by Paige Toon
But I can’t stop myself. That’s how I am. Last page of a book…Searching through sales racks…I remember Molly pointing all this out when I refused to delete James’s text back in her workshop in Sydney.
One of the envelopes is thicker, firmer, so I start with that. In there is a letter and a photograph of a little girl, standing on a balcony of an apartment block, grinning up at the camera, brown hair cut in a childish bob.
Lucy, age 5, my mum has written on the back. Bracing myself, I open the letter and start to read…
Joe,
This is your daughter. I thought you’d like to see what she looks like because you’re not going to see her in person anytime soon.
I’m not coming back, so don’t try to contact me. After what you’ve done, I never want to see you again. You’re pathetic. Evil. You don’t deserve this picture of Lucy but I’m rising above that. One day, if you ever manage to sort your fucking life out, I might let you see her. But until then…
Diane
It doesn’t sound like Mum. She never sounds like that. I don’t understand. I pass the letter to Nathan and reach for the next envelope. The water from my wet hair is trickling down my neck but I barely notice.
Joe,
Tell your mother to stop writing to me. The new tenants are sick of forwarding her letters.
Diane
I’m bewildered. I don’t get any of this. The rest of the envelopes contain letters to my father from my grandmother. There doesn’t seem to be anything significant in them, just what she’s been doing in the garden and news about the neighbours, that sort of thing. After a while I give up reading them.
Why was he in Manchester? Why would he have left his home in Dublin? I don’t know. And now I’ll never know.
It occurs to me that I’m the only blood relative of Joe McCarthy left in the world. The sole tie I have with my so-called father is his surname.
‘You okay?’ Nathan asks me, pushing my wet fringe off my forehead, like he did that time on the beach in Manly. My heart flips just looking at him. I reach out and put my hand on his face. His stubble is softer than I would have thought and it surprises me. Then he kisses my wrist and I’m leaning towards him, loving him, wanting him. He catches my eye and holds it. He must know how I feel. He must. He takes my hand from his face and gently puts it down.
‘I’m sorry…’ he says. ‘I’m sorry.’
And the moment is broken. I sit back in my seat. It’s as if he’s slapped me. He reaches across to touch my cheek and I flinch away. I can’t look at him, but I can feel his stare. I can sense his hurt.
‘Please,’ I say. ‘Take me home.’
I feel empty, flat. I can’t look at James when I get back that evening, telling him I just want to watch the telly and not talk about any of it. I leave the box with my dad’s things by the sofa, and James eyes it warily, but I ignore him. I can’t take in anything on the television screen in front of me. I feel like everything is happening in slow motion.
The home phone and my mobile have been ringing, but I refuse to answer either. When James keeps trying to, I warn him to leave them. I don’t want to speak to anyone. My life is a mess. I’m in love with James. I’m in love with Nathan. Nathan is leaving. My dad is dead.
Eventually James’s phone rings and he flips it open, leaving me in the living room and going through to the bedroom. He comes back a few minutes later.
‘That was your mum. She’s worried about you.’
I don’t answer.
I don’t go to work the next day, even though we’re busy; I still can’t face anyone. I lie on the sofa, ignoring the phone. The sound of the shrill ringing is strangely therapeutic, but in the evening, when James comes home, he snaps at me. I let him take the phone off the hook and the ringing stops.
I wonder if Nathan has been trying to reach me.
By Thursday morning I’ve made a decision to go to Somerset for the weekend. I need to see my mum. I book myself a train ticket and then ring her to let her know my intentions. I leave a note for James, telling him I’ve gone home. He’s never seen me like this and he doesn’t know how to deal with me.
Mum comes alone to the station to collect me. She hugs me tightly but I don’t return her embrace.
‘Lucy, darling…’
We drive home in silence.
With Tom at work in London now, and Nick at university, it’ll just be mum, Terry and me this weekend. Terry smiles at me sympathetically when I arrive and tells me he’s sorry about my dad.
‘You’ll be okay, kiddo,’ he says, giving me a comforting hug.
