The Nurse(13)

I wanted to say no, that I was sixteen and quite capable of living on my own. I wanted to say I was tougher than I looked. I wanted to but didn’t. I brushed the tears from my eyes and said, ‘That is so kind of you, thank you, I’d like that very much.’

Caustic, badly dressed, with a heart of gold, Mrs Higgins was also a woman who didn’t let grass grow under her large broad feet. She nodded to the fridge. ‘Bring anything that might go off, there’s no point in letting stuff go to waste. Then pack up whatever you need and come around when you’re ready.’ She jerked her thumb to the house on the other side. ‘I’ll let the Robinsons know so they won’t be pestering you, okay?’

‘Thank you, that would be kind of you.’

And with that she was gone.

My call to the school was short and to the point. It was the school secretary who answered. She was never particularly friendly, and I didn’t feel the need to give more than the basic details. ‘My father died suddenly. If you’d tell the head teacher, please, that I’ll be taking a few weeks off to help my mother with the arrangements. Thanks so much,’ I hung up without waiting for a reply.

I managed to keep a bowl of cereal and a glass of juice down. A hint of the normality that I knew would creep in day by day.

My father’s office beckoned. It was locked. ‘For security,’ he’d say. ‘I keep some information that my competitors would be delighted to get their hands on.’ As if he were a spy and not simply a sales rep for a medical supplies company.

It was locked, but I knew where the key was kept. Under the plant pot that sat in a wall recess between the spare room and my parents’ bedroom. Always in the same place. I suppose my father had so many secrets to hide, so many balls to keep in the air, that some things had to remain constant. Anyway, he’d have had no fear that either my mother or I would have taken it and gone into his precious office. We had too much respect for him. What fools we were.

I took the key, opened the door, and stood looking in for several minutes, sudden tears blurring my vision. Anger and sorrow were still grappling for dominion but here, where my father spent many hours, a masculine room that contrasted dramatically with the rather floral décor in the other rooms, one step inside, and it was sorrow that won over. The loss of the man I had so loved bent me double. His scent lingered in the air… the citrus cologne he always wore, the tweed jackets he favoured.

I sat on the leather office chair and rocked it gently as I looked around. He cleaned the room himself. Not often though and a fine layer of dust lay over the furniture. Thicker dust in the corners and at the edges of the laminate floor showed up his less than adequate skills. Even the far corners of his desk showed traces of neglect.

He had so much to hide, he couldn’t risk my mother coming in and perhaps stumbling upon something incriminating. For the first time, I felt a glimmer of sadness for him. To have kept such a secret for so long. Then I thought of Jemma. Secrets… perhaps my father and I were more alike than either of us had ever known.

Pushing that thought aside, I pulled the chair closer to the desk and reached for the button to switch on his desktop computer. I made one guess at the password; when it failed, I stopped. It could be anything. Hoping I would come across it in a notebook, or scribbled on a Post-it, I looked through a pile of paperwork. A quick flick through and I gave up. It appeared to be work stuff and was of little interest to me. Instead, I reached for the first of the four drawers set under the desktop.

It was locked, so were the three underneath. A locked office, a locked desk. Such a level of security. How afraid of exposure he must have been. Did he never consider it would all come out after he died? Did he think he was immortal? Perhaps he expected to live longer than the forty-six years he’d had.

Frustrated, I aimed a kick at the lowest drawer. It didn’t achieve anything; the desk was solid. There was a mug holding pens, I turned it out hoping it would be that easy and I’d find a key. Of course, it wasn’t. There was a filing cabinet against the other wall. Six drawers. It too was locked. The final piece of furniture was a low bookshelf set under the window. Some books, the military biographies he liked. Mostly hardbacks given to him by my mother over the years. There was one from me too. I read the inscription, to the best father ever, happy birthday, love Lissa, and in a fit of anger, despair, grief, I tore the page out, then ripped it to pieces.

In the same fit of raw emotion, I rushed to the utility room and searched in the cupboard where a few tools were kept for convenience. Rarely used, they were neatly stored in an old shoebox. I took the lot back with me. It took a lot of banging and swearing with a hammer and screwdriver to remove the front of the top drawer. The rest were easier and soon all four were open. I tossed the tools to one side – the filing cabinet could wait for another day.

Clearing a space on the desk, I emptied the contents of the top drawer in a heap and started to go through it all, item by item. The marriage certificate naming Olivia Burton as my father’s wife shouldn’t have come as a shock, but it did. As did her age. He hadn’t gone for a younger model. He wasn’t a complete cliché. Olivia was forty-five, six years older than my mother.

There was a photograph of her. Not a beauty, a more solid heftier woman than my mother. Had this been the attraction? Had my father wearied of the physical and emotional fragility of the woman he’d married? The first woman he’d married.