Skeletons (19 page)

‘There’s a letter for you here, somewhere.’

David rifled through the drawer of the reception desk. He made it sound as if a letter arriving for a member of staff was an event, which, in fairness, it probably was.

Jen’s heart started to beat faster. She knew instantly who it would be from. Only one person had ever sent her a letter here before. Not many people, surely, even wrote letters these days. Certainly no one under seventy-five.

‘It came yesterday. I put it in here for safe keeping.’

She resisted the urge to push him out of the way and look for it herself. It was painful watching him scrabble around. She knew all the letter would contain would be a cursory summary of the four or five years since the last one, and probably a
thinly disguised request for money, but she felt hungry suddenly for details – any details, however trivial and impersonal – about her father’s life. It felt blissfully uncomplicated, somehow, the idea of family that had no connection to the Mastersons. Even dysfunctional and often
disappointing family.

It was funny, finding out the truth about Charles seemed to have made her feelings soften towards her own father a little. No one was perfect. There were only degrees of imperfection. At least, with her own dad,
she knew what she was up against, she knew exactly who he was.

Finally, David spotted something and produced it with a flourish. ‘Ta da!’

She grabbed it from his hand, put it in the inside pocket of her jacket. She would have to read it on her break.

It was brief, that was the main thing that Jen thought when she unfolded the paper. There was always that moment of anticipation. A sharp excitement, like Christmas morning. Maybe this was the time he would explain himself – or, at the very
least, try to engage her in a real and meaningful way. She knew it was ridiculous. Knew there was no reason to think it would ever happen. Rory had never been verbose.

He thanked her for the birthday card. ‘Eighty! Can you believe it?’ Then there were the usual anodyne pleasantries – ‘How are you? How are the children?’ that kind of thing. He obviously wasn’t entirely confident
with their names, even after all these years. He had separated from Maxine, his live-in girlfriend of the last ten years or so, the letter said. ‘Water under the bridge.’ She had cleaned him out, leaving him with just the flat – which was in his name, anyhow, so she’d had
no choice – and very little else. So there it was, the plea for funds. She would almost have preferred it if he’d just come out and said it: ‘Dear Jen, send me fifty quid, yours, Dad.’ At least then there would have been no grey areas, no room for hopeful, pitiful
interpretation.

She wished, as she always did, that her feelings about him were straightforward. She stuffed the letter back in
its envelope and put it in her bag, intending to tear it up as she had all the others. Not
that there had been many. An intermittent trickle. She had never answered any of them.

‘I’ll write back to him. Tell him what he can do with his begging letter.’

Jason had only met Rory once – when he had turned up, out of the blue, at the little flat in Kingston where they were living when Simone was born – and, having heard Jen’s tales of his prowess as a father, had been less than impressed.

Rory had started writing to her a couple of years ago. She had never found out how he had got the address. In the confusion and excitement and ultimate disappointment that followed the arrival of that first letter, she had never thought to
ask.

It had been written on blue paper. The kind you buy in a pad and tear off sheet by sheet. Jen had recognized the handwriting immediately. Had felt faint, sick, elated all at once. It was years since she had heard from him – thirteen, probably.
His visits had stopped suddenly, a few months after he had left home, and he had disappeared out of her life so completely that it had been almost as if he had never existed. A fictional character from a book she had once loved.

Jason had been at work and she had flirted with the idea of saving opening the letter until he got home, so that they could share the moment together. She had been unable to wait, though, her fingers tearing at the envelope even as she had mulled
this over.

She had known as soon as she pulled out the flimsy sheet of paper that it was going to be an anticlimax. It was only a few lines long. Thirteen years of history encapsulated in a few short sentences.
Sorry he hadn’t been in touch. He had heard she’d got married. He was struggling a bit himself.

She had stopped herself from tearing it up just long enough to show Jason, when he came home that afternoon. That was the only time she had cried, watching her husband read the pitifully inadequate offering she had been waiting her whole adult
life to receive.

‘You don’t need him,’ he had said as he’d hugged her. ‘You have me. You have all of us.’

The other two occasions when Jen had seen him, Rory had simply materialized in front of her at the hotel, and claimed to have been passing. They had spent five minutes catching up, and then he had disappeared out of her life again for another few
years. Once, he’d pressed her for money, but not the other time, so she had occasionally allowed herself to believe he had some vestige of family feeling in there, somewhere – even though her rational self knew it was improbable. More likely, she was a box he felt he had to tick from
time to time. She tried not to care. A leopard can’t change his spots, she had told herself, more than once.