This must be difficult for him too. He’s sensitive enough to know this weekend is about Mum and me, though, and it’s a relief to be able to break away and go up to my bedroom without worrying about offending him.
Mum knocks on my door a little later. I’m lying on my bed staring up at the ceiling.
‘Lucy, please talk to me.’ She perches on the bed with a cup of tea for me. ‘Tell me about the funeral. Did James go with you?’
I force myself to sit up. ‘No, Nathan did,’ I say, daring her to give me a look. She doesn’t. ‘I found your letter,’ I tell her. She looks confused. ‘You know, with a photo of me when I was five…’ Recognition registers and pain flickers across her face. ‘Tell me what it was like, Mum. Please. I need to know.’
My father was an alcoholic, abusive bully who cheated on my mother time and time again. Once she came home to find him with two hookers in his bed. When she tried to leave, he grabbed her by the hair and smashed her against the wardrobe, knocking her out. She was pregnant with me at the time.
The abuse continued. When he wasn’t screwing other women, he would screw my mum, with, but mostly without, her consent. One time his mother–my grandmother–found her sobbing uncontrollably and bleeding because he had bitten her neck in a violent rage. She still has the scar. But my grandmother did nothing.
When I was born my mother decided we had to escape, but one of the neighbours, who saw her packing a suitcase, ran to get my dad from down the pub. He threatened to throw me at the wall and told Mum he would kill us both if she ever left.
But she did leave eventually. Because she knew he would kill us if we stayed. She escaped with me to a women’s shelter in London and with their help, managed to find us a tiny studio flat. She got a job as a secretary and over the next couple of years, life settled down.
One day my grandmother turned up on her doorstep. She’d hired a private investigator to track us both down and was desperate for a reconciliation. She tried to persuade Mum to go back to Dublin to meet with my dad, swearing that he had changed, but my mum never wanted to set eyes on the bastard again. Over the next year my grandmother continued to write and send money. Eventually Mum had enough cash for a one-way ticket to Australia. It wasn’t the outcome my grandmother had ever anticipated.
Mum tells me now that my dad did write many times, asking her to come back. He wanted to meet me. But she wrote to him only three times. Once to send him a photo of me because she was feeling generous, another to get him to tell his mother to stop writing, and finally to request a divorce.
‘Where are their letters now?’ I ask.
‘I burnt them. I’m sorry,’ she tells me.
Nathan calls me that night, as I’m climbing into bed. I’ve had eighteen missed calls since Tuesday night, so this time I answer the phone.
‘Lucy! You’re there!’ He was obviously expecting voicemail again. ‘Where are you?’
‘Dunster.’
‘Where?’
‘Somerset. It’s where I live. Where my mum lives,’ I correct myself.
‘Yes, of course.’
I say nothing, waiting for him to speak.
‘Lucy…’
‘What?’ I snap.
Silence.
‘Nathan, if you’ve got something to say to me, just say it! Why can’t you say it?’
‘What do you expect me to say?’ he asks.
My heart is
pounding so hard, I don’t answer him.
‘Lucy…Luce. About the other day…’
I wait.
‘God, do you have to make this so hard for me?’ he asks. ‘When are you coming back? When can we talk?’
‘Now is a good time.’ I don’t know why I’m being so mean. I can’t help it.
‘I…don’t know what you expected me to do? In the car…’
‘Please don’t. Don’t mention it again.’
He sighs. ‘I’m leaving in three weeks.’
‘Maybe we shouldn’t see each other anymore, then.’
‘I don’t want that!’ he exclaims, frustrated now.
‘Well, what do you want?’
‘I think it’s you who has to decide what she wants, don’t you?’ he responds, angrily. ‘Look, please, let’s talk when you come back, okay? Lucy? I do know something about what you’re going through, you know,’ he adds, and my heart breaks at the sound of his sad voice.
‘I know you do.’ I’m more gentle now. ‘But, Nathan, really, what’s the point? Next week I’ll have only a few days in London and then James and I are going to his parents for Christmas. By the time I get back, I might see you only once or twice before you go home.’
