by Lucy Dillon
Janet’s mouth formed, ‘Georgina,’ but nothing came out.
Gina could hear a faint chattering sound: it was Janet’s wedding ring jittering against the china mug as her hands shook. She seemed to have shrunk back in her chair, as if the cancer was there in the room with them.
‘But you’ll be fine, love, won’t you?’ Janet insisted, her voice brighter than her expression. ‘They’ll do what they did last time, pop you on that chemotherapy treatment and – and what-have-you.’
She really has no idea, thought Gina. The weight of it pressed down on her shoulders; now she had to tell her, with no Stuart here to help.
‘It depends.’ For a second, she thought about sugar-coating it but there was no point. This was going to happen at some stage. Better that they both got used to the idea now. ‘It depends if the biopsy detects something, and it depends where it is. And whether it’s a recurrence or something new. Fingers crossed it’s nothing. Or at least something they can treat quickly.’ Gina made the corners of her mouth pull up, even though the last thing she felt like doing was smiling. Be brave, she thought.
Janet’s shoulders dropped. She smiled, a ghoulish puppet sort of smile, then her face crumpled and she put her hands up to her face and sobbed.
‘Mum?’ Gina hesitated, then put her tea to one side, stood up and crouched by her mother’s chair, half expecting to be batted away.
Janet did wave her away, then slumped back, and let Gina put her arms around her. They sat there, Gina perched to the side of Janet’s chair, while her mother wept.
Oh my God, she knows, Gina realised. She knows much more than she’s been letting on. Maybe she was being brave for me, not the other way around.
They weren’t the quick, angry tears Naomi had cried the first time she’d told her; they were uncomfortable, heartbreaking sobs, like an animal keening, and Gina felt as if her own insides were being torn away. She’d never heard her mother cry like this. Janet had always prided herself on her self-control. But all Janet’s mourning for Terry had happened while Gina was in hospital herself, recovering from the crash. By the time she’d been discharged, whatever grief Janet had suffered had been controlled, banked down into the low simmer of misery she had maintained ever since.
This sounded like grief. It sounded to Gina’s ears as if she’d already died, and a tiny part of her felt irrationally angry.
‘Come on, Mum,’ she said. ‘I’m still here.’
She stroked Janet’s back through her cashmere cardigan, her best one for Gardeners’ Club, and felt the bird-like sharpness of her bones. Gina didn’t have much left to bolster Janet today; her own tears were rising to the surface again.
She made herself think of Nick, of the picnic waiting for her in the park after the tests. All she had to do was get through the next few hours. Break them down into minutes, she thought desperately. One at a time.
I’ve done this before, she told herself. I can do it again. Little bit by little bit.
‘Please, Mum,’ she said, rubbing her shoulder. ‘It’s just more tests. Let’s try to think positive. I just wanted to tell you so you were . . . prepared this time.’
Janet gulped, and sat up. It took her a while to get her breathing under control, but Gina waited.
‘You always were such a coper,’ Janet said eventually, wiping her eyes with the side of her finger. ‘Even when you were a little girl. I can remember when I came back from Huw’s . . . from your dad’s funeral. You’d made me some cakes with your Auntie Gloria. Your little face.’ Her face crumpled. ‘Your little face . . . wanting to make things better for me with your cakes.’
Gina was momentarily distracted from the absurdity of a three-year-old ‘coping’ by this new revelation. Janet had never mentioned Gina’s dad’s funeral before.
‘That was Dad’s funeral? I didn’t know you’d been to a funeral,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d been away on holiday.’
‘Well, what could we tell you? You were too young to understand.’
Gina looked at her mother, her eyes glazed as she replayed a moment in her mind that she was in but had no memory of. What else hadn’t she told her? Surely it was time her mother shared some of those memories of her father. Gina thought of the memory box she’d already started making for Willow, with notes and photos and stories about her and Naomi and their adventures together, before and after Willow had come along. Real memories, not borrowed ones from aunts’ albums.
‘You were wearing your little yellow pinafore with the sunflower pocket,’ Janet went on, staring into space. ‘I kept it. It’s still in the attic, in a box.’
