by Neha Yazmin
Chapter 7: Coming home
Well, that’s what usually happens…
Something different is happening today.
Just as I leave the platforms to make my way to David Ryan’s home, my senses tell me he’s stopped walking just a few yards past the station. I walk a little faster than my usual deliberate slow walk to see what’s happened.
He’s looking at the screen of his phone, perplexed. He usually checks his phone after leaving the station, when the signal’s available again, but he rarely calls anyone as he walks home.
Which is what he’s doing now.
“James, what’s happened?” David asks into his cell phone after a few seconds of holding it to his ear in edgy silence.
I lean against a tree on the sidewalk opposite the spot where he’s stopped to make the call, my back to him. I can hear him as though he’s standing right next to me. Every breath, every clearing of the throat, every sound he makes, creates a picture of him and his movements in my head. So I can see him too, even with my back turned.
“You finally got my text then?” a man’s voice says through the line. James. Yes, I can hear him as well as my father’s voice. If I was interested in James, I’d track all the sounds emanating from him through the phone connection and conjure up a visual of him in my head too.
But I choose to focus all my concentration on David.
“Yes, I got your message and I’m on my way home. But why are you texting to tell me to come home ASAP? You know I’ll be home soon.” David sounds a little irritable and at the same time slightly worried. “Is it Ronnie?” he asks panicked, and starts walking again. I decide to get to the house as quickly as I can. I monitor their conversation as I launch into a brisk walk. Well, brisk for me, probably power-walking for humans.
“No, it’s Carol–”
Some of the panic in my dad’s voice ebbs away as he realises his daughter’s fine. “Is Carol hurt?”
“Not physically…”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you nearly home?” James asks apprehensively.
“Nearly, why?”
“I guess you’ll see for yourself.”
The line goes dead.
How odd. James, my dad’s neighbour from the house opposite his, is usually home. A freelance photographer, he’s frequently in his dark room, developing his clicks. Some of his work is rather good actually, I can see through his windows. He has them up all over the house. He’s home and knows something’s going on at David’s house but won’t tell him because…
Because David’s going to see for himself.
See for himself that his wife has littered the area outside their house with all his belongings. Some are overflowing from untied black bin-bags, a few cardboard boxes with trophies and other solid objects are scattered about the front yard, but most of it is just lying on the pavement.
Passers-by are treading around the many white and light blue shirts, shiny black shoes and trainers, towels of various sizes. A few people are crossing the street to avoid the vicinity altogether. I can see a small group of schoolchildren have created a loose circle around the house and the mess outside it.
Unable to help myself, I join the crowd of kids, pulling the hood of my grey fleece further forward to hide my face. This is just to stay anonymous – its winter and the sun’s on a vacation so I don’t need to worry about sparkling.
As I wait for David to turn into his street and find his whole life’s on the pavement, I don’t want to second-guess what’s going on here. There are no conversations in David’s house to alert me about why Carol’s thrown her husband’s things out the door. It also seems that the neighbours have already discussed the probable cause of this episode and are just waiting to see how things play out when David arrives.
“What the–” he says as he finally approaches his doorstep. He throws a quick glance at the kids and the taller, awkward hooded figure standing amongst them before running to his door. It’s open so he puts his keys back in his pocket and walks in, calling out his wife’s name.
I’m pretty sure that I’m the only one who hears what unfolds behind closed doors – David and Carol keep their voices down – but everyone in the street seems to have a pretty good idea too.
Neighbours start murmuring to each other about how it was only a matter of time. A few people express pity for Carol and Ronnie, but everyone else seems to be enjoying the drama. Even James, the neighbour David is closest to, agrees with his partner Amanda that my father had it coming.
I’m in total shock.
I thought I knew him, knew him better than anyone else, better than the man who brought me up.
I had no idea!
Six months I’ve been watching him. Six months. And I didn’t have a clue who he really was.
I came down to London because my mother told me that’s where he lives. It hadn’t been at all tricky pinpointing his whereabouts and it felt wonderful finding him, getting to know him through his daily routine, his interactions with his family.
I was even beginning to contemplate the idea of approaching him one day. Just to talk. I wouldn’t tell him that I was the unborn daughter he’d left behind. Or that I was a vampire now. Definitely not that part. But I longed to have at least one conversation with him. I’d been trying to pluck up the courage to go up to him for some time.
Now I never will.
I’ve lost all desire to see him anymore. Lost all my respect for him. Yes, I respected him, despite what he’d done to me and my mother all those years ago. He was young, I reasoned. I can’t judge him for what he did in his youth, before he had a chance to grow up and find the person he was meant to be. He was a different man now. A good man. A good father. A good husband.