‘What’s the point?’ she said now. ‘He’s not going to change.’

‘After everything he’s done to Elaine … to both of you. I don’t know how he’s got the nerve.’

‘He’s just no good at being a father. It happens.’

‘It was his choice.’

‘Maybe. Or maybe he just can’t help the man he is. Nobody can. And some people aren’t strong enough to fight it.’

‘You’ve never had a good word to say about him.’

‘And I still don’t. I’m just saying, perhaps I shouldn’t always judge him so harshly. Perhaps he’s not that much worse than most people, he’s just not so good at covering it up.’

‘Well, God help the world, if that’s the case.’

‘Who am I to pass moral judgement on him?’

‘His daughter. Who he walked out on, when she was eight years old. If you can’t hold him to account, then I don’t know who can.’

‘I turned out all right, didn’t I?’

‘Despite him. That’s to Elaine’s credit.’

‘Exactly. Things might have been much worse if he’d stayed. If he’d pretended he and Mum were happy for my sake, but it had all been a lie.’

Jason exhaled loudly. ‘It makes me angry, that’s all, that you had to go through all that. And, whatever else, there’s no excuse for him cutting you out of his life except when he needs something.’

‘I just … I’m tired of feeling like I hate him. He’s a miserable, lonely old man. What’s the point?’

‘The point is that he was one of the two people you should have been able to trust more than anyone else in the world. And he let you down. Big time. I find it hard to get past that.’

‘I just don’t think life is that black and white. A lot of parents fuck up.’

‘Well, you’re a nicer person than I am.’

Jen knew this conversation could only be unproductive. And dangerous.

‘I’m going to open a bottle of wine.’

She stomped out before he could say anything else.

Water under the bridge.

As she lay awake that night, listening to Jason’s breathing, the phrase from Rory’s letter popped into her head again. She saw her dad handing her a twenty-pence piece, dressed up in his best suit, on his way out for the night. She
was about five.

‘Look after the pennies,’ he’d said, with a twinkle in his eye.

And then, in the kitchen, her helping her mum make dinner.

‘Many hands make light work,’ her dad had said as he came in to help himself to a beer from the fridge.

She blinked back a tear. So she had inherited something from him, after all. It was a useless attribute, faintly embarrassing, definitely not one to boast about, but it was his. Proof that he’d once been a daily presence in her life

Cass heard the phone at the other end ring again. Over and over. Eventually, it clicked through to answerphone and she hung up. She had left enough messages. It wasn’t as if Jen didn’t know why she was ringing. She was clearly
ignoring her calls.

The first few times, Cass had assumed Jen was at work – or with her family. Of course, she wasn’t going to answer. Cass had understood. She had left messages – hopeful and friendly, at first, getting increasingly curt and
recriminatory as time went on. And then she gave up and started ringing off when she got no reply, knowing that Jen would see her number listed as a missed call. Knowing her point would be made.

It wasn’t fair.

Jen had set herself up as the portal to the Mastersons. The gatekeeper. And now she was freezing Cass out. She had put the shutters up, and she thought that that would be enough. That if she pretended Cass wasn’t there, she might just go
away. A bit like when children think that, if they close their eyes, you won’t be able to see them. Out of sight, out of mind.

Really, Cass thought, she had had enough of being pushed aside. She had spent her whole life on the sidelines, steadfastly hoping that by being good and dutiful and discreet she might one day be allowed to be in the spotlight. It was never going
to happen, she knew that now. Not if she just sat back and waited.

Truthfully, she had had enough of being ignored. She had told Kara this, when they’d had one of their long phone conversations last night. One of the things she loved about Kara was her disregard for the consequences. She adored drama. Cass
knew that anyone else – if there had been anyone else she could have confessed her feelings to – would have told her to think twice, to tread carefully, to think about the lives she might ruin (her own most of all). Kara, on the other hand, had reacted exactly as Cass had known she
would.

‘Fuck it. It’s not like you haven’t given her every opportunity to do things properly.’

‘I know.’

‘She should consider herself lucky you’re even waiting for her to tell you when the time is right. You could have just steamed into the family home and announced yourself. I don’t know
why you didn’t, really.’

‘Yeah, cos that would really endear me to them … It’s much better if she breaks it to them, lets them get used to the idea.’

