13
Izzy is sitting in Thea’s garden. It’s her birthday. Thea invited her over the fence while Izzy was hanging out her washing, and she accepted the invitation immediately, with the awkward feeling that Thea didn’t expect her to. Nevertheless, she’s here, with a slice of birthday cake and a coffee and the sun warm on the tops of her legs. Izzy is thinking about wanting to confide in a girlfriend, and watching Thea move around the lawn, socializing, making sure everybody’s drinks are topped up.
‘Alright there?’ Thea says to her.
Izzy looks at her bare feet as she walks across the grass. She sits down next to Izzy and stretches her legs out in front of her. Her heels are cracked and her toenail polish chipped, but she doesn’t seem to care. Did Izzy’s mother use to wear nail polish? Izzy feels her chest heat up: she can’t remember. She has no idea. Shouldn’t she know?
‘Fine, fine,’ she says to Thea. ‘Though, I wanted to ask you something …’
‘Shoot,’ Thea says, her smile broad. She tilts her face up to the sun. ‘I never thought I’d get such a hot birthday. I’m not usually so lucky.’
‘My father contacted me,’ Izzy says.
Thea knows who she is – everybody does – though they have never directly spoken about it. Izzy is ashamed to feel a spark of something powerful ignite inside her. She likes shocking Thea by braving the topic. She likes the widening of Thea’s eyes. The way she scoots her chair closer to Izzy, even if she is merely after a salacious slice of gossip. Izzy hasn’t thought beyond this: this attention. She basks in the glow of it, though she knows it is unhealthy, that she is trying to fill a void.
‘Wow,’ Thea says. ‘How?’
‘By letter. He wants to meet.’ Izzy sips her coffee.
Thea’s eyes are wide. She has no idea what to say. Izzy recognizes the expression very well. Thea looks distractedly over her shoulder. Two of the guests are struggling to open a bottle of prosecco.
‘I’d love to talk more about this,’ she says to Izzy, and Izzy’s shoulders sink with disappointment. The brush-off. ‘Maybe another time?’ Thea says gently.
Izzy nods. Of course. It makes total sense. Of course she shouldn’t speak to her neighbour about this. But, even so, Izzy is filled with the feeling she calls loneliness again. Everyone has a family except her. She is free-floating, here, in Thea’s garden. She’s looking for something in the wrong place. Intimacy, she supposes. She briefly wonders whether she’s supposed to be getting that from somewhere else. Her husband, perhaps? But she suppresses the thought before it can take root.
Izzy is quiet and withdrawn for the rest of the party and, later, Thea says to her, ‘Well, we’re going to have some supper now with just close family,’ and even Izzy knows that is her hint to leave. She has outstayed her welcome, hoping to continue the conversation. Needy and aloof, all at the same time, always both together, a curdling, ugly combination.
She lets herself into her house via the back garden. It’s completely silent. Nick is at work. She imagines, as she often does, what it would feel like to have a family waiting inside. Busyness. People. Toddlers banging wooden spoons on saucepans, grumpy teens texting, their feet up on the kitchen chairs, and babies snuffling in their sleep. The stuff of life.
But how could she do that? What sort of a partnership would they make, she with her mother issues and Nick with his … with his what? How closed off he is, she supposes. It’s the first time she’s really admitted it to herself. But she can’t deny it, not now she’s tried to confide in her neighbour rather than her husband. She boils the kettle, getting a mug out and making a second coffee. She tries to imagine it. Properly this time. Bringing a baby home. Caring for it. But what if she and Nick began to argue? What if she shouted at the baby? Lost her temper? What if what happened to her father during his forties happened to her? What if it’s lying in wait, until then? No. She spoons coffee into the mug. She can’t do it.
She looks at her phone and imagines it lighting up constantly with texts. Siblings, parents, nephews, nieces.
The row her father had with her mother leaves her mind. She forgets his lies. All she can think of is this feeling inside her. This hollow feeling. This lonely feeling as the party continues next door – family only – while she stands alone, making coffee for one, thinking about traits she might have inherited.
Maybe she could speak to him. Maybe she could meet him. Maybe everything would feel clearer, and less muddy. He is suddenly a pinprick of light in the darkness. Her father. Her dad.
