A Daughter's Secret (29 page)

‘No! Mia . . .’ She pauses again, her chewed fingers wrapping tightly around themselves in her lap. I need to be ready to stop her if it becomes too much, whatever Patrick might want. ‘The thing about my dad is – I’m his little rock. His rock of Gibraltar.’

‘I remember you said that.’ I hated it then, and I hate it now – it’s no more than an emotional chokehold. I can’t help noticing, yet again, how young she looks in her shapeless clothes. He’s subtly telling her that if she ever grows up – kicks against his control, like any normal teenager must – he won’t survive the betrayal. It takes all my strength not to muscle in, but I stay silent. I did my best to make her question his demands – hopefully some of it lodged in her consciousness.

‘But it means I’m his Achilles heel. You know what that is, right?’

‘I do.’

She looks straight into my eyes.

‘He isn’t gone.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He’s here, in London.’ Her gaze travels across me like a minesweeper. ‘I told him all about you.’

I take a breath. I need to make sure, for both our sakes, that it’s me holding the reins.

‘So you’ve seen him?’

‘Yeah. Stephen’s looking after him.’ ‘Looking after’ – it sounds so benign, so caring. ‘They want him to go abroad but . . .’ Her face tightens, tears springing to her eyes. ‘He can’t leave me, Mia! He can’t just up sticks and leave me.’

I think about what Judith so wisely said – this really could be no more than the fucked-up fantasy of an abandoned Daddy’s girl. Her instinct could be better than Patrick’s intelligence. But now there’s that phrase – his Achilles heel. It sounds like it’s come straight from the horse’s mouth.

‘So where do you see him, Gemma?’ She studies me, like she’s working out all over again whether I deserve her trust. ‘Remember you can stop any time.’

‘My piano lessons. He comes and meets me there. We have a McDonald’s.’

‘I didn’t know you liked McDonald’s. You’re so slim, you don’t look like a hamburger’s ever passed your lips.’

I’m pulling on the reins here, seeing what happens if I jerk us off the course she’s set.

‘I don’t,’ she says, grinning, ‘but Dad loves it! We go to the drive-in one . . .’

Is she playing a blinder here, merging fantasy and truth to create something that’s impossible to call?

‘So, Gemma, I don’t understand. Are you saying that your piano teacher smuggles your dad into her house?’ She nods solemnly. ‘And . . .’ Should I even ask this? ‘Does your mum know?’

‘Course not,’ she says, her eyes dropping, then flicking back to my face. ‘Stephen’s people can make anything happen.’

The horrible thing is – even if everything else she’s claiming is absolute rubbish – she’s right about that. I feel a strangely satisfying surge of Patrick’s righteous anger. If there’s even a small chance this is true, I need to glean everything I can.
We are on the same side.
The thought makes my heart contract. Does he feel it? Is he here with me, on some parallel plane?

‘So let me get this straight. You’re saying that every week you trot off to piano, and there’s your dad? And then what, he goes back to a safe house?’

‘Yeah, for now!’ she says, her voice rising, colour flushing her pale face. ‘But he can’t . . . he can’t stay much longer, Mia. It’s not safe for him.’

I bleed for the depth of pain that flashes across her face. I engage the brakes, determined not to feel pressured by the clock which ticks ever closer to the end of our session. This is Gemma, the girl I’ve grown to care about, the girl I know desperately needs the adults in her life to behave like adults. I don’t want to accidentally become as bad as Christopher, treating her like she’s some kind of human slot machine, feeding in coins and demanding she pays up.

‘I think we should stop here, Gemma. I can tell Patrick what you’ve told me, if that’s really what you want, but I want to leave us some time to properly say goodbye.’

‘I think Stephen’s gonna make him!’ says Gemma, almost as though she doesn’t hear me. ‘He can make anything happen. What if he makes him disappear?’

‘Are you worried he’s going to . . .’ I don’t want to plant that thought in her head, if she’s not there yet.

‘He could just put him on a plane, just like that,’ she says, voice rising even higher, her eyes wild. Or worse:
a body bag or a police van
.

‘Gemma, look at me.’ She does. ‘You shouldn’t be having to carry all this around with you, these secrets.’ If they’re real: I study her pale face, her look of desperation and fear never faltering. It’s hard to believe that’s fake. ‘It’s better the police know.’ I wish I could swear that was true. Honestly, I feel like my version of the police was roughly akin to
Trumpton
before Patrick told me the grim reality. He can do this, surely?

