by Tara Lyons
‘I wanted to tell you, Abi. Really, I did. But what would have been the point? You made it clear you were leaving for London.’
‘Because you made it clear you were staying with her.’ I choke out the words, hardly recognising my own voice.
‘Abi, she tried to commit suicide that night, you know that. We forced Sadie to do such a thing. She was willing to take her own life, and my child’s life, because of what we did to her. What we made her witness. What we–’
I hold up my hand to make him stop talking. I can’t look him in the face. Hot tears run down my cheeks. Not gushing like waves; they’re slow and burn like bubbling lava.
After I ran from their home that night, alone and scared, I begged Patrick to meet me the next morning. He had told me about Sadie, about what she had done to herself with the razor blades, and I felt guilt like never before. He said then, as he’s just said now, that it was what we had done. Even twenty odd years ago, I didn’t truly believe that. It was what I had done. I had seen Patrick and I had wanted him. I had followed and seduced and tempted a married man. I broke that woman. When it became all too clear that Patrick didn’t really want me, and that a woman’s life had been ruined because of it in the process, I made the decision to leave Scotland for good. He never admitted then that Sadie was pregnant, just as I failed to admit that I was too.
‘But… you always said that you didn’t want children. You didn’t want a family. You were too old to start a family. That’s what you said to me.’ The words roll off my tongue like a steam train, my voice sounding like that of a child’s.
Patrick reaches over the table and lightly touches my hand, obviously unsure if I’ll pull it away. I don’t. ‘I didn’t want a family, Abi. For Christ’s sake, I was thirty-six years old at that point. It was something I never wanted to start then.’
‘I remember.’
‘But what was I to do? I had to do the right thing. The right thing by Sadie. We’d already caused her so much pain. So much so that she was ready to kill our unborn child. I had to be there for her. And the baby. I had to be the husband and father she and my child needed.’
‘The right thing by Sadie?’ His words rattle inside my brain. ‘What about the right thing by me?’
He sighs and squeezes his fingers tighter around mine. ‘Oh, Abi, I cared for you, I did. And I think if Sadie never found out about us, we would have carried on for a long, long time. But it wouldn’t have been right–’
‘What about your baby?’ I interrupt, the volcano fully ready to erupt.
A proud smile oozes onto his face and I hate myself for feeling the way I do towards an innocent child. ‘Sadie accepted my apology, and my promise that it would never happen again, but she couldn’t stay in Scotland around my friends and family. Around the memories of what you and I had done in our home. Her condition was that we moved here to Brighton, where her mum and dad and brother live.’
Patrick had never told me that. I’d never known that my rival’s family lived just half an hour’s train journey away from me and mine. All that time.
‘Later that year,’ he continued, ‘just after we moved into our new home by the seafront, Sadie gave birth to–’
‘I didn’t mean that baby,’ I say through gritted teeth, fuming at the idyllic family life painting he’s parading in front of me.
His grip loosens slightly, though he doesn’t move his hand, and he frowns. That look in his brooding eyes… Now he feels it. It’s not so much what I’ve said, but the way in which I’ve said it. ‘W-what… what do you mean, Abi?’
‘I mean, later that same year, after I had to move back in with my parents, when I gave birth to a baby. Your baby.’
Patrick yanks his hand from mine, the overspill of the hot lava burning his skin as well as mine, and the red flush from the warm fire drains from his cheeks. His mouth opens and closes, and he says nothing. What can he say?
I understand the numb feeling that’s taking over his body because it’s taking over mine too. The lines etched on his forehead, the pool of tears in his eyes, the dryness of his mouth and the tremble of his whole body – it’s a mirror reflection of my own. Patrick must be crushed to discover he has another child. I’m crushed to discover Rose has been in the same vicinity as her father for almost a year.
The father I told her had died in the line of duty months before she was born.
Chapter 13
I don’t know why it was that particular story I chose to use as a lie. It wasn’t something planned out to the very last detail, and I didn’t exactly know where it would go; it really did snowball out of control.
