Perfect Daughter (13 page)

She ran down the stairs. Her heart hammered, tears gathered behind her eyes and something close to rage coursed through her veins. She readjusted her bag strap on her shoulder with trembling fingers and held the handrail to stop herself from tumbling. By the time she found him, skulking outside, sitting under the large oak tree at the side of the school field, her pulse was sky high.

He didn’t need to confirm the news. One look at his face as he shifted his focus, unable to look her in the eye, told her all she needed to know. It was true. He was moving to America and he hadn’t even bothered to tell her.

She dropped to her knees in front of him, both the adrenalin and her anger now subsiding, leaving her spent.

‘I… I’ve got something to tell you.’ He looked serious.

‘Don’t bother, I already know.’ She plucked at the buckle on her school bag. ‘Thanks for that. How do you think it felt, hearing it from some bloody lower-sixth kids in the dinner queue?’ Her lip quivered despite her best efforts to stay calm and her tears spilled. She looked downwards, embarrassed and sad.

‘I only just heard myself. I… I wanted to tell you in person, but Mr Quidgley asked me if I could head up the team for the Physics Olympiad next term and I told him I wouldn’t be here and he asked why and… it just came out.’ He snapped a dark twig between his fingers and shook his head as if searching for the words.

‘Thanks a bunch, Sven.’ She was angry for so many reasons; only one of them was hearing the news secondhand.

He leant forward until they were inches from each other, face to face. ‘I didn’t sleep last night. My parents made the decision: my dad’s going to take up a lecture post at Harvard, we’ll be living in Boston and that’s that, I can’t do anything about it. But I don’t want to leave you. I want you to come with me!’ His eyes sparkled as if this was the brilliant solution they had been searching for.

‘How can I come with you? Don’t be ridiculous! What, just pack up my school bag and follow you to Boston? This is real life, Sven, not one of your bloody poems with a romantic fairy-tale ending.’

‘You’re bigger than this place, Jacks; bigger than anyone in it. Don’t let this postcode become your shackle. Come to America – you’ll be eighteen in a few months and you can do what you want! We can travel, you can work, we can plan a future!’

He beamed and Jacks found herself smiling too. It felt possible, it felt like she could go and live with the boy she loved and see the country she had always wanted to go to.

‘I don’t know how…’ She paused.

‘We’ll find a way!’

‘But my mum and dad…’

‘What about them? Are you going to tie yourself to them for the rest of your life? Stay here like a child, walking up and down the pier until you grow old? Or are you going to come with me and see the world?’

She looked at him, wondering how to explain that what she wanted and what she felt she was able to do were two very different things. He made it all sound so easy, so possible.

He took her hand and looked at her earnestly and in that moment she knew she would have to find a way. She would go to America!

13

Jacks sloped into the kitchen with a plastic basket full of dirty bed linen. The first wash of the day but certainly not the last. She piled it into the machine. ‘I’m going to make some bunting,’ she announced.

‘What, for breakfast?’ Pete laughed. ‘Why can’t you do toast like everyone else?’

She ignored him. ‘For Christmas. I was thinking it might be a way of brightening up this crappy kitchen, make it more homey. I saw some in a magazine.’

‘How do you make bunting?’ he asked.

‘I’m not sure, but I’ll figure it out. Can’t be that hard.’ She sat at the table.

‘You look tired,’ Pete observed as she took a quick sip from her first cuppa of the day. It had gone cold while she tended to her mum.

‘I look tired because I am tired, so I guess that makes sense.’ She shook out a cup full of detergent and poured it into the dispenser.

‘What can I do to help you?’ he asked. ‘I could make the tea tonight?’

Jacks smiled. ‘No, love, but thank you. You’re out working all day, least I can do is cook your tea. Plus it’s just easier to get it done and get it all put away.’

‘You saying I’m messy?’ He grinned.

‘Pete, you are beyond messy. It’s like there’s been an eruption at a food factory by the time you’ve finished.’ She laughed in spite of herself. ‘Has Martha told you she’s got a boyfriend?’

She stuffed the sheets into the machine and kicked the temperamental door, then reached again for her cup and held it between both palms.

‘Well, I know she’s got a boy friend, but is he a
boyfriend
? Probably not, she’s only young.’ He shovelled a spoonful of cornflakes into his mouth.

‘She’s seventeen, eighteen in January and he is a
boyfriend
boyfriend, make no mistake.’ She sighed. ‘I saw them snogging last night. In the street.’

