After You Left(84)

‘Are you planning on marrying her?’

He looks at me, uncomprehendingly. ‘Marrying? God, Alice, I’m not thinking about that. At least, certainly not at the moment. All I can focus on is my son, and what we might be able to do to help him.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, wishing I could retract the question. I am sorry for everything. Even for the things I had nothing to do with.

He gazes out on to the street. Not a part of him moves. I study his handsome profile, imprinting it in my memory, thinking that this could well be one of the last times I ever see him.

He’ll marry Lisa at his first opportunity. They have a child. His Catholic values will see to it that he does the right thing.

But it doesn’t really matter. I think I realised that this afternoon. I think I knew then that even if he had wanted to come back to me, I wouldn’t take him back. And even if he asks to come back tomorrow, or in four years’ time, my answer will be the same. Sally was right. Justin is a good man, but he’s an emotional wild card. He has morphed into something else altogether, and it doesn’t matter if the old Justin I once loved could ever return; I don’t think I want either of them any more.

I look down the length of the bar with its long mirror and its wall of shiny booze bottles. There is some relief in my epiphany. I lost a husband and gained a father. And somewhere along the way, I made new friends. Evelyn said that perhaps I need someone less buttoned-down. If I am ever to meet another man I want him to be more like Michael. Uncomplicated and easy-going. Even if he carries sweaty sports socks in the pocket of his car door.

I look at Justin and, for the first time, I see the possibility that everything is going to be okay.

The few sips of alcohol have hit my empty stomach hard. ‘Shall we go?’ I say.

He frowns, looking momentarily confused by my haste. I suddenly correct what I concluded earlier. This will definitely be the very last time I see him, outside of, perhaps, a courtroom. And by the collision of messed-up emotions that register on his face, I can tell he’s thinking the same thing, too.

I pull off the platinum wedding ring – it’s already left a small impression in my skin, even though it’s spent such a short time on my finger. I place it on the table by his martini glass.

‘Justin.’ I watch him stare, uncomprehendingly, at the ring. ‘I wish your little boy all the luck, and all the good health, in the world. I wish him the best life anyone could have.’

And then, when I feel I can say more without choking, I add:

‘And you.’





THIRTY-EIGHT


There are cards with cuddly bears, butterflies, balloons and gothic fairies. Cards with cakes, cupcakes and my age in gold or silver foil. Cards for a Special Daughter. Gradually, the themes become more grown up with the passing of time. Always, he’s written the same thing. For April, my daughter, who I think of every day. With all my love.

Out of each one falls a ten-pound note.

I sit cross-legged on Evelyn’s floor. We are going through her ‘treasure trove’ of a storage box, as I call it.

‘I found them among his things when we were moving him into Sunrise. I saw that they were all addressed to your home in Stockport, and they’d all been returned.’

There are cards right up until I turned nineteen, then we moved. Or at least, my mother and Alan moved as I was off to Uni by then. ‘I still can’t get my head around how any person could hate someone so much that they wouldn’t even let him send a birthday card to his only daughter,’ I say to Evelyn. My eyes are blinded with tears. Since learning that Eddy is my father, all I can picture is a tall, lean man sitting alone on a bench in the middle of an art gallery, a man who wears a shirt the colour of bright tomatoes, and how different that is from picturing nobody at all.

‘You just have to remember she loved you, otherwise you will go insane.’

‘It’s not enough.’ I stare at the card that has Look who’s turning 8 on the front, along with a package wrapped in a pink bow. ‘I wonder how he felt when he was posting it, knowing that in a few days it would be sent back.’

‘However he felt, he didn’t give up.’

‘No.’ I smile sadly. ‘You know you mentioned going to my ballet school to get a look at my mother and me . . . ? Well, the other day I remembered those lessons! I think my father took me once. I can vaguely picture him sitting quite out of place amongst all the mums, and I kept turning around to watch him while I was supposed to be dancing. I remember the teacher trying to coax me to pay attention . . . It’s so vivid – not his face, but more a feeling.’ I look off into the distance. ‘I felt proud.’

Now, every day, memories are unlocking themselves like tiny, almost tangible miracles. All I do is grasp at them like snowflakes before they melt. ‘Then I was on the swings at the park, and he was pushing me higher and higher, and I was a tiny bit panic-stricken, yet thinking, My dad won’t let any harm come to me . . .’ I almost can’t continue. ‘Again, I can’t really picture him; I just have a sense of him being there. A sense I’ve always had, I think.’ Frustration beats me down. ‘It’s so little! Two or three damned memories. It’s all I have of him.’

‘Your father loved you,’ Evelyn says, gathering the cards into a neat stack. ‘That is what you have of him. Like a lot of men, he was impulsive. He never saw it in terms of having to lose you in order to gain me. He foolishly saw himself as having everything. Once in a while, we all have that fantasy.’