by Kat Gordon
“It’s fine,” I say. “I mean, it’s not fine, but it’s in the past.”
He looks guilty. “And I suppose I did seem cold when you were younger, but that wasn’t because I didn’t love you… Don’t love you.” He trails off.
“Dad… ”
“And as for your mother… ”
“Dad, it’s okay. We can talk about this later.”
“No,” he says. “I want to talk about it now, while we still have time.”
“Okay.”
“I loved your mother.”
“Of course.”
“It’s important for you to know that although she… she probably married me to secure a future for you,” he says, “that doesn’t mean you should think less of her.”
“She didn’t… ” I start, but he holds his hand up to stop me.
“She never did a single thing without thinking of you first.” He squeezes my hand tightly. “Your mother loved you very, very much, Tallulah. Don’t think that she didn’t love you more than anyone has ever loved anyone, because she did.”
“I know,” I say. “And I’m sorry I blamed you for her dying.” I clear my throat. “I saw Jack earlier. I know…” I try to figure out how to phrase it delicately. “Everything, I guess.”
“He told you about your mother?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he explain?”
“Grandad? Yeah. And he gave me some money – he said he got it from you.”
“Ah.” My father passes his free hand over his face. He’s silent for a moment. “I have to admit, I didn’t give him enough credit. I thought he just wanted to come between me and your mother, to punish us. But he said he still loved her. And you.”
“What happened at Grandma’s that time? Why were him and Mum fighting?”
“He’d threatened to tell you everything.”
“Oh.” And then what? Was she scared I’d think badly of her? Is that why she got depressed? Or did she still feel guilty for everything that happened?
“So we paid him to go away.” My father coughs again. “I thought he’d take the money and run.”
“He did.”
“But he came back again, after Evie died, with some idea about claiming his own back. He said he’d take me to court.” He frowns. “I know – legally speaking – he had no leg to stand on, but by then it was too important for you not to find out. You were so devastated about your mother, I was afraid.”
I have a sudden flashback to the telephone conversation I’d overheard that Christmas – so it was me Uncle Jack had tried to get back, not my mother.
“And you paid him off again?”
My father bites his lip. “I did. I’m sorry. I know it was wrong of me. Mother said I shouldn’t interfere with someone trying to right the wrongs they did their children. And she was… ” This time the coughing fit wipes out the end of the sentence.
“Take it easy, Dad.”
“I truly believed,” my father says, hand to his mouth, “he couldn’t give you a stable, loving home. And I managed to persuade him, finally.”
I lean back in my chair. “I always thought Mum was keeping a secret from you,” I say. “That that was why she was scared when he turned up.”
“She was nearly eight months pregnant when she moved in with me,” my father says. “It would have been quite hard to keep that a secret, believe me, even without my medical training.”
I can’t hold back my laugh, in spite of the situation.
He shakes his head. “Your mother did keep secrets,” he says, slowly. “But not very well. I could tell she still had feelings for Jack. And then he called that afternoon – he said she’d told him to. I didn’t know they were speaking behind my back. It made me realise that perhaps she still wanted to be with him. Confirmed my fears, I suppose I should say. But I should never have confronted her.” He stares at the ceiling.
“Hey,” I say. “You didn’t know what was going to happen.”
I’ve been blaming him for the wrong thing, I realise. It wasn’t his fault my mother died – he didn’t push her, he couldn’t have fixed her. It was his fault I felt abandoned afterwards, but then he was traumatised too.
“I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time to get to know Jack better now?”
“I don’t know.”
“I know we had a falling out,” he says, letting out a pent-up breath. “And you seem to have done a pretty good job of growing up without me – but I’d like to spend some father-daughter time together, if you’ll let me call it that. Getting to know each other again.”
I hesitate. I still have questions.
Then again – maybe she did still have feelings for Jack, after everything, but I think my mother loved my father too. He was the stable, caring one. He’s who she chose to raise her child with. That means something to me.
“What do you think?” my father asks; he looks anxious.
“I’d like that too,” I say.
“Good,” he says.
“But slowly.”
“I really am so sorry, Tallulah.”
“Dad,” I say. “Just concentrate on getting better. We can talk about everything else later, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Good.”
He smiles weakly, then puts a hand up to his face, and pats his right eye.
“Something wrong?”
“It’s twitching,” he says. “Just a little annoying.” He coughs again.
“Do you want some water?”
He nods.
Another nurse comes in. “I’m afraid visiting hours are over,” she says.
“Let me get him a drink,” I say. I pour him a cup, and stand next to him while he sips at it.
“I’ll come back tomorrow,” I say.
He looks up. “That would be nice.”
I bend down and kiss him on the forehead and he puts his hand up, catching my hair, tugging it.
