After You (14 page)

‘You know, Lily, you might want to stop calling him that.’

She gave me a sideways look. ‘Okay. You’re probably right.’ She lay back on the grass, and smiled sweetly. ‘I’ll call him Penisfeatures instead.’

‘Let’s stick with Fuckface then. So how come you still visit him?’

‘Martin? He’s the only dad I really remember. Mum got together with him while I was small. He’s a musician. Very creative. He used to read stories and stuff and make up songs about me, that kind of thing. I just …’ She trailed off.

‘What happened? Between him and your mum?’

Lily reached into her bag, pulled out a packet of cigarettes and lit one. She inhaled and let out a long flute of smoke, almost dislocating her jawbone in the process. ‘I came home from school one day with the au pair and Mum just announced that he’d gone. She said they’d agreed he had to go because they weren’t getting on any more.’ She inhaled again. ‘Apparently he wasn’t interested in her personal growth or he didn’t share her vision of the future. Some bullshit. I think she just met Francis and knew Martin was never going to give her what she wanted.’

‘Which was?’

‘Money. And a big house. And the chance to spend her day shopping and bitching to her friends and aligning her
chakra
s or whatever. Francis earns a fortune doing private bank things
in his private bank with all the other private bankers.’ She turned to me. ‘So, basically, one day Martin was my dad – I mean, I called him Daddy right up until the day he left – and the next he wasn’t. He used to take me to nursery and primary school and everything – and then she decides she’s had enough of him, and I get home and he’s just … gone. It’s her house, so he’s gone. Just like that. And I’m not allowed to see him and I’m not even allowed to talk about him because I’m just
dredging things up
and
being difficult.
And obviously she is in
so much pain and emotional distress
.’ Here Lily did a scarily good impression of Tanya’s voice. ‘And when I really did get mad at her, she told me there was no point in getting so upset because he wasn’t even my real dad. So
that
was a nice way to find out.’

I stared at her.

‘And the next thing, there’s Francis turning up at our door, all over-the-top bunches of flowers and so-called family days out, where I’m basically playing gooseberry and sent off with the nannies while they’re all over each other at some child-friendly luxury hotel. And then six months later she takes me to Pizza Express. I think it’s some treat for me and that maybe Martin is coming back, but she says she and Francis are getting married and it’s wonderful and he’s going to be the most wonderful daddy to me and I “must love him very much”.’

Lily blew a smoke ring up into the sky, watching as it swelled, wavered and evaporated.

‘And you didn’t.’

‘I hated him.’ She looked sideways at me. ‘You can tell, you know, when someone’s just putting up with you. Even if you’re little. He never wanted me, only my mother. I can sort of understand it – who wants another man’s kid hanging around? So when she had the twins they sent me away to boarding-school. Bang. Job done.’

Her eyes had filled with tears and I wanted to reach out to her, but she had wrapped her arms around her knees and stared straight ahead. We sat there in silence for a few minutes, watching the traffic start to build below us as the sun slid further down the sky.

‘I found him, you know.’

I faced her.

‘Martin. When I was eleven. I heard my nanny telling another one that she wasn’t allowed to tell me he had called round. So I told her she had to tell me where he lived or I’d tell my mum she was stealing. I looked up the address and he lived about fifteen minutes’ walk from where we were. Pyecroft Road – do you know it?’

I shook my head. ‘Was he pleased to see you?’

She hesitated. ‘So happy. He nearly cried, actually. He said he’d missed me so much, and that it was awful being away from me and that I could come around whenever I wanted. But he had hooked up with someone else and they had a baby. And when you turn up at someone’s house and they have a baby and, like, a proper family of their own, you realize you’re not part of his family any more. You’re a leftover.’

‘I’m sure nobody thought –’

‘Yes, well. Anyway, he’s really lovely and all, but I’ve told him I can’t really see him. It’s too weird. And, you know, like I said to him,
I’m not your real daughter
. He still calls me all the time, though. Stupid, really.’ Lily shook her head furiously. We sat there for a while and then she looked up at the sky. ‘You know the thing that really bugs me?’

I waited.

‘She changed my name when she got married. My own name, and nobody ever even bothered to ask me.’ Her voice cracked a little. ‘I didn’t even want to be a Houghton-Miller.’

‘Oh, Lily.’