She picks up her phone, and dials.
They arrange to meet at a café at the beach the next evening. Nick is on lates, and Izzy will get Chris to cover for her at the restaurant. Her father has a job interview, he says, and he’ll see her after that.
He’s there before her, looking furtively around him. She’s pleased he’s nervous. But he’s also just – she sighs with pleasure, not able to stop herself – her dad. Look at him, there at the table. Her dad.
He’s ordered a bottle of wine, she’s surprised to see, and it sits on the table in front of him. The café is ambiently lit: candles line the windowsills in glass jars that refract the light across the wooden flooring. It’s pleasantly busy, to her relief. Folk music plays softly in the background.
Gabriel is wearing an anorak. As she approaches him, she sees it still has the price tag on, dangling down from the hem: £12.99 from Matalan. He isn’t sitting normally. She doesn’t quite remember his body language, but this isn’t it. He’s hunched over. He’s wearing unbranded trainers and jogging bottoms that gape and flap around his ankles. He looks cold and tense, here in the pretty café.
She sits opposite him and looks out to sea for just a few seconds. The horizon is completely flat, the sky a deep blue. If it wasn’t for a cooling breeze, it could be the height of summer.
‘How have you been?’ he says softly. He hasn’t removed his coat. He is just staring at her, his white hair messed up around his temples.
She can’t answer that – how could she possibly? – so instead she says, ‘This is a very strange situation.’
He nods, the ghost of a smile on his face, glancing down at the table. When he looks up at her, his eyes are wet. ‘You’re so big,’ he says to her. A statement from father to daughter after almost twenty years apart.
‘Oh, thanks,’ she says, surprised how easily the teasing rolls off her tongue.
His face stretches into a grin that makes her insides twist. There is just a glimpse of Gabriel there, hidden deep underneath the too-thin face, the missing tooth, five along. The white hair. The prisoner’s pallor.
‘You grew more. After I was taken,’ he says. Was taken. She notes his use of the passive voice. ‘You’re so tall.’
‘I did,’ she says. ‘I grew another few inches when I was eighteen.’ She casts about for something to say, something to break this awkward, loaded meeting, to distract herself from his unwavering gaze. ‘Your friends used to call you Tin Cup,’ she says, thinking of the memory that popped into her mind earlier. Why did they? She suddenly wishes to know everything, absolutely everything, about his history. Before her. Perhaps it’ll help.
He blinks, then the grin appears again. ‘They did.’
‘I don’t remember the friends. Who were they?’
‘Let me see,’ he says. He drums his index finger on the wooden table. ‘Tim, Dixy, Allo-Allo, Greg. Paul. Tin Cup … it’s a movie reference. Do you know …?’
‘No.’
‘No. You’re too young. Kevin Costner played a golf prodigy. I was good at golf. And most sports, I guess. They used to draw the short straw on who got to play me,’ he says.
Izzy shifts on the wooden chair. ‘Will you start playing again?’ She wonders if he could even kick a ball against the yard in prison. Probably not. She winces as she thinks of her father, her gregarious, messy, creative father, locked up.
He always had so much stuff. Was always doing so many things, forever a project on the go. His shippin
g container was chaos, but in the centre of the oils and the discarded canvases, the overalls and the lumps of clay, there would be a painting rising up from the mess like a statue. He had enjoyed his life, plain and simple: he and his friends used to play tennis every Wednesday in the summer. Badminton in the winter. Golf some Sundays, when they weren’t hung-over. Yes. It’s all coming back to her now. He was known as Tin Cup to his friends.
He finally removes his coat, even though he still looks cold. It fires a thought off inside her mind, like the first bubble in a boiling vat. Where does he live? Does he have any money? Do people remember?
‘How was the interview?’ she says.
‘Didn’t get it. I was late. Taxi didn’t show.’
‘You should’ve called.’
He throws her a strange look. ‘Next time, can I call you, then?’
‘Yes,’ Izzy says, but she feels uneasy, suddenly. Her casual offer of a lift has been grasped by her father like a life raft. ‘But you withheld your number,’ he says. He proffers his mobile to her, and she keys it in, not knowing what else to do in the face of his persistence.
