Authors: Tess Stimson
‘Why should anyone think you care?’
‘Florence—’
‘Yes, he’s fine,’ she said impatiently. ‘Proud he’ll have a macho scar. Was there something in particular you wanted, or is this just a social call?’
‘Watch your tone, Florence. I’m still your father.’
She smiled coolly. ‘Ah, well that’s just it, isn’t it? You’re
not.’
Dad snatched the magazine away from her and threw it across the kitchen. ‘Don’t you dare, young lady! Don’t you even
think
about going there! I have been your father
for fifteen years! I have changed your nappies, wiped up your puke, cuddled you when you’ve had nightmares, worked my arse off on your science projects, and taken your side a thousand times
when your mother was actually the one in the right. Don’t you
dare
tell me now I’m not your father!’
‘If you’re my dad, how come you left?’ she cried, leaping from the stool. Her entire body was shaking with rage. ‘How could you leave us? How could you
do
that?’
‘I didn’t leave
you
,’ he protested. ‘I would
never
leave you.’
She clenched her fists against her thighs. ‘You slept with Zoey! I heard Mom telling Aunt Lucy. You
fucked
her!’
‘Florence, please!’
‘You
fucked
her, you
fucked
her, you
fucked
her!’ she yelled. Hot tears spilled down her cheeks. ‘The moment you did that, you left us! How could you
do it, Dad? You ruined our family! You ruined
everything
!’
She saw he was fighting back his own tears as he pulled her roughly into his arms and held her tightly against him, even when she struggled to escape. For a moment she went as rigid as a board,
and then suddenly she fell against him, gripping him for support, giving in to her grief and pain and fury He held her as violent sobs wracked her body and let her cry it out, softly stroking her
hair and murmuring her name.
Finally, she raised her head. Tears and snot soaked his shirt-front. She dashed the back of her hand across her nose, hiccoughing and barely able to speak.
‘I didn’t leave you,’ Dad repeated quietly when she’d finally calmed down. ‘I made a mistake. A huge, terrible, God-awful mistake. I never meant to hurt you, or
Mom, or the boys. I swear to God, if I could take it back, I would.’
‘So are you’ – she hiccoughed – ‘are you going to get divorced?’
He sighed heavily. ‘I don’t know. That’s for Mom and me to decide. At the moment, she won’t even talk to me.’
‘I told you, George dropped her cell phone in the toilet.’
‘You don’t need to make excuses for her, Florence. I know your mother, she wouldn’t last twelve hours without that phone. She’ll have bought a new one as soon as the
shops opened. And I’ve left messages on the house phone. She knows I’m trying to reach her. She just doesn’t want to talk to me, and right now, I can’t blame her.’
She wanted to stamp her foot in frustration. How could men be so stupid? Reason and logic weren’t going to sort this out! He was the one in the wrong! He should fall on his knees and
beg
her to take him back, if that’s what it took.
‘You can’t just quit!’ she exclaimed. ‘You have to keep trying!’
‘Why d’you think I’m here?’
‘Yes, three days later!’
‘Well, it’s a little difficult to arrange to meet her when she refuses to speak to me,’ he said tersely. ‘And I was giving her time to calm down so we could have a proper
conversation. Look, Florence, we shouldn’t even be having this discussion. You don’t need to be part of this; it’s between me and Mom. I just want you to know that whatever
happens between us, we both love you, and nothing’s going to change that. Somehow, we’re going to work this out.’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘What about Zoey?’
He hesitated. ‘None of this has anything to do with you, sweetheart. Don’t take it out on her.’
She wasn’t going to let him off that easily. ‘Are you living with her?’
‘Not the way you think,’ Dad said uncomfortably. ‘Your mother stopped all my credit cards, which didn’t leave me many choices.’
‘So you and Zoey are, like, an item now?’
‘Florence, please. This isn’t a gossip column in one of your celebrity magazines. This is real life. None of it’s straightforward.’
‘You’re married to Mom. You should be
with
her. That seems pretty “straightforward”,’ she said, sardonically making quotation marks in the air with her
fingers.
‘And Nell’s our biological child. Is that “straightforward”?’ he said, mimicking her gesture. ‘Should we be
with
her, too? Or should we be
with
the child we’ve loved and raised for fifteen years?’
