A Daughter's Secret (5 page)

My flat’s a loft conversion, the ceilings low and perilous, the upstairs a raised platform – I’m more Heidi than Goldilocks.

‘I think we need more greens,’ says Juliet, picking up the menu, long blonde hair shielding her face.

‘Good idea,’ I say, grabbing the menu next to me, suddenly determined to be more than an aggravating, painful reminder of her mum’s absence. ‘What shall we have?’

‘Um, maybe these, with the oyster sauce?’

‘Let’s do it, they sound yummy!’ God, I sound like Brown Owl. Worse, the kind of Brown Owl who has a nip of whisky in the gym cupboard before Brownies starts.

‘So,’ I say, turning towards Robert, realizing as I do that I haven’t actually constructed an end to this sentence. ‘How’s the world of war craft treating you?’

Sharing plates, let alone in a place like this, are invariably a disaster. I feel like I’ve eaten about one portion of my five a day plus a couple of shrimps, and yet the bill still tops £300. The whole process is painful. First Marcus offers to pay it all, then Robert insists on paying half and then I insist on paying half. ‘Don’t,’ says Marcus, his hand trapping mine as I reach into my purse.

‘No,’ I say, prising his hand off. ‘You paid on Sunday.’

‘So?’

‘I’m paying,’ I say, aware that Juliet’s silently enjoying the tennis match, no doubt recording the highlights for her mum. I want to sound generous and bountiful, but instead I sound petulant and stroppy: why can’t Marcus ever book somewhere ordinary? There’s no way I’m going to be able to pay my credit card this month without dipping into my savings.

‘Fine,’ he says, his hand retreating to his glass. ‘Thank you.’

Finally we emerge, mole-like, into the sodium glow of the street lights. The wide, hushed road stretches ahead of us, lined with the kind of high-end furniture shops with nothing but a flash of gilt in the window and a double-barrelled name over the door. As Robert starts casting around for a cab, we say our goodbyes. I can feel myself hugging Juliet a bit too hard, her gym-taut body refusing to yield. Still I won’t quit.

‘Let’s do that night out. I mean, if you want to. We could go to one of those cinemas with sofas.’

Stop talking.

‘Yeah, no, we should.’

‘Not if you don’t fancy it, but—’

‘Absolutely,’ she says, looking relieved as a cab pulls up. ‘Bye, Dad,’ she says, arms flung upwards to loop around his neck.

‘Bye, sweetheart.’ Marcus turns back to me as they drive off. He grins, a bit wolfish. ‘That was fun.’

‘Sort of,’ I say. I feel like newly sprayed crops, covered by a thin, invisible layer of humiliation. I take Marcus’s hand, a little unsteady on my high heels. ‘Do you think Juliet hates me? You know, wax dolls, pins?’

He stops, swinging round theatrically and encircling my waist.

‘Come on, let’s walk a bit. Don’t be so bloody stupid. How could
anyone
hate you?’

The road feels very empty all of a sudden, eerily quiet. Something makes me dart a look behind me, even though the only things to see are overpriced armoires trapped behind plate glass. I hold on a little more tightly to Marcus, wishing I could let the contents of today tumble straight out of me, like water from a jug. Of course I can’t.

‘Even if she doesn’t hate me, she hates the idea of me. Not as much as Christian, but you know . . .’

I watch his face as he runs my hypothesis through the computer.

‘Tell you what I do know. Life’s short, and the sooner she realizes that, the happier she’ll be. What would you say? I’m
modelling
it for her.’

He sets off again, a problem solved. He’s sneaky, the way his quick brain swallows the jargon and vomits it up, reconstituted in a way that suits him. I lag behind him, trying to drag his urgent feet into step with mine.

‘Do you miss her?’

‘Who?’

‘Li-la,’ I sing-song.

‘Not after the last couple of years. I didn’t know what a vindictive bitch she could be.’ I feel myself recoil at the venom. He senses it, I think. ‘I don’t have to, do I?’ he adds more softly. ‘Once you’ve got kids with someone, they’re never really out of your life.’

‘Is that what commitment is? Children?’

‘It’s the only one that’s permanent, isn’t it? Rest of them are written on paper. That one’s made of flesh and blood.’

‘Sometimes,’ I say, my voice catching, but too slightly for him to notice. He could remember, but I know he won’t. I should do what I’d sagely advise any of my patients to: speak up, rather than silently resent him for not being Mystic Meg; but I don’t. I never do. I only show him the manicured lawns, never the compost heap. Does he do the same? I look at his profile, the jut of his hawk-like nose, his angular cheekbone. It’s a slick package.