‘Well, I don’t think I could have been so patient. What if she never does? What are you going to do then?’

‘Move on to Plan B. I just need to decide what Plan B is.’

Kara had laughed. ‘If you need help formulating it, you know where I am.’

‘Jenny!’

Elaine’s smile gave away that she was delighted to find her daughter standing on the doorstep when she opened the door. Jen turning up midweek wasn’t a regular occurrence. In fact, she couldn’t remember ever having done it
before. She had decided on a whim. Phoned her mother and suggested it before she could talk herself out of it. She had just wanted to do something nice for once, something extra-curricular.

Elaine’s house was at the end of a terrace on a small neat estate. It was the house Jen had grown up in, one of an optimistic 1970s collection of identical three-up two-downs, with weeping willows in the front gardens, in a quiet cul de sac
where the local kids could ride their bikes safely. At least, that had been the idea when it had been built. None of the weeping willows had lived through the bike-riding children becoming rampaging adolescents with too much time on their hands, and nothing to do with it.

It had been designed with young families in mind. A kind of starter home, Jen imagined. Elaine had never left, had never had the wherewithal, once Rory and his sporadic income had gone. She had watched as a never-ending cycle of happy couples
with tiny children had
moved in for a few years, and then moved on to bigger houses or divorce. She didn’t know many of her neighbours now. It had started to become too hard, trying to forge new friendships as the invisible doors revolved,
and so she had stuck to the few people who had stayed put as long as she had. There weren’t many of them left.

Elaine stood back to let her into the small hall. She was smartly dressed: A-line skirt, baby-blue blouse, outdoor shoes with clicky low heels. Jen noticed that her hair was neat and her make-up just so.

‘Have you been out?’

‘Oh, just the Co-op. I wanted to get a cake in.’

Jen bit her tongue. ‘Great.’

The idea of Elaine, dressed and made up with nowhere to go but the Co-op, struck a chord of guilt.

‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

‘So,’ Jen said purposefully, ‘I’ve brought a ton of bin bags. We can load up everything from the spare room and I’ll take whatever’s any good to Oxfam and the rest to the tip.’

‘Are you sure? I could easily do it myself.’

Jen put an arm around her mother. ‘And how would you take it anywhere? You don’t have a car.’

‘Well, it’s really kind of you, Jenny. It’ll be a great help.’

Jen experienced a righteous glow. The kind you get when you help a blind person across the road or give anything silver-coloured to a beggar. There was no such thing as altruism – it was all about how it made
you
feel, not them.

‘And I’ll go through the attic while I’m here. Might as well.’

She said this without really thinking. God only knew what was up there, and how long it would take to sort. Jen didn’t think anyone had climbed the rickety metal ladder in living memory. She had certainly never set foot up there, her
childhood fear of spiders having given its dark corners a horror-film atmosphere she had been keen to avoid. Since she had become a mother herself, she’d forced herself to overcome that particular neurosis, unwilling to pass it on. She would still rather never encounter anything with
more than six legs but, if she did, at least she no longer cried and screamed and ran out of the room.

‘I can’t have you doing that, it’s a terrible mess up there. Just helping me with the spare room is enough. I’m really terribly grateful.’

‘Don’t be silly. At least I can have a quick scout around and see if there’s anything obvious that can go –’

‘No, Jenny,’ Elaine said sharply.

Jen almost did a double take.

‘I … I just mean, we won’t have time to chat if you’re up in the attic … Why don’t you leave it for another time?’

‘That’s crazy. I’ve got the car here and the whole afternoon –’

‘I can do it myself,’ Elaine said, sounding slightly desperate now.

‘You can’t get up that ladder.’

‘Well, I’ll ask Dominic, from up the road, one of these days. His son would offer, I’m sure.’

Jen had no idea why her mother was being so adamant.
Assumed that, unaccustomed as Elaine was to being offered any help from her daughter, she didn’t know how to accept it. She was probably afraid
of putting her out too much. Scared that if today turned into a production number, then Jen wouldn’t offer to visit her again any time soon.

‘Tell you what. I’ll do half an hour up there, that’s all. You can time me. And then we can have tea and cake and do the spare room together.’

Elaine, she noticed, was looking anxious. Her patent happiness at seeing her daughter seemed to have waned.

Twenty-three minutes later, Jen understood why.

‘I was protecting you.’

Elaine looked at the fireplace, the carpet, anywhere but Jen.

