Our Little Cruelties

by Liz Nugent

  Sweat broke out on her forehead.

  ‘Because he’s her father.’

  At first, I thought the menopause was making her delusional, but she burst into tears and the truth came flooding out. She and Brian, creeping around behind my back.

  ‘It was just one night,’ she said, ‘at Luke’s gig, before we were married.’

  ‘Well, obviously before we were married,’ I snapped. ‘I wouldn’t have married you if you hadn’t been pregnant.’ This was a lie.

  ‘Oh, because you’re so honourable?’

  She said that she and Brian had some kind of druggy one-night fling.

  ‘Brian doesn’t even do drugs!’

  ‘He did that night. I swear, you can ask him.’

  Susan said she never knew who Daisy’s father was until recently, but she chose me.

  ‘Brian and I … we started to have a proper relationship a few years ago –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He was always mad about me. He always felt that if he’d asked me out first, I would have married him. I know, it’s deluded, but it all went sour after the time when he called here that morning and found you making breakfast in my dressing gown. He was so furious we were still sleeping together –’

  ‘But that was, what, two years ago –?

  ‘I know, but I think that’s when he decided to get the DNA test.’

  Susan took down a copy of a DIY manual from the kitchen dresser. From between two pages she revealed a copy of the DNA test that proved Brian was Daisy’s father. Susan had made him swear never to tell Daisy.

  ‘And me?’ I said. ‘Did you form some pact not to tell me?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, tears rolling down her cheeks.

  I had to get out of there. I tried to be rational about it. I had not always been faithful to my wife. I accept that. But she had cheated on me with my own brother before we married. And yet it was my infidelity that broke up our marriage? She had made me believe that Daisy was my own child, and Brian had played along. How was I going to face Daisy? How did I feel about her now? I knew how I felt about Brian. I wanted to kill him. The deceit, the betrayal. My daughter, who was not my daughter.

  I left Susan’s house in a state of total distraction. Part of me wanted to confront Brian, but I was afraid of what I might do to him. I went home and sat up all night. Susan had given me photo albums after our separation. I don’t think I’d ever looked at them, but they weren’t the type of things to throw away. I looked at the photos now. Daisy on my knee, sitting up on my shoulders, celebrating her birthday parties. Susan, Daisy and I, a self-contained unit.

  But there was the evidence in too many of the photos. Brian, pushing Daisy on a swing. Brian, teaching Daisy how to tie her shoelaces. Brian and Daisy lying on the sofa together reading or tickling each other. My mother appeared in some of the photos, always beside me, beaming with pride. What would she make of this turn of events? Poor Mum would be horrified. Luke only appeared in a handful of photographs. I don’t know who had the photos of our childhood, but Luke was rarely at our adult family events, and when he was, he was in the background, drinking wine.

  Coffee after coffee kept me wired. I went back through the photos of Susan and me. It had never occurred to me to remarry. I hadn’t really wanted to go through with the divorce, but it was cleaner for tax reasons. Even at the times when I couldn’t stand her, there was a part of me that loved her.

  There it was – our wedding day. She was five months pregnant. We’d had to get special permission from the parish to avoid the three-month waiting time to get our church wedding. And yes, didn’t Brian leave for Paris the month after the wedding? I remembered the argument Susan and I had about appointing him as godfather. She didn’t want him in that role and I thought she was being ridiculous. Her sister was godmother, after all. But then, Brian never came home for the christening, even though I offered to pay for his flight. He must have suspected he was Daisy’s father her whole life. But why had he waited until so recently to get a DNA test to prove it? The date on the form proved it was shortly after Daisy moved in with him. Just two years ago. After our fight. After he discovered that Susan had cheated on him with me.

  The buzzer in my apartment rang. I woke with a start, confused and exhausted.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Dad? It’s me, Daisy.’

  ‘Come on up.’

  Susan wasn’t coming, there was no roast chicken dinner. I was not her father. If anyone deserved to know the truth, it was Daisy.