Rose was coming up to her fourth birthday when I decided, when I knew what needed to be done. She was in a part-time private nursery, between our home and my parent’s house, and I was in my element – finally a fully fledged paramedic. After leaving Scotland, deciding that I was in fact keeping the baby growing inside of me, and giving birth to Rose later that year, I then had to complete a three-week induction into the London Ambulance Service with a clinical tutor.
It felt so good to not have wasted my degree. My parents were supportive of all my decisions and doted on Rose, of course. Only Mum knew the truth about Patrick – about the married man I’d had an affair with – and Dad didn’t ask many questions. They rarely do, do they, dads? They’re happy with minimal information, rarely prodding and poking for the finer details, unlike some mothers who need chapter and verse, from what you ate to what time you got home. Which is exactly what my mother needed. The woman who could spot a half story from a mile away and demanded to know the full truth before she could even begin to play along. That’s where me and my mum are identical in our parenting ways. Maybe it comes with only having one child – the need to know absolutely everything about them.
My mind briefly conjures the memory of the voicemail Rose left me during the terrorist attack, and the name Dylan circles round and round in my head. I think of all the friend’s numbers that I have… not a single one. I’m overcome with a feeling of hate towards myself, no one else. Here I am, thinking I’m so like my mother, with our shared desire to know everything about our daughters and yet, when I’m being tested, I find myself not knowing the exact things I need to bloody know.
I try to shake off the frustration that’s building strength in my neck and travelling north to my temples. I picture my father again; a man who was just happy to have his only daughter home once more. Rose was a delightful bonus to him. He was so proud of me, working hard and putting into practice in London what I’d learnt in Scotland – I was proud too. It felt good. London was my home, and I couldn’t remember why I had craved so intensely to leave it, or why Scotland had appealed to me so much. But then, isn’t that always the way when a chapter in our lives ends tragically? It’s impossible to look back on it with any comfort or fondness.
Anyway, niggles of questions had started with Rose: she wanted to know what a daddy was, and why her friend Natalie lived with a man and a woman, yet she only lived with me. I had danced around it for long enough; those questions were only going to intensify, and they did. Father’s Day arrived and Rose’s nursery used this occasion to make cards and finger paintings and superhero drawings, and all of that other crap that makes children focus on their daddies.
Oh God, I know I shouldn’t think that way. It wasn’t the damn nursery’s fault.
Nonetheless, Rose didn’t really know what it all meant, so she made a lovely card for her granddaddy – wise beyond her years, that girl, I’ll tell you, but sadly some kids aren’t, and those monsters are the ones who become high school bullies. Rose came home and cried. The kids had told her she had to make a card for her daddy, not her granddad because that wasn’t the same. Her little face was red and blotchy, and the snot trickled down to her small lips uncontrollably. To a four-year-old, being different can be hard.
‘Why, Mum? Why? Why don’t I have a dad? All the kiddies at school have dads and I don’t. Why, Mum? Why?’ Rose’s small voi
ce choked as she questioned me over and over again. She breathed in deeply, her pebble-brown eyes masked by tears, and she looked up at me, waiting. Waiting for an answer. Waiting for an explanation. Waiting for a reason.
As the parent, it’s your job to have all the answers.
It was in that moment I knew I couldn’t do this for the rest of our lives. Yes, the older she got, the more Rose would understand. The older she got, the more kids and teenagers and friends there would be who had no dad, or no mum, or two dads, or two mums, or step-parents, or extended families – especially living in such a diverse city as London. But all I could see, right there in that instance, was my daughter’s crumpled face desperate to understand why she was… different. And so, I did what any parent would do. I scooped her up in my arms and I made everything better for her.
I told Rose about a man – a hero – who died before she was born. I told her about a firefighter who I met in Scotland and loved dearly, who saved people’s lives on a daily basis and taught many students how to do the same. I told my daughter she didn’t have a daddy because he had died rescuing someone else.
