No Going Back

by ALEX GUTTERIDGE

  “A misunderstanding perhaps. I did think about moving.” It wasn’t a proper reply, not one that explained everything.

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No. Do you think we ought to ring your mother and let her know that you’re here?”

  “She’ll be fine. She thinks I’m with my friend Abi.”

  “Do you want to stop for lunch then? It’s just a sandwich and some salad.”

  “I don’t want to be any trouble.”

  “You’re not. I’m in the middle of doing a painting for someone. I paint animals. But this is proving a bit difficult. I like to capture the character and I can’t quite get it so a break will do me good.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “Of course.”

  I suddenly had a horrible thought.

  “Do you have any animals?”

  “No,” she said, heading for the stairs. “I used to have a big ginger cat but he died a couple of years ago. He was too special to replace.”

  I heaved a sigh of relief. That was one less thing to worry about.

  Penny’s work room was on the first floor at the front of the house. It was beautiful and light with two tall windows looking out on to identical houses opposite. At one end was a Victorian fireplace with tiles down either side featuring little blue birds. It was really pretty. Her work table was next to the window and on it was a half-finished watercolour of a horse.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said. “You’re really clever.”

  “Thank you,” she replied. “Do you draw or paint?”

  “No, I’m no good at it.”

  “You should be. Your mother’s a very talented designer and your father could draw too.”

  “Could he? I didn’t know that.”

  I ran my finger over her pot of brushes, breathed in the smell of paint, gazed at the pinboard covered with photographs and quotes and little bits torn from magazines.

  “Did he come here, to this house?”

  She pressed her lips together. “Yes.”

  “Were you close?”

  “Like brother and sister, at one time.”

  “What happened?”

  She sat down suddenly and gazed out of the window. “People change, Laura. They drift apart.”

  He was there, standing in the corner, very, very still. If he’d had any breath to hold he’d have been blue with the effort.

  “Did you change,” I paused, “or was it Dad?”

  “Would you like to see some photographs of when we were young?” she asked, totally ignoring my question.

  “Yes please,” I replied.

  She put her arm around my shoulder. “Then let’s get some lunch and we’ll do that.”

  While Penny made us cheese and tomato sandwiches with some brown bread she’d baked that morning, she sent me outside to pick some rocket from a window box fixed underneath the kitchen window. Dad followed me into the little backyard.

  “Laura, what on earth are we doing here?”

  The phone went and Penny answered it.

  “Won’t be a minute,” she called to me, wandering down the hall towards the front room.

  “I had to bring you here and I knew you wouldn’t come on your own.”

  “So you never were planning to meet up with your friends?”

  “No.”

  “But why did you have to bring me so far away?” he asked, looking totally distraught.

  “Because Gran is calling in the vicar to get rid of you. He’s part of the Diocesan Deliverance Team and they go to houses to deal with spirits who are making a nuisance of themselves. That’s why I had to get you out of the house, to somewhere you’d be completely safe. I thought if I found Penny, if I brought you here, you could stay until all the fuss dies down.”

  He raked his hands through his hair. “But here, Laura. Why here?”

  “Because I thought you’d be happy here. But you’re not and I don’t understand why. She’s really nice. Even if I told her about you I don’t think she’d mind. I don’t think she’d say I was completely crackers.”

  “But you’re not going to tell her about me, are you?”

  “No, not unless I have to.”

  I stared at him.

  “You’ve got to promise me that you’ll stay here, Dad.”

  “And if I promise, you’ll go now? This minute?”

  I started snipping at the rocket.

  “Well I can’t go straight away. That would look rude.”

  “All right then. But immediately after lunch – you’ll go then?”

  “Why, what’s the hurry?”

  “I don’t want to have to leave you but if we have got to part we’d better not drag it out.”

