Things I Want My Daughters to Know (33 page)

The conversation flowed well enough. It was a pleasant evening.”

“That’s more like it. Pleasant is a bit of a killer word, though. Sounds like you were at some classical music concert. I’d kill a guy who described an evening with me as pleasant. Will you see her again?”

He realized that Hannah wasn’t really expecting there to have been anything else for him to confess. Of course not. She’d be shocked/

disgusted/furious if she really knew, wouldn’t she? It was a first date—if a date was indeed what they were calling it—and when you were in Hannah’s world, nothing more than kissing would ever happen on one of those.

“I’m sorry that my vocabulary displeases you. Would you prefer . . .

rocking evening, killer evening? Sick evening?”

“Good vocab, Dad!” She giggled. He sounded ridiculous.

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She lay back and put her head on his shoulder. She smelled of shampoo and the kind of sugary perfume that only young girls thought smelled good. “Will you go out with her again?”

He sighed, suddenly serious. “I don’t know, Han.”

“But you liked her.”

“I liked her. She’s a nice person. If I’m allowed to say ‘nice.’ But . . .”

“But what, Dad?”

“But I’m not sure I’m ready for all this. I’m not looking for anything. . . .”

“You don’t have to be ‘looking for anything,’ Dad. It doesn’t have to be ‘going anywhere,’ does it?”

He squeezed her arm. “Why are you so interested, anyway?”

“I don’t want you to be sad, Dad. I want you to be happy.”

It was different for Hannah. For Hannah, Barbara had been gone now, for eight, nine months. Going for a couple of years before that. Her recovery time frame was different, he knew. It wasn’t less, or more, or better or worse—just different.

Maybe he was leaning on her too much. Maybe she wanted him to find someone so she could share the burden of him with someone else.

He didn’t mean to be a burden, of course, but he recognized that in some ways he was. Jennifer hadn’t visited since . . . since what had happened last month. He hadn’t been in touch, either. He was still angry with her, still embarrassed for her. Lisa came when she could. But her and Andy’s weekends were often taken up by Cee Cee, and they both worked all week. Amanda was all wrapped up with her new bloke.

Maybe it was all a bit much for Hannah, being stuck here with him all the time.

Maybe his head hurt and he couldn’t think about it anymore right now.

“You make me happy, Hannah.” He kissed the top of her head. “Tea in bed makes me happy, Hannah.” She sat up and smiled at him. He 244 e l i z a b e t h

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glanced at his alarm clock. “An extra hour of sleep followed by a bacon sandwich in bed would make me happier still. . . .” She smirked. “Then this Sunday is all yours—we’ll do whatever you want . . . chick flicks excluded. I can’t do a chick flick today, even for you.”

She jumped up and backed toward the door. She was growing up, for sure, but there was still plenty of the bounding puppy in her.

“Can’t. I’m going out. You don’t mind, do you?”

“So the tea was to butter me up?”

“No. The tea was because you’re my daddy and I love you.” She was batting her eyelashes at him, and it made him smile.

“Hold the sugar, please.”

“So it’s okay?”

“That depends. Who, what, where, why, when?”

“God, Dad.” She was rolling her eyes at him.

“God, Hannah.” He rolled right back.

“My mates, shopping, maybe a film or a pizza, town, because, by nightfall. That thorough enough for you?”

“Don’t be sarcastic.”

“I’m just answering the questions.”

“Have you got your phone?”

“Yes, I’ve got my phone. And clean knickers and a handkerchief.”

“Again, I’m not loving the sarcasm.”

Actually, he didn’t mind it. It seemed . . . normal. Normal that Hannah should want to go out with her friends. Normal that she should resent his interest.

“And it still depends.”

“On what?” Hannah was now bordering on belligerence. Her switch flicked easily these days.

“Do I still get my bacon sandwich before you go?”

She grabbed his sweater from the back of the chair, where he had thrown it the night before, and aimed it at his head.

Mark mock groaned and rolled over, pulling a pillow over his head.

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Not for the first time in the last few weeks, he had the vague feeling that she was lying to him. She’d become a little closed off. A little belligerent. She’d started closing doors at lot. She was on the phone all the time.