She wiped briskly at her face with the palm of her hand, as if embarrassed to be seen crying. She inhaled her cigarette, then ground it out on the grass and sniffed noisily. ‘Mind you, these days Penisfeatures and Mum argue
all
the time. I wouldn’t be surprised if they split up too. If that happens, no doubt we’ll all have to move house again and change names and nobody will be able to say anything because of
her pain
and her need to
move forward emotionally
or whatever. And in two years’ time there will be some other Fuckface and my brothers will be Houghton-Miller-Branson or Ozymandias or Toodlepip or whatever.’ She half laughed. ‘Luckily I’ll be long gone by then. Not that she’ll even notice.’

‘You really believe she thinks that little of you?’

Lily’s head swivelled round, and the look she gave me was far too wise for her age and utterly heartbreaking. ‘I think she loves me. But she loves herself more. Or how could she do what she does?’

Mr Traynor’s baby was born the following day. My phone rang at six thirty in the morning and, for a brief, awful moment, I thought something terrible had happened. But it was Mr Traynor, breathless and tearful, announcing, in slightly disbelieving, exclamatory tones, ‘It’s a girl! Eight pounds one ounce! And she’s absolutely perfect!’ He told me how beautiful she was, how like Will when he had been a baby, how I simply must come and see her, and then asked me to wake Lily, which I did, and watched her, sleepy and silent as he gave her the news that she had a … a … (they took a minute to work it out) an aunt!

‘Okay,’ she said finally. And then, having listened for a while: ‘Yeah … sure.’

She ended the call and handed the phone back to me. Her eyes met mine, then she turned in her crumpled T-shirt and went back to bed, closing the door firmly behind her.

The well-lubricated health-plan salesmen were, I estimated at ten forty-five, one round off being barred from their flight, and I was wondering whether to point this out when a familiar reflective jacket appeared at the bar.

‘No one in need of medical assistance here.’ I walked over to him slowly. ‘Yet, anyway.’

‘I never get tired of that outfit. I have no idea why.’

Sam climbed up on a stool and rested his elbows on the counter. ‘The wig is … interesting.’

I tugged at my Lurex skirt. ‘The creation of static electricity is my superpower. Would you like a coffee?’

‘Thanks. I can’t hang around, though.’ He checked his radio and put it back in his jacket pocket.

I made him an Americano, trying not to look as pleased as I felt to see him. ‘How did you know where I worked?’

‘We had a call-out at gate fourteen. Suspected heart attack. Jake reminded me you worked at the airport and, you know, you weren’t exactly hard to track down …’

The businessmen were briefly muted. Sam was the kind of man, I had noticed, who made other men go a bit quiet. ‘Donna’s sneaking a look in Duty Free. Handbags.’

‘I’m guessing you’ve seen your patient?’

He grinned. ‘No. I was going to ask for directions to gate fourteen after I’d sat down with a coffee.’

‘Funny. So did you save his life?’

‘I gave her some aspirin, and advised her that drinking four double espressos before ten a.m. was not the best idea. I’m flattered that you have such an exciting view of my working day.’

I couldn’t help but laugh. I handed him his coffee. He took a grateful swig. ‘So. I was wondering … You up for another non-date some time soon?’

‘With or without an ambulance?’

‘Definitely without.’

‘Can we discuss problem teenagers?’ I found I was twirling a curly lock of nylon-fibre hair with my fingers. For crying out loud. I was playing with my hair and it wasn’t even my actual hair. I dropped it.

‘We can discuss whatever you like.’

‘What did you have in mind?’

His pause was long enough to make me blush. ‘Dinner? At mine? Tonight? I promise if it rains I won’t make you sit in the dining room.’

‘You’re on.’

‘I’ll pick you up at seven thirty.’

He was just gulping down the last of his coffee when Richard appeared. He looked at Sam, then at me. I was still leaning against the bar, a few inches from him. ‘Is there a problem?’ he said.

‘No problem whatsoever,’ said Sam. When he stood up, he was a whole head taller than Richard.

A few fleeting thoughts flickered across Richard’s face, so transparent that I could see the progression of each one.
Why is this paramedic here? Why is Louisa not doing something? I would like to tell Louisa off for not being obviously busy but this man is too big and there is a dynamic I do not entirely understand and I am a little bit wary of him.
It almost made me laugh out loud.

‘So. Tonight.’ Sam nodded at me. ‘Keep the wig on, yes? I like you flammable.’

One of the businessmen, florid and pleased with himself, leaned back in his chair so that his stomach strained the seams of his shirt. ‘Are you going to give us the lecture about alcohol limits now?’

The others laughed.

‘No, you go ahead, gentlemen,’ Sam said, saluting them. ‘I’ll just see you in a year or two.’