‘I didn’t want the job, anyway.’
‘You could call back, explain why you were late … they might make an exception.’
‘Nah.’
‘But if you were working –’
‘Leave it, alright?’ he says, his voice thunderous in the café.
‘Sorry.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Her eyes meet his. He doesn’t look away, so she does, instead.
‘Anyway, it was just shelf stacking,’ he says, fiddling with the menu on the table. A blush is colouring his cheeks.
She finds her face heating up, too. Her father was no academic. He only ever had handyman jobs, painting, decorating, but his tastes were firmly middle class. He liked Brie and red wine and discussing art – he loved Francisco de Zurbarán and Caravaggio. He liked to buy pork and apple sausage rolls from M&S Food and posh burgers for barbecues. He liked that they owned an upmarket restaurant, even though he never worked in it himself. He had a wide pretentious streak that she had loved.
‘Going to any interview is a great first step,’ she says brightly.
‘They asked where I’d been for the last eighteen years. Then it all came out. I’ll have to lie, I guess? Next time.’
‘What’s the advice? Your … from the people helping you.’
He laughs now, a bitter sort of laugh. More of a huh sound. ‘My cellmate got released two months before me. Know where to?’
‘No.’
‘Finsbury Park. Just gave that as his postcode to the probation officer. They were fine with it. Though they made sure he bought a tent.’
‘That’s … horrendous,’ Izzy says, staring at him, this fascinating familial specimen she’s sharing a table with. How is it ever going to work? Even if he is innocent. Even if. How will he find a life? Build one from scratch? What are the ingredients for starting over? Does he want something, maybe? Help … money?
He’s still staring at her. He hasn’t taken his eyes off her. ‘You’re so like her,’ he says. ‘Do you know? Do you remember?’
She nods. ‘Yeah. I remember her. Of course I do.’
Her eyes meet his. He looks … how does he look? There’s a kind of hunger in his expression. So why does she feel fine here, alone with him, in the dimness of the café? It is because of him, she supposes, and the way he makes her feel. The way fathers make their daughters feel: safe.
‘Me too,’ he says softly. He gestures to the bottle. ‘You want to share? It’s nice,’ he says. ‘Though maybe too upmarket for your tastes.’ A tiny grin.
Of course. Of course he remembers. Memories spring forward, scenes she hasn’t thought of for years. Heinz baked beans and sausages, shared in a single bowl, during Dawson’s Creek. A 99p Sainsbury’s kids’ pizza, proffered to her like a gift one evening. He knows her tastes. He made her, she thinks, as she watches him. He made her, and so he knows her – still – better than anybody.
She flags a waitress down, gets a glass, and pours the wine. It dribbles out of the bottle like blood. She takes a sip. He’s right. It’s too rich.
‘Order something else,’ he says, catching her expression. ‘What do you want?’ He rummages in his pocket and her heart constricts when he pulls out a handful of coppers. ‘You order at the bar.’
‘It’s fine,’ she says, hoping he hasn’t spent the last of his money on an impressive bottle of wine.
Gabriel sips from his glass. ‘Nothing like a fine red on a warm night,’ he says, but the sentence sounds strange to her. Constructed, somehow: fake.
‘Did you ever drink in prison?’
He gives a tiny laugh, a little sniff. ‘No.’
‘Not at all?’
‘No.’
‘I thought prison was a law unto itself.’
‘Oh, it is. It’s easier to make things other than alcohol. Fermenting is beyond most prisoners.’
‘Like what?’
‘All about Spice these days.’
‘Spice?’
‘Legal high or, at least, it was. Manufactured into liquid. Sprayed on to a faked child’s painting which is brought in; they can get it past the guards.’
‘And then what?’
‘Ripped up and smoked, like tobacco. They would get off their bloody faces on it.’
‘On their kids’ paintings?’
‘Most of them didn’t even have kids, Iz. All fake.’
‘Did you ever try it?’ A sickly feeling settles in Izzy’s stomach. The old Gabe was so against drugs. And now look at him – roughened around the edges by prison life.
‘No. Spice was the least of my worries, anyway,’ he adds.
‘Yeah?’
