‘I’m picky,’ she said, not willing to admit that it was the miserable shyness that got in the way. ‘There isn’t a single boy at school that I fancy.’
‘Oh no, they’re hopeless. That’s why you need an older boy.’
After a moment they both smiled. Their spats never lasted long and were quickly forgotten just like an old married couple. ‘But you’ll have to watch it,’ Francesca went on. ‘He’s older than you so …’
‘I know. I know.’ Izzy blushed at that, cheeks flooding with colour. She might be the cleverest, but she was not the prettiest girl in the class. What she did have though was impressive breasts for her age and a very impish look and a raucous laugh that appealed to the boys. ‘That won’t happen. I have that all sussed out. I’ve had a talk with my mum.’
‘Have you? Gosh, we don’t talk about things like that.’
‘She says if I have any sense I’ll wait until I’m at least eighteen before I get serious. She was pregnant herself at seventeen and she doesn’t want that to happen to me although things have worked out for her, haven’t they? They are still soppy about each other. I wouldn’t be surprised if she has another baby. She’s only really happy when there’s a baby round the house.’
Francesca raised herself up to check on James who, having scoffed his sweets, was looking after himself digging about in the sandy grit by the water’s edge moving pebbles around with a stick, chattering away to himself. Satisfied he was OK, she lay down again. She knew that, because of the age difference, she would never enjoy the kind of relationship Izzy had with her brothers. The truth was, although she loved James, she could not rid herself of the feeling that he was to blame for her dad leaving home. It was never explained to her, not properly, and because she was only ten she might not have understood in any case. It hurt though, and it still hurt that he had just upped and left and never made any attempt to make contact afterwards. It hadn’t been her fault whatever it was and it wasn’t fair that he should shut her out of his life so completely. That was men, her mother had explained, they couldn’t be trusted, not one of them.
‘Frankie …’ she heard her brother’s voice calling, but merely raised an arm in acknowledgement. How many times had she told him not to call her that? She hated it for it was her father’s pet name for her and she had no idea where James had picked it up because he had never known him.
‘Frankie,’ Izzy repeated with a laugh. ‘I think I’ll start calling you that. Francesca’s such a mouthful.’
‘Thanks a lot. I like it.’
‘Stop calling me Izzy then. You can call me Isabel instead.’
‘Izzy’s OK. You look like an Izzy.’
Izzy frowned. ‘I suppose you think your name sounds sophisticated? Aren’t names difficult? Hardly anybody I know likes their own name, but then you don’t get a say in it, do you? I have a list of my favourites for my own kids.’
‘I’m never going to have kids.’
‘Where did that come from?’
‘I’ve just been thinking, that’s all. I don’t want kids. Not ever.’
‘You’ll change your mind.’
‘No, I will not,’ Francesca said, shaking her head. ‘You forget, Izzy, I was ten when James was born and Mum had a terrible time. She started off at home and you should have heard the screaming before she was carted off. I’m not kidding, we nearly lost both of them. It was touch and go.’
Izzy laughed. ‘Oh come on, it’s the twentieth century. Women don’t die in childbirth these days.’
‘Mum nearly did and she was ill for months after. There’s no way I’m putting myself through that.’ She sighed, remembering how she had practically brought up James on her own with her mum being so out of it. She would spend most of the day in bed and expected Francesca to look after the baby when she got home from school. With her dad gone, what they had done for money during those long months – the first few months of James’s life – she had no idea, but they managed, just about, and then, when her mum had recovered a little, she started making the pots again. She thought some money came her mother’s way from her father, but her mother clammed up whenever money was mentioned, always maintaining that they had enough to get by on and she wasn’t to worry.
‘I’m having four babies, two of each,’ Izzy said, a dreamy look on her face. ‘I might even marry Martin if he asks me.’
‘A car mechanic?’
‘Why not? You’re such a snob. What’s wrong with that? He could have his own garage one day.’
‘I suppose so,’ Francesca said doubtfully. Martin was gritty and good-looking yes but he didn’t look very bright although she was not about to tell Izzy that, not when she was obviously half in love with him already.
‘I read somewhere that you should get married young and have your kids young so that you can be rid of them by the time you’re forty. Then you can do all the things you’ve always wanted to do.’
They laughed at that, stubbing out their cigarettes in unison and glancing up at the wide blue sky. With the temperature soaring, Izzy started to unbutton her denim shirt, pausing as she caught Francesca’s expression.
‘It’s OK to bathe topless,’ she said. ‘There’s nobody around.’
‘There’s James,’ Francesca said giving her a warning look. ‘You shouldn’t. Not in front of him.’
‘Come off it, he’s only a child. You’re such a prude.’
Francesca flushed, opening her mouth to protest then deciding not to bother. She had made her point though and, although she looked irritated, Izzy fastened up the buttons again and they settled down, arranging themselves on the dry rough grass, closing their eyes and relishing the sun on their faces.
‘It smells like summer,’ Francesca said, voice gentle and happy.
‘That’s because it is summer. Sometimes, Francesca, you do talk a lot of crap.’
