cheated on, the converse is true: he is still to blame; he didn’t do enough to keep you; he is a loser. That’s a tough call. Unless you’re my wife.
Daddy Dearest Page 5