No Going Back

by ALEX GUTTERIDGE

  “Tea,” Penny said, leading us into the sitting room. “I’ve made tea. Do you drink tea, Laura?”

  I nodded and she put a bone china cup and saucer in my hands. Why hadn’t she used mugs? Was it so that I had to concentrate more in order not to spill the hot, sweet liquid onto her pale-blue silk cushions? I put the tea on the table in front of me.

  “Laura, I can explain,” Dad whispered in my ear. I lifted my hand and brushed him away.

  “How did you know my name?” I asked Daisy.

  The woman, Amanda, spoke. She was sitting on the edge of the chair, her hand resting lightly on Daisy’s shoulder.

  “Daisy has always known about you,” she said. “I’ve told her ever since she was a baby that she had a sister and her name was Laura. I’d always hoped that one day you two would meet but not quite like this.”

  “I don’t understand what Penny’s got to do with this,” I said.

  “Amanda is a friend,” Penny explained. “She and your father met at a party of mine. Daisy was only two weeks old when he died. Your mother had her family to rally around. Amanda didn’t have anyone. I didn’t approve of what she and your father had done but I tried to be supportive.”

  “Did my mum know about you?” I asked Amanda.

  “Yes.”

  Still I wouldn’t, couldn’t, look at Dad.

  “Was he going to leave us, for you?”

  Over by the window Dad shook his head furiously. I shifted on my seat so that he was out of my line of vision.

  “Maybe,” Amanda replied. “I can’t pretend that I didn’t want him to.”

  I was shaking now. I couldn’t get my head around this. I wanted to get away, to be back in my room at the farm, somewhere quiet and peaceful where I could lie down and fall into a deep sleep. Then, maybe when I woke up, I would find out that it had all been a horrible dream. I stood up. My tea rippled as I placed the cup and saucer on the uneven table top.

  “I’ve got a train to catch.”

  “Laura, you’re upset,” Penny said. “You can’t go yet.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  Daisy’s face was so white. She looked as if she was about to burst into tears. I was an expert on when people were about to cry. I’d had enough experience myself.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to her. “None of this is your fault.”

  She blinked and sure enough a couple of tears lodged on her upper cheek. “I thought you’d be happy,” she sniffed.

  It was one of those moments that can define your future, define someone else’s too. I knew instinctively that the answer I gave would have an impact on both of our lives, for better or for worse. Be a grown-up, Laura, I said to myself. Show Daisy that you’re the sort of person she’d be proud to call her sister. I didn’t want to be sensible and mature and reasonable though. I wanted to rage and stamp about and shout. But I looked at Daisy with her red-rimmed eyes and quivering bottom lip and somehow I got a grip on myself.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again. For goodness’ sake, why was I the one who kept apologising? “It’s just been such a shock, that’s all. I had no idea, none at all. No one warned me.”

  I did look at Dad then, shot him a look as full of disappointment and venom as I could muster.

  There was this uncomfortable silence in the room. No one knew what to say to me and my head was clogged with angry, resentful thoughts that were kicking my insides to pieces. I wanted to be better than those thoughts so I scrabbled in my rucksack and pulled out a piece of paper and a pencil.

  “Here’s my mobile number. You can text me if you like.”

  I wasn’t even sure whether I wanted her to but just saying the words helped. I did feel a tiny bit better about myself. I shoved the pad back in my rucksack and made for the door. Dad was right by my side.

  “Can I come with you to the station?” Penny asked. “Make sure that you get on the train safely?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t.”

  I didn’t mean to sound so rude but the last thing I wanted was her fussing around me, trying to make polite conversation, trying to justify her actions.

  “Will you send me a text when you get back then?” She pushed a business card into my hand. “Please?”

  I nodded, partly because I’d have agreed to anything just to get out of there, just for them all to leave me alone and stop staring at me as if I were some newly discovered prize specimen. As I left Dad was standing on the doorstep, mouthing the word “Sorry,” so many times that I lost count. And that’s where I thought he’d stayed but, as I turned the corner at the bottom of the street, he materialised beside me.

  “What are you doing here?” I groaned.

  “I want to explain. I really didn’t want you to find out like this.”

  “What is there to explain? You were having an affair. You had another child. You might have been about to leave Mum and me. I’m probably not your favourite daughter after all. I don’t expect you wanted me to find out at all. End of.”

  “Laura, it’s not like that.”

  “I bet! Leave me alone, Dad, will you? Go and spend some time with your other daughter while I sort my life out.”

  And I marched off, leaving him standing looking lonely and sad by a crossroads sign. Apt or what?

  EXPLAINING

  Mum was waiting on the platform at Derby station. I spotted her before I’d even got off the train and to be honest I was tempted to duck down and carry on to Sheffield, except I didn’t know anyone there and then what would I do? I could tell from her strained expression that Penny had been in touch and told her everything. I got off the train and walked straight past, avoiding eye contact. She hurried to catch up with me and I shifted my bag from one shoulder to the other so that it formed a buffer between us.

  “Are you all right?” she asked quietly, the words almost whisked away in the slamming of doors and clatter of heels on asphalt. “I know what happened and I’m sorry.”

