Chapter 16
I needn’t have worried about a detrimental change in my father’s physical appearance. The man I instantly recognise is as healthy and hearty as ever – perhaps more so. His hair is still clippered down to a number one all over, a vanity he acquired when he realised he was going bald. His colour is good, and I notice that his shoulders seem wider than before. Has he, veteran criticiser of gyms, been working out?
I had pictured the inmates dressed in some kind of degradingly banal overalls – a bright orange or yellow maybe, a bit like my uniform at Café Crème. Instead, my father is wearing jeans and a pale blue shirt, not unlike the kind of clothes he’d worn on Sunday afternoons when we were kids, when he would potter about the house doing this job or that, chasing us with a hammer and a comedy, fake-horror expression on his face.
OK. I need to stop these thoughts now.
He rises when he sees me, and the look of sheer pleasure mixed with astonishment on his face nearly finishes me off for good. I keep my cool and sit across the table from him, smoothing my new gypsy skirt underneath me and taking a long time to adjust my bag on the floor by my feet.
He waits, watching me the whole time.
With as much ice as I can muster, I say hello.
‘Hello, Stella.’
Where my voice was all frost and hardness, his is deep and mellow, and in those two words he manages to convey a gratitude I’m not sure I understand.
‘So. This is prison then?’ I glance around, mainly to avoid his intense stare, and instead I catch the eye of a guard – the same one who checked my holdall when I came in – who winks at me salaciously. Bloody cheek! I jerk my head back towards my father and make my expression challenging. ‘Bit of a holiday camp, isn’t it?’
My father smiles and reaches across the table for my hand. ‘It’s so good to see you, Stella. I’ve missed you.’
I snatch my hand away as though his touch is acid. ‘Well, you’ve only got yourself to blame. If it wasn’t for your greed we’d all have been better off and you wouldn’t have to miss any of us.’
Already I’ve given away more than I wanted to. So much for being cool. I remind myself that I’m here to do the decent thing and that all I have to do is go through the motions and soon it will be over.
‘How are you?’ He asks this almost casually, as if he’s been away on holiday or something.
‘Oh, I’m fine. You know, having lots of fun, going to lots of places with interesting people, the usual stuff. And you?’
The smile is starting to slide off his face now and I wonder what the hell he had expected. After all this time did he think I’d just waltz in here and all would be well? Does he not realise how angry I am with him for deserting us like that?
He takes a moment to readjust then speaks again. ‘I heard about your house. I’m so sorry.’
‘Why are you sorry? That, at least, wasn’t your fault.’ Although in some ways maybe it was…
He ignores me and carries on. ‘It must have been a terrible shock, waking up one morning and finding that. I can’t imagine. Billy tells me you didn’t have any insurance. It is a shame but I do understand, Stella. I know how difficult it can be to keep a track of these things.’
I don’t know if it is the sharp reminder that he and my brother have had a relationship all this time from which I’ve been excluded (the fact they had been discussing me only makes it worse), or the audacity of him comparing my small housekeeping difficulties with his enormous – and illegal – financial misdealing.
Whatever it is, I suddenly feel sure that if I stay for one more minute I will have to hit him.
I stand up, scraping my chair across the floor and making the woman just across from me wince.
‘This was a mistake,’ I hiss, and snatch up my bag. This time his hand tries to grab hold of my arm, but I shake it off violently. One of the guards calls out. I don’t hear what he says, but my dad drops his hand and pleads with me in a low voice.
‘Stella, don’t go. Please. I know it’s hard, I really do, but you’ve come all this way. At least give it a chance. There must be things you want to say to me, stuff you need to get off your chest. I want to listen. I really do. And I … There’s something I need to tell you too.’
Well, of course, that gets me interested. I make a point of standing for another minute though, hoping it will at least embarrass him in front of the other inmates, and then I sit down primly, folding my hands safely in front of me.
‘Go on then,’ I say, ‘let’s hear it.’
Now he seems reluctant to speak. Maybe it was just a ruse to keep me here.
‘You have something to tell me?’ I prompt.
