Perfect Daughter

by Amanda Prowse

  She unrolled the crumpled scan and traced her fingers over the tiny white shape.

  Jacks changed her route halfway home, replaying conversations in her head with Sven, Pete and now Martha. The information and words exchanged swirled in her head like a badly tuned radio with all three voices fighting to be heard. She wanted a little clarity and thought a bit of straight-talking with a certain mechanic might help.

  She pulled into the road where Gideon worked. She cut the engine, walked up the driveway and was hovering by the wall, wondering if she should go in and what she should say, when she heard his ready laugh and then his words, loud and clear.

  ‘So it’s all good. All good, Dad. She’s lovely, I know you’ll love her.’

  ‘Well, I can’t wait to meet her.’

  ‘Shit!’ Jacks murmured. The man sounded like his son: affable, confident and calm.

  ‘This is a big step, son.’

  Big step? That’s an understatement! Jacks had to stop herself from jumping in and shrieking at them both.

  ‘Having a baby isn’t something you do on the spur of the moment, it’s a lifetime of commitment.’

  ‘I know. I know that.’ Gideon’s tone was firm. ‘But I love her, Dad. She’s incredible. She’s smart and I can’t believe she’d love someone like me, but she does and I’m never going to let her go. I want to give her a good life. I want to look after her and our baby. She makes me want to be a better person, if that makes sense.’

  ‘It does. I’m proud of you, Gideon. I always worried that because things didn’t work out with your mum and me, it might put you off becoming a dad and settling down. I’m glad it hasn’t. And I know you’ve had a rough ride. But you’re a great kid, a great man.’

  Gideon laughed. ‘That’s the thing, Dad. I’m not having a go at you or Mum, but I know what it feels like to be in the middle when it goes wrong and I’m never going to put our little one in that situation. I’ll work at it. If I can make Martha happy, then everything else should follow, shouldn’t it? And I know we probably haven’t had the best start, but it’s not about that, is it? It’s about the finish, about how we end up that matters.’

  The man chuckled. ‘Tell you what, son, you seem to have it a lot more figured out than I have and I’m twice your age!’

  ‘I have got it figured out, Dad. I want to open my first garage in the next year. Start small, but I’ve done the projections and I reckon we could expand quite quickly. Then in a couple of years, when the brand is up and running, offer it as a franchise.’

  ‘Wow! You’ve obviously given it a lot of thought.’ His dad sounded impressed. As was Jacks, if reluctantly.

  ‘I have. I can’t wait to get started, to be my own boss. I’ve come up with a whole range of services and I want to run a training programme for people who have the interest but not the qualifications, help get them started too and tie them into my business so I keep the skills.’

  ‘And you can do all that?’ His dad sounded a little sceptical.

  ‘All that and more. I’ve got mates who would love the jobs. I mean, we could do high end as well, total van refits for the surfies, conversions with living quarters, you name it!’

  ‘How much do you need to get started, properly started?’

  ‘I’ve found the perfect premises and the bank said they’d lend me some money, but they want a massive deposit and that’s where we come unstuck. I mean, what do they think, that I’ve got cash stuffed under a mattress? I’m putting every penny I can away for the baby.’ Gideon sighed.

  ‘I wish I could help…’

  ‘No, Dad, don’t be daft. Who has that kind of cash? It’s a shame, though. It would have been perfect. It’s an old lock-up with a workshop on the ground floor, a nice space and a flat above – smart, you know, like an American loft. I took Martha to see it and she got it, instantly. She’s got great vision. She wanted to put old tin garage signs on the walls and a big retro fridge in the corner and a football table—’

  ‘They’re all good ideas,’ his dad agreed.

  ‘Yeah, but pointless, cos I haven’t got a deposit and I can’t see how we can get one. It’s gutting. I just want to do right for Martha and the little ’un.’

  ‘You will, son. You’ll see.’