‘Is it not enough commitment for you? Is that it?’ says Marcus, stopping suddenly. ‘Do you want something sparkly on your finger before you live with me but you’re too postmodern to admit it?’

My flat flashes into my mind, the way the door clunks shut after me. The way I can flick the deadlock for an extra bit of security.

‘No. It’s not that.’

‘Then what is it? You trying to suss me out with all these questions about Lila? Work out whether I’m worth putting all your chips on red for?’

‘No!’ I say, hating how inarticulate I am tonight. ‘It’s just, it’s huge, isn’t it?’ I grab his hands between mine, stiff to my touch. ‘We’re not kids. We know what can happen.’

Sometimes I do feel like a child – a weird, supersized one, responsible and hopelessly irresponsible all at once. It’s so long since I lived with someone – Jamie, my twentysomething boyfriend – and the truth is, I wasn’t very nice to him. Marcus stares at me, his eyes burning.

‘Bit of positive thinking might come in handy right now, don’t you think? In your professional opinion?’

‘If we move in . . .’ I look at him, continue more quietly. ‘I don’t want to have to move back out.’

His face softens. We’re under a street light, the lines and crevices of his face smoothed out by its sympathetic yellowish hue.

‘I’m not going to skip out on you.’

‘I hate it when people make those kind of promises,’ I snap, before I can edit myself. ‘You can’t say that.’

‘Well guess what, I just did,’ he says, grinning, refusing to rise to it. His certainty in his own certainty makes me feel safe. I slip my arms around him, pull myself against his bulky chest. I’m cold now.

‘Let’s go back to yours,’ I say.

‘Let’s go home,’ he says, hand already hailing a cab.

April 1987 (eight years old)

Lorcan’s fingers are caressing the neck of his guitar, back and forth, so long and thin and white as to be almost girlish. Everything about him has that elongated quality, his cheekbones high and fine, his brown curly hair straggling around the collar of his stripy flannel shirt. I know how the fabric will feel when my cheek presses against it, but right now I’m sitting at his feet, my gaze zigzagging up and down, chasing the chords he’s picking out. I daren’t look away. If I look away he might be gone, but if I concentrate hard enough I can keep him ensnared in my web. I’m a big, fat spider and he is my prey. You must never tell your prey that they’re your prey, in case they make a run for it.

‘Is that your song?’ I ask, as he lays the guitar down on the battered floral sofa we got from Molly’s mum and dad when her family moved house. He laughs, his face a Polaroid of the stupidity of my remark, and I search desperately for something better. ‘Is it The Beatles?’

‘No, darling, it’s classical guitar. Can’t you hear it?’ He picks out a refrain again, his blue eyes – almost as dark blue as my new, scratchy, uncomfortable school uniform – tracking my face. Can he see I’m more grown-up now? I try to make my listening face reflect how mature I’ve become in the months he’s been gone. I drink tea with breakfast, like Mum, and I read
Smash Hits
.

‘It’s beautiful,’ I say. ‘Did you play it on tour?’

‘
You
’
re
beautiful,’ he says, laughing at the grown-up description, this laugh very different from the knife-slice laugh from before. I look at him, counting all the bits that make him a whole person. He’s younger than other people’s dads, his skin smoother, his shaggy hair untroubled by grey. ‘My beautiful, beautiful baby. I missed you so much while I was away.’

‘I missed you more!’ I cry, risking springing up onto the sofa, my hot cheek pressed on the exact point of his chest I was eyeing from the floor. I can hear his heart beating through the soft fabric. It makes me more sure he’s really here, more than a mirage that I’ve conjured up with the sheer force of my longing. ‘I missed you every single day.’

‘Shall we make some supper?’ he says, standing up, long denim-clad legs unfolding from underneath him like a pair of stilts, my cheek left hot and bare. I wonder if I’ve been too ‘mushy’. He hates mushy. I dig my nail into my palm to remind myself, hard enough for it to really hurt.

The kitchen is NOT big, in fact it is very small, with a very old oven and a fridge that rumbles like a hungry dragon and sometimes keeps me awake. Mum says if my friends say anything I should tell them it’s ‘vintage’ but the way our flat is makes me not especially want to invite people over. I don’t think they especially want to come anyway, not the girls I’ve met at my new school. I’m glad I’ve got Molly. She’s got a fridge with an ice maker, but she doesn’t care that I haven’t.

