The Daughter's Choice

by S. D. Robertson

  ‘How can there be no photos of her?’ I demanded, stomping my feet on the tiled kitchen floor. ‘It’s ridiculous. There must be some pictures of her somewhere. Are you hiding them from me? Why would you do that?’

  In response, he looked at me with this awful pained expression: a fragility behind his eyes that I didn’t recognise. It freaked me out to see him that way and instantly put a stop to my acting up.

  When he eventually spoke, his voice rasped with an unusual hesitancy. ‘I mean, she – your mother, that is – wasn’t a big fan of being photographed. I’m not sure why. She never really explained. It must sound strange to you: especially these days, when people take selfies every other minute on their phones. But it wasn’t like that back then. And we had such precious little time together. There were a few snaps I did manage to take, but I made the mistake of keeping them all in one place – one envelope. Then there was this fire and, well, they were all destroyed.’

  ‘A fire?’ I asked, knowing nothing about this.

  He let out an exasperated sigh. ‘Yes! It was a very long time ago, Rose. Listen, I wish I did have photographs of her that I could share with you, I truly do. But I’m sorry, I don’t. I wouldn’t keep them from you if I did.’

  ‘Okay,’ I replied in a tiny voice. ‘It’s fine, honestly, Dad. I shouldn’t have said what I did. I didn’t mean to accuse you like that. Please forgive me.’

  ‘Forgive you?’ he said, eyes stretching wide, beaming spotlights on me. ‘There’s nothing to forgive. It’s me who should be apologising.’

  We hugged it out after that. Dad’s always given the best cuddles: big, all-enveloping embraces that make you feel loved and safe like nothing else.

  I felt so bad, I never asked him about this again. I did mention the fire to Nana once, a little while afterwards, curious about what had happened. She told me she hadn’t been there at the time, but as far as she knew, it had been an accident – some kind of mix-up – while he’d been destroying old paperwork, burning it off in the garden. He’d always felt terrible about it, she said, which kind of explained the way he’d reacted to my earlier interrogation.

  It’s not the end of the world. I just have to imagine her in my head. I’ve been doing it for so long, it’s second nature now. She was younger than me when she died – only twenty – which messes with my head if I reflect on it too much.

  It’s not strictly about me, but the way my parents met is certainly a key part of my life story, so I’m going to cover that here very briefly too. Not that I was around for it, obviously, but Dad’s told me the tale on enough occasions for me to be able to recount the basics.

  They met at a wedding, although not in a conventional fashion. It was a swanky do at some very grand hotel. The groom was an old schoolfriend of Dad’s, a couple of years older than him. Only a handful of other guests were fellow former pupils, meaning Dad felt a bit isolated once the meal was over and the evening do was in full swing. He’s always been more of a talker than a dancer, so while the few people he knew were all busy boogying, he found himself propping up the bar and chatting away to a pretty bartender.

  It was love at first sight, the way he tells it; the meeting of two minds. They just clicked. In fact, they were so busy clicking that my mother, who’d picked up the job through a temp agency, ended up getting fired by her manager for doing no work. Not that either of them cared. It gave them the perfect excuse to run off together and spend some time alone.

  Have you ever seen the movie Before Sunrise? It’s that super romantic one from the mid-1990s with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy as two young strangers who meet on a train journey and spend the rest of that day and night wandering the sumptuous city of Vienna together. They have these intense, exhilarating, nuanced conversations with each other – dialogue playing a huge role in the film – as a romantic attraction quickly blossoms between the two kindred spirits.

  I like to imagine my parents having a similar connection when they first met: the kind of pure, potent chemistry that only happens when true soulmates come together. I even tell myself that’s why Dad has never shown any interest in other women, as far as I’m aware. I’m probably over-romanticising things, but what’s a girl supposed to do when she’s never known her mother? Can you blame me for wearing rose-tinted glasses?