  Jacks fastened her coat and walked slowly back down the drive to her car. She drove home, her appetite for tearing a strip off her daughter’s boyfriend somewhat abated. It wasn’t that she was happy about the situation, far from it; she was now more confused than ever. He clearly wasn’t some shyster about to run out on Martha and if anything this only irritated Jacks even more. She thought about Gideon calling Martha every night and relaying what he had learnt. This boy was making it very hard for her to hate him. She sighed as she thought about the cheque she had so readily destroyed and the difference that money would have made to the young couple. ‘You can be stupid sometimes, Jacks,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Why don’t you think before you act?’ As she uttered the words, her dad’s image floated to the front of her mind; she had to duck round it to check the rear-view mirror before turning right.

  26

  Nineteen Years Earlier

  Gina scooted to the end of her friend’s bed, flung open the window and pulled out her cigarettes.

  ‘You can’t smoke in here, G!’ Jacks had taken her pillow from beneath the duvet and placed it behind her back to make a seat.

  ‘Why not? Your mum and dad smoke – they’re not going to smell it. And if they come in, I’ll lob it out the window.’ She sparked the flint and took a drag, letting the wisps of smoke fill her mouth and stream out through her nostrils.

  ‘I’d just rather you didn’t,’ Jacks pressed.

  ‘What’s wrong with you? You’ve been right moody all day and now I can’t have a fag in your room, which I’ve done a million times before!’

  Jacks retched and placed her hand over her mouth.

  Gina stared at her mate. ‘Are you going to be sick?’ She glanced round the room, looking for a suitable receptacle, then took a final drag before flicking the butt out of the window and blowing the last of the smoke outside.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Gina crossed her legs and sat in the lotus position as she pondered her ashen-faced friend.

  Jacks nodded. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

  ‘What?’ Gina flicked through her notebook, scanning her homework tasks.

  ‘I’m pregnant.’

  Gina sprayed laughter over her friend and leant back against the wall. ‘No you’re not, you silly moo!’

  ‘I am.’ Jacks stared at her friend.

  Gina sat up straight and shook her head, as if trying to fathom which question to ask first. ‘Are you winding me up? You can’t be!’

  Jacks shook her head. ‘I’m not joking. I am, G.’

  ‘Who’s the dad?’

  ‘Pete.’

  ‘What?’ Gina squealed.

  Jacks nodded. ‘Pete Davies.’

  ‘But… Pete Davies? He can’t be! I knew you had that snog at Mr B’s, but you’ve always gone on about what a waste of space he is and now you’re telling me you’ve been shagging him?’ Gina’s mouth hung open.

  Again, Jacks nodded.

  The two girls sat in silence for some seconds. There was an awkwardness between them that they’d never felt before.

  ‘I thought you told me everything?’ Gina’s voice was soft, hurt.

  ‘I did! I do!’ Jacks pleaded.

  ‘Clearly not.’ Gina gathered up her books and placed them in her oversized satchel.

  ‘Don’t go, G! Please!’

  Gina ignored her request. ‘I honestly don’t know what to say to you. I feel like I’ve been punched. You and I don’t have secrets. I can’t believe it!’ She shook her head.

  ‘It just kind of happened.’ Jacks sat with her eyes downcast.

  ‘These things don’t just “kind of happen”. You make them happen.’ Gina paused. ‘Do your mum and dad know?’

  Jacks nodded.<
br />
  ‘Do you love him?’

  Jacks gave a small shrug and nodded again.

  ‘Fucking hell.’ Gina picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder. ‘Fucking hell! Are you going to finish school?’

  Jacks nodded for the third time.

  Gina stared at a spot on the wallpaper, her thoughts far away. ‘I feel like I’ve lost my dream. I thought we’d go to Bristol like we agreed, get a flat, get jobs. That’s how I saw it happening. I figured that if we did it together, it would be possible, we’d look after each other. I really wanted that.’ Gina left the room without looking back.

  ‘I really wanted that too,’ Jacks whispered as she slithered down her bed and buried her face in her pillow.

  27

  Jacks drove straight back to Sunnyside Road after her aborted attempt to have a go at Gideon. As she pulled up outside her house she spotted Gina’s Corsa parked further down the road. They met on the pavement.

