Authors: Rowan Coleman
My initial instinct is to sit at the back of the lecture hall, but it is solidly occupied, and by people who will know I am an unfamiliar face. So I go to the front row, which is empty, and all at once I can see him. My father. He is right there.
There is a dizzying moment, and I am tempted to laugh out loud, laugh and point, and maybe scream a bit. Fortunately, I don’t do any of those things. Instead I sink lower into my seat, pulling up the collar of my shirt. It helps a bit if I think of myself as an undercover private investigator.
He’s unpacking his briefcase, staring up at the screen and swearing under his breath at his Mac. He’s obviously not got to grips with PowerPoint. I could help him with that, I am really good at presentations. He looks older than I thought he would. For some reason, I pictured him as still being the young man in the photo Mum gave me the day I decided to come here, thick black hair, tall, and ungainly in a sort of graceful way. But he is not as tall as I imagined, and there is an almost-bald spot on the back of his head that reflects the spotlights. He dresses quite well, though, for an older man, wearing what look like Diesel jeans, and a nice shirt … well, it would be nice if he didn’t tuck it in and do it up all the way to the top.
Watching him arrange his notes, I see him glance up at the room, which is simmering with noise, perhaps trying to get a sense of what his audience is like today. The room can’t quite be full enough yet, though, because he picks up his phone and checks it, maybe for a text from his wife, and then … I freeze.
He catches my eye and smiles at me. Instinctively I smile back in recognition, because I’ve seen that smile a hundred times before, in my bedroom mirror, or in photos my friends have taken of me that I used to stick to the wall above my bed. He looks like me! I expect him to gasp with the same sensation of recognition, and realise at once exactly who I am, this person who has been missing for so long. But he doesn’t.
‘Don’t normally get punters in the front row.’ He actually speaks to me.
He’s well-spoken, his voice is deep, rich. Yes, I think, it’s rich. He’s confident, sure of himself. He is speaking to me.
‘I’m not a student here,’ I say, with ridiculous honesty, because I don’t want the first thing I say to him to be a lie. ‘I just heard about the lecture, and how good it is, and I wanted to attend.’
He looks pleased, really pleased – stupidly pleased, actually, like a man who doesn’t get enough reassurance. I notice the thick gold wedding band on his left hand. I knew he was married, but I wonder what his wife is like, and whether she will like me. I wonder about my half-sisters, and whether they look like me, too. It’s funny, I never think of Esther as
my half-anything: she was always wholly my sister from the moment she arrived. But these strange creatures that I don’t know and can’t even picture … I can’t imagine them even being halves. Add us all up together and we might manage a quarter, perhaps.
‘Well,’ he says, actually winking at me. ‘I hope you enjoy it.’
I spend the next few seconds adjusting to the idea that my father is a man that winks at total strangers.
Of course, I don’t listen to anything he is saying. I just watch him, and re-adjust my thoughts every few seconds into remembering what I am doing, and why. What I am doing is looking at the man who donated the sperm that created me. And even if one moment is all that it took, he is still half of me – of the way I look, the way I talk, the way I am. Maybe he is even half of the reason why, when everything went a little bit wrong for me, I went off down a dark and dangerous path determined to make it worse – a path I might still be on if it weren’t for Mum and Gran charging to the rescue.
So he’s talking and I’m just staring at him, and he glances at me from time to time, with a sort of frown, like maybe he’s seen me around somewhere, or we have met before. And as the lecture is coming to an end, I know he is going to talk to me again, and ask me what I thought of it, or maybe even ask me where he’s seen me before. And suddenly, I have the feeling that he knows, he knows who I am, and I panic. I get
up, even though he is still talking, and I make my way along the row and then towards the exit, keeping my head down.
‘Tough crowd,’ I hear him say, just as I go through the door. The students laugh, and I realise I didn’t do a very good job of keeping a low profile.
Freezing cold air immediately bites at my cheeks, and I shudder. I don’t know what to do next. I feel like if I just go back to the hotel, then it’s over, and really nothing will have changed, so I follow the signs to the student union building, hoping to find a warm place to think. I flash my out-of-date card at a bored-looking guy on security, and he lets me in with barely a glance, not even at my red lipstick.