  Anyhow, from what I gather, they were inseparable after that night. I came along less than a year later and, far too soon afterwards, my mother was taken from us.

  Although she was an orphan, I do have family on my father’s side. The only problem is that none of them live nearby. Not any more. And it’s not a huge family by any stretch of the imagination.

  There’s my nana, Deborah, who helped us out a lot when I was little, but several years ago she moved to an expat community not far from Marbella in Spain. The official reason was because she couldn’t handle the British winters any longer. ‘They’re so long and dreary,’ she still tells anyone who’ll listen whenever she makes a rare visit home. ‘They make me depressed. Even when summer finally comes along, there’s no guarantee of it being nice. Not in Lancashire. You usually get just enough decent days in May and June to give you hope, only for it to drizzle incessantly once the schools break up at the end of July. At least you know where you are with the weather in Spain. And people are nicer to one another when the sun’s out. Honestly, it’s like being on holiday all the time. I love it.’

  In truth, I think she went there because she was lonely and needed a change to reinvigorate herself and give her life purpose. Her husband Stephen – my grandad – died years ago, when I was six. I do remember him, although he was never around much, like she was at that point, so I don’t feel as if I knew him very well. He was always busy with work, but she worshipped him. That’s still clear today from the way she talks about him. Dad says she’ll never marry again, although we suspect she has had one or two boyfriends since moving to Spain. She’s never fully come out and admitted it, though, like she feels to do so would be a betrayal of my grandad. Maybe that’s another part of the reason she moved so far away, so she could do such things out of sight of her family and old friends.

  I usually speak to her at least once a week. Despite the physical distance between us, we still have a strong bond, as she’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a mother. Video calls make keeping in touch so easy. It’s not the same as her living nearby, but it’s better than nothing.

  I actually spoke to her yesterday evening. I told her about coming on the tranquillity tour, but she struggled to understand the concept. ‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘How’s it a tour. Where do you go?’

  I explained: ‘There are various different saunas, steam rooms and so on. You go into them one after another.’

  ‘So they’re in different places, are they? How do you travel between them? On a bus?’

  ‘They’re all on one site, Nana. You just walk out of one and head on to the next.’

  She screwed up her face, clearly still not grasping the concept. ‘Will you be naked?’

  ‘What? No, of course not. I’ll be in my swimsuit.’

  ‘Good. Make sure it’s not too revealing. You never know who might be watching. There are perverts everywhere these days, you know. I was only reading the other day—’

  ‘Nana, chill out! It’s a country spa hotel I’m going to, not some seedy inner-city sauna. Dad booked it for me and Cara, remember? Do you really think he’d send us somewhere dodgy?’

  ‘Listen, Rose, all it takes is one person with a camera phone and, next thing you know, there might photos or videos of you on a sex website.’

  If I hadn’t been visible to her, I would have banged my head on the table in front of me. Instead, I smiled patiently and promised to be careful. ‘Anyway, are you looking forward to the wedding, Nana?’ I asked. ‘I can’t wait for you to fly in next Thursday. I’m dying to show you my dress, for a start.’

  ‘My favourite granddaughter’s wedding? Of course I’m looking forward to it. And I can’t wait
to see you in your dress. Goodness knows how I’m going to stop myself from sobbing throughout the ceremony. My little Rose – all grown-up. How’s the weather forecast looking, by the way?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not wasting time looking at the weather, Nana,’ I said. ‘I’d rather focus on the things I can control. I’m sure it’ll be fine. Probably not as warm as you’re used to in Spain, but I’d rather not be covered in a sheen of sweat in all the photos, anyway.’

  ‘I’ll have a word with Him Upstairs and ask him to sort it for you,’ Nana replied. To be honest, I wondered if this was a little dig at me for having a civil ceremony, rather than a church wedding, which I know my grandmother would prefer. Nana didn’t elaborate, though, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt.

  ‘By the way, Rose, before I forget, do you know when Bridget and family are arriving? I forgot to ask her when we last spoke.’