I watched him head off to Departures, joined by Donna outside the newsagent. When I turned back to the bar Richard was watching me. ‘I have to say, Louisa, I don’t approve of your conducting your social life in a work setting,’ he said.

‘Fine. Next time I’ll tell him to ignore the heart attack at gate fourteen.’

Richard’s jaw tightened. ‘And what he said just then. About your wearing your wig later on. That wig is the property of Shamrock and Clover Irish Themed Bars Inc. You are not allowed to wear it in your own time.’

This time I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh. ‘Really?’

Even he had the grace to flush a little. ‘It’s company policy. It’s classified as uniform.’

‘Damn,’ I said. ‘I guess I’ll just have to buy my own Irish-dancing-girl wigs in future. Hey, Richard!’ I called, as he walked back into the office, bristling. ‘For fairness, does that mean you can’t get jiggy with Mrs Percival while wearing your polo-shirt?’

I arrived home to find no sign of Lily, other than a cereal packet on the kitchen counter and, inexplicably, a pile of dirt on the floor in the hallway. I tried her phone, got no response, and wondered how you were ever meant to find a balance between Over-anxious Parent, Normally Concerned Parent, and Tanya Houghton-Miller. And then I jumped into the shower and got ready for my date that absolutely, definitely, wasn’t a date.

It rained, the heavens opening shortly after we arrived at Sam’s field, and we were both soaked even running the short distance from his bike to the railway carriage. I stood dripping as he closed the door behind me, remembering how unpleasant the sensation of wet socks was.

‘Stay there,’ he said, brushing the drops from his head with a hand. ‘You can’t sit around in those wet clothes.’

‘This is like the opening to a really bad porn movie,’ I said. He stood very still and I realized I had actually said the words out loud. I gave him a smile that went a bit wonky.

‘Okay,’ he said, raising his eyebrows.

He disappeared into the back of the carriage and emerged a minute later with a jumper and what looked like some jogging bottoms.

‘Jake’s joggers. Freshly washed. Possibly not very porn star, though.’ He handed them to me. ‘My room’s back there if you
want to get changed, or the bathroom’s through that door, if you’d prefer.’

I walked into his bedroom and closed the door behind me. Above my head the rain beat noisily on the carriage roof, obscuring the windows with a never-ending stream of water. I wondered about drawing the curtains, then remembered there was nobody to see me, other than the hens, which were huddling out of the wet, grumpily shaking drops from their feathers. I pulled off my soaked top and jeans and dried myself with the towel he’d placed with the clothes. For fun, I flashed the hens through the window, something, I observed afterwards, Lily might do. They didn’t look impressed. I held the towel to my face and sniffed it guiltily, like someone inhaling a forbidden drug. It was freshly laundered but somehow still managed to smell irrevocably male. I hadn’t breathed in a scent like it since Will. It made me feel briefly unbalanced and I put it down.

The double bed filled most of the floor space. A narrow cupboard opposite acted as a wardrobe, and two pairs of work boots were neatly stacked in the corner. There was a book on the nightstand and beside it a photograph of Sam with a smiling woman, whose blonde hair was tied up in a messy knot. She had her arm around his shoulders and was grinning at the camera. She was not supermodel beautiful, but there was something compelling about her smile. She looked like the kind of woman who would have laughed a lot. She looked like a feminine version of Jake. I felt suddenly crushingly sad for him, and had to look away before I made myself sad, too. Sometimes I felt as if we were all wading around in grief, reluctant to admit to others how far we were waving or drowning. I wondered fleetingly whether Sam’s reluctance to talk about his wife mirrored my own, the knowledge that the moment you opened the box, let out even a whisper of your sadness, it would mushroom into a cloud that overwhelmed all other conversation.

I checked myself, took a breath. ‘Just have a nice evening,’ I murmured, recalling the words of the Moving On Circle.
Allow yourself moments of happiness.

I wiped the mascara smudges from under my eyes, observing in the small mirror that little could be done for my hair. Then I pulled Sam’s oversized sweater over my head, trying to ignore the weird intimacy that came from wearing a man’s clothes, pulled on Jake’s joggers and gazed at my reflection.

What do you think, Will? Just a nice evening. It doesn’t have to mean anything, right?

Sam grinned as I emerged, rolling up the sleeves of his jumper. ‘You look about twelve.’

I went into the bathroom, wrung out my jeans, shirt and socks in the sink, then hung them over the shower curtain.

‘What’s cooking?’

‘Well, I was going to do a salad, but it’s not really salad weather any more. So I’m improvising.’

