by Amy Bratley
From behind me I heard the sound of Daisy’s footsteps at the top of the stairs outside the bathroom door, followed by her two-year-old son, Benji.
‘Dad!’ Daisy said, appearing from behind me, handing me a cup of coffee. ‘Don’t talk like that. You’re only fifty-nine. Careful, Benji!’
I turned to Daisy and smiled as she held her own drink up in the air, while Benji snaked through her legs, so it didn’t spill. Dressed in denim shorts and a striped blue-and-white T-shirt, Daisy looked fantastic. She always did. Even when she’d had a sleepless night with Benjamin, she was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as if she had just inhaled a pint of wheatgrass juice. Her hair was shiny enough to reflect the clouds, her skin had mother-of-pearl luminescence and her figure was straight and lithe and had the fantastic tone of someone who spent hours in the gym. Mine, on the other hand, had too many curves to keep track of.
‘This is for you,’ she said, handing me an envelope. ‘I don’t know if it’s important. Maybe you should change your address, since you haven’t lived here for nine years. Just an idea.’
She handed me a letter from the Chocolate Society that had been sent to my dad’s address. I’d been a member since I was thirteen years old and still hadn’t got round to changing that address, much to Daisy’s despair. Daisy was much more organized than me, much more of a grown-up. She’d never let a bill go unpaid, or ignore a toothache, or go to the laundrette because the washing machine was broken and getting it fixed seemed like an insurmountable task. When we were little kids she used to walk round my bedroom pointing at toys I needed to pick up and put away, writing me lists of ‘chores’ for which she would reward me with a gold star. I went along with it, but I couldn’t care less for the gold stars. I much preferred the squares of chocolate I stole from the tin of treats she kept under her bed. She caught me once and slapped me so hard the outline of her hand stayed on my arm for hours.
‘Thanks,’ I said, taking the letter and coffee, sipping and flinching when I burned my tongue, then putting it down and kneeling to give Benji a kiss. ‘How are you, little man?’
Benji, his button eyes wide, a shy smile on his lips, put his arms around my neck to hug me. He smelt of chocolate biscuits, which I knew Dad would have quietly given to him when Daisy wasn’t looking. I rubbed his back and squeezed him back, before standing to kiss Daisy on the cheek.
‘And how are you?’ I asked her. ‘You look great. How do you manage to look like a supermodel when you’re working full-time and looking after a toddler the rest of the time?’
She rolled her eyes but a smile played on her lips.
‘No sleep and soaring stress levels help me stay in shape,’ she quipped. ‘How about you? Getting on OK with the cafe? And how was the Supper Club thing you did? I’ve always fancied having a go at that. Everyone at work talks about it.’
I glanced at Dad, who gave me a sympathetic smile then busied himself with extracting the clumps of hair from Benji’s hands.
‘I’ll tell you in a bit,’ I said, screwing my face up. ‘It was, er . . . interesting.’
‘Right,’ she said distractedly, frowning, concentrating on Benji, who was now trying to eat the hair. ‘Hey, Benji, stopthat!’
‘Nooooo!’ Benji screamed as Daisy pulled him up from the floor, where he was now having a mini-tantrum.
‘Please, Benji,’ Daisy pleaded in exasperation. ‘Just give me a break. Please!’
Benji’s screams got louder. He kicked Daisy in the ankle and her eyes filled with tears.
‘No, Benji!’ Dad said, throwing me a worried look. ‘Don’t kick your mummy.’
We all looked at Benji while he pounded his fists on the bathroom floor, his tantrum in full throttle. Daisy folded her arms across her chest and closed her eyes.
‘Can I help at all?’ I asked, but Daisy just opened her eyes and shrugged despondently. She had always been like this. Her mood would change at a flick of a switch. She’d go from dynamic to helpless in seconds.
‘He’s a nightmare at the moment,’ she said moodily. ‘I just don’t know how to handle him.’
Poor Daisy. She was now a single mum to Benji and it couldn’t be easy looking after a toddler on your own. In fact, sometimes it looked like a total nightmare. I made a silent vow to help her out more.
‘Maybe I can take him for a day next weekend,’ I said. ‘Give you a break. Or Dad could have him and we can both go to the Sanctuary for the day?’
‘Oh,’ Daisy said, a smile bursting onto her lips, ‘a spa day would be great. But I’ll treat you. I know you’re broke.’