It didn’t sound too dishonest when I first uttered those words, the words that calmed and soothed her and allowed her to understand why everyone’s families are not the same. Patrick was a paramedic who I met in Scotland and loved dearly. Patrick saved lives and taught many students how to do the same. Patrick died to me when he chose to save his marriage and stay with his wife. It wasn’t the worst lie in the world.
That’s what got me through it.
As Rose got older she would occasionally ask a few questions, mainly on holidays like the dreaded Father’s Day, or sometimes even on her own birthday. From an early stage I made it quite clear it was something that hurt me to talk about. She could obviously see the pain in my eyes because she never pushed me too far. Over the years I added on a bit more information to keep her at bay from ever digging too deep: I didn’t know her father’s family because he was quite a bit older than me; he was cremated so there was no grave to visit; returning to Scotland would be too painful for me and was something I never wanted to do.
I don’t know why – and I never wanted to ask – but from about the age of fifteen, Rose seemed to accept everything I had said. She stopped asking about her father, but every Father’s Day, she would give me a bunch of flowers to say thank you for playing both roles in her life, and she would ask if there was anything I wanted to do or talk about. The answer was always no. I didn’t want to rock the boat. Her annual gesture made my heart both swell with love and pride and break with guilt and shame.
I raised an amazing daughter – an amazing woman – but it all started with a lie. A lie that has gone on for so long, the truth can never be told because I know that if I do, I will lose my daughter forever.
Chapter 14
Patrick’s looking at me with those same sad eyes, demanding answers and explanations, and I’m positive that I can see a glimmer of moisture in them. Patrick isn’t a crier – at least he wasn’t when I knew him – and I can’t help feeling that shame all over again.
I want to get up and run; this small, shabby place has become a claustrophobic dome, the fire having sucked the life out of it, and all I can feel is the heat on my skin. It’s burning my neck and my eyeballs and singeing every hair on my head.
‘Abi!’
His voice drags me from the pit of flames, supports me like a water buoy, and I rapidly suck in a lungful of air in fear of the fire snatching it away from me again. But it doesn’t. I’m okay, I can breathe, and my body hasn’t combusted in a rage of fire.
‘How… how did I not know about this?’ Patrick says, the quiver of his lips and chin unmissable.
I half-laugh, half-sigh at his look of misery. ‘Like I knew about all the things you’ve just told me, Patrick. Are you being serious?’
He slowly exhales and rubs both hands over his face. Perhaps he’s hoping for some magic trick, that I’ll have disappeared by the time he’s finished. It’s debatable. I don’t need his pain on my conscience too.
Wait a minute. He’s the bloody reason I lied to Rose in the first place.
I feel the irritation prickling at me. ‘You know, Patrick, if you were honest with me twenty years ago… if you had told me about Sadie and the little family that you had decided on starting, and the fact you left Scotland to live in Brighton–’
‘Hang on,’ he interrupts. ‘Why are you in Brighton?’
Now it’s my turn to pray for a magic trick. But what’s the use? It won’t help me. ‘Rose… our daughter… attends Brighton University. She’s almost finished her first year.’
Patrick steeples his hands in front of his face, as if he’s praying. I know no amount of praying or magic can help us now. Any colour left in his face drains away. He’s grey. As grey as that thunderous sky outside. He runs his hands over his forehead, then his fingers glide through his neat hair – I notice a soft tug to the strands as he does so – and he stares down at the table.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ I say, trying to break the suffocating silence between us, although I have no fucking clue what he’s thinking. I don’t even know what I’m thinking. ‘You could have bumped into her or you could have passed each other on the street, on the beach, anywhere. You have to understand – how could I have ever known you were here?’
In that moment, it occurs to me that I have no idea what Patrick does for work here. I would say his time on the ambulances is far behind him…
‘Oh my God, Patrick, do you work at the university?’
