Four years ago. ‘My father worked away, a few days every week and alternate weekends, for as long as I can remember, far longer than four years.’ They said nothing. What could they say? That it was possible there had been other women before Olivia. I got to my feet. ‘Thank you.’ I was dismissing them too soon. Dropping back onto the sofa, I wiped a hand over my forehead. I was in this alone and there were things I needed to do. A funeral I needed to arrange for my lying, cheating parent. ‘Where is my father’s body?’
As if afraid I wouldn’t be able to retain the information, on top of all I had already received, the officer took out a notebook and pen and scribbled the information down. ‘You just need to ring an undertaker; they’ll collect your father’s body and follow any instructions you give them.’
Any instructions… I’d obviously succeeded in convincing the officers that I was in control. I didn’t have much choice, of course, my mother had abdicated all responsibility. There was some consolation that in her current state, she wouldn’t know how dreadfully she’d been betrayed. ‘Thank you, and for being kind.’
They seemed reluctant to leave and only did when I walked to the front door and pulled it open. ‘I’ll be fine,’ I said. A lie I’d find myself repeating again and again over the coming days, and even when I was alone, I used it like a mantra. I would be fine. I had no choice.
Thanks to the address book and my mother’s careful record in it of anyone important, it was easy to sort out some of the essentials. Next to the name of a solicitor, she’d written the word will. I rang and made an appointment to see him the following week.
Since my mother had organised the funeral of her parents when they’d passed away, she’d also recorded the name of an undertaker. I rang, gave them the details, and answered what questions I could.
‘It’ll be a cremation. I’ll leave the choice of casket to you, the cheapest one you have please. We won’t want any music at the crematorium either.’ It was what my father deserved. The most basic of send-offs. Sorrow and anger were taking turns to rock me. His betrayal of my mother, of me, of our family. All those wonderful days out we’d spent, those dinners, the many indulgences. All inspired by his guilt, not love. Treachery and betrayal. If he were alive, I might have been tempted to kill him.
I’d never spent a night on my own or a night apart from my mother. I pulled the curtains to hide the creeping darkness, but it was the sad loneliness and weight of despair that sent me to my room. I crawled under the duvet and tried to capture the scent of yesterday.
I wondered what my mother was doing. Was she too lying in a bed trying to recapture a life that had vanished in a puff of smoke. Noxious smoke. But she didn’t know that. Probably she was locked into a drug-induced sleep. Maybe when she woke, she’d remember she had a daughter.
Sleep wouldn’t come and I lay there with my thoughts, wondering if I’d ever feel fine, if the lie would have to do. It was hunger that drove me from under the bedclothes less than an hour later. It seemed that one part of me was working as it should.
I had cooked for myself before, learnt to do basic stuff on those days over the years where my mother was on one of her neglectful days. There had been a lot of trial and error with burnt fingers, overcooked food and disastrous combinations. I stared into the fridge and was soon munching on some cheese and toast, minutes later throwing up into the kitchen sink. Hunger and devastating sorrow, it seemed, weren’t compatible.
The night stretched before me, and after that the days ahead. What would I do? Anything I liked? Nothing at all? I wanted to train to be a nurse, that desire hadn’t altered in all the years since I’d read those anatomy and physiology books. There was a part of me that felt I owed it to Jemma.
There was nothing to prevent me living alone. It was a terrifying thought. I liked my own company, but the word alone was intimidating. I had no belief in my mother returning. No belief she would come out of her self-imposed withdrawal. And young, inexperienced as I was, I knew it was for the best. My father’s death had shattered her mind, his betrayal would have tortured it first.
In the morning I would make the necessary phone calls. Ring the school, explain my situation, tell them I’d be taking a few weeks off to bury my father. Ring the company my father worked for, explain he wouldn’t be coming back. The car he had been found in belonged to them; I wondered if they’d already been informed by the police. Wondered too if they’d known about his two lives.
I’d have to investigate our financial situation too. My father kept the spare bedroom as an office. A room my mother and I were forbidden from entering. He used to joke about it. ‘I keep secrets in there, if you found them, I’d have to kill you both!’
It seemed the joke was on us.
10
Bleary-eyed from a sleepless night, the next morning I sat to make those phone calls. Before I could start, the doorbell rang. It was our neighbour, Mrs Higgins, a florid-faced, buxom woman who wore clothes she made herself with enthusiasm and an absolute belief they were as good as any she’d have bought in boutiques in Bath. They weren’t, but she had a caustic tongue, and nobody ever dared tell her the truth. That day she was wearing a dress with a neckline that gaped badly showing far more of her breasts than she’d have liked. Or maybe she knew. Maybe she didn’t care.
‘Hello,’ I said and waited.
‘I saw the ambulance.’
Her dress sense might have been woeful and her tongue caustic, but she was at heart a kind woman and on her face I saw only sympathy and a desire to be of help. Prurient curiosity would have made me angry; her kind sympathy made me cry. She didn’t hesitate, taking me in her arms and holding me tight, then moving into the house with me held close.
‘Tell me,’ she said, sitting me down at the kitchen table and keeping hold of my hand. ‘Your mum?’
I nodded, then shook my head. ‘It’s Dad, he’s dead. When the police told Mum, she couldn’t cope. Doctor Brennan said it was best that she go into a clinic.’ I didn’t have to elaborate. Mrs Higgins had lived next door for long enough, she’d seen my mother’s highs and lows. ‘You poor love. What a shock for you. You should have come around to me straight away. The police, honestly, they should never have left you alone. You’re nowt but a child.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘I’m not having that. You move in with us till your mum is home, okay?’
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.’