I leaned in to Daisy and gave her a hug.
‘Thanks,’ I said and we smiled at one another.
‘Benji?’ Dad said, clapping his hands together to distract him. ‘Benji? How do I look?’
We all looked towards Dad, who stood grinning down at Benji in front of the window, which was open enough to see the early evening sun pour over the roofs of the houses opposite.
‘Like an egg!’ Benji said, suddenly recovered, jumping up at Dad until he picked him up and swung him round onto his back.
‘Gosh, you’re heavy. I’m too old for this,’ he muttered, puffing out. ‘I’m like one of those old greyhounds, ready for the knacker’s yard. Come on, let’s go downstairs. Enough crying.’
‘Don’t say that, Dad,’ I said quietly.
‘What?’ he said.
‘About the knacker’s yard,’ I said. ‘You’re young.’
Daisy and I exchanged concerned looks. Recently we were always having secret talks about Dad: whether he was OK, whether he was hiding anything, why he sometimes refused to be clear about where he was going and what he was doing.
‘Oh,’ he said, waving his hand at me dismissively, ‘I’m almost an OAP.’
I chewed at my thumb. We’d been wondering if Dad had a health problem and wasn’t telling us. I was aware it was paranoid thinking, but when you’ve lost one parent, you can’t help thinking the other one is hanging on by a thread, too. He had been behaving strangely – he’d taken part in copious fundraising events for various local charities, above and beyond any normal person’s expectations. It had come from nowhere, this philanthropic streak. He’d bathed in a bathtub of baked beans, washed cars, shaken a money box in the driving rain, dressed up as a giant teddy bear and had now collected sponsorship money to shave all his hair off. Whenever Daisy or I approached the subject, he changed the topic or laughingly told us to mind our own business.
‘OK!’ Daisy said, recovered now that the tantrum was over. ‘Look, let’s go downstairs and make you a sandwich, Benji.’
‘Granddad gave me some chocolate biscuits, so I’m not hungry,’ Benji said. Dad pulled a guilty face and mouthed ‘Sorry’ at Daisy, who sighed, then waved her hand dismissively in the air as she started down the stairs.
‘Toast, then,’ she said. ‘You need something that isn’t chocolate. Come on, Benji. Listen to what I’m saying, please.’
Daisy and Benji headed down the stairs while Dad pulled shut the bathroom door behind us, clutching a dustpan filled with his hair. I thought about how I could best ask him what was going on with him, but before I could, he started talking about Joe.
‘Anyway, I wanted to say earlier, that Joe’s a good man,’ he said in a concerned voice. It suddenly dawned on me what Joe had been doing when they went to the folk club night. ‘I hope you’re nice to him, Evie.’
‘Dad,’ I said. ‘Did Joe . . . has Joe . . . has he said anything about marriage? Is that what you were talking about the other night at the folk club? As well as wooden recorders?’
Dad smiled, tapped his nose and shook his head.
‘I can’t tell you what we were talking about,’ he said. ‘It’s up to Joe to talk to you. I’m just saying that he’s a good man and I know that Ethan coming back must make things difficult, but he’s not worth the—’
He stopped, looked up at me, moved towards me and placed his hand on my shoulder. He looked strange with no hair;
so much younger.
‘Did he explain why he went?’ he asked.
I shook my head and pulled a face.
‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘I’m going to find out. That’s what I want. To find out.’
He put his arm tight around my shoulders and directed us towards the kitchen door, where Daisy was slicing a tomato and hissing threats of the ‘naughty step’ at Benji.
‘Be careful what you wish for,’ Dad said. ‘That was something else your mother used to say. Be careful what you wish for.’
Chapter Seven
After I told her Ethan had returned – it seemed I couldn’t stop telling everyone – Daisy turned towards me, a buttered knife in her hand, a distracted frown on her face. The air smelt of burnt toast and the dishwasher was going through the noisiest part of its cycle. She pressed the END button on the dishwasher and clicked off the radio so the kitchen lapsed into a dramatic silence.
‘Did you just say Ethan’s back? You’re joking?’ she said. ‘I thought he was in Italy?’
‘Mummy,’ Benji said, clamping his arms around her knees. I sat down at the kitchen table, a big old oak thing with years of scars and scratches, and moved a copy of the Independent onto a pile of newspapers, stacked up behind a vase of sunflowers cut fresh from the garden.