  39

  2017

  Brian

  Susan had phoned me to warn me on that Sunday morning. Will knew. He had picked up some ridiculous rumour from Grace Kennedy that I was a paedophile and Susan thought it was the lesser of two evils to let him know that I was Daisy’s father. I panicked. I didn’t know what to do about either situation. I wanted to go out and see Susan, but she claimed to be sick. She knew that Daisy was going to Will’s for lunch. Would he tell her? Surely not.

  I decided to call Conrad in Paris. I had been in and out of touch with him for years. He and André had come to Dublin for rugby weekends and to Wexford for the opera. And when Susan and I had gone to Paris together, shortly before I discovered Will was back in her bed, we had dined in La Saucisserie. Conrad knew the truth about Susan and me. He knew that she was the reason I had turned up in Paris in the first place. He was the first person I told about the DNA test results. He insisted I tell Susan and let her decide whether or not to tell Daisy.

  I could hear Daisy and her pals laughing and messing in the basement as I lifted the phone to call him. Two of her pals had stayed over. They were such odd-looking kids, but I had learned quickly not to ask Daisy if they were boys or girls. They were just ‘they’, apparently. I let Daisy have her private life. The basement was hers. It had its own front door, large bedroom, small shower room and kitchen. I still played the benign, indulgent uncle, but since I’d discovered I was her father, I’d grown more protective of her career and her mental health. I think I’d done a better job than her parents. Daisy was happier with me than she had been for a very long time. I did not want anything to spoil that.

  But first, I had my own reputation to protect. I represented a lot of young people in my agency. Any suggestion of impropriety could sink me.

  Conrad and I spoke in French and English, switching back and forth, both of us fluent in each other’s language. He told me he still saw Arabelle occasionally in the neighbourhood of the restaurant. She was usually in the company of a handsome young man and two little girls. He suggested that I trace her on social media, warn her that muck-raking journalists might try to track her down. I should try to get some admission that she had a teenage crush on me.

  I told him Will had discovered I was Daisy’s dad. He drew in his breath and I could almost hear the Gallic shrug at the other end of the phone. ‘It is a crisis for your family, yes?’

  When I hung up, I searched for Arabelle Grasse on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. I used these platforms for my agency work. I didn’t know how to use the others. There were a number of women with that name on social media but none of them matched up to the girl I remembered. They were the wrong age, the wrong nationality, a different colour. I realized if she had an account, it might be under her married name, assuming she had married the handsome man with whom Conrad had seen her. I racked my brains to think of the boys in her class. There was Sacha Kippenberg, the bright boy who sat beside her. I prayed that would not be a common name. I put his name into Facebook, but nothing came up, and then into Twitter. Bingo, there he was. He was now the editor of a literary journal. I spent hours going through his 12,000 Twitter followers one by one until I found her. Arabelle Beauchamps, ‘femme et mère de deux anges’, living in Paris. She didn’t appear to have a career. The photo was unmistakable. Her high cheekbones and pert nose. Her hair was blonder, but it still had that lift at the front of her head. I trawled through her posts. Mostly photos of her home, her family, her dogs
, her nights out, her afternoon walks, her sunny skiing holidays. She had done okay for herself. I ‘followed’ her and asked her if she would accept a private message from me. Then I waited.

  And realized that Daisy had already left to go to Will’s for lunch. I wondered how his attitude to her would change. He loved her, sure, I knew he did. I was certain he wouldn’t do anything to hurt her. He was her uncle, after all.

  I spent the afternoon refreshing Arabelle’s Twitter page, waiting for a response. I had been able to send a message to Sacha Kippenberg asking him to warn Arabelle that journalists might want to talk to her. His instant response was reassuring. He was in regular contact with her. She had become obsessed with another teacher the following year and had been removed from the school. Most of her classmates knew she was a liar and a fantasist. He would be happy to speak to the press on my behalf and he would let Arabelle know what was happening. He said her childhood had been unstable, but she was now happily married and settled and totally embarrassed by her teenage crushes. He guessed she would refuse to speak to the media.