He is none of those things.
“You are going to leave this house, now,” Carol is saying firmly. I can hear the quakes in her voice though, the tremble of her lips as she speaks, trying to be brave and unwavering. Trying to keep from crying. “Now David,” she insists, “before my sister returns with Ronnie. You’re going to pack your things from outside and get out of my sight before my daughter comes home. I will not let her see me, or the front yard like this.”
“This is my house Carol, and there’s no way I’m leaving it without seeing my daughter.”
“You should have thought about that before you started screwing your secretary!” his wife retorts. “And how dare you stand there calling this your house, you have such a nerve!” I totally agree with her. He should be begging his wife for forgiveness rather than claiming what is his. “Just get out. Get out!” I can hear her sob now; she’s really upset. The screeching of a wooden stool tells me she just sat down on it, her knees going weak.
“Carol please,” he pleads in her moment of weakness. Quick footsteps approach the breakfast bar where his wife is. The clattering of cutlery tells me David is leaning on the counter, his hands brushing the metal objects strewn across it. “I swear she means nothing to me, Carol. Nothing. We can work it out. I won’t do it again, I promise.”
“You’ve said that before you liar!” she shouts. This time, her scream travels to the ears of the children outside. They start sniggering, particularly the girls. I imagine the boys are rooting for David to get himself out of this mess. One he’s obviously been in before.
A serial adulterer – how had I not seen this? Mind you, if you’re only watching someone get on and off the tube to work, and forcing yourself to stay away the rest of the day, you wouldn’t really discover that they were having an affair. And I wasn’t looking for the signs anyway. I just watched him for the sake of watching the father I never had and never would.
“I mean it this time, honey,” David says softly. He’s reaching for her hand but the sharp scratch of wood against travertine means Carol has jumped off her seat and won’t let him touch her. “I won’t do–”
“Yes you will, David. That’s what you do. This is the third family you’ve broken up. Ronnie
will be the third child you never see again.” Fourth, I thought when she said third child. Ronnie will be the fourth child he’ll never see again.
The fourth child who’ll never see him again.
My mother was right about him. He’s not worth it. Whether or not she convinced him to stay with her all those years back. Whether she told me the truth long ago. Whether or not I tracked him down while I was still human. Every scenario would have ended in the same way. David would have always left her, left me. That’s what he does.
He leaves people.
I realise that the main reason I was angry with mum was not because she chose to lie about my biological father, but what I thought was her motivation behind her actions. I wanted a father who loved me, not the one who couldn’t bear to look at me most of the time, and she owed it to me to tell me I had another shot at a successful father-daughter relationship.
But she hadn’t.
And I thought it was to control me. She didn’t want to see David again, she didn’t want me to see him again, and so it wasn’t going to happen.
It’s clear now that mum was only protecting me from David Ryan, and from everything that could lead me to this sort of pain. The hurt I feel right now, the distress that Ronnie will feel later this evening when she comes home from her aunt’s and discovers her father has left.
The pain of being left behind. Cheated. Betrayed. Deserted.
Whether or not he loved me, thought of me as his own, my adopted father Jake did take care of me and provide for me. He didn’t leave us. He stuck by us.
As I turn to leave the scene, the house that David has exited to gather up his things, I feel something heavy slipping off me and falling to the pavement. A burden. The burden of anger.
I’m not angry at mum anymore. I understand her better now than I ever did as a human. I see her point of view. Yes, I’ll never agree that she had a right to be so overbearingly overprotective and possessive of me, but I get why she felt like she had to do that.
Perhaps if she hadn’t always had her eyes on me, Christian or some other vampire would have found me much earlier. Earlier? Yes. Strange I know, but it feels like I was going to be a vampire all along, but my mother delayed the moment for as long as she could.
What a weird thought. Me, destined to be a vampire!
I said many things to my mother the night I left, and one of the things was that I would never forgive her. Well, I didn’t know as much as I do now, know me as well as I do now, and so it seems I’d been wrong about that. I guess I do forgive her, forgive her for almost everything.
The other thing I said was that I was never coming back, and it seemed I was going to be right about that. What with me becoming a vampire and all that.
But now… I don’t know… It feels like I have to see her one last time. See her with understanding and forgiveness in my eyes rather than fury and betrayal. She can’t see me though. I can’t go up to her and tell her we’re cool now, but it won’t be closure if I don’t see her.
So I’ll return to Reading for a final farewell.
What an unexpected stab of fear and anxiety the thought brings with it.
Coming home.