‘Yes, I have.’ My father leans back, crisis temporarily averted. I’m still on the edge of my seat though. I could bolt at any minute. ‘But first I’d really like you to tell me why you haven’t been to see me before now.’
‘Are you crazy? You really need me to spell it out for you?’
He nods, his face grave. ‘I think I must do. At least, I need to hear it in your own words. I’ve sent you visiting orders before and I’ve sent you letters and messages via your mum and Billy. I wanted you to hear my side of it, there never seemed to be time before the trial –’
‘You were too busy selling off the family assets to save your own skin.’
‘I can see that it looked that way to you. And I can see how angry you are. So you do blame me for everything? For all of it? Without ever giving me a chance to explain?’
I look into his eyes and see that he is genuinely puzzled by this. Time to put him in the picture.
‘Do you know what life has been like for us since you were put in here? For me? For Mum? Do you even care? My mother – your wife – has virtually no money to live off and has the spending habits of Posh Spice. She buys more useless tat than even she knows what to do with and has been running up credit card bills faster than you can say “balance transfer”. How do you think she’s paying for the mortgage and the gas bill, not to mention the satellite TV subscription and the bloody membership for a golf club she never goes to anymore?’ I lean forward, enjoying the way he recoils. ‘Go on,
Dad
, tell me. Because you’ve obviously given it a lot of thought while you’ve been locked up in here. I mean, you haven’t just pushed it out of your mind and hoped it would all go away, have you? Not my wonderful, responsible father.’
At this, my not-so-wonderful, not-so-responsible father puts his head in his hands and, to my horror, starts to cry. His tears are silent, more of the wracking kind, but even so I begin to fear for his safety. I mean, he’s in prison. Where they beat you up for being weak. Or worse.
‘Dad,’ I say quietly. ‘Dad, come on. Stop it now. You don’t want that lot to see you like this.’ My sweeping nod takes in the guards as well as the other inmates. This may be an open prison, low security and all that, but they look a pretty rough bunch to me.
‘Stella.’ My father clutches my hand again. This time I let him. ‘I’m so sorry for what I’ve put you all through. I had no idea. I really didn’t. Billy and your mum, they never said anything ... I’m so sorry.’ Oh God, he’s off again. Honestly, how has the man survived in here? I’d forgotten how emotional he can be. Come to think of it, it was a bit of a family joke when I was a kid, how “real” men are those who are able to show their feelings, not hide them. I just wish he’d repress them a bit right now.
‘OK,’ I tell him, patting his hand tentatively. ‘It’s OK. There’s nothing anyone can do about it now, is there? You didn’t mean for it to end up like this, I guess.’
Listen to yourself. Making excuses for him, making it all OK. But I’ve never been very good around people who are upset – that’s why I avoid my mum, she’s always upset about something. If she’s been coming to see him regularly, and she obviously has, it’s not surprising she’s been in bits about it. He is the kind of man who’s just not suited to doing time. And, in a weird way, this makes me quite proud of him.
‘I’m so, so sorry,’ he says again, and I shake my head, trying hard to hold back my own tears.
We sit in silence for a while. Other visitors are starting to leave now, hugs exchanged, tears shed. A small child clings onto his mother’s leg shyly as she pushes him forward towards a frighteningly emaciated man. Who would bring their kid to a place like this?
I reach into my holdall and pull out the bag of Murray mints I bought at the services. My dad takes them gratefully – too gratefully – and I shake away his thanks. He promises to send me another visiting order in a fortnight and I try hard not to feel too pleased. Do I want to visit him again? I’m not sure I could go through this twice.
‘Dad,’ I say as the room empties, ‘you said you had something to tell me.’
‘I do, Stella. And it’s important that you believe me. Really important.’ He is standing now, looking over his shoulder at the cheeky guard, gauging how much time we’ve got left.
‘Well? What is it?’
As he starts to talk the guard looms over me and says it’s time to leave. I shrug him off and turn back to my dad, still holding his hand, still searching his eyes. ‘Well?’ I say more urgently.
My father meets my gaze, his expression steady and calm once again.
‘I didn’t do it, Stella. This is the truth – what I said in court was the lie. I’m innocent. Completely innocent.’
