A Daughter's Secret (28 page)

‘I need to talk to you,’ I said.

He reached out a hand, stroked my cold cheek.

‘Sorry I didn’t ring this week, but you don’t want some thicko who fails his exams. I got an offer from Durham.’

Three hours on the train at least.

‘Course you did. They know quality when they see it.’

‘Too right. I’m not just a pretty face.’ His eyes were roving the room, checking out the scene. I took his beautiful chin between my fingertips and turned his face back towards me.

‘Earth to Jim. I
need
to talk to you.’ His eyes darkened as he heard the catch in my voice, and I almost backed away from the edge. I suddenly craved a few more drops of the before, but the truth was that the before was already over. ‘I’m pregnant.’

The colour drained from his face. I waited for something to register there.

‘You can’t be.’

‘I am. I’ve taken three tests.’

We sat there for an agonizing minute as he tried to absorb it.

‘Fuck’s sake.’ I reminded myself of how shocked I was when I first found out. This was shock, pure and simple. ‘Listen, I’ll help, of course I’ll help.’ I started to breathe again, relief flooding through me. ‘Mum and Dad’ll pay for it if your mum and dad can’t.’

‘They don’t have to completely support us!’

His expression was one of pure disbelief.

‘I meant . . . Mia, you can’t have a baby!’ He saw my stricken face. ‘I mean, we’re not old enough to be parents.’

I cried, yet again, and Jim signalled quickly and efficiently for the bill, dropping a crumpled fiver on the silver platter and leading me out.

We spent hours criss-crossing the Heath, Jim pleading with me to see sense. I knew he was right – that the part of me that wanted to keep the baby was entirely illogical. The problem was it was stubborn too.

‘Your mum’s got it sussed,’ he said eventually. ‘There’s plenty of time. We can have a baby when we’ve got jobs and a mortgage and money for some flash pram we don’t even know how to put up.’

It was a master stroke. It didn’t make me want to have an abortion, of course it didn’t, but I didn’t really and truly want to be a mum either, particularly now I’d seen his face. There were so many areas where I was riddled with self-doubt, but academic achievement wasn’t one of them. I loved the simplicity of it: what I put in I got out. I didn’t want to be like Mum, all thwarted ambition and broken dreams. I was going to be a top-flight human rights lawyer, noble and accomplished with great suits like they wore in
LA Law
. There was no perfect solution, but I knew in my heart that this was the least imperfect one. We sat on a bench, my damp face on his shoulder, one of his hands stroking my hair whilst the other manoeuvred a fag. I still avoided the smoke.

‘Shsh,’ he kept saying, his touch hypnotic. ‘It’s all going to be fine now. Hunky-dory.’

He didn’t seem to understand about before and after – it might’ve been his baby, but it wasn’t his body. Still, he was here beside me, and in that moment it was all that mattered. The next time I sprang this momentous news, I vowed, it would be a very different story.

When I told Mum, I could tell she was relieved, even though she hated the fact that she was. It made me hate myself in turn for exposing her to a situation where every solution felt like a miniature tragedy.

‘I know how hard this is,’ she said, enveloping me in yet another hug, ‘but there’ll be time for you. A better time. I’m sorry if I failed you.’

‘You didn’t fail me!’ I said, hugging her back harder.

‘Of course I’ll come with you.’

‘No, Jim’s coming,’ I said, ignoring the look of utter contempt that crossed her face. ‘But thank you. That’s what he said,’ I added defensively. ‘That we’d have plenty of time for kids.’

‘Did he?’ she said, her eyes like chips of ice.

We didn’t mention Lorcan – safely out of the way with some of his muso mates – although his presence loomed large. Mum admitted she’d already looked into options, and thought it was best to do it privately and quickly. We made some phone calls right there and then, an initial appointment booked for Monday. Mum hung up the receiver, looked with pure maternal love at my pale face. I couldn’t promise to be able to give that, not yet.

‘And if you change your mind, you know I’ll support you every step of the way.’

She didn’t say ‘we’. She was right not to – we just didn’t know how right.

Chapter Sixteen

When Brendan buzzes to say that Gemma’s arrived for her session, I close my eyes and take three deep gulps of air. So much of me wants to creep away from the mess I’d made, convince myself that the most responsible thing is to never see her again, but she’s asked for this. I owe it to her.

I find my poise – she deserves poise, not cringing – and walk confidently into the waiting room. I was expecting a scowl, or another self-satisfied smile of triumph, but instead her eyes widen with pleasure, her smile more genuine than I’ve ever known it to be.