It’s the middle of the afternoon, and the bar is mostly empty, except for a few students playing pool and watching some sort of American sport on TV. There’s one guy behind the bar, leaning on it, his eyes fixed on the TV too.
‘Do you do coffee?’ I ask him, making him start. He looks at me, and then looks at me again, which makes me feel uncomfortable. I touch my hand to my face, wondering if I’ve got Biro on my cheek again, or rubbed my mouth without thinking about it, so that now I have a clown’s mouth rather than a femme fatale pout.
‘Coffee?’ He says the word like he’s never heard of it before. His accent sounds local, but he doesn’t look like working in a student bar would be his first choice of job. He looks like fronting a manufactured boy band would be his first choice of job. He’s smartly dressed, wearing an ironed shirt tucked into
skinny jeans, and a waistcoat, of all things, topped off with a thin black tie. He’s got fairish brownish hair that’s obviously been styled with the sort of care that only a girl should take – and is that a hint of mascara under those green eyes, or has he just got
really
thick lashes? I am looking so hard, I miss him repeating the question.
‘Um, yes, coffee,’ I say. ‘You know, became popular in the sixteenth century, black in colour, unless you add milk. I like it with milk. And sugar. Are you familiar with the concept of sugar?’
‘You are funny,’ he says, lifting his chin a little and scrutinising me by looking down an improbably straight nose. ‘I like that.’
‘I’d like a decaff coffee,’ I say sharply.
‘Of course. A latte?’ He smiles at me, and instantly I feel stupid for being sarcastic, because he has got this incredibly charming smile. I mean, it’s ridiculous; it’s like being thirteen again and having the stupidest instant crush on a boy in the Sixth Form. He smiles and he’s all sparkly and pretty, and makes me want to squeal, like an actual girl. It feels like such a long time since I looked at a boy and thought about kissing him – weeks since anything like that has come into my head – but, oh my God, that smile! That smile is gold. Someone needs to get hold of that smile and exploit it to extort pocket money from thirteen-year-old girls the world over.
I dip my face away from him, and wonder about leaving before I try to flirt with the worst-dressed boy I’ve ever met, and
then I remember what I am doing here, and why. I remember the baby, my mother, my father. All these reasons mean I can’t run away from a boy with a sweet smile any more. Life is no longer about hiding – and it’s not about flirting, that’s for sure. He probably likes music with tunes, I tell myself. And stupid sappy words. I bet he likes Coldplay.
‘To be honest,’ he says, noticing that I have failed to reply, and kindly stepping in to save me, ‘all of the coffees come out of that machine, and they all taste more or less the same. Unless someone has hot chocolate, and then they taste of that.’
‘The cheapest one, then,’ I say, and I watch him grab a mug, stick it under a stainless steel machine and press a button. A few seconds later, a steaming cup of milky coffee is set before me.
‘I haven’t seen you round here before,’ he observes.
I roll my eyes, wondering if I can make a break for a table, where I might be safe. ‘I come in here every Friday. You don’t remember me?’
‘Nice try.’ He laughs, and wields that smile again. Stupid smile. ‘I wasn’t trying out a line on you. I’d remember you, if we’d met before. I’ve got a thing for faces, and your eyes are the blackest I have ever seen.’
‘Oh,’ I say. I’m not sure how to take that.
‘I’m a photographer,’ he tells me. ‘I’m always looking for interesting faces.’ He stares at me for one long intense moment, during which I think I might melt into a pool of
my own hormones. ‘Yep, blackest eyes I’ve ever seen …’ I sit transfixed, like a mouse about to be gobbled up by a snake, as he leans across the bar. ‘You can barely see the difference between the iris and the pupil. Can I photograph you?’ He pulls back suddenly, and I blink as the spell is broken.
‘No,’ I say, firmly, winding my fingers around the cup. ‘No, I’m not from round here. I’m just here for a day or two, maybe less, even.’
My first encounter with my father has not made me want to introduce myself to him. If anything, it makes me want to know him even less – the way he looked at me, the curiosity in his returning gaze. I can imagine it. I know exactly how it will pan out. ‘Hello, I am your long-lost daughter, the one you never knew about or wanted. No, I don’t have a career. I failed my second-year exams because I got pregnant by a boy, who dumped me, and I went to pieces because I’m a sap, and it didn’t help that I found out that my mum – remember her, the one you knocked up? – is seriously ill. And then I ran away from my seriously ill mother, and got a job in a strip bar. I’ve bounced around from stupid to stupid for months, and I thought I’d round it off nicely by coming to see you. Oh, what’s that? You’d like me to leave now? Thought so. See you in another life.’