  It’s funny how that word ‘sorry’ can make you so angry when it’s meant to do the opposite. I kept silent, kept walking fast so she had to make an effort to keep up with me.

  I inserted my ticket into the slot at the barrier while an official waved Mum through. We headed out towards the car.

  “I’ve been so worried about you,” she gasped. “You didn’t answer your mobile.”

  “That’s because I didn’t want to talk to anybody. Can’t think why, can you?”

  “I did what I thought was best, Laura. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

  I stopped. In the middle of the spot where the taxis turned.

  “So were you ever going to tell me? Or was it something you thought I didn’t need to know? After all, it’s not particularly important, is it?”

  A taxi hooted at me. I couldn’t care less. Mum reached for my arm. I flinched myself out of her reach.

  “I have a half-sister. You had no right to keep that from me.”

  She looked as if she was about to burst into tears. “You don’t understand…”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “And neither do I,” called a cab driver, “and I don’t particularly want to, so can you carry on this conversation somewhere else, ladies?”

  I glared at him.

  “Laura,” Mum begged, “you can’t stand here. You’re getting in the way.”

  Reluctantly I stepped to the side and she shepherded me towards the car.

  “So,” I said, as soon as she settled behind the steering wheel, before she’d had the chance to start the engine, “can you explain why everyone else knew and I didn’t? Even Liberty knew that the fairy tale you’d concocted wasn’t true. Even my own cousin knew more about my life than I did.”

  “Not everyone knew,” Mum said weakly, twizzling her wedding ring.

  “All those years you lied about who was putting flowers on the grave and you knew.”

  She half turned towards me. “Yes, I knew.”

  “Did you know that Dad was having an affair bef
ore he died?”

  “Yes, I knew that too. Eventually. They met at Penny’s house. It was a Christmas party and everyone had had a bit too much to drink. I remember your father spent a lot of time talking to this very attractive woman in a green silk dress. We rowed about it when we got home. He said I was being silly and jealous and that she was new to the area and didn’t know many people. He said he was just being friendly.”

  She gulped as if struggling for air.

  “Then he started to say he was working late or meeting someone for a drink and I believed him.”

  She was crying now.

  “How stupid can you get?”

  She looked at me, tears streaming down her face, mascara smudging in the hollows under her eyes.

  “In the end I confronted him. He lied at first but then he confessed. He said he was going to finish it and I believed him. He could be so charming, so loving. I wanted to trust him.”

  She half smiled.

  “I never thought he’d leave us, and then on the day of the funeral she turned up. Holding a baby. She sat at the back in the church, near the door, behind a pillar, but I’d spotted her. Everyone had. A month-old baby at a funeral does tend to attract attention. Can you imagine how humiliating, how shocking that was for me, Laura?”

  I had such a vivid picture of it all in my head that, yes, I could imagine.

  “I’m really, really sorry. I know that I should have told you but I found it so difficult to accept and very quickly you started to build your father up into this fantastic person, this hero, the sort of devoted daddy every little girl longs for. I couldn’t shatter that image.”

  I tried to take in all that she had said, tried to understand it from Mum’s point of view.

  “But I have a sister,” I repeated, more calmly now. “Have you any idea how much I longed for that?”

  She wiped her eyes, looked at me confusedly. “I thought you were happy.”

  I shook my head. “It’s not about being happy or unhappy.” I hesitated, struggling for an explanation. People say that you can’t miss what you’ve never had. That’s not true. I’d never had a brother or a sister but I’d still missed the ones I might have had, the ones I wanted. I’d never liked the fact that it was just me. People make assumptions about only children and they’re usually not very complimentary.

  “I’d rather not have been alone,” I said. “I’d have liked someone to play with, to fight with, to talk to, to share my growing up.”

  “You’ve had Liberty.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  How could I explain that now I had met Daisy, seen how her brown hair was blond at the edges the same as mine, the way her eyebrows had that slight kink the same as mine, the way her voice sounded similar in pitch to mine, it had opened up a huge chasm inside of me, a sense of loss.

  “Sisters don’t always get on, you know.”

  I was silent for a moment. “I just wish that we’d had the chance to not get on,” I said. “You never let me find that out and we only lived forty-five minutes apart. Would you ever have told me?”

  “Of course.”

  “When?”

  “When the time was right.”

  “And when would that have been?”

  “I don’t know.” She covered her eyes with her hands.

  “Now I know why Gran never liked Dad,” I said. “That’s why she was so keen for you to make a fresh start. I suppose she insisted that I mustn’t be told any of this.”

  Mum moved her hands away and looked at me.

  “No,” she said, “you’re wrong. Your gran was very much in favour of telling you, right from the start.”

  I leaned my head against the coolness of the window and looked at my reflection in the glass. I was tired and confused. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be with someone who understood me and, weird as it seemed, that person was Gran.

  She was waiting in the kitchen when we got back. The kettle was on and she was already wearing her dressing gown. Her hair was down but held back on one side with a sparkly pink clip. As I walked in she leaned back against the range and opened her arms. I didn’t hesitate. I walked straight into them. She smelled of lemon shower gel, and the dressing gown was soft against my cheek. I wanted to cry but I was too tired, too washed out. She didn’t speak, just stroked my hair with one hand and held me tightly with the other. I wanted to stay like that for ever, with my eyes closed and my mind blank.