  And then I got a call from Susan, distraught. Daisy was at her place, and refusing to speak to her mother. She had locked herself into her bedroom. I grabbed my car keys and drove straight out to Dalkey. I couldn’t believe Will had told her.

  When I got to the house, I saw Will’s car was there too. He swung open the front door and came charging at me like a bull. I put my hands up in submission.

  ‘Will, let’s think about Daisy, okay? She needs to know that nothing has changed.’

  ‘You fucked my wife!’ He was simmering with rage.

  ‘Well, technically, I didn’t. The first time, when Daisy was conceived, was before you were married, and the other times were long after your marriage was over, so no, I didn’t really fuck your wife. I fucked your girlfriend, and then your ex-wife –’

  He swung his fist, which didn’t land, but as I avoided it, I fell backwards on to the gravel.

  Susan came to the door. I’d never seen her look so awful. She had lost weight and there were dark circles under her eyes. Her hair was lank and her skin looked grey.

  ‘Stop it!’ she yelled, but her voice was weak and the effort it took made her stagger and sway.

  Will and I both stopped in our tracks. I picked myself up off the ground while Will led her into the house. Susan limped over to the sofa and lay down, shivering.

  ‘I can’t deal with this right now, okay? Can you both just leave? And I’d really appreciate it if one of you could take Daisy with you. I’m just not up to it.’

  These words came out breathlessly. It was alarming.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  Will answered. ‘She says it’s menopause.’

  Susan began to weep.

  ‘I thought it was, at first,’ she said. ‘I haven’t been sleeping properly over the last month, you know, night sweats. I googled it and asked my sister and they all pointed to menopause, but the last few weeks, my throat is sore and my neck is swollen and I just feel like shit all the time. My doctor sent me for a biopsy on Thursday.’

  The word ‘biopsy’ scared me. ‘Biopsy for what?’

  ‘What do you think? Cancer.’

  My phone buzzed annoyingly in my pocket. I ignored it.

  ‘Doctors overreact,’ said Will dismissively. ‘It could be glandular fever and menopause, or any number of other things. They’re just covering their arses and racking up the bill to charge the insurance company.’

  Susan brightened a little. ‘Do you think so?’

  Will was right. How many times had I heard of people getting dire diagnoses that turned out to be minor ailments. The weight loss, though, was worrying. I decided to be the practical one. ‘Do you have everything you need, Susan? Can I pick you up some painkillers? I can open a tin of soup if you like?’

  A door slammed upstairs. Daisy appeared on the mezzanine overlooking the kitchen. She was calm and spoke in a sing-song voice, the way she used to when she was a child.

  ‘Playing happy families, are we? You liars and hypocrites. And now the whole world knows what you’re like.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Susan. ‘Darling, please calm down, we can all talk about this rationally. Nobody ever meant to hurt you. We all love you, sweetheart, but right now, I’m just too sick. Please understand.’ Susan’s voice was so weak that she barely sounded convincing.

  ‘I understand everything,’ Daisy said, ‘and I’ve written it all down in my blog and published it. If you start to get some press attention, don’t be surprised. I’m only here to collect my clothes and now I’m going back to your house, Brian – Dad – to collect the rest of them. By the way, I’m firing you as my agent. I’m moving in with a friend. I don’t want to see any of you again until I’m ready. That might be next week, or it might be never. You disgust me, all of you.’ None of us said a word as she charged down the stairs carrying a backpack over her shoulder, a suitcase in each hand.

  She checked her phone. ‘The taxi’s outside. Have a nice life, you parasites. To think, I always thought Luke was the weird member of this family. You’re all freaks, and you’ve even made a freak out of me.’

  Susan protested weakly. Will tried to apologize. I followed her out and tried to help put her bags in the cab, but she pushed me roughly away. The car door slammed and the wheels scrunched on the pristine white gravel, leaving grooves in their wake.

  When I went back into the house, Will was holding a sobbing Susan in his arms. It should have been me holding her, but it struck me then. I had always thought Will took what he wanted, but now I realized – Susan always chose Will. I was never her first choice. For her, it was always Will. I loved her still. She loved him.