Neither of them noticed that James had, in the meantime, abandoned his game with the pebbles and stick and had climbed onto the stone parapet of the bridge, the little stone bridge that spanned this stretch of the river and was even now poised like the tightrope walker he had recently seen on television. Arms stretched wide with a big grin on his face, he edged forward towards the centre oblivious to the fact that, if he fell in, he’d only just achieved confident swimming with the aid of armbands.
Below the bridge, the river at that point shelved steeply and was dark and deep, an inky blackness they had often peered into, trying in vain to gauge the depth, the bottom indistinct, but full of tangled weeds.
In Gareth’s caravan, resurfacing from the memory, she let out a little gasp of horror and shuddered.
‘Are you all right?’
She nodded gathering herself together.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she repeated. ‘You have nothing to reproach yourself for. I don’t know why you think you should tell me because I can’t help, Gareth. I wish I could.’
‘I know you can’t. It’s something I’ve got to live with for the rest of my life. For some reason, it’s been on my mind all week. I never talk about it, but I wanted to tell you, Francesca. It put pay to a relationship I had because she couldn’t understand why I was letting it get to me. Like you, she kept on saying it was an accident.’
‘It was for heavens sake. It could happen to any driver.’
‘I don’t want it to spoil things for us.’
Oh dear, that sounded a little too earnest for her to take in and for a moment, she felt like telling him her story, but the feeling passed for there had been enough confessions for one day. The stupid girl, a new driver going too fast without a seatbelt – well, honestly, sad as it was, she did have it coming.
She escaped the caravan soon after that, declining his invitation to stay. If she stayed for supper it would drag over and the sleeping arrangements in the caravan were a bit too cosy for her liking. In any case he had become morose and she couldn’t cope with that. It wasn’t fair of him to expect her to. She needed time on her own and the drive bac
k gave her that time. It was disconcerting that Gareth seemed to be relying on her more and more, determined it seemed to take the relationship a step further. It was alarming and astonishing that her body was behaving so treacherously, so soon after David had died, and she wondered what he would say. She worried that she might have ended up in Gareth’s bed tonight doing a little consoling and she did not want to have to face the consequences of that in the morning. Good heavens, they were both a mess with enough emotional baggage to fill a carousel at the airport.
There was one important difference.
His guilt was entirely self-inflicted.
Chapter Fourteen
THE VOICE ON the phone was that of a stranger, a woman’s voice, pleasant sounding with a northern accent and as soon as she asked if she was speaking to Francesca Porter, Francesca was immediately suspicious of a cold caller. Coming as it did when she was just about to start eating, albeit a salad, she mentally prepared herself for a polite, but firm response.
‘I’m not selling anything,’ she said quickly before Francesca could end the call. ‘And I’m sorry to call you out of the blue, but we’ve been trying to contact you for some time.’ Her laugh was a little forced. ‘May I introduce myself? I’m Miss Hannah Williams. I am a senior community liaison officer and I work for a local government agency here in Yorkshire. I can give you a telephone number if you wish to ring it to check my credentials and call me back.’
‘You’ve got it wrong, Miss Williams. We’re not moving to Yorkshire any more,’ Francesca told her wondering quite why social services should feel the need to be in contact. ‘We were in the process of buying a house,’ she went on, aware she was in danger of unnecessary explanation. ‘But we backed out because my husband died recently.’
‘I’m so sorry for your loss,’ she said briskly. ‘But my call has nothing to do with that. It’s your father, Mrs Porter. He requested that we try to locate you.’
‘You’re not a private detective?’
‘Goodness no, although sometimes we have to act like one. Your father is in a nursing home and he’s very ill. Let me reassure you that he’s being very well cared for. It’s a beautiful place outside town with lovely views and an excellent reputation. I visited him recently and he is perfectly happy there.’
‘My father?’ What Miss Williams was actually saying finally pierced through her muddled mind and she fiddled with the phone cord, missing what the lady was saying next and having to ask her to repeat it. Time, it appeared, was of the essence if she wanted to see her father again.
‘Hang on a minute,’ she interrupted the lady in full explanatory flow. ‘You can’t just spring this on me. Are you aware of our circumstances?’
‘Yes. He has confided in me. I know there has been an estrangement.’
‘Well then, you will know that I haven’t seen him since I was ten years old. He left us and never came back,’ she said, voice rising. ‘He just cut me off completely. I haven’t had a birthday card or a Christmas card from him. He never came to my graduation or my marriage …’ she ignored the fact that nobody came to that. ‘And now you expect me to come up there to hold his hand just because he happens to be dying. I must say he has an almighty nerve.’
‘You are angry, Mrs Porter.’
‘Damned right I am.’ She felt her heart pound, ridiculously annoyed by the sound of this woman’s patiently professional voice. How dare she interfere in people’s private lives? She had absolutely no business to be doing so.