  “That’s a bit melodramatic, isn’t it?” I half laughed. “I mean, it’s not as if we’ll never see each other again. It’s only for a little while, maybe just a few days or a couple of weeks. Then you can come back, once Gran is convinced that you’ve gone.” I checked my watch. “I suppose I could send Abi a text and see if she’s free for an hour or two.”

  “I thought you’d lost your phone.”

  “Yes, so did I. I found it on the train. It was in my rucksack all the time. Silly me!”

  He just raised his eyebrows. He may not have been around for years but he wasn’t fooled at all.

  We sat outside in Penny’s tiny garden to eat our lunch and she leafed through an album of photos showing her and Dad as they were growing up. She told me all sorts of things that I never knew, like how she and Dad wanted to build a tunnel to each other’s houses. Dad started his in the back garden and when his father found out he was really cross. Apparently Dad’s father was very strict.

  “I don’t think they quite knew how to deal with your father,” Penny said. “He was quite a naughty little boy, always getting up to mischief. I’m the youngest of three sisters and I was a bit of a tomboy when I was small. Your father and I were only six months apart in age. I thought he was such fun.” She put a bowl of cherries in the centre of the table and told me about her time at art college and how hard it had been when she first started out.

  “Do you know what you want to do when you leave school?” she asked me.

  I shook my head. “I work hard but I’m not clever. I’m about in the middle of the class and don’t have a particular talent for anything so I’m not sure what I’ll end up doing. Something boring probably.”

  “Don’t say that!” She sounded genuinely upset. “I’m sure you’ve got lots of talents. Maybe you just haven’t tapped in to them yet. There’s plenty of time. Some people take ages to find their direction in life.”

  I wanted to stay and talk to her for longer but Dad was pointing at my watch.

  “I’d better be going. Can I help you to clear up first?”

  “No, definitely not. There’s hardly anything to do.”

  I asked to use the bathroom and she directed me upstairs. The door to her bedroom was slightly ajar. I don’t know why I pushed it open and crept in. Next to the double bed was a photograph of a small child sitting in a flowerbed, holding a ginger kitten. She had curly brown hair and a heart-shaped face. I wondered if she was Penny’s daughter because there was a definite family resemblance. When I came out of the bathroom Dad was standing on the landing and the bedroom door had been closed.

  “You will be okay here, won’t you?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll miss you.”

  “I’ll miss you too,” he said and his eyes looked all teary. “But it won’t be for long, will it?”

  “No.”

  “Promise?”

  I smiled. “Yes, Dad. I promise.”

  “I’ve had the best time, Laura, these last few weeks. Getting to know you properly has been…” his voice was all croaky, “… amazing.”

  “It’s been the same for me too, you know. And it’s not goodbye for ever. It’s just a short break.”

  He nodded. “You will take care of yourself?”

  “O
f course. You too.”

  “Laura,” Penny’s voice called up the stairs. “Is everything all right up there?”

  “Fine,” I said as I held out my arms to Dad and he held his back to me. Our fingers almost touched. I could feel a charge of electricity between us. A warmth spread through my whole body.

  “Next best thing to a hug,” he said.

  “Yes,” I whispered. “Thank you.”

  Downstairs in the hall Penny put her hands on both of my shoulders.

  “I don’t know exactly why you came, Laura, but I hope that I’ve answered some of your questions. Will you come and see me again?”

  “Yes, I’d like that.”

  “Me too.”

  She bit her lip. “Send my love to your mother.”

  “I will.”

  “Are you going to see your friend now?”

  I nodded although Abi hadn’t replied to my text.

  “And you’ll take care travelling home?”

  I nodded again.

  Dad was standing next to her. I waved.

  “See you soon,” I said.

  “I hope so,” she replied but of course I wasn’t really talking to her. I was talking to Dad.

  He waved back and blew me a kiss. I smiled and closed the gate behind me. Mission accomplished.

  SECRETS

  Abi still hadn’t answered my text so I decided to go home. Not back to Derbyshire, which still didn’t feel like home, but to my old house, my real home.