‘Mia!’ she says, like it’s a glorious reunion.

I feel something in that moment that’s almost love. I’m glad she’s here, despite everything.

‘Hi, Gemma,’ I say, smiling back. ‘Let’s go through, shall we?’

She throws herself down on the couch like it’s her own personal resting place.

‘I thought you wouldn’t see me. I thought you meant it!’

‘I did mean it, Gemma, but with everything that’s happened I think we all thought – you, me, your mum, my boss – it would be good for us to have a chance to . . .’ It’s unexpectedly hard to finish the sentence. ‘Say goodbye.’

She goes to speak, but then shrinks in on herself. Her eyes dart up to mine, and she gives a brief nod. It’s stupid, but I want to put my arms round her thin shoulders and hug her, promise her that everything’s going to be all right. However bad it feels now, you can get through this: if you wait it out, eventually time will decide it for you, make you mistress of your own destiny. But how can I make her any promises?

‘What if I don’t want to say goodbye to you?’ she says, her voice cracking. Her grey-blue eyes fill with tears, her face puffy with emotion.

It twists on my heart, the way she gives herself to me now. I’ve become a mirror for the parent who treats her badly, and now she wants me more than ever.

‘Gemma, I’ll miss you too, but I think it’s for the best. We’ve blurred the lines. I blurred them because I care about you, but it wasn’t my finest hour. You deserve better.’

‘I don’t want better, I want you!’ Her hands fly up to her face. ‘You get me, Mia. No one gets me. They all think I’m weird.’

‘Who thinks you’re weird? You’re not weird, you’re you. Remember what I said? There’s only one Gemma Vine.’

‘Everyone does,’ she says, her voice a painful quaver. ‘Everyone at school. They even think the props I make are weird. My teachers – but they have to make listening faces, like this.’ She twists her mouth into an exaggerated moue, her eyebrows arching up. I can’t help laughing at her, which makes her preen. ‘My waste-of-space family,’ she continues. ‘The only people who don’t think I’m weird are you and my dad.’ She pauses. ‘And you probably do think I’m weird, but you’ve had, like, years of training to make
your
listening face.’

‘Gemma, look at me.’ She does, her gaze naked. ‘I don’t think you’re weird, I promise, and nor does your mum. She loves you. More than I think you sometimes realize.’

‘Yeah, no. I know she loves me,’ she says, sarcastic in a way that tells me she knows it’s true.

‘I think you’re dealing with an awful lot of things that a person your age shouldn’t have to deal with. And actually, you’re doing pretty well.’ I have to look away as I say it, the thought of the potential hidden evidence blindsiding me. I can’t protect her. I thought I could, but I can’t. All I can hope is that it was nothing more than a tactic on Patrick’s part, but the way his face looked when he told me said otherwise. ‘And I’m really sorry that I let you playing my dad’s song get to me. You shouldn’t have done it, but I’m the adult, and I should’ve stayed calm.’

‘I’m sorry!’ she says, a sob rising up. She buries her blonde head in her arms. She looks so thin and vulnerable, no more than a wispy pencil sketch.

‘You don’t need to apologize,’ I say, keeping my voice soft. ‘I should never have told you so much about me. It was confusing. If I hadn’t, you wouldn’t have . . .’, I was going to say ‘had the ammunition’, but it would have sounded too raw, too emotional – too like a break-up. ‘Known what to find.’

‘I do like his songs!’ she says, raising her gaze.

It breaks my heart, the way she’s clutching at straws, looking for ways to please me. I don’t take the bait, I simply smile at her.

‘Listen, Gemma, we’re here to talk about you. Not me. I’m boring, irrelevant!’ I say, holding her gaze, hoping she’ll come back with a smart reply. She doesn’t.

‘Don’t leave me, Mia!’

I’m choking up now, but I swallow it down: I owe her total professionalism, even if it feels like a muzzle. It’s funny, I’ve always worked from gut instinct within these four walls, and yet, outside them, I’ve struggled so much to listen to anything but the deluded diktats of my thoughts. I can’t imagine how it’s going to feel next week, not having this amazing playground. So much of what makes me me, at least in my eyes, is here in this room.