He had set a pot of water boiling on the stove, where it had fogged the windows. ‘You eat pasta, right?’

‘I eat anything.’

‘Excellent.’

He opened a bottle of wine and poured me a glass, motioning me to the bench seat. In front of me the little table had been laid for two, and I felt a faint frisson at the sight. It was okay just to enjoy a moment, a small pleasure. I had been out dancing. I had flashed some hens. And now I was going to enjoy spending an evening with a man who wanted to cook me dinner. It was all progress, of sorts.

Perhaps Sam detected something of this internal struggle because he waited until I took my first sip, then said, while stirring something on the hob, ‘Was that the boss you were talking about? That man today?’

The wine was delicious. I took another sip. I hadn’t dared
drink while Lily had been with me: I might have let my guard down. ‘Yup.’

‘I know the type. If it’s any consolation, within five years he’ll either have a stomach ulcer or enough hypertension to cause erectile dysfunction.’

I laughed. ‘Both those thoughts are oddly comforting.’

Finally he sat down, presenting me with a steaming bowl of pasta. ‘Cheers,’ he said, raising a glass of water. ‘And now tell me what’s going on with this long-lost girl of yours.’

Oh, but it was such a relief to have someone to talk to. I was so unused to people who actually listened – as opposed to those, at the bar, who only wanted to hear the sound of their own voices – that talking to Sam was a revelation. He didn’t interrupt, or tell me what he thought, or what I should do. He listened, and nodded, and topped up my wine and said, finally, when it was long dark outside, ‘It’s quite a responsibility you’ve taken on.’

I leaned back on the bench and put my feet up. ‘I don’t feel like I have a choice. I keep asking myself what you said: what would Will want me to do?’ I took another sip. ‘It’s harder than I’d imagined, though. I thought I’d just drop her in to meet her grandmother and grandfather and everyone would be delighted and it would be a happy ending, like those reunion programmes on television.’

He studied his hands. I studied him.

‘You think I’m mad getting involved.’

‘No. Too many people follow their own happiness without a thought for the damage they leave in their wake. You wouldn’t believe the kids I pick up at the weekends, drunk, drugged, off their heads, whatever. The parents are wrapped up in their own stuff, or have disappeared completely, so they exist in a vacuum, and they make bad choices.’

‘Is it worse than it used to be?’

‘Who knows? I only know I see all these messed up kids. And that the hospital’s young persons’ psych has a waiting list as long as your arm.’ He smiled wryly. ‘Hold that soapbox. I need to shut the birds up for the night.’

I wanted to ask him then how someone so apparently wise could be so careless of his own son’s feelings. I wanted to ask if he knew how unhappy Jake was. But it seemed a bit too confrontational, given the way he was talking, and the fact that he had just cooked me a very nice supper … I was distracted by the sight of the hens popping one at a time into their coop, and then he came back, bringing with him the faint scents of outside, and the cooler air, and the moment passed.

He poured more wine, and I drank it. I let myself take pleasure in the snugness of the little railway carriage, and the sensation of a properly full belly, and I listened to Sam talk. He told of nights holding the hands of elderly people who didn’t want to make a fuss, and of management targets that left them all demoralized, feeling they weren’t doing the job they’d been trained for. I listened, losing myself in a world far from my own, watching his hands draw animated circles in the air, his rueful smile when he felt he was taking himself too seriously. I watched his hands. I watched his hands.

I coloured slightly as I realized where my thoughts were headed, and took another swig of my wine to hide it. ‘Where’s Jake tonight?’

‘Barely seen him. At his girlfriend’s, I think.’ He looked rueful. ‘She has this
Waltons
-style family, about a billion brothers and sisters and a mum who’s home all day. He likes hanging out there.’ He took another sip of his water. ‘So where’s Lily?’

‘Don’t know. I texted her twice but she hasn’t bothered to reply.’

The sheer presence of him. It was like he was twice as large
and twice as vivid as other men. My thoughts kept drifting, pulled on tides towards his eyes, which narrowed slightly as he listened, as if he were trying to ensure he had understood me perfectly … The faint hint of stubble on his jaw, the shape of his shoulder under the soft wool of his jumper. My gaze kept sliding downwards to his hands, resting on the table, fingers absently tapping on the surface. Such capable hands. I remembered the tenderness with which he had cradled my head, the way I had held on to him in the ambulance as if he were the only thing anchoring me. He looked at me and smiled, a gentle enquiry in it, and something in me turned molten. Would it be so bad, as long as my eyes were open?