Perfect Daughter (32 page)

Jacks nodded and thought about her dad. She knew how that felt.

Martha took a deep breath and tried to stem her tears. Gideon placed his arm around her shoulders and whispered into her scalp. ‘We’ll just get through this and then you can get some rest, okay?’

Martha rallied slightly and smiled up at her man, who had the ability to make everything feel a little bit better. Jacks watched as they sloped off to find a seat.

Gina sidled up to her friend. ‘How you doing?’

‘Not sure. I want to go home now – well, I do and I don’t.’

‘Not too much longer.’ Gina smiled. ‘By the way, I’ve still got the storage boxes of Ida’s stuff in my garage. Let me know when you want them and I’ll drop it all by. No rush, of course.’

‘Thanks.’

When the last of the mourners had left and Jonty, Martha and Gideon were heading back to Sunnyside Road, Jacks walked to the car with Pete. ‘Gina’s still got boxes of Mum’s stuff in her garage.’

‘Do you want to go and get them now?’

Jacks nodded. ‘May as well.’ She wanted to delay going home to the house with the redundant stair lift and the bath hoist they’d never used.

Pete carried the large square cardboard boxes up the stairs and placed them on the floor. Jacks lifted the top one and put it in the middle of Ida’s bed. She ran her fingers over the photos on the windowsill and picked up her mum’s bed jacket that lay in wait on the pillow.

‘What do we do with all her stuff?’ she asked.

‘Nothing. Not until you’re ready. But when you are ready, some will go to charity, some we’ll keep and some we’ll throw away. Don’t worry about it now, though. It can wait.’

‘What’s that?’ Jonty asked from the doorway, pointing at the box on the bed.

‘Some of Nan’s stuff from the move, bits and bobs we left at Aunty Gina’s. Just going to have a sort through.’

‘I was a bit scared of her,’ he whispered.

‘Who, love? Aunty Gina?’ Jacks asked.

Jonty shook his head. ‘No Nan.’

Jacks sat on the bed and beckoned her boy into her arms. ‘Why on earth were you scared of her? She was just a little old lady.’

‘She used to be quiet and then suddenly shout things and call me Don or Toto and it used to make me jump.’

‘She was a bit confused, love. She wouldn’t have wanted to scare you. She loved you.’

‘And sometimes she was a bit smelly and I didn’t like that.’

‘She couldn’t help it, Jont. She was old, but she was like a big baby in a lot of ways.’

‘Is that why she had food on her face?’ He blinked.

‘Yes.’ Jacks imagined seeing Ida through his eyes and understood that she probably hadn’t seemed all that appealing.

‘Is she with Grandad now?’

‘I think so.’ She hugged him tight. ‘They are probably dancing on a pier somewhere, having a jolly old time.’

‘Is she still confused, do you think?’ Jonty had obviously been giving it some thought.

‘No.’ Jacks smiled. ‘I don’t think she is. I think, wherever she is, she’s happy and not confused any more.’

‘That’s a good thing then.’

‘It is, mate,’ Pete interjected.

‘Can I go and watch telly with Martha and Gideon now?’

Jacks nodded and he padded down the stairs in his socks, avoiding the tacks.

‘Do you think he’s okay, Pete?’

‘Yes, love. It’s a period of adjustment for us all, but it’s like anything, isn’t it? As long we all keep talking, we’ll be fine.’

She ignored the lesson.

‘Let’s see what we’ve got here.’ Pete opened up the box and pulled out a neat stack of folded pillowcases.

‘Charity shop,’ Jacks said decisively.

‘You sure you want to do this now?’ he asked as he placed them in a pile. He reached in again and brought out a geometry set, intact and unopened.

‘Jonty might be able to use that,’ she said.

‘Doubt it.’ Pete sighed as he lifted out an empty Nike trainers box. This made them smile – the idea of wrinkly, creaky Ida owning a pair of hi-tops and going running. They wondered who’d given her the box.

Pete handed it to Jacks, who carefully lifted the lid to reveal a bundle of paperwork, all tied up in a piece of lilac ribbon. Jacks loosened the ribbon and let the bundle fall apart on the bed. She raked through it, selecting a photo of herself with her dad in front of the Winter Gardens. She remembered it being taken. She was nine. They had been about to go inside and watch the Gang Show when her mum had pulled out the camera and snapped away. Jacks laughed into her palm. ‘Oh God! What am I wearing?’

Pete took the photo and studied the image. ‘Dungarees! Nice!’