‘Ouch!’ Daisy said, wriggling away from Benji and sucking her thumb. ‘Benji, stop pulling me! Look what you made me do! You made me cut my finger!’
She dropped the knife on the stone tile floor and Dad knelt down to pick it up.
‘Mummy,’ Benji said before bursting into tears. I caught hold of his arm and guided him towards me. I lifted him up onto my lap and hugged him. He buried his head into the crook of my arm and sniffed away tears.
‘Are you OK?’ Dad said, walking towards Daisy with a piece of kitchen towel. ‘Here, have this. Come here, Benj, come and sit on my knee instead. We can look at this book and give your mum and aunty Eve a chance to talk.’
Benji slid off my lap and climbed up onto Dad’s, throwing his arm around Dad’s neck. Daisy sat down on the kitchen chair next to me with a sigh, peering at the cut on her finger, blotting the blood with the kitchen towel.
‘Sorry, Eve,’ she said. ‘You were saying about Ethan. What a nightmare. Have you told Joe? Did he say why he left? Have this toast, Benji. How do you feel about it?’
She slid the plate of toast onto the table near Benji, who totally ignored it.
‘No, I don’t know why he went,’ I said. ‘We couldn’t talk, but I’m going to find out. Joe doesn’t know. I stupidly haven’t told him.’
Daisy looked at me and frowned, beginning to shred the paper towel.
‘You’d better tell him,’ she said. ‘Otherwise he’ll find out and be really hurt.’
She adopted the tone of voice she used to tell Benji off and I felt suddenly irritated.
‘I know!’ I said, exasperated. ‘I will, of course. The last thing I want to do is hurt Joe. I’m not a complete bitch.’
‘I wasn’t saying that,’ said Daisy softly. ‘I was just telling you Joe would be upset if you—’
‘I know he would!’ I said. ‘What do you think I am!’
‘OK!’ she said. ‘I was only saying. Don’t freak out!’
The air was suddenly cool between us and I marvelled at how quickly our conversations could go from being completely calm to incendiary in a flash of words. It had always been the same. I knew in a few minutes Daisy would act as though nothing had been said, while I silently fumed inside my head.
‘OK, girls, come on,’ Dad said, pausing from reading Where’s Spot? to Benji, who had turned the toast plate upside down. We all fell silent and I hated that Ethan, only just back in my life, was already causing problems. I sighed and looked out of the kitchen window at the garden in full bloom, which looked gorgeous. I thought of the days Joe and I had spent out in the garden when we were kids, before his family had moved away. Now, the neighbours were media whizzkids with buckets of money, who had painted the entire house sage green and who had loud-voiced barbecues in the garden.
‘The garden looks fantastic,’ I told Dad. ‘Especially the chrysanthemums.’
He rose from his chair and, leaning on the windowsill, looked out at the red flowers. He beamed.
‘I like to call them summer margaritas,’ he said. ‘Your mum’s favourite, of course.’
Daisy scraped her chair back and stood, moving over to the kitchen counter again. She put the dishwasher back on and it immediately began to whoosh and whirl. Then she walked over to me and put her hand on my shoulder.
‘Eve, I just can’t believe Ethan is back,’ she said. ‘Shall we have a glass of wine in the garden and chat? Do you want one, Dad?’
I looked at her face. She smiled. She was over our cross words already. I nodded.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’d really like that. It’s a bit of a shocker.’
‘I’ve got to go out in a minute,’ Dad said, standing and holding Benji’s hand tightly. ‘But pop upstairs with me first, Eve. I’ve got something I want to show you quickly before I go.’
‘Now then,’ Dad said, dragging a box-file off the shelf and opening it up to reveal a stack of documents. I peered over his shoulder while he flicked through letters from Mum to him. ‘I think it will be in here somewhere.’
We were in the back bedroom of the house, a light, calming room, which was always referred to as ‘Mum’s room’ because it contained all of her things that Dad just couldn’t part with. The wallpaper, cream with small pink roses, had not been changed since she died, though the rest of the house had been redecorated several times. Nor had the furniture, a mahogany wardrobe and matching chest of drawers, ever been moved from their position. It was as if moving anything in there would break a spell. I picked up a framed photograph of my parents when they were very young and had just met. My dad was bent double, his face turned to the camera, my mum leapfrogging over him, her brown wavy hair flying up in the air, a gigantic smile on her face. I put it down and picked up another, of her cradling me as a baby. Her gaze was one of pure devotion. I sighed. I might not have her now, but at least I’d had her then.