‘He said . . .’ She’s sobbing, properly sobbing now. ‘He said this could be the last week.’ A cynical part of me sits up at the phrase. This is meant to be her last week here. Coincidence or projection? She looks at me, her body opening towards me. I cross to the sofa, put my arm round those spindly shoulders, and let her cry into my chest.

‘You’ve told me now,’ I say as sobs rack her body. ‘I heard you. I know how hard it is.’ Can I really leave her, after this? I’m flattering myself. It’s not my choice, I’m suspended. I talk a little more, keeping my voice soft and calm, hoping that some of the words will filter through her distress. I tell her how much I’ve valued the sessions we’ve done together, how hard she’s worked, how much I hope she knows her own value.

And then, once Brendan’s buzzed for the second time, reminding me my next client’s been waiting fifteen long minutes, we say goodbye.

March 1995 (sixteen years old)

Mum wanted me to wait a couple of weeks, leave time for me to change my mind if that was what was meant to happen, but I didn’t want to risk it. An odd, arctic calm had descended on me, a permafrost of self-preservation. Doctors were seen, forms were signed and now I was a day away from my body being vacant again. It sounds cold, but the truth was it had started to feel like an alien continent. I was nibbling food without tasting it, walking to school like I was walking on the moon, air-sprung feet barely landing on the pavement. Lorcan had raged and shouted, told us he’d go straight back to New York, and then slumped into a disconsolate silence. He wouldn’t look at me, would stay in bed until I’d left the house, and then disappear in the evenings.

But Jim made up for it. He was so utterly lovely to me, coming home the next weekend and taking me to a proper Italian restaurant in Primrose Hill, his hand never leaving mine throughout the meal. He even fed me a forkful of spaghetti. ‘You’re being so brave,’ he kept saying. ‘We’ve just got to hang in there.’ On the Monday, he sent me roses and I tried not to think about Valentine’s Day. Mum took delivery of them, hiding the vase in my room so Lorcan wouldn’t see it.
Love you, Jim xx
, said the card, and I Pritt-Sticked it into my diary, reading the sparse, precious words again and again. Logically, this didn’t have to be a disaster. I would survive it, and life would go on – there would be other babies, babies we could parent properly. I just had to protect myself from the volcano of Lorcan’s rage erupting again.

Lysette was loyal but tongue-tied. We were inseparable at school again, apart from when I went to my Oxbridge classes. I’d had a surge of motivation, aware of how much I’d been taking for granted. I wasn’t going to be a problem-page cliché, my future ruined by a stupid mistake. My teachers stared a little too hard at me, but I ignored them. We’d had to tell the head of year, who had been suitably, Catholicly, horrified, but they’d decided not to suspend me. For now, I was a purposeful robot. How odd that that never struck me as dangerous.

English was our last class of the day on the eve of my abortion. I was back in the desk where it began, but at least now Lysette was smiling at me. I could see the worry in her eyes, and I gave a brittle, uncertain smile back. She linked her arm through mine as we left the classroom.

‘Do you wanna go to the Coffee Cup,’ she asked, ‘or do you want to go straight home?’

‘I’m meeting Jim in Camden,’ I said, and a look swept across her face. What was it? Pity, disapproval? I was so weary of getting that look from her and Mum. It was none of their business. ‘Did I tell you he sent me roses?’ I said, my voice tight and haughty. ‘Ten of them. Big, fat pink ones.’

‘That’s . . . that’s nice.’

Now it was Lysette’s turn to go robotic, her words clipped and sterile.

‘Why do you have to be so negative about us?’ I said, anger surging up. ‘Fuck’s sake, is it so bad that we love each other? What have we actually done wrong? We made a stupid mistake, but . . .’

Lysette’s face was white, her jaw clenched.

‘You don’t want this baby, do you?’ she said, her voice a strangled whisper. ‘It’s not because he’s persuaded you . . .’

I couldn’t look backwards, revisit moments that I’d burnt through. I’d overcome the useless sentimentality that had dogged those first few days.

‘We’ve made a decision.’

‘As long as it’s
your
decision. It’s your body! You know I don’t think you should have it, but I don’t want him manipulating you.’

‘Manipulating me?’ I said, puffing up with righteous indignation. ‘He’s your brother, Lysette. Why are you always so shitty about him?’

‘I’m not!’ she said, almost desperate. Lysette was always such an open book, but right now she was fighting to keep the pages tightly closed. Our eyes locked – she broke. ‘He’s not faithful. He can’t be. All the things that make him fun – he’s spoilt. He doesn’t mean to be a bastard.’ She saw my stricken face, tried to hug me. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said it. Not today. But I had to, in case . . .’