Her cheeks burned. He was treating her like a kid, using smart-ass answers to dodge the real question. She turned away, angrily shrugging him off when he tried to stop her.
‘Florence, all I’m saying is that sometimes life’s confusing. Relationships are confusing. Doing the
right
thing isn’t always the same as doing the
best
thing.’
She didn’t turn round. ‘Do you love Mom?’
‘Of course. With all my heart.’
‘And Zoey?’
‘I don’t know how to answer that.’
Suddenly she was too tired to argue any more. She faced him, feeling about a hundred years old. ‘Just tell me the truth, Dad. It’s not like you can make things any worse.’
‘Look, Florence, I can’t talk about this with you. I should go. I’ll come back tomorrow.’
‘Mom won’t be here. Gramps has to have some big procedure at the hospital. She’s going to be there most of the day with Gran.’
‘Shit. She did tell me.’ He rubbed his hands over his face. ‘I have to go to Manchester for the day on Thursday. I’d cancel if I could, but it’s the Inland Revenue.
Friday, then. Tell her I’ll be here Friday afternoon. Three o’clock. Please tell her to call me any time before that if she wants to. Will you do that for me?’
She nodded.
‘Love you, Flo-Mo. You know that, don’t you?’
She shrugged, and then nodded again, quickly, unable to help herself.
He kissed her on the top of her head and gave her a brief, hard hug. She watched him from the window again as he walked down the street, his shoulders bowed as if the weight of the world was on
them. She was still angry with him; but she was sorry for him as well. She couldn’t tell Mom she’d let Dad in the house; it would feel like she was taking his side. She’d just
have to tell her he’d phoned or something and pass on the message about Friday.
She suddenly felt light-headed and sat down quickly on the arm of the sofa. All the emotion of the past half-hour had taken its toll. Adrenalin affected her sugar levels just as effectively as
exercise. Her vision started to blur, and she felt clammy and hot.
Oh no, not now.
Juice, or some glucose tabs. She had to boost her sugar again.
She was halfway to the kitchen when she passed out.
‘If I’d got home twenty minutes later, you’d have ended up in the ER,’ Mom scolded, tucking her into bed as if she was Charlie’s age. ‘How
could you let yourself get so low? You’re normally so responsible about your sugar.’
‘It was just so
quick
,’ she protested. ‘I didn’t get any warning. One minute I felt fine, and the next, it was too late.’
‘Did you get your insulin wrong at breakfast?’
‘No, I just had a bagel and gave myself three units to cover it, same as always.’
‘Did you do anything to set it off? Have you been running or something? No crazy diets? Please tell me, Florence.’
‘I didn’t
do
anything,’ she said guiltily. It was almost true. Talking to her father didn’t really count as
doing
anything.
‘Well, it’s lucky I had your glucagon pen in my bag,’ Mom sighed, standing up. ‘You gave me the fright of my life when I walked in and saw you on the floor.’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
‘No harm done. After the last few days, I suppose I was almost waiting for something like this to happen. Try to get some sleep, and come and find me if you feel low in the night.
Don’t let it get this far again.’
She definitely couldn’t tell Mom about Dad coming over now,
she thought bleakly as her mother shut the bedroom door. Mom would find some way of blaming him for what had happened.
She was paranoid enough about her diabetes – she’d freak if she thought he’d set off a sugar low, even though it really wasn’t his fault. She’d just have to wait and
tell Mom his message about Friday tomorrow. One day wouldn’t make any difference.
Except that by the time Mom got home from the hospital well after ten, tired and fraught from a day of supporting Gran and worrying about Gramps, Florence had already fallen asleep. And on
Thursday morning, Mom had again gone out before she’d got up, and she was so grumpy and sad when she got home that Florence knew it was the worst time to give her Dad’s message. Maybe
it would be better if he surprised Mom, she decided finally. That way, she wouldn’t have a chance to refuse to see him. She knew Mom would be at home on Friday afternoon because she was
collecting Gramps – who was doing so well now, the doctors could hardly believe it – from hospital on Friday morning, and no way would she leave him on his first day home. Dad had
promised he’d come and talk to Mom. He’d promised he’d sort it all out. She just had to trust him.
