Skeletons (20 page)

It wasn’t the most salubrious of areas.

Jen held on to her bag as she walked from the bus stop, trying to look as confident, as casual, as she could. Trying not to give off a vibe that said, ‘I’m a stranger here, I don’t really know where I’m going and I clearly
must have something in this bag worth stealing, otherwise why would I be holding on to it so tightly?’ In truth, there was nothing in there she couldn’t replace – except for the photos. She knew she should have had them copied before she came.

She had decided not to mention where she was going to anyone – not Jason, not Poppy, not Amelia. She didn’t think any of them would understand. She filed the idea away in her ‘Secrets’ file. At this rate, she was going to need
an entire cabinet devoted to them.

She had caught the train down to Croydon, and then the bus to the other side of the town. She’d asked the driver to tell her when they got there, and he’d pulled a face and said, ‘Look out for all the boarded-up shop
fronts,’ a phrase that was only marginally better than, ‘Get out at the chalk outline of the dead body,’ and which hadn’t exactly made her feel at ease.

She knew from the map that her dad’s flat was close by. She had never been there before, obviously. She wasn’t quite sure why she was there now. It was stupid, really. A
whim. If it
wasn’t for the fact that she just wanted to get inside – somewhere, anywhere – and shut the door before she got mugged or worse, she would have turned round and gone straight back to the bus stop.

She was taking a chance that he would be home. She hadn’t called ahead to check. She couldn’t have, even if she’d wanted to, because she didn’t have a number – and, anyway, once she’d made the decision to come,
she’d had to move quickly before she changed her mind. She hadn’t really thought through what she would do if he wasn’t there. Leave a note, maybe. ‘Jen was here.’

She wasn’t expecting to gain a father, just maybe a bit of closure. Perhaps they could have some kind of a functional relationship for the last however many years he had left on earth. Jen could visit and take him out to the shops or the
pub, and he could act like he gave a shit who she was.

She found the house on the edge of the estate. She made a note that, if she got lost on the way back to the bus stop, she should turn left at the salivating pit bull, tied to a child’s climbing frame with a bit of string that it could have
chewed through in about a millisecond, if it had the brains to realize it. Number 25 had the guttering coming away on the upper floor, but an attempt had been made to plant some flowers in the tiny front garden. Unfortunately, someone had then decided to store their shopping trolley on top
of them. Jen rang the bell for the ground-floor flat, and waited. After what seemed like an age, she heard noises in the hall, and then a voice.

‘Who is it?’

‘It’s Jen.’

‘Jen who?’

Great. Now she was taking part in a live-action knock, knock joke.

‘Your daughter, Jen. Jennifer. Jenny. Jesus, Rory, how many Jens do you know? Let me in.’

She listened as he pulled back a bolt, then a chain and, finally, a deadlock. She felt sick. She barely knew this man, hadn’t even clapped eyes on him in more than four years.

He peered round the door, an old man with a slightly too flat nose and thin sparse white hair, who vaguely resembled her father. Jen didn’t know what reaction she had expected – maybe, in her most hopeful imaginings on the way here, delight
that his daughter had finally sought him out, or even a gruff, ‘What do you want?’ What she got was the indifferent politeness of an acquaintance, and not a very close one at that.

‘Oh, it’s you. You’d better come in,’ he said, pleasantly enough.

Jen followed him down the corridor to the tiny kitchen at the back.

‘Cup of tea?’ he said, as if it had been four days, not four years, since they had seen each other last.

‘Lovely.’

There was something about him that was so familiar, that took her right back to when she was seven or eight, and he was an everyday fixture in her life. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was. It certainly wasn’t the way he
looked. Back then, Jen knew more from photographs than memories: he had been tall and dark and in good shape. He was always sporty, she could remember that much, and he would try to encourage her to play football in the park with him. She had wondered in the past whether having another
child, a son, might have made him want to spend more time with his family, might have made him stay.

‘So, to what do I owe this pleasure?’ Rory said as he fussed around with mugs and tea bags.

‘I don’t know … I … I got your letter, and I just thought, well, it’s been years …’

‘Come to see how the old fella looks, now he’s an octogenarian?’

‘You look well, actually.’

‘So you’re still at that hotel? I wasn’t sure you would be.’

Jen nodded. ‘We live in Wimbledon.’

‘What … you and … um …?’

‘Jason. My husband’s called Jason. We have two daughters, Simone and Emily. Both at college.’

Rory bristled. ‘I know that. Well, not the college bit. Clever girls, then, are they?’

‘They are.’

They sat in silence for a moment, while Rory poured water into the mugs and then squeezed the tea bags before plonking them on the counter. His flat could do with a good clean, she noticed. The kitchen counters had a sticky-looking film over
them. There were cobwebs around the corners of the window. The whole place smelled slightly of stale air and unemptied bins. Clearly he was missing having someone to look after him.

‘So you and Maxine have split up?’

Rory handed her a mug of tea – or, at least, that’s what she assumed it was. It looked like a cup of dishwater with some milk thrown in.

‘She moved out a while ago. No big deal.’

‘How have you been?’

‘Oh, you know, getting old.’

‘Are you doing OK, though? Healthy?’

‘Not too bad, considering. I manage. Jean from next door comes in now and then and gets some shopping for me.’

Jen stopped herself from asking whether Jean from next door was his new girlfriend. It wasn’t out of the question. ‘Right.’

Rory waved a pack of Hobnobs in her direction. ‘Biscuit?’

She took one.

‘How are your girls?’

‘Simone and Emily. They’re both at university, like I said. I have photos. Look.’