He’s pushing a bloody bag out from the recesses of the fridge, triumphantly thumping it down on the rough wood of the ancient table that we got from his mum and dad. Everything at their house is valuable, which is different from expensive, and can mean it smells very old and doggy. We don’t go there very often, but I don’t really mind. I sent them a letter to thank them for paying for my new school, because Mum said it was polite, but they didn’t write back.

‘Steak!’ he says. ‘You can try it medium rare now you’re nearly nine.’

The clocks went forward last week, and as I watched Mum stand on a chair and swivel the arms on the plastic kitchen wall-clock I wished that she would turn round and swivel me. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen . . . then I’d be a teenager and I would be properly mature, and we could all go on tour together. I’m only eight and a half but maybe six months is ‘nearly’ in Lorcan’s head.

The meat glistens on the counter, a red slick of blood oozing from its marbled flesh. I don’t remember the last time we had a meal like this. We have boiled eggs and soldiers, pasta and pesto. I eye it nervously.

‘Chef Mia,’ says my dad, producing a strange little hammer from his rucksack, silver with a mottled surface. He bows, passes it to me with a flourish. ‘Over to you.’ And he throws a handful of herbs over the steaks, then shows me how to flatten them, his fingers as tight as a tourniquet around my forearm.

‘Harder!’ he shouts, as we hammer harder, although by now I’m giggling too much to be any use. Perhaps I don’t want to gain my chef stripes: it feels safe here, his grip strong enough for me to believe that the moment will never end. ‘
Magnifique!
’ he says, unclasping me so he can put a tape in the ancient player next to the sink. Next he produces a bottle of red from his seemingly bottomless rucksack, opening it with the same sense of ceremony he’s giving everything. He fills a glass to the brim, then grabs a beaker from the cupboard.

‘In Italy the
bambinos
drink wine from when they’re toddlers. You can just have a taste.’

He dribbles some into the glass, then puts it under the tap until it’s Ribena-coloured, different from the potent ruby red of his. I take a tiny sip, trying not to recoil from the bitter mustiness of it.

‘Now you have to say cheers,’ he says, and taps my glass with his.

‘Cheers!’ I shout, and we shout it back and forth, knocking our glasses together, harder each time. He drinks deeply, and I try to do the same, but it goes up my nose and then we both laugh some more.

Mum doesn’t even try to get home for supper. The clock hands have got to quarter to ten when she comes back, and we’ve listened to both sides of the tape of
Dark Side of the Moon
three times. She looks a bit like she’s been in a storm. Her hair – which is blonde, the best colour for a girl – is quite messy, and she isn’t wearing any lipstick.

‘Mia, why are you still up? You know bedtime is eight.’

She’s looking at my dad when she says it, and he’s looking at me. He smiles a naughty sort of smile, the kind I reckon Mr Toad would have when he gets to drive his car, and I smile back.

‘I’m not tired,’ I say, even though secretly I am, and the wine and water has given me a headache and I don’t want to listen to Pink Floyd any more, even if they are musical geniuses. I prefer Wham! but if I ever told my dad that he might not even like me any more.

‘Go upstairs and brush your teeth,’ she says, in a voice that is all bossiness and not love, and which is not her usual voice.

Lorcan chinks his glass against mine. Luckily mine’s empty so she can’t prove there was wine in it, but she eyes it suspiciously. He’s still grinning, and now he looks sort of soft around the edges.

‘We’ve been having a fine old time. Mia’s been telling me about school and what she and Milly have been getting up to.’

‘Molly,’ I say, before I can help it.

‘That’s really wonderful,’ says Mum, in a voice that says different, ‘but she’s got to be up for school at 7.30.’

Mum has to be up at 7.30 too. She works in a café now, because it means she can pick me up from school, but in another life she was going to be a lawyer.

‘She’s far too clever for school. School of life is all this one needs. How about we go on an adventure tomorrow?’

I turn my head to look at Mum, but not quickly enough. Her face is already saying no. Now I turn my face into the ugliest thing I can make it. She smiles at me like she wants to make up, but I don’t want to. Suddenly I am really, really angry. The dragon is inside my chest, not inside the fridge. I make my feet stomp on the stairs when I go up them so everyone will know, but I don’t think they’re really listening. Mum’s turned her horrible cross voice on my dad, which is so stupid. He’s only just come home: he’s never going to want to stay here when she sounds like a wicked witch. I shouldn’t have stamped my feet either.