I was as stiff and straight as a pencil. I felt as though I might topple clean over, the blood rushing to all the wrong places, but I forced myself to regain control.

‘I’m going now,’ I said, shaking her arm off me. ‘I know you’re only trying to help,’ I added mechanically, guarding against us falling out again.

He lied of course: he lied and lied. And I lied too. I pretended to him, and to me, that I believed him. I used my favourite trick, the one where you can choose not to know something that will be too ruinous to your happiness. He dropped me home and I kissed him goodnight obediently, like a puppy who has finally learnt how to get a treat. But I was cleverer than him, I always had been, I now realized. I was cleverer than most people. I’d decide when to defrost myself.

Mum insisted I ate breakfast, a soft-boiled egg that made me want to gag. She made me soldiers, like I was a little girl again, and watched me anxiously as I nibbled at them. I loved her so much in that moment, and I nearly broke, asked her to take me, but I couldn’t risk going off course. Lorcan wouldn’t come downstairs, his heavy footfall making the house reverberate with anger. Jim was early, a state of affairs that was unheard of. My God, he wanted to make sure this was in the bag.

‘Hello, Mrs Cosgrove. We finally meet,’ he said, putting out a polite hand. Mum made the briefest contact with it.

‘We do,’ she said, her eyes like slate, ‘and it’s Claire.’ She turned her back on him, hugging me close. It was so warm there, her heartbeat so unexpectedly comforting. I lived inside that body once. ‘Darling, are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?’

I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak. I stayed where I was.

‘We should go,’ said Jim eventually, and I could feel Mum’s glare, even though I couldn’t see her face from my vantage point in her arms.

‘You’re right,’ I said, pulling away. He put out his hand for mine, and I looked at it. It was like a dead fish. I opened the front door.

‘I’ll be here when you get home,’ Mum said, and I smiled gratefully, then walked down the path towards Jim’s car.

Lorcan came out of nowhere. He must’ve gone out the back door and lain in wait. He barrelled into Jim, taking him completely by surprise, pushing him down on the pavement.

‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’ he shouted. ‘That’s my grandchild!’ He was gripping him, pinning him to the ground, Jim still too shocked to fight back.

‘Get off him,’ I screeched. Yet again, I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. We were trapped in a cliffhanger from a bad soap opera. ‘Mum!’

Lorcan turned his face towards me, his eyes wild and staring.

‘You’re no child of mine,’ he said.

Mum came running out, and started trying to pull Lorcan off him, but it was like Lorcan was possessed. I hated it when he got like that, unreachable and terrifying. He could do anything in this state.

‘Lorcan, stop. Stop!’ I pleaded. Jim was trying to push him off, but Lorcan’s skinny body seemed to have supernatural strength. Jim was slight too, a lover, not a fighter.

‘You trying to get away from me?’ Lorcan screamed. ‘Don’t you fucking dare. You’re a murderer!’

I looked down the suburban street, desperate for help. Curtains were twitching by now, but no one had come out to help us. Mum was pulling at Lorcan, as Jim aimed punches.

‘Get the fuck off me!’ he shouted. ‘You fucking lunatic!’

I felt a deep wave of dread. I could see Lorcan’s face, his rage reaching boiling point.

‘Don’t you fucking dare,’ he said again, grabbing Jim’s head. As the police car screeched to a halt, he was hitting it against the pavement. Jim screamed, then stopped screaming, blood pooling around him. I was screaming too, but I didn’t even know it.

By the time the ambulance pulled up, Lorcan was already in handcuffs. I was on the ground, kneeling next to Jim, but he couldn’t hear me. ‘I love you,’ I said, again and again, the last twenty-four hours an irrelevance. And then, as they put him on the stretcher, I felt a deep pain inside my belly that was more than shock.

Chapter Eighteen

My car’s an ancient Polo, totally incongruous amongst the sleek Mercedes and BMWs that line the road the fridge is on. The stupid nickname grates on me now: Judith was right, there was something so obviously awry for me to be undermining our first home together so slyly. I sit there, looking up at it, the sadness I’ve been holding at bay suddenly overwhelming. I’ve stifled it, swinging between whipping myself for my night with Patrick and whipping Marcus for being so callous and cut-off. Now, sitting here, I just think that we’re both a bit hopeless. We did have happy times, but somehow we couldn’t convert a handful of shiny beads into an heirloom-worthy necklace.