He’d put two and two together and made what he was sure was five: it had started when she’d met that guy at the party a few weeks ago.

When he’d asked about him, she’d brushed the questions off, making a joke of it, until he persisted, when she’d gotten sulky and spent the rest of the night in her room, whispering into her phone and listening to awful music.

He realized she was a masterful manipulator. She’d just deflected him with all this Jane stuff. Made him a much juicier topic for conversation than she was herself.

It wasn’t fair, shutting him out like this. He’d always been easygoing about stuff like that. Their house had always been full of her friends. Not like some parents. Barbara always said you kept them close and you kept them safe. He wasn’t some Dickensian papa.

Maybe he was worrying about nothing. Maybe she actually was out shopping and eating with her friends. Maybe his head hurt. Maybe he’d go back to sleep.

Hannah

That was the first really serious lie she’d ever told her dad. Fibs, of course. Half truths, exaggerations and stuff. But this was a big fat lie.

Her chest was hot from telling it, but the feeling wasn’t all bad. Like when she’d been really young, like seven or eight, and her friend Cheryl had dared her to steal a Bazooka bubble gum from the newsagent. Taking it felt really bad, but kind of good, too. Exciting and daring. Like she was someone else just for a moment. Of course, she’d been caught with the Bazooka and frog-marched back to the shop to hand it back and apologize, and then she was not allowed to have Cheryl for tea
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as Mum’s disappointed, sad face. But that wasn’t going to happen this time. She certainly wasn’t going to be caught by Mum, was she? Besides, she’d been working really hard for these stupid exams. She deserved a bit of time off. Why shouldn’t it be up to her how she spent it?

She was going to Nathan’s house. Not to a film or for a pizza or to shop. Not with her friends. The bit about having her phone with her was true. But Dad hadn’t asked her if it was switched on.

She’d told Nathan to pick her up a couple of streets away, and he hadn’t protested. He wasn’t wild about parents, he said. His own were going to be out, and they would have the house to themselves this afternoon. Hannah was nervous. She’d never been alone with a boy in that way before. At the cinema, sure. And she’d done her fair share of slow dancing and snogging, at parties and things. She wasn’t a prude or anything. But this was something different, with someone who seemed older and more serious. The boys at school were still such colossal idiots.

But he was so sweet as well. He said the nicest things to her. He had since the first time they met, at Ruby’s party a couple of weeks ago. He’d been calling her and texting her ever since. On Valentine’s Day he’d sent her a card, and he’d signed it “Nathan” so that there was no doubt. It wasn’t one of those schmaltzy, sick-making cards, either; it was a postcard of a painting of a pre-Raphaelite sort of a girl, all Rapunzel hair and dreamy expression. He’d written Be Mine? with a question mark and signed his name. She’d never been so thrilled with an item of post and three words.

Nathan would be eighteen in September. He was doing his A levels, and he’d be going to university in September. He was very tall and skinny, in a cool way, not a geeky one. He wore drainpipe jeans and kept his fringe swept forward across his eyes. Dad would almost certainly call him girly and say he should get it cut. He listened to bands she hadn’t ever heard of before. She’d started downloading them onto her iPod.

Nathan had given her playlists. He said he was her Svengali, and she didn’t really know what he meant. He read loads. If Dad could see be-T h i n g s I W a n t M y D a u g h t e r s t o K n o w 247

hind the haircut, he’d be impressed with how clever he was. Hannah didn’t realize, or admit to herself, that she hadn’t given her dad the chance, either to object to the hair or respond to the intellect. And, of course, there was the car. It might be a Ford Focus, and it might belong to his mother, but the point was it no longer needed to be driven by said mother. He could drive it himself, which was, of course, impossibly glamorous. The ten long months before Hannah would be able to get her provisional license seemed interminable. He was trendy and smart and obviously romantic, and Hannah thought that everything about him was breathtaking.