  I left, hoping to catch Daisy before she cleared her things out of my house. How could she see me as the bad guy? I had always tried to do right by her. I didn’t know exactly what Will had told her. I’d forgotten to ask, I was so rattled by Susan’s appearance. I hadn’t asked when the biopsy results were due either.

  I pulled in at a petrol station. My phone continued to buzz with messages from journalists, friends, clients, all outwardly sympathizing, but wanting the scoop. Daisy’s blog had gone viral.

  When I took Daisy in, I had warned her to stay away from social media, and she had obeyed me as far as I knew. She hadn’t seen the cruel and vicious comments from unidentified strangers calling her a fat attention-seeking whore, the doctored photos of her surrounded by mounds of food, the ones where they superimposed her face on to the image of an elephant. The casual cruelty of it all shocked me. But her counsellor had agreed with me and warned her off social media. She had a separate lifestyle blog called FitandFat unconnected to any social media accounts and hundreds of thousands of followers from all over the world who were mostly kind and supportive. She wrote about body positivity, mental health, plus-sized fashion and where to get it, travel, books and food. I had accompanied her on whirlwind tours of America and Canada, and we were on the verge of sealing a TV deal whereby she would host her own talk show on Netflix. It would be filmed in Ireland but networked around the world. The stakes were extremely high. There were book offers on the table too, but I didn’t want to rush Daisy or bombard her with too many decisions. I didn’t want her to be overexposed. One thing at a time. I was taking care of my daughter. In the garage forecourt, I clicked through to her blog.

  She had written up the whole shitstorm while I had been trying to track down Arabelle. How her father had pretended to be her uncle, how she had once caught the man she thought was her father physically attacking her other uncle’s (Luke’s) current girlfriend (Mary). She told how Will had always referred to me as a loser and a money-grabber. How her uncle had married her mother believing he was the father of her baby. How her other uncle, who had been a psych patient so many times, was the most normal member of our family. The Drumms sounded like characters from a Greek tragedy.

  On one level, I was relieved. Although I didn’t come w
ell out of the story, the paedophilia rumours were totally overshadowed and, when I checked Twitter to see if Arabelle had responded, I discovered she had blocked me. Good. This was the best outcome. Grace Kennedy now had a bigger story, but so did TMZ. We were trending on Twitter.

  When I got home, I went down the back stairs to the basement. Daisy was flinging things into black plastic bags, tears streaming silently down her face. I saw an extremely distressed young woman. All I wanted was to be able to comfort her and make her pain go away. Whose fault was this really? Susan’s for not telling the truth when she was pregnant, Will’s for telling the truth yesterday or mine for doing the DNA test? We were all to blame.

  ‘Daisy, please –’

  She wouldn’t look at me.

  ‘I only knew for sure two years ago.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it. Please go away. I’ll be out of here in an hour. I’m gonna get a new agent tomorrow. I’ve been approached by loads and I always turned them down out of loyalty to you.’

  ‘I don’t care about that. I care about you.’

  ‘No, you don’t! Dad – I mean, Will – told me everything yesterday. You manipulated me to spite him and Mum. It was never about me.’

  ‘That’s not true. Look, we’ve always been close, haven’t we? I certainly suspected the truth. I desperately wanted you to be my daughter for all those years, but then when I did the DNA test, I was worried what your reaction might be.’

  ‘So when were you going to tell me?’

  ‘I don’t know. Honestly? Never. Because look how upset you are. We could all have just carried on as normal.’

  ‘Jesus, Brian, this isn’t normal. None of this is normal. Just leave me alone. I can’t bear to see you.’

  ‘Can I call you? Tomorrow?’

  She screamed at me. ‘No, you can’t call me! Leave me alone!’

  Will had a lot to answer for.

  By the time Daisy left, there were already press photographers at the door. I tried to hold them back, repeating ‘No comment’ over and over, but Daisy ignored me and told them: ‘My comment is on my blog. My family are trash. That’s all you need to know.’ There were five smartphones in my face, recording everything.