“It took a heart attack to bring you back,” he says.
“No,” I say. “It wasn’t that.” I want to shake my head, but he seems to be using my hair as support.
“Good,” he says. “Because I don’t think I could survive another one.”
The nurse gives me a sympathetic smile as I leave the room.
“They’re all a bit groggy for a while after they wake up,” she whispers to me. “He’ll get better, don’t worry.”
“He’s fine already,” I say.
She gives me one of those pitying looks they keep for relatives in denial, and closes the door behind me. Outside my father’s room a cleaner is mopping the floor. My shoes squeak as I pick my way around the bucket, and everything smells waxy, fresh and new.
PART FIVE
Heart Again
Twenty one
Did you know the heart is the only organ not completely in thrall to the brain? Specialised pacemaker cells at the entrance to the right atrium are myogenic, meaning they will contract without an outside influence – such as the electrical impulse coming from the central nervous system. In fact your heart forms two weeks after fertilisation, and beats in the fifth week of the gestation period, before it is first fed by this impulse.
In other words, if you cut your heart out it could – in theory – continue beating.
When I was younger we went on a day trip to the museum. I don’t know which museum; it was dark and had waxwork figures re-enacting scenes from Anglo-Saxon life. Men carrying shields and spears, women stirring huge cauldrons. My mother held my hand around the exhibitions and let me have an ice-cream in the café afterwards.
I remember sitting in the museum grounds with my face turned up towards the sun, my mother and father opposite me. My father wasn’t wearing a tie that day, and he took his shoes and socks off to feel the grass with his bare feet. The two of them exchanged looks and laughed when I asked about the sandy hair growing on his toes. Years later, I realised that we must have looked like an odd little trio, the two full-bodied, blond parents with their skinny, dark-ha
ired daughter.
I remember it being a national holiday, or something like that, because the place was crowded with people. Some boys – they must have been teenagers, although at the time they seemed old to me, and I hid behind my mother’s legs when they came near – were kicking a football around, and my father kicked it back at them when it landed on our picnic blanket. He kicked it quite hard, and one of the boys, the closest one, clapped him and said something complimentary. My mother raised her eyebrows, “I didn’t know you played football,” she said, and my father laughed again.
We must have gone somewhere else, although I don’t remember that, because it was late when we came home, my mother carrying me in her arms. I fell asleep up there, my cheek nestled in the crook of her neck, my father walking next to her on the kerb side. Just before I dropped off I felt his hand reach up and ruffle my hair. I heard him murmur something, and a car whoosh past. Then my mother’s heartbeat pumping blood around her body, warm and safe and full of love for me.
Acknowledgements
There are countless people I would like to thank, but I should start with Ruth Salter and Jenny Slattery (two friends who happen to be great nurses). During my MA I practically lived at their flat and the week before I had to hand in my first piece of writing they were talking about the heart; this started me thinking about the metaphorical possibilities inherent in medicine, and the novel took off from there. I’m also eternally grateful for the existence of Wikipedia, and Orijit Banerji, another friend and a brilliant doctor, who kindly read through the medical sections for accuracy.
My agents, Natalie Butlin and Christine Green at Christine Green Authors’ Agent, have been wonderful, working tirelessly on the manuscript and still finding time to prepare delicious lunches for me. Also Claire Anderson-Wheeler, who gave me my first invaluable feedback on the novel before jetting off to New York. I will definitely be taking you up on your offer of a drink out there someday.
My editor, Lauren Parsons, and the rest of the brilliant staff at Legend Press. Having someone fall in love with your book and get behind it as they have done has been the most incredible feeling.
My tutors, Fiona Stafford, Annie Sutherland and Philip West at Somerville College, who were fascinating and encouraging and made Austen, Beowulf and Shakespeare even more enjoyable, if that’s possible.
I owe a huge debt to Susanna Jones at Royal Holloway, who always believed in this book, and Andrew Motion, who led me gently to the conclusion that I would make a terrible master criminal.
John Robertson and Charles Milnes, two of the nicest, most understanding bosses I could have hoped for.
For their patience and for all the drinks, the following writers: Emma Chapman; Liz Gifford; Carolina Gonzalez-Carvajal; Lucy Hounsom; Liza Klaussmann; and Rebecca Lloyd-James. No one makes gin more fun.
My amazing friends, whose excitement about my becoming an author has been so moving. My favourite family, Janet, Alex and Hannah Gordon; Tallie might be a lot like me, but they made sure our lives were completely different. And my favourite cats, Daisy, Lucky and Maggie.
And last but not least, my boyfriend Tom Feltham. You’re almost as brilliant a writer and editor as you are terrible at cleaning kitchen surfaces, and I love you very much.
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