Perfectly Ordinary People(50)

When after three days he’d failed to reply, I checked the address and emailed him again, saying that we could make it a shorter visit if he preferred.

Finally, in desperation, I went to Mum and Dad’s and literally begged my father to look for the phone number. And this time he found it with shocking ease. I suspected he’d known exactly where it was all along.

‘No, I’ll call him,’ Dad said, holding the slip of paper out of my reach.

‘Let me,’ I insisted, jumping to get at the bit of paper. ‘I’m the one who’s been talking to him about a visit.’

‘Yes, but I’m the one with the phone number,’ Dad said. ‘So it’s only polite. Plus I have a feeling.’

‘A feeling about what?’ I asked, but he raised a finger to silence me and turned to dial the number.

‘Bonjour, puis-je parler— Oh, sorry. Yes. Of course I do. Can I speak to my father, Chris? Oh, it is? Hi there. Yes.’

Dad’s face went a little grey then and he perched on the edge of the sofa for a moment before slumping back into it. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Go on.’

Then, ‘Yes . . . Yes . . . Yes . . . No! Yes . . . Yes . . . Oh . . . Oh, I see. Oh, God, that— . . . Yes, of course. Gosh, I’m sorry to hear that. Yes, I will.’

Finally he hung up and shook his head. ‘I hope you haven’t booked tickets yet,’ he said.

‘Who was that, Dad?’ I asked. ‘And you didn’t let me—’

‘He’s in hospital,’ Dad said, interrupting me. ‘Your grandfather’s fractured his hip. He fell off a ladder cleaning the gutters, apparently. That was a friend of his, Igor.’

‘He’s in hospital?’ I said. ‘But that makes me want to go even more.’

‘Not much point for the moment,’ Dad said. ‘He’s completely out of it, apparently. And Igor said it’s not looking great.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I asked. ‘What do you mean, not looking great?’

‘He is seventy-six, sweetheart,’ Dad said.

‘It’s only a fracture though, isn’t it?’

Mum, who’d remained silent until that point, now looked up from the Radio Times she’d been leafing through. ‘Hips can be nasty,’ she said. ‘My grandmother died after she broke her hip.’

‘But seventy-six isn’t even old,’ I said. ‘Especially not these days.’

‘It is if you’ve got a broken hip,’ Dad said. ‘But we’ll see. I said I’d call back tomorrow. He was just on his way out the door. I’ll keep you posted. But I don’t think your little adventure’s going to work out. Not in two weeks’ time it’s not, anyway.’



Dan and I ended up in the Lake District, where we spent two nights in a luxury spa complex, followed by a week in a cottage on Lake Windermere.

It was sunny, which was as lucky as it was unexpected, and though it wasn’t the South of France, we had a lovely time, lazing around, reading, eating, drinking and, of course, shagging.

Grandpa Chris was on my mind, but whenever I called home, the news was always the same: he was stable but still in hospital. After each phone call, Dan and I would discuss the many things I didn’t know about my family, and how strange it all was, and what the possible causes might be for such a void. But we didn’t come up with much and our conversations only made me more determined to get down to see Grandpa Chris as soon as he was better.

The holiday enabled Dan and me to reconnect though, and very possibly in a way that a trip to Arcachon, heavy as it would have been with family intrigue, might not have done. So by the time we got back, I felt as in love with him as I ever had.

Meanwhile – a fact that had been perfectly dissimulated by my mother – Dad had flown down to Bordeaux to be with his dying father.

I was pretty upset when I found out, though I hid it well. It seemed to be something Dad and I could have done, or rather should have done, together.

Much later on, Mum explained that Dad hadn’t intended to go himself, in fact he’d specifically told her, on multiple occasions, that he saw no reason to do so. But as his father’s condition had worsened, his emotions had suddenly caught up with him. One morning on opening his eyes, he’d turned to my mother, and said, ‘I have to go, don’t I? And I have to go today.’

I imagine that Mum, who gets the ‘family’ thing better than she gets just about anything else, will have nodded and stroked his head. ‘Of course you do,’ she’ll have said. ‘I’ll help you pack a bag.’

Also, in fairness to my father, by that point, by the time it had dawned on him that he needed to go, I was lazing by a heated pool in Windermere. Not wanting to spoil my holiday was an understandable, albeit – in my opinion – insufficient reason for having lied to me.

I didn’t find any of this out until after I got back, when I finally went to visit my parents.

I was riding a wave of optimism in the wake of my successful holiday and virtually buzzing with rediscovered passion for Dan.

Surprised to find the house so quiet on a Sunday, I asked my mother what was going on.

‘Your father told them all to stay away,’ she said, which surprised me even more. ‘He wants some peace and quiet this weekend.’