‘What you doing here, then?’ the boy asks me, leaning his elbows on the bar.
Boys shouldn’t have such nicely proportioned noses; they should have noses that are either too big or too thin,
but his is perfect. It’s hard to concentrate while looking at it, but marginally easier than trying to engage in conversation while looking at those green eyes fringed with thick lashes. He looks like he should star in a musical, for Christ’s sake.
‘I’m visiting someone,’ I say to the tip of his nose. ‘A friend, sort of.’
‘Boyfriend?’ he asks, just like that, and for a second I think he might be interested. And then I decide it’s probably just that he’s northern, and northern people are always very frank and nosy, at least according to Gran, who thinks she knows everything because she retired to the Pennines. Not any more, though. Now she is out of retirement, for one last job.
‘No,’ I say, as if the very idea of such a thing appals me. I feel myself colour, which he notices, and that makes him smile, which makes me want to give him a dead arm. ‘My boyfriend’s in London.’
His smile wavers – maybe – just a little bit, perhaps? At any rate, he’s not so cocky now. I’ve met boys like him before – fashionable boys who dress like they are in a band, and who own more pairs of shoes than I do. They usually turn out to be dicks. Well, Sebastian did, anyway. Sebastian, who I will quite soon have to talk to again and explain to him that he is actually going to be a father, because I never want my child to be sitting in some bar twenty years from now working up the courage to explain to him who they are.
‘So, what’s your name, then?’ he asks me. ‘I can ask you that, right?’
‘Caitlin,’ I say.
‘Zach.’ He holds out a hand with a wide silver ring on the forefinger, and I take it and shake it. He looks into my eyes, just for an extra moment longer than maybe he should, and once again I have to remember who I am, why I am here. I am not here to flirt with pretty barmen. My days of flirting with boys are over.
‘Zach is perfect for you,’ I tell him.
He laughs. ‘Why’s that?’ he asks me.
‘Because it’s all cheerful and zipp-a-dee-doo-dah,’ I say, which makes him laugh again. He laughs a lot. He must be awfully happy.
‘Caitlin.’ He says my name again, and it sounds familiar on his lips. ‘Your boyfriend is a very lucky man.’
Whoa. Again he just says it, just like that. Like he’s not a pretty boy in a tie, and I’m not a girl dressed entirely in black with the sort of make-up that makes me look like I might want to take a chunk out of his neck. I am not his type, and he is not mine, and we both know it.
‘You think you’re such a smooth operator, don’t you?’ I say.
‘Nope.’ He shrugs. ‘Nope, I just say what I’m thinking. It’s a curse and probably the reason I don’t have a girlfriend at the moment. And I meant it. Your boyfriend is a lucky man. You’re extremely interesting …’
The moment is broken by voices, and I recognise one of them. It’s my father’s. My shoulders hunch up around my ears as Paul Sumner walks in with a group of three students, two
girls and a boy. I can’t stop myself staring at him in the mirror behind the bar while Zach leaves me and goes to take orders from one of the girl students. I watch my dad, half-conscious that the girl is giggling like a loon as Zach serves her. He must have smiled at her. Paul sits at a table opposite the bar, locked in animated conversation with the other two students, and then he must feel my gaze because suddenly he looks up and sees me watching him. It’s all I can do to tear my eyes away from his face. And I know he is getting up and coming over.
‘You left before the end,’ he says.
‘I … I had to go somewhere,’ I stutter. I am sitting at the bar, with an almost finished cup of machine coffee. We both know that was a lie.
‘It’s fine,’ he says. ‘I can’t get rave reviews all the time.’
His smile is cool and short, over in a flash. He nods, picks up the tray of drinks that the girl student ordered, and prepares to go back to his table.
‘Wait,’ I say, standing up abruptly. A drink sloshes over his hands. He sighs and puts the tray down. ‘What?’
‘I …’ I wait for him to look at me and notice my black eyes, which are just like his, and for him just to
know
. But he doesn’t. He just stands there for what seems like eons, his irritation growing. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I’m really sorry I left early.’