Daniel flicked off his seatbelt and pushed his seat back so that he could stretch his legs. The mention of her mum brought a warmth to his smile. He had really liked her, back in the day, Romany could tell just from that expression.
‘Your mum was like a force of nature,’ he said. ‘She just didn’t care what others thought of her. She did what she thought was right. She was completely chaotic though. Was she like that later too?’
Romany thought of the mess the flat used to get into, the way her mum never had what she needed when she needed it, her refusal to ever make a plan and then her frustration when things didn’t work out the way she wanted. She nodded.
‘Yeah. Pretty chaotic,’ she said with a smile.
‘And she was loyal,’ Daniel went on, his eyes focused on the bins further down the street. ‘If you were on her team, she’d do whatever it took to make sure you were okay. Did she tell you about her own mum?’
‘A bit,’ said Romany.
Daniel nodded. ‘Well, she had a pretty hard time growing up. I think that’s why she never made plans. There just hadn’t been any point when her life was so out of her own control. But I also think that was why if she found you and she liked you, then you could never quite shake her off. She stuck like glue and she would defend you against anyone. Like I say, loyal.’
Romany loved hearing this kind of thing and it fitted so neatly with her own understanding of her mum, so she knew he wasn’t stringing her along.
‘Did you two go out?’ she asked, shyly.
Daniel, still staring resolutely out of the windscreen, nodded again.
‘We did, actually,’ he said, although Romany knew they must have done because of the way he was talking. She would guess that the two of them had been pretty close.
‘That’s cool,’ she said. ‘And how weird that you should be going out with one of Mum’s friends now. That’s a mad coincidence.’
Daniel turned his head and looked at her out of the tail of his eye.
‘It is,’ he said. ‘But not in the way that you think.’
Romany was confused. ‘How do you mean?’ she asked.
‘Well,’ he began slowly, ‘the coincidence isn’t so much that I knew your mum. It’s more that I was going out with someone that she met on a course.’
Romany didn’t really follow, but it didn’t matter. The main thing was that she had increased the number of people she could talk to about her mum.
‘Actually,’ Daniel continued, ‘it is a coincidence that me and Hope are together, and that your mum met Hope, but the reason I moved to York in the first place was to be closer to your mum.’
He turned his head further still so that she could see his face.
‘And you . . .’ he added.
A hush fell. Now he stared straight into her eyes the way he had done in the restaurant on Christmas Day. Romany blinked and then blinked again. Daniel was obviously trying to make a point, but she wasn’t following. Why would he want to be near her?
‘Romany,’ he began. He paused, rubbing his hand over his mouth, and took a deep breath.
But she was there.
She had got it.
She knew exactly what he was trying to tell her.
And suddenly there wasn’t enough oxygen in the confined space. She threw the car door open, making a passer-by jump and then swear at her indignantly. She had to get away. She didn’t know for certain what he was about to say but she didn’t want to hear it. She ran from the car without closing the door and straight to the flat, fumbling for her key in her jacket pocket. She threw a look over her shoulder, but he wasn’t following her. He was still sitting in exactly the same spot, as if frozen in time.
The key turned, the door swung open and Romany fell into the flat and slammed the door behind her.
53
Romany stood with her back against the door. Her breath was a ragged panting, and her heart was pounding so hard that it hurt. She squeezed her eyes shut while she tried to calm herself. A voice was speaking to her in her head and she knew it was her mum.
‘Slow down, Romey,’ she said. ‘Focus on the breath. In through the nose. Out through the mouth.’
Romany tried to do what her mum had taught her, but it wasn’t working. How could she make herself calm in the light of what she thought she’d just worked out? Was Daniel her dad? Was that what he had been about to tell her?
She tried to bring to mind all the things that her mum had ever told her about her dad, but there wasn’t much, just that they had loved each other very much, but that it hadn’t worked out. When Romany was younger and pressed for more details, her mum had just shaken her head and said that she would tell her everything she wanted to know when she was old enough. And then when she had been old enough, she hadn’t wanted to know, had refused, in fact, to listen.