  I stood on the opposite side of the road just staring at it for a couple of minutes. There were net curtains up at all of the windows and new blue pots crammed with African marigolds outside the front door. It didn’t look at all like my house any more. Suddenly I wished that I really had arranged to see my old friends. Maybe they would stop me feeling so weird and displaced, as if I didn’t really belong anywhere.

  I couldn’t stand on the pavement for ever so I began to walk towards the shops. I picked up some flowers from the florist two streets away and headed for the cemetery. Penny hadn’t actually said whether she’d been to the grave so I thought I’d go and check.

  Sure enough there was a little posy of roses and white phlox but they’d obviously been there for some time and the petals were turning brown and falling off. I cleared them away, replaced them with my yellow daisies and sat on the bench for a while.

  It was strange. There was no point in talking to Dad because I was pretty sure that he wasn’t around. I’d half expected him to follow me when I left Penny’s house but I had the feeling that he’d actually stayed put. I must have been really tired because my mind just went blank. That doesn’t happen very often. I’ve usually got so many thoughts whizzing around inside my head that it can be exhausting. It was nice just to switch off. In fact I think that I almost dropped off to sleep. I jerked myself awake and blinked several times before checking my watch. It was almost five o’clock. Suddenly I didn’t want to be here any more. I wanted to be back at the farm with Mum bustling around in the kitchen and the clickety-clack of Gran’s knitting needles as she settled down to watch some quiz programme.

  As I shrugged the rucksack onto my back a woman walked down the path towards me. It was the woman who had walked straight past me that day several weeks ago and put her flowers on an untended grave. I have no idea why but, before she noticed me, I slid off the bench and melted back into the shadow of the tree. The branches swept low and were full of leaves so I was partly hidden. I watched as the woman stopped by Dad’s grave and looked at my fresh flowers. Then she looked towards me, straight through the lattice of leaves. I stared back, unsure what to do. A girl stepped forwards. She was holding a small bunch of pink and white flowers and must have been walking directly behind the woman so I hadn’t spotted her before. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. She was younger than me, maybe about ten, and she was slimmer than I was at that age and maybe a little bit taller. But apart from that it was like looking at a younger version of myself. She was also definitely the girl from the photograph in Penny’s bedroom.

  “What is it?” she asked, following the woman’s gaze.

  I stepped forwards into the sunlight.

  The woman put a hand on the girl’s arm. “We ought to go,” she murmured.

  “No!” the girl said, shaking her mother away and taking a tentative step towards me.

  I had this enormous lump in my throat and I had no idea why. It felt like the size of an orange. Surely it must be grotesquely visible. The girl’s face was serious but slightly inquisitive.

  “Hello,” she said.

  I licked my lips. She waited, hands clenching the posy a little bit tighter. A petal dropped from one of the roses and landed on the back of her hand like a velvety pink teardrop. She didn’t seem to notice.

  “Hello,” I replied.

  The woman stood helplessly behind the girl. I could tell that she wanted them both to be spirited away, to be anywhere else except here.

  “Are you Laura?” the girl asked.

  Someone else who knew my name.

  “Yes.”

  She smiled then, a beautiful, radiant smile. “I’m Daisy.”

  She said it as if I should know who she was. I must have shaken my head slightly, looked confused, because she glanced briefly behind her, as if looking for permission of some kind. The woman’s eyes narrowed, her head definitely shook. The girl turned back towards me and hesitated.

  “Are you Penny’s daughter?” I asked.

  Daisy’s smile vanished in an instant. She looked upset.

  “No,” she said. “This is my mum.”

  I stared at the woman. “I don’t understand.”

  She ignored me, took hold of her daughter’s arm. The rose petal fluttered to the ground where it lay between us.

  “Daisy, we really ought to be going.”

  The girl stood her ground. “I haven’t put my flowers on Daddy’s grave yet,” she protested.

  The woman closed her eyes as Daisy walked purposefully forwards, retrieved the jam jar from behind the headstone and placed her posy in it.