She produced them from her bag, with a flourish, and showed him the girls all the way back to when they were babies. Last time she had seen him, when he’d walked into the hotel four years ago, she had only had a few recent snaps of her two
girls on her phone, and nothing of when they were growing up – plus she hadn’t wanted to deal with him then, had wanted to get him out of there as soon as she possibly could – so now she took him through the whole story. Then she dug out her iPhone and showed him the most up-to-date
pictures she’d taken of them both, and of Jason. She flicked through any with Elaine in quickly, before he really noticed.

He examined them all carefully. ‘Lovely girls,’ he chuckled, once she’d got to the end.

‘Emily reminds me of you. She has this thing she does where she flicks her hair out of her eyes …’

Rory pointed up at his balding head. ‘Not any more.’

‘No, but you used to. I remember.’

‘You do?’ He smiled, as if that made him happy.

Jen felt as if she was about to burst into tears. He was so like himself, so like the man she remembered, but also immeasurably different. She didn’t know what she was doing here. It was too late, truthfully, to start thinking of this man
as her father. You couldn’t make it real, just because you wanted it so much.

‘So I just wanted to make sure you were all right, really. It’s been a long time.’

‘Well, last time I came to see you at your hotel, I got the impression you’d rather I hadn’t.’

Jen could remember it clearly. She’d been busy at the time, but she could easily have taken ten minutes to speak to him properly. Instead, she had felt angry that he could just waltz back into her life after years of silence, and expect her
to be pleased to see him. And she hadn’t tried to hide her irritation.

‘I’m sorry, a lot’s happened since then.’

‘We’re all getting older.’

Jen inhaled deeply. ‘Mum … I found the things you sent me. In Mum’s attic. I never knew.’

Rory gave a gruff half-laugh. ‘That’d explain why I never got thank-you notes, eh?’

‘I feel awful, Dad. I had no idea.’

‘Well, it was all a long time ago.’

If he felt relieved that she now knew the truth – emotional that he had been vindicated, after all these years – he wasn’t showing it. Maybe he had got too used to the idea of them being strangers.

‘I thought you’d just forgotten about me.’

‘I kept it up for a few years, but once you got to being
a teenager I gave up. I shouldn’t have, I know that now. I just assumed that, now you were older, you would have got in touch with me
if you’d wanted to, and so you must have decided you didn’t want to. It was only years later that it dawned on me you might never even have known I was trying to stay in contact.’

‘I still don’t understand, though. Why didn’t you just turn up? Insist on seeing me? Take me to McDonald’s, anything? Just because Mum said you couldn’t –’

‘It’s not worth raking it all up again, love. What happened’s happened.’

‘But I’d like to hear your side of it. I’ve always thought … well, that you weren’t bothered, to be honest. Can you just tell me what went on? I feel as if … I need to know everything, that’s all.
Just to understand …’

It was her own fault, she thought later. She had pushed him for an answer.

In one way, it all made sense. Jen had always had a memory, deeply buried somewhere, of her father getting teary-eyed one Saturday, saying goodbye. She had always dismissed it, assumed that she had invented it to make herself feel better.

In another, it was the most unimaginable thing she could ever have heard. She simply couldn’t take it in. It was like hearing the rules of the universe – the quarks and the strings, and the idea that all the matter in the world came from
something the size of a pinhead. You could follow the words. You could even accept that what you were being told might prove to be the case. But that didn’t mean you understood it. It didn’t mean you could process that thought and fully comprehend it.

‘I don’t believe you,’ she said, when Rory told her.

‘Then don’t,’ he said, flatly. ‘It’s better if you don’t.’

‘Mum would never … I mean, hiding presents, maybe, but …’

‘I never blamed her. I drove her to it. I was staying out all night. I was drinking. We were unhappy.’

‘And then you left.’

‘Yes. I tried to keep on being there for you but then, one day, I’d had a couple of beers before I got there – I wasn’t drunk, but I suppose she could smell it on my breath – and that was it. She told me she was taking me to
court.’

‘I don’t remember any of this.’

‘Why would you? We tried to protect you from it. Anyway, things were different then. Everything was loaded to the mother’s side, and they agreed with her. Stopped my visitation, and that was it.’

‘That was it? You didn’t try to … I don’t know, overturn the ruling?’

‘Of course I did. I cleaned up my act. Gave up drinking. Tried to have the decision reversed, but Elaine wouldn’t have it. Threatened she’d call the police if I ever came round again.’

Jen had tried to imagine her mother so fired up with anger and revenge that she would choose to deny her her father, rather than give him anything.

‘I don’t want you to blame your mother, Jenny. It would never have happened if I hadn’t been so … I know that, for a fact. I ruined our marriage, not her. Who could blame her for wanting to punish me in the worst way
she knew how?’

‘Why have you never told me any of this before?’

‘What would have been the point? I’m glad you’re close to your mother. I wouldn’t want to get in the way of that.’

Jen had exhaled loudly. ‘So what am I meant to do with this information now?’

‘Nothing. You asked me. I told you. There’s nothing to be gained by it going further than this room.’

‘Shit. I wish I didn’t know.’

‘Sometimes,’ Rory said, ‘ignorance is bliss. If you ask me, the truth is overrated.’

‘I’m sorry, Dad.’

‘For what?’

‘I just am. I never knew …’

‘Me too,’ he said, and that was the closest she had ever come to hearing him express real regret for the way things had turned out.

As she left, about twenty minutes later, keen to be back to familiar ground, and having run out of things to say, she gave him a quick hug, something she had never done before. Well, since she’d been an adult, at least.

‘How are you doing for money?’ she asked as she put her jacket on.

‘Well, my pension … you know …’

She handed him a ten-pound note out of her purse.

‘I’ll try to come again.’

‘That would be nice,’ he said, and he sounded like he might mean it.

Jen wasn’t sure if she really would, though. She had enough complications in her life.