***
Clever Carpets was a shop with a name Paul felt perfectly justified in being suspicious of. Smart Homes had seemed the obvious choice for his own business – that his surname lent itself to such a use was just lucky. But companies who chose names so obviously dubious were at best fly-by-night, or, in the worst cases, extremely dodgy.
The store, in one of Milton Keynes’ many retail parks, occupied a surprisingly large amount of space and boasted, according to their advertising, “the widest choice of floor coverings you’ll ever see”. Hmm, really. Paul was also highly suspicious of spurious – and unprovable – claims. He regarded the spotty young sales rep with careful eyes, determined to step in at the first sign of dodginess.
Stella seemed happy enough, though. She’d found the advert in the local newspaper, pointing it out to Paul yesterday afternoon. He hadn’t the heart to tell her that she really should be attending to the viewings diary (i.e. doing her job) and not trawling through the papers.
They’d reached a tenuous understanding since that night at the pub – or, at least, Paul had. He understood that Stella was still pretty messed up about her ex and that now that lowlife was back on the scene, Paul would have to keep his newly discovered feelings to himself. At least until things had settled down a bit. He also understood that, as they worked together and she was one of his best friends, stopping those feelings from growing even deeper was going to be nigh on impossible.
Stella was, of course, oblivious to all this. She seemed to have recovered from her own embarrassment, though, and had even joked about her clumsy pass a few times. Paul longed to tell her that it had been far from clumsy, and that he wished more than anything that he’d responded in kind at the time. The one thing she had made crystal clear was that she didn’t want to lose Paul as her friend and this, he told himself, was at least something.
It would have to do. It was all he had to hold on to for now.
‘What do you think of this one?’ She held out a sample of muddy-brown colour carpet, her face lit up with enthusiasm.
‘It looks a bit like your old carpet does now. After the fire damage, I mean.’
Stella’s face dropped and she hesitated for a moment before trotting off to find another. ‘I know just what you mean,’ she called over her shoulder bravely.
The old Stella would have told him to mind his own beeswax, or said he had no taste anyway and why was she even asking him. This one was still a little too careful around him.
Paul missed the old Stella. If only he could turn back time…
‘You should choose whatever you like,’ he said, catching up as she continued to search through the vast swathes of samples. The sheer volume of fibre was starting to make him feel itchy. ‘You’re the one who’ll have to live with it, not me.’
Why did she suddenly look at him so sadly? What had he said? He was only trying to be supportive. In lots of ways Stella was just like every other woman he’d ever known – impossible to understand without a manual.
‘So I went to see my dad.’ Stella had her back to him and threw this comment out carelessly, out of the blue. Paul was sensitive enough to take his cue and answer in a similar casual tone.
‘How was it?’
‘Good. Fine.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Yeah.’ She turned to face him again and smiled. ‘It was good, actually. Surprisingly so. I’d expected, oh, I don’t know, for him to be really defensive. He wasn’t, though. In fact, he said… Well, it doesn’t matter. But it was all quite normal, really. Considering.’ Paul nodded sagely. He had no idea what passed for normal during a prison visit. ‘So thanks,’ she said. ‘For persuading me to go.’
‘Did I?’ Last Friday’s conversation had taken such an unwelcome turn that he hardly remembered this part of it, but he wasn’t going to bring that up now.
‘You did, yes. So thanks.’
Stella seemed to be wandering aimlessly amongst the racks of carpets so Paul guided her to a section marked “100% Wool”, mainly to avoid being accosted by the aforementioned spotty youth who was making a beeline for them.
‘I can’t afford any of this,’ she said, fingering an oatmeal loop wistfully.
‘What was it like, then? Prison?’ asked Paul, genuinely interested.
‘Pretty much how you’d imagine, really. I got searched going in. Nothing too invasive but, honestly, there was this guard who was very familiar. And I don’t mean I thought I knew him, I mean
familiar
. Not in a good way.’
‘Was there, now?’ said Paul through tight lips.
‘There’s a list of things you can and can’t take in, and you have to queue up and wait for the visiting room to open, which is just like you see on TV, small tables with chairs either side. Not too forbidding, really.’ Stella picked up another sample and, after checking the price, pressed it to her nose.