‘I loved them. I wore them all the time. And please note the stripey socks, which were a carefully thought-out accessory.’

‘Your dad looks so young,’ Pete observed.

‘He was fifty-four, so quite old to have a nine-year-old, at least among my friends.’ Jacks nodded as she rummaged through the pile. ‘Look at this!’ She held up a piece of card with two tiny milk teeth sellotaped to it. ‘These were the first ones I lost. Mum must have got them back from the tooth fairy!’

‘She must have!’ Pete laughed.

A yellowing piece of paper caught her eye. She removed it from between the coach tickets, a memento from her parents’ trip to France and a birthday card Ida had received from her sister, whose pink glitter stuck to her fingers. Jacks unfolded the single sheet and instantly recognised her mother’s beautiful penmanship.

‘I’d forgotten what lovely writing she had.’ She turned the page to show Pete, then started to read it.

Pete watched as her face crumpled and her mouth twisted.

‘Oh, Pete!’ Jacks placed her palm on her chest and handed the sheet to her husband. ‘Oh God! I don’t know what to think.’

Pete read the letter addressed to his father-in-law out loud.

‘In response, Don, I watched you with Jackie tonight and my heart sank. She thinks the world of her dad and yet you calmly lie and tell her you’ve been working, when I know you were with Joan. Mr Wievelmore told me he saw you again. The pleasure he takes in keeping me informed makes everything even harder, but I understand, she is his wife and he really doesn’t know what to do either. That makes two of us. Your lies are making me ill, making me angry and making my home feel like a prison. I love you. All I’ve ever done is love you, and Jackie made us complete. I thought we would have been enough. To find out you and Joan have been carrying on all that time, behind my back, even through my pregnancy, is more than I can bear. My heart is broken, but I will try, I will try to carry on for the sake of our little girl. Please give her up. Tell me what I can do to make you give her up. I can’t share you. I won’t. Ida.’

Pete glanced up at his wife, who looked horrified.

She shook her head. ‘I can’t believe it.’

Pete reread the detail. ‘Who’s Joan Wievelmore?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never heard the name before. Do you think it’s true?’

Pete nodded. ‘I do, Jacks. I don’t know why she’d keep the letter all these years if it wasn’t. And it certainly sounds true.’ He scanned the words again. ‘It says “in response” – do you think your dad might have written to her?’

Jacks grabbed the pile and sifted through the sheets and envelopes, sorting though postcards and photographs until she found it. The envelope was blank and unstuck. She pulled out the two sheets and flattened them with her palm against her thigh before lifting them towards the light and reading out loud. She wanted Pete to hear it too.

‘I have thought long and hard, Ida. Living with a secret is a very hard thing to do. I agree that Jackie should not be lied to; she’s my daughter and as far as I am concerned deserves to be given the facts. Joan and I fell in love. It was simple, it happened. She made me happy. She makes me happy. I cannot give her up. I simply ask that you let me go, then there will be no more lies. I sometimes think my punishment for having fallen in love is the way you refuse to release me, wanting me to spend my days apart from her, with you reminding me of my many failings. It’s a hard lesson for me to learn and a rotten way for us both to live. Surely you can see that you would benefit from the freedom too? You are a wonderful woman, Ida, and I want you to be free to go and live your own life in your own way, so I can do the same. I stay for Jackie. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be elsewhere. I do. I love you too, in my own way, but as we know, that’s not always enough, is it? Whoever said life was easy? Don.’

Jacks slumped on the bed and shook her head. ‘He wanted to leave us. I can’t believe it. Not my dad!’

Pete lay next to her. ‘It was a long, long time ago and nothing to do with you. Your dad loved you very much, you know that.’

‘These must have been the letters Mum wanted to find, the ones she was waiting for, the ones she kept asking about. Do you remember, she said once that I mustn’t read her letter. She shouted it. “You mustn’t! Don’t do it!” And then when she went AWOL at Ange and Ivor’s, she said she was looking for something we’d stored there. This is what she was looking for.’ Jacks fanned the papers against her palm. ‘She wanted to keep this from me. Oh, Mum!’

She started to cry, properly cry, for the first time since Ida’s death.

‘I shouted at her,’ she sobbed. ‘I should never have shouted at her. I just lost my patience sometimes and I was a bit rough with her once or twice when she was in the shower. I didn’t mean it. I was just tired. So tired. And… and I scared her, took her to the Avon Gorge in the dark. I should never have done that. I wasn’t thinking straight.’ She sobbed harder, almost hysterical.