‘We can’t leave it like this, though, Luce,’ he says sadly. ‘We have to say goodbye. Please. Will you call me?’
I tell him I will, but I’m not sure either of us believes it.
Chapter 25
I arrive back at our empty flat on Monday, not caring that I’ve missed another day of work. James has left a pile of post for me on my bedside table, and I recognise Molly’s handwriting on the top envelope. I open it up to find a card telling me how sorry she is about my dad and that she hopes I’m coping. She and Sam miss me more than ever. There are cards from Gemma and Chloe, Reena and Paul and Karen and Alan too. I feel loved, and it makes me happy and sad at the same time.
James has moved the box of my dad’s things from by the sofa. I spend ten minutes frantically looking for it and eventually find it in a storage cupboard near the boiler in the kitchen. I leave it there. I’m angry with him for hiding it away but, at the same time, I accept it’s better that the box isn’t still by the sofa where I’d just stare at it morbidly.
Nathan calls me on Tuesday morning when I’m back at work. I divert him to voicemail. My heart wanted me to pick up, but my head won that round. Things would surely have been a lot less painful if I’d listened to the latter a bit more over the past year.
Mandy, Chloe and Gemma have been very sweet to me since I went back to work. Chloe and Gemma haven’t said much, but their sympathetic looks and tea-making capacity speak volumes. I’m relieved that it’s nearly Christmas and the office is winding down, although I still feel bad about how much time I’ve had to take off. Chloe tries to distract me by telling me about her date with William.
‘Oh, she won’t stop going on about him,’ Gemma interrupts.
‘Is that right?’ I smile.
Chloe grins happily. ‘Yes. He is divine!’
‘Seriously? Did it go well?’
‘That date, and the next one, and the next one,’ Gemma chips in again.
‘Are you two a proper item, then?’ I enquire, and Chloe nods.
‘Yep, he is just lovely. In fact, he’s invited me to their Christmas work drinks on Friday night–you should come too! It would be such a laugh…’
Our office closes that lunchtime for our Christmas break.
‘That’d be great.’
‘So, you see?’ she adds merrily. ‘James was wrong about him being shy.’
I suddenly remember James’s private warning to me a couple of weeks ago. What did he say again?
‘Tell her to watch out…He’s a bit of a liar, that one.’
But I can’t bring myself to destroy Chloe’s mood. Not just yet anyway. Not before Christmas.
Nathan calls me on Wednesday morning but once more my head wins the battle. Then, that evening, I arrive home to find him leaning up against his Saab, smoking a cigarette. He spots me at the same time as I spot him, and I freeze momentarily. He drops his cigarette butt onto the pavement and squashes it out as I approach.
‘I thought you quit?’ I ask him, unsmiling.
‘Relapse,’ he says.
‘Have you been here long?’
‘Half an hour, forty minutes…’
‘Come in, you must be freezing.’
He locks his car and follows me up the stairs.
Inside the flat I put the kettle on and offer him beer, wine or coffee before deciding on a glass of wine for myself. He opts for coffee because he’s driving.
When I go back through to the living room he’s leaning forward on the sofa with his head in his hands. I sit at the other end, tucking my feet up and facing him. I sip my wine and wait, watching him. His messy hair falls sexily to just above his chin. When did he get a haircut, I wonder…
Finally I can bear it no longer.
‘What are you doing here, Nathan?’
He sighs and leans back. ‘I don’t know.’ He turns to look at me, his eyes filled with anguish. He holds his hand out to me for a second, then lets it fall on the sofa when I don’t take it.
I do want to be close to him. I want to take his hand and snuggle up against his chest and let him hold me tight. I want to kiss him. I want to make love to him.
I want him not to be going home in just over two weeks.
‘Your coffee’s getting cold,’ I say.
‘I don’t care.’
‘You would if I’d made you a tea.’
He smiles for a fleeting moment and I can’t help but smile back.