He lifts his head, but it remains firmly in his hands, as if he doesn’t have the strength to hold it up; but he does manage to bob it up and down. Slowly. He huffs. ‘Yes, Abi, I work there. In the science department. The university has different campuses spread across Brighton. What does she… our… Rose, did you say? That’s a nice name. What does Rose study?’
‘English Literature.’ The words come out as a whisper.
Patrick breathes differently this time. It’s not a huff or a puff, but a release of some kind. I can tell the difference just as I see a smile tug on his lips. ‘That’s studied on a different campus to mine,’ he says. ‘Okay, it’s not a million miles away, but as a part-time Paramedic Science tutor, I’ve never had the need to venture there. Hopefully your daughter has had no need to come across to mine.’
Goosebumps bristle my skin at the way he says ‘your daughter’, but what do I expect? He’s just found out about Rose; there’s hardly going to be any admiration in his tone.
‘Yes, hopefully not,’ I concur, and have no more words.
The dryness of my mouth reaches my throat and I feel like I’ve taken part in one of those dry cracker eating competitions. Where do we go from here? What do I do? I can’t tell Rose the truth after all these years.
‘Actually, I haven’t been able to get in touch with Rose.’ I drain my wine glass, allowing the scarlet liquid to warm my throat and bring some normality to my mouth. ‘It’s the reason I’m here at all. She hasn’t answered her phone to me for a couple of days.’ I try to downplay it, outwardly seem cool and at ease, when in truth, I feel like I’m drowning without even the hope of a paddle to save me.
‘You travelled to your daughter’s uni because she hadn’t answered the phone?’ Patrick says and laughs. ‘Imagine your mother doing that when you were in Scotland. Jesus, Abi, you would have gone ballistic.’
I hate him; no, I hate his words. But is that because he has a point?
‘She’s a grown woman. A student. What are you expecting, daily updates on her activities?’ he continues, a patronising smirk on his lips and deep furrows in his brow.
He thinks I’m overreacting, just as Dave and Adele did. What’s wrong with these people? Or is it that there’s something wrong with me?
‘Well…’ I hesitate. ‘It’s just, I mean, Rose and I are very close, and we speak regularly. To not hear from her is strange. For crying out loud, why is that so
difficult for everyone to understand?’ The frustration is tiptoeing on anger.
Patrick raises a hand and removes the smirk. At least that’s something. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. Of course, it’s natural to worry when your kid leaves home and gets a life for themselves, especially when you were the biggest part of their lives. Take it from someone who knows. Not only am I a parent who lost their kid to university, but I see it every year when freshers hit the halls. They grow up, Abi. They do their own thing.’
He’s right. They’re all right. But I can’t shake the worry that has taken root in the pit of my stomach, pushing aside logic and reason. It’s bad enough trying to ignore Patrick’s continual use of ‘my kid’ and ‘your kid’ – another kick to my already vulnerable gut.
‘She hasn’t even been on social media for two days. And there was a terrorist attack in London on Friday, in case you don’t get the news down here by the sunshiny seaside…’ Now I sound like the child – not even because it’s far from sunny here today – so I pause to take a deep breath. ‘She would have been worried about me and wanted to check in.’
God, I sound desperate. I must look it too because Patrick takes my hand in his again. The warmth of his skin brings those goosebumps back for all the wrong reasons.
‘Abi, listen to me.’ Oh God, the way my name rolls off his Scottish tongue. ‘I know you’re worried, and I didn’t mean to make you feel like your thoughts or feelings don’t matter. Rose is just doing what any twenty-year-old does during their first year at university. She’s enjoying herself, probably doing things she’s never done before and meeting people that are blowing her mind. Just like you did in Scotland. Don’t deny her that by storming down here and making her feel guilty for not checking in on you.’
I actually never thought of it like that. Looking back, she had tried to check on me that afternoon during the attack. It was me who didn’t get back to her. I nod, concluding he’s right. I pull my hand away from his; the power he holds over me is infuriating.