‘From what? From my own father?’ Jen rifled through the battered cardboard box she had dumped on the table. ‘There are … what? Seven years’ worth in here?’

Elaine eased herself down on to the sofa. She looked like she might have fallen over if she hadn’t.

Jen picked up one of the still-wrapped gifts. ‘To Jenny, love Dad’ written on the label. She tore it open. Bouncy deely-boppers wobbled about on a purple headband.

She reached for another in gaudy Christmas paper, ripped into it. A
Now That’s What I Call Music
CD: ‘Kayleigh’, ‘West End Girls’ and ‘Alive And Kicking’. Some of her favourite songs when she was
thirteen.

‘How could you?’

‘I thought I was doing the right thing.’

‘You let me think he just didn’t care about me. That he’d forgotten me the minute he walked out of the door. And he sent me presents till I
was … what … fifteen?’

Elaine was studying her hands. ‘I’m sorry, Jenny.’

‘No wonder you didn’t want me to go up there. What else might I find? Letters? Did he write me letters?’

‘Sometimes.’

Jen stood up, made to go towards the ladder again.

‘I burned them all.’

‘You …?’

‘Jenny, love, you have to understand. I had to make a decision. He was so unreliable.’

‘Did he ever try to see me?’ Jen could hear how cold her voice sounded, couldn’t do anything about it.

Elaine’s voice was getting smaller and smaller. ‘I couldn’t have him take you out when he’d been drinking, could I?’

‘It’s not as if he ever hurt me, or took me down the pub and then came home without me.’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then I don’t understand.’

‘All those times he was supposed to pick you up, and then he didn’t come –’

‘What? So because he was a bit flaky, you thought it would be better if I never had any contact with him again?’

‘I thought it would be better for you. I thought if he kept letting you down, it would break your heart.’

‘And losing touch with him altogether wouldn’t?

‘I’m sorry, Jenny –’

‘Jen!’ Jen raised her voice. ‘It’s Jen, for God’s sake. How hard is that to remember?’

‘I’m sorry. You’re making me nervous.’

‘I need to understand why, that’s all.’

‘I just wanted you to be happy.’

‘And it never occurred to you to let me decide what that would take? For Christ’s sake, Mum.’

Elaine made as if to stand up. ‘I’ll make us some tea.’

‘No. I have to go. I need to get back home.’

She grabbed up the box and left before her mother had a chance to protest.

When she got to the house, she left the presents in the boot of the car and told Jason she had worked a few extra hours. She knew if she filled him in on what had really happened, he would talk her out of what she had decided to do next.

‘Judy’s still sick,’ she said, wrinkling up her face.

She hoped he couldn’t see she’d been crying again.

Another Sunday, another painful afternoon sitting in Charles and Amelia’s front room. Jen had thought about trying to get out of it, knew she wouldn’t be able to pull off another migraine, couldn’t face the argument with Jason
that would inevitably follow.

So she sat at the table, monosyllabic, as closed in and uncommunicative as a teenage girl. Picked at her food. Spoke only when spoken to. Sulked.

‘Are you unwell, sweetheart?’ Amelia said, laying a gentle hand on her arm. ‘You do look a bit peaky.’

Jen looked up, became aware that her mother-in-law was looking at her, concerned.

She forced a smile. ‘No, just a bit knackered. Hard week at work.’

‘Still doing extra hours?’

Jen nodded weakly.

‘So have you heard Martin got a new car?’ Charles looked at Jason as he said this so, thankfully, Jen didn’t feel she was expected to answer.

‘Another one? Do you think maybe he’d give me one of the old ones? Charitable donation.’

She let them chatter on, barely tuning in to what they were saying, nodding and smiling here and there when she thought she should.

That morning neither she nor Jason had leapt out of bed in order to make the other tea so they could have their usual Sunday morning catch-up. They had both just lain there, feigning sleep, until it had felt like a decent hour to get up.

By the time they left to go home, Jen felt as if she had barely strung two words together all afternoon. She longed to confide in someone about what had happened at her mother’s house but she had forgotten how to talk to her
mother-in-law.

She hated knowing that Amelia was concerned about her but, at the moment, it didn’t feel like there was anything she could do about it. She was just grateful it was all over for another week. That was all she could do now – take her life
one step at a time, and try to fight fires along the way. It was exhausting, but there didn’t seem to be another way. She had no idea how long she
could go on like this, but trying to think of a solution was like trying to unravel the
mysteries of the universe. She didn’t even know where to start.