Dad wouldn’t have let her go to his house if he’d known it was just the two of them, hence the lie. But Hannah wasn’t worried. She felt confident that Nathan wasn’t the kind of boy (she corrected herself—

man) to expect her to . . . do things, just because they were alone. It would just be so nice for it to be the two of them, to have time to talk and . . . oh, it was just thrilling all around, and the real truth was that, alone with him or not, she just didn’t want to talk to her dad about it yet.

It would be cringy. This was private and grown-up and . . . private.

And, actually, she might want to do
some
things.

Nathan had the music on very loud in the car. It wasn’t one of his mum’s CDs. She climbed in beside him and beamed at him.

“Hiya.”

“Hiya.”

He leaned over. She had kissed him, that first night, at Ruby’s. A bit, right at the end. But this was different—it was broad daylight, and there was no atmosphere, and she felt self-conscious. She returned the kiss chastely. He grinned at her, switched on the ignition, and drove off.

Lisa

March 5 was Andy’s forty-first birthday. Last year, when he’d turned forty, he’d rented a house, out in Norfolk. They’d gone there with twelve of his best friends, for the weekend. The weather had been unex-248 e l i z a b e t h

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pectedly beautiful—crisp and blue-skied and still. There had been long walks, and roaring fires, and boozy, funny evenings. Lisa had given him a first edition of one of his favorite novels—a Thomas Pynchon. She and his friends had put on a show, hurriedly rehearsed in the weeks before Norfolk. They’d called it “40 Things We Love About Andy.” Someone had made an iPod mix of all the hits from the year he was born.

This year, no celebration had been planned. Cee Cee was with Karen—she had been promised birthday dinner at Pizza Express at the weekend, which compensated her for her absence on the actual day. Cee Cee thought that any birthday that came without cake, and someone who could make balloon animals, was a total washout.

Lisa had asked Andy if he wanted her to book a restaurant, meet some friends. He’d replied that he’d rather eat at home, just with her, have a nice bottle of wine and a quiet night. She’d cooked a lamb casserole and chosen a good Barolo. She’d handed over her presents a little apologetically—a new tie, some socks, a pair of silver cuff links. Dad presents, she called them. She hadn’t found inspiration this year. He said they were great. They reminisced a little about Norfolk.

“Actually, I’ve got something for you,” he said, getting up from the table and fumbling in his bag.

“But it isn’t my birthday.”

“I know that. Still, I have.”

He put a small box on the table, just as she had been afraid he might the moment he said he had something for her. She was scared of little velvet boxes.

“It isn’t a ring,” he spoke quickly, watching her face intently. “I know you’ll have a view about how a ring should look. I wouldn’t risk getting it wrong. Not when you’re going to wear it . . . all the time.”

She held the box in one hand and gently opened the domed lid. Inside, nestled against navy blue velvet, lay a small uncut diamond.

“See—it’s a diamond. Uncut. Just the stone. You get to choose everything. The setting, the cut. What color gold you want the band to
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be . . . all of that stuff. I thought yellow, but he says everyone is into white gold now. Or platinum. Whatever. That’s the point—you get to go and see him and choose yourself. Impact without risk, the guy in the shop said.”

“It’s beautiful.” It was funny how seeing a diamond that way, like it came out of the mine, and not dressed up in its setting, made you realize how ridiculous it was that they cost so much money. Who decided that the little shiny stones they were digging up should be the most valuable thing on earth?

Andy sat down at the table beside her.

“Thank you. But . . .”

“Listen to me for a minute, Lisa. I’ve got something to say.”

This was the conversation she’d been dreading since December, when he’d proposed on that one amazing night and it had all seemed so stupidly perfect. And she still, in the end, hadn’t been the one with enough balls to start it.

“I’ve been pretty good. You said you’d marry me in December.

That’s two months ago. In that time, you’ve only told your sisters. You haven’t let me tell my daughter—and you haven’t told anyone else. Not Mark, or any of your friends. We haven’t set a date.”

“I know,” she began. He raised his hand to stop her. “I’m not finished.” Lisa looked at her plate.

“I haven’t had a lot of experience in this area, but I know this is not how happy, excited brides behave. An engagement isn’t supposed to be a secret. It’s supposed to be something you want to tell people. It’s supposed to be leading up to a wedding. It’s supposed to be a good thing.”