When I was nine we transferred to a commando in Somerset, and when I was twelve he went with his ‘lads’ to Iraq. I stayed with Granny for the duration of his tour. Another first day at another new school: I was exhausted.
Dad was minister to a bunch of Marines protecting Kurdish refugees on the northern border with Turkey. It was a peaceful deployment, his letters said, until they abruptly stopped. We later learned there’d been a confrontation with a local militia, and a young woman and her child were hurt. Just like my mother, this young woman had died in Dad’s arms.
He was signed off work for three months after that, because the Naval Archdeaconry wanted to look after him. In actual fact, this isolation – the very thing he’d spent so many years trying to avoid – sent him to an alcoholic grave.
There were no dramatic scenes, and he continued to take me to the coast whenever he was sober enough to drive. He continued to cuddle me, to tell me he loved me – he sometimes even made me sandwiches for school. But the drink towed him under rapidly, and he never went back to work. I think he foresaw his end because he managed to buy us a tiny house in Plymouth when I was fourteen. I was lucky – by the time I was fifteen he was capable only of buying alcohol.
The Naval Archdeaconry did their best to help him, but Dad never took the hand they extended. Drink was clearer and easier, and it was available from the shop at the end of the road, rather than a weekly counselling session twelve miles away.
My father was a lonely and humble drunk. He spent most of his time in the front room, watching television, drinking, sleeping. He ate when I fed him. Whenever I tried to do something about it, the drinking got worse, so there were no desperate scenes with hidden bottles. He was just never sober, and I was too frightened to push him over the edge.
The Archdeaconry had to let him go in the end. They’d agreed a recovery roadmap that would ultimately have had him serving his commando in Zaire, but he repeatedly failed to turn up to meetings and ignored their letters. He couldn’t do it.
He died of alcohol-related heart failure a few days before my A-levels started. His training at least bequeathed him the good sense to call an ambulance before he lost consciousness, but he died on the way to hospital. They told me he wouldn’t have known a thing, that he had gone out with a half smile on his face. It made me wonder if he could already see my mother.
By the time I left school, I had only my grandmother. She was a formidable character, but she was eighty.
Jeremy Rothschild was my only long-term hope.
Chapter Thirty-Five
‘David’s married,’ Jeremy said, as if I didn’t already know.
‘My housemate told me. The morning after. If I’d known, I would never have . . . I’d never have . . .’ I stopped.
I thought back to the way David had gone after me, that night. What Jeremy must have thought of me, when he saw us kissing. When he got my letter.
He was silent for a moment. I wondered if he was angry, or embarrassed. Or perhaps resigned? Maybe this wasn’t the first time he’d had to deal with the aftermath of his cousin’s one-night stands.
‘That’s why I wrote to you, rather than David.’ My voice held, and Jill gave me an encouraging smile. ‘I didn’t want his wife to find the letter. This situation is bad enough without someone else’s marriage being ruined.’
‘Very considerate of you. Especially given the circumstances.’
Good start, Jill wrote, on the back of an envelope. He seems nice.
‘Look,’ he continued. ‘Emily. I am so sorry that this has happened. It shouldn’t have done.’
I agreed, although there was no spirit in my voice.
‘Can I send money? That’s not why I’m calling,’ he added, quickly. ‘But right now, in the immediate term, before we make a plan, would money help?’