‘During my fifteenth year, I was moved to this open prison, shared a room with a guy named Steve. He was in for embezzlement, from work. He was doing an Open University course in social media, whatever that is – I never really got the hang of it. Anyway, in open prisons we had rooms, not cells. Like …’ he gestures one hand upwards, trying to find the word, ‘like halls of residence, I guess.’
‘I didn’t go to university.’
‘No, I know. Paul said … Jesus, Izzy, of all the things I thought you’d end up doing, it wasn’t running a fucking restaurant. You used to exist on cheese toasties.’
She has to laugh. ‘Still do.’ She likes the swear word. He would never have sworn in front of her when she was seventeen. But here they are, two adults, a bottle of wine between them.
‘Yeah, I …’ he scans her face, searching, she guesses, for an explanation. ‘I was surprised.’
‘What did you think I’d do?’
‘Ballet,’ he says immediately. ‘Teaching ballet, or dancing … didn’t you?’
She shrugs awkwardly, not looking at him. Nobody knows about the ballet. Not even Nick. ‘I’m good at running a business,’ she says eventually. ‘Better than you and Mum.’ She flashes him a grin. ‘What happened to Steve? In the open prison?’ she asks, and she remembers now. Their chats were always full of layers, digressions, asides. They meander and undulate like linking rivers, dividing far apart and then coming back together.
‘Oh, he was training in the gym. Bench pressing. This other guy, Danny, was spotting him, then moved, so Steve dropped the weight. Bar crushed his windpipe. Danny set it up. Denied it, but I saw the whole thing. Blood everywhere.’ Gabe makes a slitting motion across his throat while staring directly at her.
Izzy scoots her chair backwards, away from him, feeling herself pale.
‘Sorry,’ he says quickly. ‘Been inside too long. I’ve become … I don’t know what’s normal now.’
‘Why did he do that?’ Izzy says, ignoring that sentiment. She can’t go there herself. It’s not normal to have witnessed these things. He must be changed, inside, because of it. Made worse. Blackened.
‘Wanted him dead. Always had.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
�
�Yes. That’s the thing in there. They’re already serving. They have nothing to lose. Lawless place. Fucking lawless.’
Think of what the years inside have done to him. She hears Chris’s warning again. She had thought of the monotony, the pain of being in prison, but not the other things. Who has Gabriel associated himself with for the last eighteen years? Not people who drink nice bottles of red in a seaside café, seemingly. And so, whoever he is now, he has her phone number, programmed in by her, willingly.
‘Sorry for telling that story,’ he says suddenly, putting his wine glass down and slopping wine on to the table. He doesn’t clear it up, doesn’t even look at it.
‘It’s fine,’ Izzy says tightly, wanting to move on. To get away, really: she shouldn’t have come here.
‘I’ve forgotten how to converse normally,’ he says.
‘No, you haven’t.’
She wonders if he still does all the things she remembers. Does he still paint his miniature portraits? Tiny pieces of canvas, the size of one of his hands. Does he still like to toss a ball up and down while on the phone? Does he still cycle absolutely everywhere? How can they begin to catch up on nearly twenty years, anyway? Even if.
‘Anyway,’ he says, like he hasn’t just told her a horrifying story, ‘I was telling you about the debt on the phone. Now you need the next bit. What happened next.’
‘Gabe,’ she says, and he winces.
‘Yes?’
‘Do you have an alternative explanation?’
‘We’re getting to that,’ he says quickly. ‘I promise we are.’
He reaches for his wine glass. She stares at his arms. Those tanned, black-haired fatherly arms she remembers so well: opening jars, hanging up paintings, moving quickly in front of her to stop her from running out into the road. They’re skinny now, pale, the hairs white. His elbows jut out uncomfortably, too angular, like two squares underneath his skin.
He fiddles with the stem of the glass. ‘I drank out of blue plastic mugs for eighteen years,’ he says, gesturing to the glass. ‘I feel like I’m going to break this.’
‘We can get you a mug, if you like,’ she says with a smile. An image of her mother’s injuries springs into Izzy’s mind. God. Is she mad to be here, with this man – convicted by an impartial, dispassionate jury?
The Evidence Against You Page 10
