How to Kill Your Family(17)

The clippings showed me a little of what Simon did. He owned, amongst other things, Sassy Girl, the budget airline Sportus, and about 1,800 properties across the South East, the state of which had earned him the mildly amusing moniker ‘The scum landlord’. He also owned a few hotels, and a couple of yachts which could be rented out by the week if you felt a five-star hotel was a little too downmarket for your holidays. In what was the very definition of a vanity project in 1998, Simon and Janine also had a vineyard, and produced wine which I assume was only bought by their friends and cronies. It was bottled under the name ‘Chic Chablis’. As if anything could tell you more about a person.

The last thing in the box was a thick, cream envelope. Inside were two pieces of paper. The first one I opened was a letter from Simon himself. It was a hasty scrawl, written in black ink, the words almost ripping through the paper.

Marie, thank you for your letter. I am sorry to hear that you are ill, but what you suggest is impossible. As I have told you many times before, your decision to have your child was yours alone. You had no right to imagine that I’d risk my family and reputation for the product of a six-week fling. Instead, you chose to have the baby (which I have no proof is mine anyway), and then try to entice me into seeing her. This delusion has to stop. Your daughter is not, nor ever will be, a part of my family. I have a wife, Marie! I have a daughter. I may possibly be due a peerage in next year’s Honours list. You must stop trying to impress upon my life. I have enclosed a cheque for ￡5000, which is more than generous, but given your health problems feels like the right thing to do. In return, I demand that you cease all contact. Simon.

The other letter in the envelope was the letter my mother had sent which provoked this nightmarish screed. I didn’t want to read her pleas, see the vulnerability and sadness in her own handwriting. It was too embarrassing to see how weak my mother was in the face of this man. She was weak, but I was strong. So I would read it and reinforce the rage in my stomach, fortify it with steel and keep it there. I opened it.

Dearest Simon,

I know you have asked me not to write, and I have tried to respect your decision, though it makes me sad. But I must tell you that I am not well. I will not live too long, according to the good doctors at the Whittington Hospital (it is not far from you). I am resigned to it, not because I wish to die but because I’m tired. I’m tired and I have felt unwell for many years now, and life since I had Grace has been hard and it does not seem to be getting any easier. But do not for one second think that I blame Grace. She has been a light through it all. I wish so much that you had met her as a baby, as a toddler, when she was six and insisted on being called ‘Crystal’. I wish you had been there for her frog phase, when she ribbited instead of speaking for a week, or when she won the drawing prize at school. You have missed so much, but you do not have to miss the rest. I will. I will miss it all, and it makes me so anxious that I cannot sleep, though truthfully the monitor and the ward noise don’t help. Simon, you must take her. You must tell your wife about her – she will forgive you for something which happened so many years ago. Surely as a mother she would not let a child go without both her parents? I have little money to ensure her coming teenage years will be smooth, and my parents have never stopped being angry with me for my choices – I will not let her blossoming spirit be squashed by them. My friend Helene has offered to take her in, but it would not be as wonderful as having her own family around her. I do not want to beg, but I will, for our daughter’s sake. Please do the right thing, I know you are a good man and that you would not leave your own child alone in the world. I will not be going home, so please write to me at the hospital, Floor 4, the Hummingbird Ward.

All my love and affection,

Marie

I shut the file, pushed it back under the bed and checked the floor for any loose paper which might give me away to Helene. After that, I must have walked straight out of the flat, because I found myself in the local park, where I sat down on a bench and tried to slow my heart down. I stroked the palm of my hand with my other one, and tugged at the bottom of my throat, trying to loosen the lump which had suddenly taken up residence there. I knew more about my father than ever before. I knew he was rich beyond comprehension. I knew he had a family, a home, a horrible mantelpiece. He owned businesses I had heard of – Sassy Girl, was a label the girls at school wore. He was a public figure. My mother had asked him for help as she was dying (and humiliated me by doing so). And he had rejected her, berated her, and knocked her down. I wanted to run to his house and jump on him, hit him, push my fingers into his eyes and force his head against his hideous marble floor. I breathed slowly, trying to focus on the see-saw in the children’s play area. But the rage stayed. I knew it wouldn’t fade now, no matter how calm I could make myself feel outwardly. In life my mother had ably shielded me from the rejection, from the callous and cold detachment of this man. And I had been safe with her warmth to surround me. But in dying, she could not absorb this hurt for me anymore. I knew I couldn’t really go to his house, ring the bell, and demand that he pay some vague price for what he had done. I’d get as far as the bronze gates outside and be turned away. The Artemis family were clearly used to putting up walls and dismissing those who inconvenienced them – debtors, fans, beggars, and unwanted children. I would have to wait, I realised, sit it out and come up with a plan for when I was older and more able to make contact. This thought comforted me. I had five years until I was 18. Five years to think up a way to make the Artemis family suffer. I still remember this moment vividly, and I’ve thought of it many times since, always with a smile. Because even at 13 (and though I was too nice back then to let myself think it explicitly), I comforted myself with the knowledge that I would grow up and make them know, really know, the pain that we had suffered.