‘Mrs Porter, if you will allow me to continue a moment? This predicament is not as unusual as you might think. It happens all the time. People, family, lose touch for various reasons over the years. Often people in your father’s situation feel an overwhelming desire to set things right at the end of their lives before it is too late.’ Miss Williams’ voice was gentle, but powerfully persuasive. Francesca had a vision of a plump friendly face, mid-fifties she thought, soberly dressed and not married, although it could be that she simply used her maiden name at work. Perhaps she was a mother herself, her children grown up by now. She could hear the voice, the pleasant soothing voice, but she was no longer listening.
‘Mrs Porter? Are you still there?’ the prompt was soft.
‘I’m sorry. What were you saying?’
‘I was just trying to explain your father’s motives. Believe me, in all my experience of this sort of thing it’s almost always for the best that you make the effort to see him.’
‘Best for whom? For him or me?’
‘Both of you.’
‘How did you find me?’
‘Does it matter? He’s kept some sort of track of you over the years so we knew you were working in London and although you’re no longer doing that we were able to ascertain your change of name and, via one of your colleagues, your new address.’
‘Really?’ she was astounded that somehow or other she was still on the radar. For heavens sake couldn’t you just choose to disappear in this country? Did you have to be up there on the system so that any old Tom, Dick or Harry or in this case a long lost father could find you? But then she remembered she had informed the office of her new address in case they needed to contact her about any of her previous accounts. However she was a little put out that they had divulged the information to a third party.
Obviously it was too late now.
‘Your particulars will be deleted from our database if you wish them to be,’ Ms Williams went on, seeming to read her mind. ‘So you need not fear that. We are under an obligation to tell your father that we’ve located you, but we’ve also had to tell him that he mustn’t expect too much either. You are quite at liberty to refuse to see him.’
‘Good. Then I refuse.’
‘I understand perfectly and I can’t force you of course. It’s entirely up to you, but I would urge you to think very carefully before you say no. Please give it some consideration. Can I at least give you the details of where he is and a phone number should you change your mind?’
Reluctantly, she took down the details, reiterating belligerently that this didn’t mean she was coming up. She would have to think about it.
Replacing the receiver, she looked into the mirror and gave a loud Selina-type curse. After all this time, he thought he could still get round her. After all this time, he expected her to drop everything and rush to his dying bedside.
It took all of five minutes, five seconds even, to make the decision. Rushing upstairs, she quickly packed a bag.
By coincidence, the nursing home was a stone’s throw from the house she and David very nearly bought and it took some careful map-reading to avoid driving through the very village. Remembering the time they had visited it, full of excitement, she could not bear to see it again, very likely with the For Sale board resurrected by the wall. Who else would have the nerve to buy what had been a once beautiful but was now sadly dilapidated house? Not many people possessed David’s obsession with moving up here at any cost. He was totally unfazed by the thought of extensive and expensive refurbishment, although he would not of course have done any of it himself.
That particular house, on paper anyway, was his idea of perfection or would be when they had paid a fortune out to builders and decorators, whereas for Francesca the very word ‘potential’ made her heart sink. Potential to her meant living on a building-site and picnicking in one room for months.
‘Leave the talking to me,’ David had said on the way over. ‘We mustn’t seem too keen even if we are.’
‘I do know that,’ she teased him, laughing at his uncharacteristic anxiety. She had decided for the sake of harmony to compromise on the location and David had made a big song and dance about compromising on its central-village position when he would have preferred something more remote. ‘I work in advertising,’ she reminded him. ‘And although you always know straight off what the client is thinking when you come up with a proposal you don’t always want to show that you know. You have to develop a poker face.’
�
��You used to work in advertising, darling,’ he said, stopping the car in the lane outside to check his watch. It was just off the main street if you could call it that, but it was a happy walking distance from all that the village could offer. It wasn’t much. There was a pub and a quaint looking church with steeple. Also surprisingly there was a thriving village shop. A small junior school for the children they would never have. Their appointment to view was for two-thirty and it was now two-forty. ‘Let’s go,’ David went on, climbing out and rushing round to open the passenger door. ‘They’ve had time to sweat.’
‘David, you are evil.’
She wished these little memories would stop intruding into her mind, particularly just now when she was about to visit her father. She was dreading it and had told nobody, just leaving a message with the chap who did the Lilac House garden that she would be away up north for a couple of days.
Heading indoors she wondered if he would recognize her. Well, obviously not although even after thirty two years she knew she would recognise him.
She signed her name in a book in the hall and a nurse, fully kitted out in a proper uniform, took her into a side room to have a word. If she was in any way surprised at Francesca’s sudden appearance she did not show it.
‘How lovely to see you,’ she said quietly and without condemnation. ‘Please don’t worry. Your father is dying, but he looks all right. Have you met death before?’
Met death?
‘My husband died in his armchair,’ she said, feeling the tears welling up. ‘I was clattering about in the kitchen and I didn’t hear a thing. I don’t know if he cried out for me,’ she went on, feeling foolishly she had to explain. ‘By the time I went back into the room, he was gone. He was just sitting there and he looked very peaceful. Do you think he cried out for me? It was a heart attack.’
Just Another Day Page 12