  ‘Friday, I think. Sorry, I’m not entirely sure. Dad will know, but he’s not around to ask.’

  Bridget, my dad’s elder sister, makes up the rest of my core family. Well, her and her husband Joseph plus their two sons, Patrick, seventeen, and Harry, fifteen. There are a few other more distant relatives – second cousins and so on – but none that we see regularly.

  It’s not like we see Bridget and family that often either, to be honest. They live up in Scotland, in a small village north of Dundee; it’s a fair trek for us to travel up or them down to see one another. That said, I’ve always enjoyed spending time with my younger cousins. They’re good fun to be around, if a little exhausting. Whenever we meet up, which tends to be once or twice a year, they usually end up involving me in some kind of game, typically requiring lots of running around and shouting. They’re definitely not the type to spend hours on end sitting behind a computer screen or tablet, playing video games, like a lot of boys their age. I suppose you’d call them outdoorsy, athletically built and ruddy-cheeked, with Scottish accents occasionally so strong that I have to ask them to repeat themselves.

  When I was younger, there were moments when I used to wish I had brothers or sisters, just like I used to yearn for a mother. It was only normal in the circumstances – I see that now – although at the time it often led to feelings of guilt, like I was letting Dad down in some way by thinking such things. Like I wasn’t appreciating him enough and taking everything I did have for granted.

  Anyway, sometimes when I met up with Patrick and Harry, I used to pretend to myself that they really were my brothers. I even remember saying so out loud to them on a few instances, making it part of a game. Thankfully, they always played along without saying it was weird.

  We went on a short summer holiday with them to Northumbria when I was around twelve, for instance. I recall playing on the beach one day with a bunch of other children we’d got talking to.

  ‘Let’s trick the others and say we’re sister and brother,’ I whispered to Patrick, throwing in a conspiratorial wink for good measure, before doing the same to Harry. Both boys grinned and nodded in reply, happy to oblige. And so I referred to them as my brothers at every available opportunity after that; it felt particularly good to hear them reciprocate.

  I really missed them after that trip. I felt so glum driving home alone with Dad once the break was over, even though he did his utmost to cheer me up by doing silly impressions and singing along to songs on the radio in an exaggerated falsetto.

  ‘Cheer up, Dimples,’ he said eventually. ‘Returning home isn’t that awful, is it? Holidays are fun, I know, but if they went on forever, they’d just be normal life. And there would be no holidays to look forward to, would there? Plus you’ll get to see Cara and your other friends again.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I replied with a grunt. ‘I’m tired, that’s all. How much longer do we have to drive? Are we nearly there yet?’

  ‘Seriously, Rose?’ Dad replied, shaking his head. ‘We only left forty-five minutes ago. You do remember the journey up here, right?’

  I turned away from him to look out of the window at my side, not yet ready to stop wallowing.

  He started snorting and talking in this silly pig voice he used to use when he’d read me ‘The Three Little Pigs’ as a bedtime story.

  ‘Little Rose, little Rose, don’t be glum,’ he said, reaching over with one hand to gently tickle my neck.

  ‘Don’t!’ I said, jerking away from him but already finding myself struggling not to smile. By the time he’d grunted and squealed his way through a suggestion to stop for a burger and a milkshake when we were halfway home, my bad mood was broken.

  Dad’s always been good at doing the right thing to cheer me up when I’m down. He knows me better than anyone else in the world – and yes, that includes my fiancé.

  CHAPTER 6

  The next really clear memory I have after the bloody chin incident is probably my first day at primary school.

  I’d been looking forward to it for ages. Don’t get me wrong, I loved spending time at home or out and about with Dad and Nana. Plus Cara and I were already great pals by that point. But I wanted to spread my wings and start my journey towards adulthood. Obviously I wasn’t thinking in quite such defined terms, as I was only four years old, but I was itching to move on to the next stage of my little life. I was super keen to learn as well as to meet new people.