‘No!’ Pete smirked.

‘Yes! And I don’t find it funny.’

‘Do we know him?’

‘His name is Gideon.’

‘Gideon?’ He laughed. ‘What kind of a name is that?’

‘Pete, his name is not the issue here.’ She sighed again, louder this time. ‘He works at a garage in town.’

‘He’s not at school then?’ Pete looked up.

‘No, he’s a couple of years older.’

‘Well, as long as he looks after her and she’s happy…’

Jacks shook her head. ‘Are you nuts, Pete? We don’t want her having a boyfriend!’

‘We don’t?’ He looked confused.

‘No! She needs to study, needs to get them As! Christ, am I the only one that can see that?’ Jacks slammed her cup on to the table.

‘She’s not daft, Jacks. She knows what she needs to do. And the worst thing you can do is to object – you’ll only make him more attractive.’

‘Make who more attractive?’ Martha asked as she came into the kitchen.

‘Your boyfriend,’ Pete answered honestly.

Martha smiled at her dad. He never lied to her.

‘Why don’t you bring him home for tea one night?’ Pete asked, ignoring Jacks’ glare, which bore into him from the sink.

‘Do you think so?’ Martha asked nervously.

‘Yes!’ Pete said. ‘We’d like to meet him properly, wouldn’t we, love?’ he said, turning to Jacks.

‘Mmmnn.’ She nodded as enthusiastically as she could.

‘Okay, I’ll ask him. Have I got a shirt, Mum?’

‘In the airing cupboard.’

‘Mu-um, I can’t go to school today!’ Jonty yelled from the bedroom.

‘Why not?’ Jacks shouted from the bottom of the stairs.

‘I’ve got period pain in my tummy!’

Jacks collapsed in a heap on the banister. Martha fell against the wall giggling and Pete guffawed loudly.

‘Why are you all laughing?’ Jonty shrieked. ‘I have! Martha was allowed to stay off when she had it and I’ve got it!’

The three only laughed harder.

Ida started ringing her bell. ‘I need help! I have passed water!’

Pete was still laughing as Jacks stepped back into the kitchen and ran the tap. ‘We are the most bonkers family in the street! God knows what Giddyup or whatever ’is name is will think of it all!’ He smiled with something close to pride. ‘He’ll probably run a mile!’

And even Martha chuckled.

We can only hope…
Jacks thought as she ran up the stairs with her bucket of water, detergent, rubber gloves and sponge.

A few days later and Jacks’ bunting was coming along nicely. She ran her fingers through the triangular pendants that she’d cut from a mishmash of charity-shop fabrics and threaded together on red ribbon. Still three weeks to go until Christmas Day, she thought, as she removed the growing pile from the kitchen table. She ran the hoover over the house, tidied the lounge as best she could, lit a scented candle on the mantelpiece and set places at the table.

Martha, meanwhile, split her time between checking her phone repeatedly and looking at her face in the hall mirror. ‘I feel mean, Nan eating upstairs while we’ll all be down here,’ she offered as Jacks set Ida’s tea tray.

‘She likes eating up there, love. And it’s only for one night. She might get a bit flustered with someone she doesn’t know, and besides, there are only five chairs around the table and that’s a squash. Where we would put her – on top of the fridge?’

Martha smiled.

‘Or maybe we could put Jonty up there? He’d probably like it!’ Jacks giggled.

The doorbell rang and Martha dashed to the front door, skidding in her socks along the hall floor and arriving before the bell had given its final chime.

Jacks noted her eagerness and took a deep breath. She looked at her own reflection in the window and saw her dad’s face, ‘Oh, Dad, I’m trying, I really am.’ She turned, smiling, to greet Martha’s boyfriend.

‘Hello. Thanks for inviting me. I bought you these.’ He handed her a bunch of tiny yellow roses.

It was the first time she had been given flowers in a very long time. ‘Oh, Gideon, you shouldn’t have done that! Thank you!’ She was touched and immediately set them in the glass vase that lived in the cupboard under the sink.

‘I was going to bring wine, but I don’t really drink and I didn’t know which one to pick. They all look the same – apart from red or white, obviously.’

Martha laughed as though it was the funniest joke ever told. Pete walked in and shook Gideon’s hand: a hand with rings of black grease under its fingernails, working man’s hands like his own.

‘Blimey, you bought her flowers?’ He indicated Jacks with his thumb. ‘What are you trying to do, make me look bad?’