‘Don’t cry, love. Don’t cry. Calm down, Jacks.’ Pete held her tight. ‘You did everything for your mum. She was happy and she knew she was loved.’

‘Oh, Pete… Pete…’ She gulped, trying to speak through her tears. ‘I miss her, I miss her being here and I thought my dad was perfect! I did! I thought he was the most perfect man!’

Pete thought back to the night a few months ago when he’d sat at the kitchen table and watched the hands on the clock turn so slowly he was convinced time was going backwards. ‘No one’s perfect,’ he whispered.

‘I thought Dad was. But the worst thing is that I hated the way Mum treated him – it made me feel angry with her, I despised her at times, but all that time she was heart-broken. Imagine her having to live like that! He had done that to her and I didn’t know!’ Jacks let her tears fall as she buried her head in the candlewick bedspread. ‘Oh, Mum! I’m so sorry. My mum! And now it’s too late. I’m so sorry!’

Pete held her even tighter.

‘I can’t believe it, Pete. Why did he do that to us? Hurt her and lie to me? I can’t believe they had this secret.’

‘Everyone has secrets, Jacks. And you mustn’t let this change things. You adored your dad and he you. What went on between him and your mum is a whole separate thing. They were grown-ups and it’s to their credit that they kept it from you.’

Jacks shrugged free from his grip and sat up, trying to catch her breath. ‘Since Dad died, I’ve had a little picture of him in my mind all the time. His face has just sat there, in the middle of everything I look at. But now it’s gone. It’s just disappeared.’

Pete took her hand inside his. ‘Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe you’ll be able to see your own family a bit more clearly now.’

‘You mean Martha, don’t you?’ Jacks started crying again and collapsed against her husband’s chest.

‘Yes I do,’ he whispered. ‘And remember what we agreed, Jacks, about telling her. That time is getting close now, you know that, don’t you?’

Jacks nodded, how could she forget? They sat together in silence, both digesting the facts of the letter and its implications. It was Jacks that spoke first. ‘I need to re-evaluate, Pete, need to get my mind straight and think about life going forward. My dad was right, I need to look forwards, look ahead and the path’ll be clear. Looking back will only get me into trouble.’ She had a sudden flashback to the day her mum died and the way Ida had gestured at her to carry on straight ahead. She smiled through her tears. ‘Even Mum was telling me to go forwards, I think, in her own way. You know, Pete, I don’t think she was always quite so out of it as we thought.’

Pete was only half listening as he picked up an A4 envelope and flipped it open. He held the contents up to his face. ‘Jesus Christ!’

‘What is it?’ Jacks shrank back. ‘I don’t know if I can cope with more bad news.’

‘It’s not bad news, love. It’s a certificate and a letter signed by your mum and her solicitor, and a note for us, from Ida.’

Jacks took the piece of paper and swallowed as she spoke the sum aloud. ‘Thirty-five thousand pounds in Premium Bonds!’

She read the letter through. ‘Inherited from her father… Now I come to think of it, when I was little she used to talk about Granddad being good with money. Used to irritate the hell out of Dad when she mentioned it, he thought it was made up!’

Pete stared at her. It was some seconds before he spoke. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘Oh, Pete, this must have been the treasure! I thought it was just her mind playing up, I never dreamt…’

The two sat in silence for some minutes, until Jacks spoke. She sat up straight and coughed. ‘I’ve got an idea, Pete, but only if you agree…’

‘Try me.’ Pete leant back against the headboard of Ida’s bed and listened to his wife.

32

Thirteen Years Earlier

Pete and Jacks stood by the side of the pond and watched as Martha put the bread bag on the ground and instead pulled her bag of Twiglets from her pocket.

‘Martha, darling, the bread is for the birdies and the Twiglets are for your lunch!’

‘But I don’t like Twiglets, so I’m swapping!’ she stated matter-of-factly.

Jacks turned to her husband and leant on his arm, laughing. Pete patted her hand. ‘She is so like her mum.’

‘Yes, she is.’ Jacks shook her head, picturing herself at five years old.

The gaggle of birds gathered around Martha’s feet. She squealed and jumped backwards. ‘Daddy! I don’t like them!’ She ran back to the protection of her parents, burying her head in her mum’s lap.

‘Oh, Martha, they won’t hurt you. You were doing a great job of feeding the ducks – good job you were on hand to give them some lunch.’