  I’ve always been studious and gregarious. Some students work hard because they feel like it’s the right thing to do, keeping one eye on their future. However, my key driver has always been knowledge. I’ve had a thirst for it for as long as I can remember. I enjoy learning for the sake of it. Nerdy, right? And yes, I’ve achieved good grades as a result, but that’s never been the be-all and end-all for me. Maybe this goes some way to explaining my current lack of a job. If I’d focused on a career endgame from the beginning, things might be different.

  As for the gregarious thing, I’m pretty sure that’s a reaction to my home situation: a response to the way I was nurtured. I don’t mean this as a criticism of my father. I owe him everything. However, he’s not always the most sociable of people. He’s fine with me and other family members and friends – put him in the right situation and he can be quite the live wire – but generally he’s not a fan of situations where he has to mingle with lots of people, particularly when it’s a group he hasn’t met before.

  Dad’s comfortable in his own company and happy to leave home as little as possible. It helps that home is a roomy Victorian house: a secluded former vicarage with large gardens and a private drive, off a winding country road, surrounded by open fields.

  It’s even called The Old Vicarage. It’s lovely. I couldn’t have wished for a nicer home to grow up in – I wouldn’t have agreed to have my wedding reception in a marquee there, otherwise. And yet I do think that growing up in such a place, with my father being the person he is, shaped me into someone far more convivial than him.

  ‘Ready?’ Dad asked on my first day of school, having taken twenty-odd photos of me in my itchy, stiff new uniform outside the house. It was a gloriously warm, sunny morning that felt more like July or August than early September.

  ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ I ran over to the car and banged my palms on the window, impatient for him to unlock the door.

  ‘No need to smash your way in there, Dimples! I do have keys.’

  ‘You can’t call me that at school, Daddy,’ I said a few minutes later, as he drove the short journey to my new school.

  ‘Sorry, I’m not with you. Call you what?’

  ‘Dimples,’ I replied, referring to the pet name he’d called me for as long as I could remember.

  ‘Oh, right. Why? Don’t you like it any more? I just love those cute little dimples of yours when you smile, that’s all.’

  ‘It’s fine at home,’ I said. ‘But my teacher might think it’s my real name – and it’s not.’

  ‘I see.’ He nodded and flashed me a serious look. ‘No problem, Rose. I’ll be sure to use your actual name while we’re at school. Okay?’

 
‘Okay.’

  Oakfield Lane Primary School, where I spent a large chunk of my time for the next seven years, was located about three miles from our house in a charming little village in the middle of nowhere with one general store, two pubs, a playground, a church and a chip shop. Today it remains much the same.

  It’s the kind of village where everyone knows everyone else and people definitely don’t mind their own business. Not that I was aware of this back then. However, when we were waiting in line outside the reception classroom, I did notice that most of the other children and their parents already seemed to know one another. They were busy making conversation while Dad said nothing to anyone other than me. Meanwhile, I was already excitedly eyeing up my future classmates, wondering who to make friends with first.

  On the first day there were plenty of other dads there, as well as all the mums, though their numbers soon thinned out as the weeks passed and the novelty of their child being a new starter wore off.

  I felt like people were staring at us. With hindsight, there were several potential reasons for this. Firstly, living a few miles outside the village, we were outsiders. Secondly, it was just me and Dad. That might not seem especially unusual nowadays, but it was less common at that time, particularly in a small rural community. Thirdly, Dad was something of a celebrity in his heyday. He wasn’t always such a recluse. At the tender age of nineteen he published a novel, A Child’s Scream, about the abduction of a young boy from a quiet village. Rather than focusing on the crime, it deals with how the kidnapping affects a group of friends who, while having a barbecue, ignored the lad’s cry for help, assuming it to be the sound of kids playing. The book was a huge international bestseller and Dad was the darling of the literary world for a while. His face was plastered across newspapers and magazines, here and abroad; he did various book tours and even made some TV appearances.