Gideon laughed.

‘Sit down, love.’ Jacks offered him a chair. ‘Jonty, your tea’s ready!’ she shouted up the hallway.

Jonty thundered down the stairs and sat opposite their guest.

‘How’s your tummy now, Jont?’ Pete asked.

‘Have you been ill?’ Gideon said.

‘No.’ Jonty sulked, not wanting to talk about his ailment of a few days ago, having been fully informed by his mum in the car on the way to school.

‘So where do you live, Gideon?’ Jacks asked as she cut a slice of steak-and-kidney pie and placed it on his plate.

‘Thank you, that looks lovely,’ he replied. ‘Just up on Alfred Street. Not too far.’

‘Have you always lived in Weston?’ Pete asked, tucking into the crisp pastry, his favourite bit.

Gideon shook his head. ‘No, we moved here when my mum and dad got divorced. I was ten. We’d been living in Bedminster in Bristol till then. But my mum got a job at Weston General – she’s a nurse.’

‘Ah, my mum was a nurse,’ Pete said. ‘She passed away a few years ago.’

Gideon looked a little ill at ease, unsure if it was fitting to offer condolences after this length of time. It led to an awkward silence, broken eventually by Pete.

‘You a football man?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Love football.’ Gideon smiled at Martha, as though he had given a correct answer.

‘Who do you support?’

There was a moment of tension as everyone waited for the name of his team to fall from his lips.

‘Rovers.’ Gideon looked Pete in the eye, before collapsing in giggles. ‘Nah, only kidding. City.’

Pete beamed. ‘That’s my boy!’

Martha laughed, clearly having briefed her man.

‘Shocking season though,’ Pete continued.

Gideon leant forward. ‘No cohesion, that’s the trouble. All going for individual glory, doesn’t always feel like a team.’

Pete nodded. ‘That’s true, but that team spirit has to come from the top and it just hasn’t been there. We should get Russell Osman back. Knew what he was talking about did Big Russ.’ He winked his approval at his daughter.

Jacks groaned inwardly as she dished up her mum’s food and trod the stairs with Ida’s special padded tray. Her smile slipped the moment she left the kitchen. He was a nice enough lad – polite, and sweet to buy her flowers – but she had been hoping that he was going to be a disaster. With Pete now clearly smitten as well, it would only make it harder to keep him and Martha apart.

She pushed open the bedroom door with her foot. ‘Here we go, Mum. Nice bit of steak-and-kidney pie with spuds and peas. It’s not too hot. Eat what you can – I’ve cut it into little bits. Let me get you started.’

She placed the spoon in her mum’s hand and watched as Ida brought it up to her mouth, smacking the mashed food against her gums and letting most of it fall back on to the tray.

‘Martha’s brought a friend home for tea. A boyfriend, if you can believe that! I don’t know, Mum, feels like five minutes ago she was starting school and now she’s nearly finishing. Makes me feel old.’

Ida mashed more peas between her lips, some of which stuck to her chin in a gooey green streak. She had always been a messy eater, in fact messy in general and not overly fond of housework. In the latter years it had driven Don mad. He took control of the little things, fastidious almost in his quest for order. He was painstaking in his need to perfectly slice the bread – his ability to keep the loaf straight was an art. He was similarly obsessed with the patch of grass at the back of their house; no more than ten-foot square, it was never sullied by a weed or a stray leaf and was always lovingly referred to as ‘the lawn’. Jacks could see now that he’d wanted to keep control of the little things because he could. He might not have been able to make his wife be kind to him, or stop her flinging dirty bras over the banisters for all to see, but he was happy as long as his toast was symmetrical and his grass immaculate. It made sense to Jacks now.

‘I’m going away,’ Ida announced through her mouthful.

‘Oh, lovely. Be sure to eat all your tea before you go.’

‘I’m going on a trip to find my letter.’

‘Don’t forget to send me a postcard and bring me back a nice stick of rock.’ Jacks smiled and left the door ajar.

She trod the stairs and hovered in the hallway, listening to the boy holding court at the table.

‘I’ve done a lot of research. No one is doing what I want to do at an affordable price. Usually body kits and pimp jobs for cars are only available at the high end of the spectrum, but I reckon there are loads of people with low- to mid-range cars who would love modifications that aren’t too pricey. You know – lit-up dashes, neon subwoofers, fur roof-lining, you name it!’