  Inside my head everything was swimming. I watched in disbelief as she settled the jar full of flowers next to my yellow daisies. I felt cold and clammy and my eyes couldn’t focus properly. There was this rushing in my ears.

  “Laura, Laura, are you all right?”

  The woman’s voice came from very far away, as if she were at the end of a long tunnel. I was aware of her grabbing my arm and leading me back to the bench, easing me down, gently pressing my head towards my knees.

  “Better?” she asked, after a couple of minutes. “I’m sorry. You’ve had a bit of a shock.”

  I nodded. That was the understatement of the year.

  “There must be some mistake,” I whispered. “I don’t understand.”

  Daisy stood in front of me, her face full of concern. “It isn’t a mistake, is it, Mummy?” she asked the woman. “Laura is my sister, isn’t she?”

  How do you describe a moment like that? It was like my world caving in and opening up all at the same time. It was disbelief and recognition, excitement and blame. It was a huge tangle of questions tying me up in knots. It was beyond belief, and yet as I looked at her standing in front of me, unsure whether I’d ever be able to remember how to activate the right facial muscles and smile again, I knew that it was true.

  “How?” I asked.

  What a stupid question. There was obviously only one explanation but before the woman got the time to answer her mobile phone rang. She ignored it. It rang again.

  “You’d better answer that,” I murmured. “It could be important.”

  In truth I wanted some space, some time to think, or not think. I just wanted time. I sat, only half listening while she spoke. I remembered learning about the five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. In the space of about thirty seconds my mind turbo-charged through the first four but when it got to acceptance it felt like running into a bric
k wall. NEVER. This could not be true and yet looking at Daisy I knew it was. Suddenly my whole body was so angry that I barely remember springing from the seat.

  “No,” the woman was saying, “it’s too late. She’s here. I’m sorry. I didn’t expect…”

  I lunged for the phone, wrenched it from her grasp and pressed it against my ear.

  “Who is this?” I bellowed.

  There was a gaping silence. Sometime, someone was going to feel the need to fill it and it wasn’t going to be me.

  “It’s me.”

  The voice was soft and quiet, barely audible through the noise of a plane passing overhead. “It’s me, Penny. I’m so sorry you had to find out like this.”

  “Penny,” I shouted. “You knew? It’s true?”

  “I can’t talk about this over the phone. Why don’t you all come back here and have a cup of tea?”

  “That photo by your bed. I saw it and thought it looked like me. I thought it was your daughter.”

  “Daisy is my god-daughter.”

  Daisy. Dad’s other daughter. She was watching me, frightened now, since I grabbed the phone like a person possessed. She looked like a little cornered mouse watching a cat, waiting for it to make its next move. I thrust the phone back at the woman and bent forwards, put my head in my hands. I had a half-sister. For all of these years I had a sister and no one had told me.

  Half an hour later I was, once more, pushing open the gate to Penny’s front garden. She’d obviously been looking out for us because the door opened before we’d even reached the porch.

  We hadn’t spoken on the way over. The woman, whose name was Amanda, had driven us in her car. I sat in the back and tried to ignore the way her eyes kept checking up on me in the rear-view mirror. Daisy was upset now too. She thought that she shouldn’t have said anything, that everyone would be cross with her. I think she was crying a little but I was feeling too detached to care. That wasn’t right, was it? If she was really my sister then I would feel something, wouldn’t I? I’d want to comfort her. But I didn’t. So perhaps it was all some terrible mistake after all. Except that of course I knew it wasn’t.

  “Laura.”

  Penny reached out to touch my arm but I brushed her away. She had no right to touch me, to pretend to be all caring and concerned. I wanted to rush around to look for Dad but I didn’t need to. He sloped into the hall and from the look on his face he obviously wanted to be anywhere else than here, maybe even back with Gran and Reverend Tim. I couldn’t even bear to look him in the eye.