She didn’t sleep much on Thursday night, worrying that the hospital would keep Gramps in another day or something else would go wrong, but Mom was safely home by noon on Friday, curled up
with a book in Gran’s conservatory, and she was still home at three, and at four, and five.
And Dad never came.
Harriet had no time for pain or grieving. That could come later. Right now, all she had room for was anger. It was what sustained her, giving her the strength to do what needed
to be done.
She tapped her foot impatiently, glaring round the empty waiting room. It looked more like the office of a trendy advertising firm or dot.com company than that of a family lawyer – all
black leather, chrome fixtures and white walls covered with garish red and black modern art. She’d loathed it on sight.
Nor did she like being kept waiting. This
Mr
Neil Hatfield had better be all Jerry Topoleski had cracked him up to be. She wasn’t happy Nicholas Lyon had declined her case; he was
among the best family lawyers in London, and she knew his refusal had nothing to do with his workload, as his paralegal had tried to suggest when she’d phoned to beg him to reconsider that
morning. Nick Lyon was famous for only taking on divorce and child custody cases he felt he could ethically stand behind; gold-digging trophy wives and abusive ex-husbands need not apply. Merely
having him represent you effectively gave you the moral high ground in court. His refusal to take on her case underlined the grey nature of the ethics that underpinned it.
Hatfield, on the other hand, had a reputation as a ruthless, amoral shark who’d out his own grandmother as a crack-dealing whore if it would help him win his case. And right now, as far as
she was concerned, winning was all that mattered.
A platinum blonde in a tight charcoal pencil skirt and clingy satin blouse sashayed out of his office and nodded curtly at Harriet. ‘Mr Hatfield is ready for you now.’
She stood up, smoothing her own conservative trouser suit. ‘Thank you so much for the coffee.’
The girl looked puzzled. Unsurprisingly, since she hadn’t bothered to offer Harriet any.
Hatfield came out from behind the vast slab of green glass that served as his desk and extended a hand. His grip was cool and firm, she noted with relief. She couldn’t abide men with damp
haddock handshakes.
He wasn’t what she’d expected, given his reputation. Far more Establishment, for a start: his grey suit was neither sharp nor shiny, his tie discreet. No showy Rolex or flashy gold
cufflinks. In his mid-fifties, he had a heavy, leonine head with a distinguished shock of thick salt-and-pepper hair, and his blue gaze was coolly appraising. Mentally she chastised herself for
buying into stereotypes. She was better than that.
She sat down on the uncomfortable armless black leather chair on her side of his desk. Its eye-line meant she was looking up at him – Psych 101.
‘I assume Jerry Topoleski has briefed you,’ she said crisply.
‘And arranged the transfer of funds to our corporate account,’ Hatfield replied, taking his own seat. ‘I should inform you that ten thousand pounds will be withdrawn
immediately as a retainer. Should you decide not to pursue your case, it will be non-refundable.’
She frowned. ‘Even if I walk out now?’
‘Mrs Lockwood. People bring me unwinnable cases because they know I can win them. To do that, I may resort to methods and tactics that, whilst perfectly legal, they often find distasteful.
I find it irksome in the extreme when they change their minds. My time is valuable. I don’t like it being wasted.’
‘So regardless of its outcome, this meeting has already cost me ten thousand pounds?’
‘It has.’
‘Good,’ Harriet said grimly. ‘A ruthless bastard is precisely what I need.’
The lawyer laughed and flipped open the manila folder on his desk. She’d researched Hatfield online as soon as her American attorney had emailed his letter. She knew he’d been
happily married for twenty-four years and was a father of three, but there wasn’t a single family photo or personal memento on his desk or in his spartan office.
‘Now then, Mrs Lockwood. Let’s talk about your case. You realize you haven’t got a hope in hell, don’t you?’
She didn’t rise to the bait. ‘I believe that’s why you’ve just made ten thousand pounds for ten minutes’ work.’
‘Indeed. You want to divorce your husband on the grounds of adultery – yes, yes, so far, so dull.’ He looked up. ‘Far more interesting to me is the fact that you want
custody not just of your own four children, including a daughter who, it transpires, is not your biological child, but also of the biological daughter with whom she was switched, and whose
foster-mother – for want of a better word – has just run off with your husband.’