  “A nice toasted teacake,” Gran said at last. “That’s what you need, and a hot drink, followed by a good night’s sleep.”

  I didn’t argue although to sleep after the day I’d had seemed hopelessly optimistic. But by the time I got into bed my eyelids were so heavy they felt as if they were coated with concrete. Mum knocked tentatively on my door. I’d barely spoken to her since we’d got back.

  “Are you feeling better?”

  What a dumb question. Of course I wasn’t feeling better. My whole world had suddenly been turned on its head. People I thought I could trust had turned out to be lying to me, and Gran, whom I’d never liked, never trusted, was suddenly the only person in the world who seemed worth bothering with.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I replied, hoping my sleepiness hadn’t curbed the sarcastic edge too much.

  “Liz,” I heard Gran’s voice whispering up from the bottom of the stairs. “Leave her alone. Let her sleep.”

  But Mum wouldn’t leave me alone. She came in and stood by my bed for a while, watching me while I willed her to go away. Finally she left and I listened with relief as she made her way downstairs. I snuggled deeper under my duvet, thinking that my room felt cold because I was so exhausted. Stupid of me not to realise the real reason.

  “Laura, are you awake?”

  I groaned, opened one eye. Dad was bending over me, hands clasped together in front of his chest. “When your world’s been blown apart you’re hardly likely to fall into a blissful sleep, are you?” I muttered.

  He flinched. I opened the other eye.

  “What are you doing here? You’re meant to be staying put in London, remember?”

  Secretly, I was pleased he was there, that he hadn’t just left me to stew, but there was no way I was going to tell him that.

  “I couldn’t just leave you at the end of the road. You weren’t thinking clearly. I was worried about you. There are always things to worry about when you’re a parent – drugs, drink, sex, exam stress…”

  “And secret families,” I added dryly.

  He straightened up, then sank onto the bed. I could see the bright pink flower pattern from my duvet through his jeans.

  “I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t mean you to find out like that. I knew that I ought to tell you about Daisy myself but…”

  I stared at him, trying to fathom what he was thinking, what he was feeling.

  “But you bottled it, because really you didn’t mean me to find out at all?”

  “I didn’t want to hurt you. I’ve never ever wanted to hurt you.”

  I made a choking noise. “You didn’t think about that when you were in bed with Amanda, did you?”

  He winced. “Don’t be crude, Laura. It doesn’t become you.”

  I shook my head. “Well, I’m so sorry but I’m not the perfect, forgiving daughter you think that I am. You’ve cheated me, Dad. You’ve let me down.”

  I wished I could cry. Get all of that anger out. Instead it was burning inside of me, making my every muscle feel as if it had set solid.

  “Do you think I don’t know that? I’ve let everyone down. I want to try and explain, if you’ll let me.”

  He reached out, as if to touch my hair, my cheek. If I hadn’t instinctively moved away he might have actually made contact with me. Instead I just felt a tingle of energy and something like a crescent of disappointment falling away with the curve of his hand.

  “I’m not perfect, Laura. Far from it, but I’m trying to be a better father. When you’re fourteen you think that adulthood is some defined
moment, as if when you reach twenty or twenty-five then you’ll be a grown-up, as if you’ve stepped over a line in the sand. You think that you’ll feel differently, be more confident maybe, more able to cope with what life throws at you. You think that you’ll have all of the answers. It’s not like that. Growing up is something that takes a lifetime, whether you live to thirty-one like me or seventy-four like Grandad. Most people do their growing up in stages and, looking back, I was probably a bit behind everyone else of my age. I was certainly behind your mother, even though she’s younger than me. When you were born I wasn’t ready to give up my other life, the one where I could just go out and have fun without worrying about other responsibilities. I know it sounds weak and pathetic but, although I loved you more than you will ever know, I found it difficult to settle down to family life. Your mum seemed to take to it much more naturally and that made me feel so inadequate. She coped so well with you that it seemed that I wasn’t really needed.”

  So he was blaming Mum now for his weakness. I put my hands over my ears.

  “Stop it! I don’t want to hear any more excuses. You blew it, Dad. You blew it then and you’ve blown it now. Go back to where you came from.” I held up my hand. “I know you’ve said that you can’t, but to be honest I don’t believe you. Why should I believe anything you say any more? You’ve lied about the past so there’s no reason why you wouldn’t lie about your return journey as well, is there?”

  He looked genuinely shocked. “Is that really what you want?”

  You know when you say things that you don’t really mean but you just can’t help yourself? This was one of those times.

  “Yes, it is.”

  How can three such tiny words have such power? How can they convey something so massive, that it can change your entire future? He was quiet for a moment as if taking it in.

  “Whatever I did in the past, Laura, it didn’t mean I stopped loving you. You are my firstborn. I remember the very first time I held you in my arms and looked down into your beautiful blue eyes. I had never felt anything like that rush of love. I may have made mistakes but that love for you never went away. You are my special girl. You are the best thing that ever happened to me.”