‘You kept it?’
‘I kept all your baby things. I wanted to pass them on to your children.’ Janet bit her lip, struggling. ‘I always hoped . . . I know I haven’t been the mother I wanted to be. We don’t have the relationship I thought I’d have with a daughter, and that’s not all your fault, Gina. I thought that maybe if you had children I’d have another chance to do it again. Better.’
‘Or you could just try a bit harder with the daughter you’ve got?’ It was out of Gina’s mouth before she had time to realise she was speaking, not thinking. ‘You never share things with me.’ Her voice trembled. ‘Why did you never tell me that story about me and the cakes until now? Why won’t you share anything about your relationship with Dad? Like when I was born. It’s part of me. You don’t want to talk about anything difficult. But that’s half my life! You can’t just pretend it didn’t happen, Mum. I’m here!’
Gina’s randomly swinging moods were pummelling her again. The uncontainable rage that came and went had swept back in, and she knew she shouldn’t be directing it at her mother, but it was as if she was possessed by something else. Something bigger and angrier than she was. It was the stress of the tests, she hoped. Maybe it was easier for them both to get angry about something else. She didn’t have infinite time to hear these things about her dad. And if Janet didn’t tell her them, then he would disappear.
Janet closed her eyes. ‘Sometimes you’re very like your father, Georgina.’
‘Am I?’ demanded Gina. ‘How? And don’t tell me because I’m brave. He was a soldier, he didn’t have a choice. I don’t have a choice either.’
‘He wasn’t brave. He was reckless. And he was cruel.’
‘It was his job!’
‘You didn’t know him.’ Janet bunched her hands into fists. ‘I had to grow up listening to you wanting to turn him into a saint, and I let you, because I thought it was the very least I could do, making you grow up without a dad. But because of him I was worried about you, Georgina, all your life. I worried about him when he was on duty, I worried about him when he went off and couldn’t tell me where. I worried because . . .’
‘Because what?’
‘Because sometimes I wondered who exactly I’d married.’ Janet’s eyes were strained with the effort of admitting something hard. ‘And Huw died before I ever felt I knew him properly, and then I didn’t know which parts of your father were going to come out in you. Like that drinking phase you went through, it worried me sick. And I’m sorry if you think I disapproved of you and Kit, but I didn’t want you to make my mistakes.’
‘What were your mistakes?’ A cold feeling settled on Gina. ‘Are you saying I was a mistake?’
Janet recoiled. ‘What? No! You were the best thing in my life. You are the best thing in my life. My girl. My beautiful girl.’ She grabbed Gina’s hands, and the ferocity in her eyes was shocking.
They stared at each other, and Janet seemed to be struggling with herself.
‘What do you remember about your father?’ she asked.
Gina was thrown by the change of tack. ‘I remember him being tall,’ she said. ‘I remember him taking you to the races. With that swing tag you had for the enclosure that he gave me. I remember him smelling of tobacco and that big navy wool coat he had. But that’s about it. I wish I remembered more.’
Janet took a couple of shuddering breaths, and Gi
na knew there was something she didn’t know, that her mother was deliberating about whether to tell her. A darkness closed over her, sharpened with curiosity.
‘Mum?’ she said. ‘Tell me. Whatever it is, I need to hear it. I’m not ten any more. Tell me about my dad.’
The irony of Janet keeping unpalatable truths from her while she’d hidden behind Stuart’s version of her chemo didn’t escape Gina.
Janet twisted her ring around her finger. ‘Well, he was tall. Dark hair, like yours, lots of it. I was always having to cut it to keep it army-regulation length. He had a lovely laugh – very deep and Welsh. Your gran used to say he sounded just like Tom Jones. I met him in the local pub when he was stationed near where we lived. He was a bit older than me, nearly thirty. Swept me off my feet, quite literally. We were mad about each other. And he decided we had to get married, so we did.’
That much Gina had more or less guessed for herself. ‘But that’s all right . . . isn’t it?’