‘Ah,’ Dad said, pulling out a piece of paper that had yellowed with age, with splodges of grease on the edges. ‘This is it. Your mother’s “Lovebird Cake”. She used to bake this if we’d had a row and she wanted to make up. She used to cook this a lot, which wasn’t great for my waistline. I found it the other day when I was sorting through all these things. I feared I’d lost it. But I thought you’d like to have it. Maybe you could even try it out for the cafe?’
I rested the baby photograph on the chest of drawers and moved to where Dad was standing. I peered at the recipe over his shoulder.
‘That’s lovely,’ I said. ‘Joe mentioned you’d found a recipe Mum cooked.’
Dad handed me the piece of paper, and just as I started to read, I heard the clatter of a plate falling onto the kitchen floor downstairs, Daisy’s raised voice and Benji shouting back at her.
‘God,’ I said, catching Dad’s eye. ‘Is Daisy OK? She seems very on edge with Benji.’
He shook his head in exasperation and sighed.
‘It’s boys,’ he said. ‘They’re hard to look after. Girls are easier, I think. She has a tough time with him, and you know how hard she works.’
He looked thoughtful for a moment, then pointed at the recipe.
‘Anyway, concentrate!’ he smiled. ‘This is an important piece of Thompson history!’
I smiled back at him. Written in blue ink, in my mum’s handwriting, were the words ‘Audrey’s Lovebird Cake’, encased by a biro heart. There was a list of ingredients, method and cooking instructions.
‘I bet this is delicious,’ I said, with one ear still on Daisy and Benji arguing downstairs. ‘I wish Daisy had more help from Iain. He’s hopeless, isn’t he?’
Anger bolted across Dad’s face, then he looked sad and sighed. Iain, a Canadian artist with whom Daisy had had a short rela
tionship, was Benji’s father, but since the day Daisy had told him she was pregnant, he’d refused to be involved and was now living back in Canada. He shook his head and cast his eyes to the floor.
‘What a bastard, deserting her like that,’ I said, voicing both our thoughts. Dad didn’t reply, just checked his watch. He thrust the box-file into my hands. I knew he hated talking about Iain, because he probably wanted to break his legs. Although he was the gentlest soul I knew, if anyone crossed his daughters, he flew into the most awful rage. I cast my mind back to an incident when Daisy went to university and her landlord was harassing her whenever he collected the rent. After Daisy’s tearful phone call, Dad had driven to Brighton at ninety miles per hour, furiously gripping the steering wheel, punched the landlord in the face and made him give Daisy all her money back, before moving her out into alternative accommodation.
‘Oops,’ he said now. ‘Sorry, Eve, but I’ve got to go to this charity thing. To show I’ve shaved off my curls.’
He kissed my cheek and gave me a hug. I hugged him back. He glanced at the clear glass vase of hot pink, pale pink and lavender flowers on the window sill, a mixture of carnations, delphinium and larkspur. He was so sweet, always making sure there were fresh flowers, a burst of life, in this room of memories.
‘I need to change those flowers later,’ he said. ‘Anyway, see you soon. And just tell Joe the truth about Ethan. He’ll understand. He’s a good guy with a big heart. He loves you. I mean really, really loves you.’
‘I know,’ I said, with a smile. ‘I love him too. Bye, Dad.’
‘Speak to you tomorrow, darling!’ he called as he walked out of the room and quickly down the stairs. I heard him talking to Daisy and Benji – saying goodbye.
‘Bye!’ I called after him.
Left standing holding the recipe, I folded it in half and put it on the window sill next to the flowers while I found the space on the shelf where the box-file went. Before I put the file back, I flicked through the documents distractedly, wondering what else Dad had kept. There were letters there that Mum had written to him. Some of them had small illustrations underneath her name, caricatures of Dad wearing different exaggerated expressions. My eyes moved over her handwriting and I was struck by how much it said about her: bold and clear, it seemed to leap off the page and burst with emotion, just how I remembered her. I heard Daisy’s footsteps on the stairs.