‘Lucy, please, come here.’ He holds out his hand to me again. I edge closer to him on the sofa and let him take my hand. He looks at me sadly. ‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ he says. ‘I don’t know what to do. I see you here, in this amazing flat with this great job and lovely friends—’
‘And let’s not forget James,’ I say, before I can stop myself.
‘As if I could.’
We fall silent for a moment.
Eventually I speak. ‘What about you? You’re going back to Sydney in two and a half weeks. Surely you wouldn’t consider staying on?’
‘Even if I could delay my flight for a bit, where would that leave us? I’d still want to go back home eventually. I miss the beaches. I miss the surfing. I miss my brother–he’s the closest family I have.’
‘My mum is the closest family I have,’ I reply quietly.
‘I know! And I’m sorry. It’s a bloody nightmare.’
‘I don’t even know how you feel about me.’
‘Yes, you do.’ He holds my gaze. ‘Yes, you do.’
My heart pounds in my chest. ‘James will be back from work soon,’ I say finally.
‘I should be going, then.’ He stands up, while I stay seated. Oh, God, I don’t want to let him leave. But I have to.
‘What are you doing for Christmas?’ I blurt as he reaches the door, trying to delay his departure. Is this it? The moment I let him walk out of my life for good?
‘Just spending it with Richard and Ally and everyone at the house. None of us has any family over here, so, you know…’
‘Well, I hope you have a good one,’ is all I can muster. Please don’t leave. Please.
‘You too.’ He smiles sadly. ‘Maybe we’ll catch up when you get back? Before I fly home?’
‘Maybe.’ Let him go, Lucy. Let him go.
He opens the door and pauses for a moment to look back at me. Oh, God, no! He starts to walk through, then stops suddenly, and gets something out of his pocket.
‘You forgot your tape…after the funeral,’ he says, placing it on a shelf.
And then he’s gone.
‘Nathan! Wait!’ I run towards the door, open it and pull him back inside. And then he’s kissing me, up against the wall, pressing his lips to mine, and I never, ever want him to stop.
Finally he tears himself awa
y, rough hands still holding my face. He bends down and kisses me again, slower this time, touching his lips to my jaw, my neck and back to my mouth again. I slide my hands up inside his jumper and feel his taut, toned stomach. I know I have to stop. It takes all the willpower in me to pull gently away. I lean back on the wall and he rests against the door, watching me, breathing heavily.
‘What now?’ he asks and we both smile guiltily.
‘Whoops,’ I say.
‘Bugger,’ he replies.
Then we become serious.
‘Oh, God,’ I say. ‘This has just become a whole lot more complicated.’ I try to curse my head for letting my heart get one over it.
He pulls me to him and wraps his arms around me, holding me tightly for a minute.
‘I’m sorry this is such a mess,’ he says into my hair. ‘But I don’t want to lose you.’
‘No, I’m the one who’s sorry.’ I pull away. ‘It’s over with James. I’ll speak to him tonight. It will be okay.’ I will myself to believe it.
But as soon as he’s gone I realise more profoundly than ever what a complete and utter fuck-up I’ve got myself into.
When James comes home half an hour later, I’m sitting on the sofa, absent-mindedly fingering Nathan’s Concorde charm, totally caught up in my thoughts.
‘Hi!’ He grins at me as he takes off his jacket. ‘Changed your mind?’ he asks, noticing both the full mug of cold coffee on the table and the glass of wine in my hand.
‘Mmm,’ I nod.
‘What’s up?’ he says when he sees my expression.
‘We need to talk,’ I say sadly, and his face freezes in fear as he sits down on the sofa.
‘I can’t do this anymore, James. I’m sorry.’
‘Lucy, what are you saying?’ he asks nervously, eyeing the silver charm in my hand.
I’ve made up my mind. Nathan understands me, he ‘gets’ me, he loves me. I know it will be a rocky road for us; he’s going home soon and that thought fills me with sickness and dread, but I can’t let him leave without giving us a try. I want to be with him. In every sense of the word.