‘There are other therapists, Gemma . . . you can still have support. I think what we need to do, in the time we’ve got left, is make sure there’s nothing left unsaid between us.’ She nods, big eyes asking me to carry on. ‘I know your mum’s talked to you about Patrick, the lawyer.’ It feels odd calling him ‘the lawyer’. It’s been six days, and there’s been no contact. He doesn’t know that I’m homeless, single and – the hat trick – potentially unemployed. Would he even care? Much as I’m still raging with him, I can’t help believing he would, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Maybe I need to believe in something, a life raft to save me from the existential bleakness of my and Marcus’s bloodless severing of ties. He ranted at me when I called him, but it felt like it was his titanic ego that was hurting more than his heart, and the truth was that I didn’t hurt enough either. Perhaps there’s too much else going on for me to feel it just yet. ‘I want you to know that I didn’t tell him any of the secrets you told me about your dad. But I can understand if you’re angry I talked to him at all. They’ve asked to interview you again, right?’

‘I’m not angry,’ she says, insistent.

‘It’s OK to be angry, Gemma. You won’t hurt me.’ I wish she’d break, smirk at me in the infuriating way she usually does – like I’m an incompetent fool, and she’s the one who should be firing the questions. It’s so Alice in Wonderland. She’s been furious with me, week after week, and now, when anger would be entirely justified, she can’t lay claim to it. ‘And it’s OK if you’re not, too. Or if it comes later.’

‘Can you talk to them with me?’ She looks up, finally cheeky. ‘Can you come and talk to your boyfriend?’

I smile at her, shaking my head.

‘He’s
not
my boyfriend.’

‘I know he likes you! And I reckon you like him . . .’ I don’t reply. ‘You think I’m just being a pain in the bum like Mum says, but I’m not thick, Mia. Dad always says I’ve got nous. Your face does something funny when you say his name, like you’re having a row inside you.’

She’s sharp, this one – I wish I could tell her that. Then I start thinking it through, watching the knowing smile that tugs her mouth upwards. So far there’s been no formal complaint about me, but I can’t help wondering if the axe will fall after the session they begged me for has been delivered. If her erratic mood pings towards anger, if she tells Annie what she suspects about me and Patrick, there’s no way I’ll escape a formal investigation. I’m a cowardly fool for not telling Judith the whole sorry tale when I had the chance. I quickly recover myself. This is Gemma’s time.

‘Gemma, we’re talking about me again, and I want to keep talking about you. I can’t come with you to your interview, but I can try and help you prepare.’ I pull back, Patrick’s dire warnings flooding back. ‘Emotionally, I mean. Are you nervous?’

‘No.’

‘Really?’

She’s silent, her gaze fleeing out of the window. I look for that familiar blankness, but her face is a picture of fierce concentration.

‘If I tell you . . .’ she says. ‘Mia, if I tell you what I know about my dad, could you tell your boy— tell the police for me, so I don’t have to go?’ I look at her, my heart beating hard in my chest, trying to work out how to respond. ‘If you care about me, if you really
are
sorry for going behind my back,’ she adds, the sharp little manipulator back in the room, ‘then you’ll do it for me.’

Chapter Seventeen

I sit there looking at her, my mind whirring. She has extraordinary power for one so young; I don’t want to be a horse, kicked hard in the flank, clearing a fence neither of us should ever have attempted.

‘That’s the rule, isn’t it? If I tell you something that’s’ – she makes quote marks in the air, an affectation I hate – ‘
relevant to the police investigation
, you’re meant to tell him. That’s what I want to do. Simples,’ she adds in that annoying voice from that annoying advert.

‘Gemma, I’m not sure if that’s appropriate at this stage—’

‘You always say it’s my session, to use how I want. This is how I want to use it.’

Perhaps this has always been where we were heading, the natural conclusion to our work together. God knows I didn’t dodge it, nudging her to tell me about those messages, asking her all about her dad.

‘So what
do
you want to tell me? And, Gemma, I’m going to coach you here. Go very slowly. Stop any time. This is our last session, and I don’t want you to be left with your guts hanging out because you shared too much.’

She looks at me, vulnerable again.

‘If I don’t finish telling you, can I come back?’

Is this what this is all about? I think of Annie recalling her seduction, how powerless she was to resist. Gemma’s learnt at the feet of a master. If Patrick could see us now, he’d be punching the air.

‘No. We’ve agreed this is the last session and we’re going to stick to it.’ Would I have been so adamant if I was the only person who could extract the truth? The thing is, for her own safety, she can’t be allowed to feel like she’s omnipotent, running the show. It’s imperative I hold the boundary, at least for now. She looks at me for a long minute, her jaw rigid. ‘You don’t have to talk at all, Gemma, remember that. We could just sit here together.’