‘That was all fine. If he hadn’t been in the army.’ Janet stared at her ring. ‘Not even just the army. Huw always wanted to be in the SAS. That was his ambition – he said it was the only way to get the proper experience of soldiering, even if it meant going into dangerous places. Being married didn’t change that. We’d only been married four months when he finally passed the selection process, which was why we moved up to Leominster.’
She paused. ‘And that was when I realised just how much your father could drink. He wasn’t always violent, just . . . went into himself. My dad never drank so I’d never seen a man drunk before. But by that time I was on my own with him. I didn’t know much about army life. I didn’t know much about life at all – I was only twenty-one. Huw was a nice man, but he’d seen things I hadn’t.’
Gina held her breath, stunned. It had never occurred to her that there might be reasons like this for the gaps in the story. Mum not wanting to remember. A very different Janet started to take shape in her imagination: not a mum, a young girl, scared, newly married. ‘Mum, you don’t have to . . .’
‘You said you wanted to know about your father.’ Janet’s lips were set in a line.
Gina nodded unhappily.
‘Anyway, you came along. I thought maybe having a baby might calm him down a bit, make him see there were more important things in life than going on SAS missions. He adored you. He really did – I’m not making that up. You were the apple of his eye. He used to carry your photo around everywhere, his lovely baby with his brown curly hair. Things were all right for a bit. He went to South Africa and trained troops, instead of getting posted to Northern Ireland – that was where all the dangerous business was going on, undercover with the IRA. And then I found out . . .’ Janet stared out of the window. ‘I found out just before your third birthday party that he’d volunteered to be sent out there. Actually volunteered.’
Janet’s fingers tensed around Gina’s hand.
‘It’s really bad that the army wouldn’t tell you what happened, Mum,’ she said, trying to meet her in the middle. ‘Don’t they owe you that, at least? Can’t we find out now so many years have passed?’
Janet shook her head, and Gina couldn’t read her expression. It was tight and angry and sad all at the same time. ‘They wouldn’t give us any information because they don’t know themselves. Your father wasn’t where he was supposed to be when he died. He’d . . . gone off somewhere, acting on his own initiative, they said. Which is fine and dandy when it works out, of course. When it’s doesn’t, they suddenly won’t tell you a thing.’
Gina’s whole body tensed, braced against what was coming next.
‘I asked who I could – but they wouldn’t tell me anything.’ Janet looked haunted. ‘Huw was always reckless, but drink made him think he was invincible. And they were all deep undercover, they had to be with the IRA. It took the unit a long time to find out where they’d taken him . . .’ She covered her mouth with her hand, then said, ‘There was no body to bury.’
The tension released and Gina felt herself fall like a stone inside. Her dad, the handsome, smiling man in the Ascot photograph, half her DNA, half her personality, dying alone, undercover somewhere in Belfast.
‘He knew he was going into danger,’ said Janet, bitterly. ‘He knew there was a real danger he’d be killed, and he still went. We weren’t enough. It was bad enough letting me down, but I’ll never forgive him for leaving you.’
‘Mum—’
‘Don’t even think about saying it was for the greater good. I was twenty-five, a widow with a little girl, and I had to go home to my parents – who hadn’t wanted me to marry him in the first place, believe me – and start again. Huw had no family – they were all ex-regiment anyway, which was why he’d gone in himself. That was why we never talked about it. It was easier to forget. What could I tell you if you asked? Nothing. I didn’t know anything, and I was heartbroken, and angry, Georgina.’
‘But how could you just forget all about it when you had me?’
Janet flinched as if the words had physically slammed into her. ‘Oh, Georgina, because you made it all worthwhile. You were my reason for getting up in the morning. Your little hands on my face, your smile when I took you out to the park.’ Her mouth contorted as she struggled to smile and not cry. ‘We were such good friends when you were little, you and me. Such good friends.’
A lump formed in Gina’s throat at the yearning in her mother’s voice.
‘When you started school, and I couldn’t be with you all the time, that was when I started to worry about you. You were such a daredevil. Climbing things, jumping off things, no fear at all. I worried that you’d got your father’s recklessness. I worried you’d got his temper too. I couldn’t bear the thought of anything happening to you. It used to make me sick, worrying that you’d get a taste for drink at school. That you wouldn’t know when to stop either. I probably worried far too much but I couldn’t help it. I felt like I hadn’t worried enough before and look what had happened.’
Gina felt ashamed of the hours she’d spent moaning to Naomi about her mother’s paranoid questions and curfews. ‘Didn’t you talk to anyone about it?’
She snorted. ‘Who’d I talk to? No, I just got on with it. Terry was good, though. He understood. He’d have made a good father, Terry.’
‘He was a good father,’ protested Gina. ‘He was a lovely father to me.’
Janet looked up, as if Gina had said something unexpected. ‘Was he?’
Gina nodded. ‘Of course he was.’
They sat for a moment, letting the words sink in as fresh ghosts moved between them. Huw Pritchard, now fleshed out into three dimensions, headstrong and dangerous. Janet as a devastated young widow, left alone with a baby at the same age Gina had been drinking wine in central London bars. And baby Gina, reckless. Gina didn’t remember being reckless. She’d always thought she’d been too rule-following, if anything.
There’s so much I’ve never asked, thought Gina, and suddenly she wanted to. She needed to know her mother better.
‘I know I was hard on you growing up.’ Janet’s voice was sorrowful. ‘But I couldn’t stop myself. You were so young when you met Kit – all I could think of was how trusting I’d been at your age. I thought I knew everything. When you were in that accident, they could have taken any part of me to keep you alive. My heart, my liver, anything. I’d have had your cancer a hundred times over, if I could have had it instead of you.’ She looked at Gina with red, anguished eyes. ‘You know I’d have it now, if I could. My beautiful little girl.’
Gina gulped and flung her arms around her mother, unable to bear the pain in her voice. ‘I’m sorry,’ she sobbed, into Janet’s hair. ‘I’m sorry, Mum.’
‘I don’t know how to tell you how much I love you.’ Janet was struggling to get the words out. ‘I used to pray you’d have a baby so you’d be able to experience all the love I had for you, and maybe it would have brought us closer. I got it wrong. I didn’t mean to hurt you about it. I didn�
�t realise it would be painful for you.’ She looked tortured. ‘Oh, Georgina. When you were little it was so easy – we’d just cuddle and put everything right. Soon as you were growing up, I didn’t know how to talk to you any more. We never seemed to hear what the other one was saying. But I still loved you. So much.’
‘I should have told you more,’ said Gina. Her mouth was wobbling; she could barely form the words. ‘I shouldn’t have kept things from you.’
‘Georgina.’ Janet rested her cheek on Gina’s, as she used to when Gina was a child, after the bedtime story. ‘You’ll always be a part of me.’
Gina squeezed her eyes shut. Then she opened them, because she didn’t want to look at what was crowding her mind. ‘Mum, they’re only tests,’ she said. ‘You’ve got me for ages yet.’
‘Not long enough,’ said Janet. She gazed at Gina as if she was seeing her for the first time. She was, thought Gina. Like I am. ‘There’ll never be enough time for me to be with you.’
Gina buried her head in her mother’s chest and let the tensions and fears of the past days out, and felt Janet’s arms tighten around her, as if she could keep every bad thought away.
Chapter Twenty-five
Gina didn’t know if it was her, or some strange weather effect, but as she walked through the wrought-iron gates into the park, the light seemed two shades too bright, like sunshine trapped under a dark raincloud a few minutes before a storm. All the colours around her felt so intense they hurt her eyes: the roses in the beds were a deep velvety red, the leaves a glossy emerald. The grass had been mown and the fresh green smell reminded her of banana sandwiches, of summer-afternoon sunbathing after games with Naomi, a smell you could almost taste.
The warmth of the afternoon had thickened the air. It hummed with bees making their way from one unfurling flower head to another, and now the sound of the offices turning out started to filter through as well. The park was filling with people, ready for the weekend in their rolled-up sleeves and bare legs. Gina smelled sun lotion and office sweat and perfume and the tangy smell of barbecue from the grill restaurant on the high street.