  ‘Oh God, Jacks, are you okay? Last night was a complete nightmare. I’m so sorry!’ She looked at her friend, her usual smile replaced now by an expression of concern. ‘Pete turned up at our house and I didn’t know what to do! I couldn’t lie to him, I didn’t know what you’d said or whether you were home already from seeing Sven. I thought you’d probably had a row and he’d come to see Rob. I’m so sorry if I dropped you in it.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault. You were in a horrible position. Sorry you got dragged into it.’ Jacks opened the front door and shouted up the stairs. ‘Home, Mum! Be up in a second!’

  ‘It is my fault, kind of. I’m the one that suggested we go up to London. I should never have brought that bloody magazine over. I started all this!’ Gina sighed.

  ‘No, G, you didn’t. It started years ago, long before you saw him in a magazine. Don’t worry about it.’ Jacks was sincere. She made her way to the kitchen and filled a bowl with instant porridge oats, ready for the microwave.

  ‘Is Pete okay? He seemed really mad last night.’

  ‘He is mad and he has every right to be. He left early this morning without having breakfast. I didn’t see him. But we needed to talk and clearing the air like that has to have been a good thing. It was long overdue.’

  ‘There’s something else.’ Gina chewed her lip as her eyes darted from Jacks to the floor.

  ‘What?’

  Gina let out a long sigh. ‘I googled Sven last night, had a good root around.’

  ‘Well, hey, Miss Marple! What did you discover? Anything juicy?’ She tried to keep the mood light, masking her fury at him having tried to buy her forgiveness.

  ‘I printed this out.’ Gina removed a sheet of A4 paper from her bag and unfolded it. ‘Here.’ She pointed at the top of a paragraph. ‘Read that bit.’ She took a seat at the table.

  ‘Sven Lundgren blah blah blah…’ Jacks scanned the words. ‘Whose first super-yacht was called…’

  Gina smiled. ‘Yep. That’s the bit.’

  Jacks reread the line. ‘Was called Lady Jacqueline.’

  ‘How about that! He named his bloody boat after you!’

  Jacks nodded but wasn’t really paying attention. She was busy studying the following paragraph: The Lady Jacqueline was the first of the fleet for Somniorum Yachts, which takes its name from the Latin, Lacus Somniorum, meaning ‘Lake of Dreams’.

  Jacks felt conflicted. A small part of her wanted to whoop with joy at this revelation, but it didn’t change the fact that he had left her. He had known she was pregnant and he had abandoned her, leaving her alone to pick up the pieces of her broken life.

  ‘And there’s something else – this is the last thing, I promise!’ Gina squirmed.

  Jacks looked at her mate. ‘What else did you discover?’

  ‘Nothing. I didn’t discover anything, but I did speak to him.’

  ‘To Sven?’

  ‘Yes. He called me this morning.’ Gina tapped the table.

  Jacks wished her stomach didn’t keep jumping at the sound of his name.

  Gina continued. ‘He stayed in town last night and is heading back to London today. He flies back to San Francisco tomorrow, but he asked if you would go and meet him.’

  ‘Why would he want to meet me? I thought I was pretty clear where we stood last night.’ Jacks stirred her mum’s porridge and then filled the kettle for her tea, thinking about how he had let her down.

  ‘I’m just the messenger.’ Gina held up her palms. ‘But he sounded pretty desperate. He’s going to be on the Marine Parade, where he was parked last night.’

  ‘When?’

  Gina looked over her friend’s shoulder at the kitchen clock. ‘Now. He said he’d wait for an hour and then he’d be off.’

  Jacks recalled Pete’s words. ‘You make sure, Jacks. You make sure things are sorted properly.’ She had to put the lid on this once and for all.

  ‘I’ll just run this up to Mum. Do you mind sitting with her for half an hour, G?’

  ‘Course I will. Take your time.’ She squeezed Jacks’ arm.

  Jacks drove to the Marine Parade and parked her Skoda behind his flash car, which she could see in the daylight was a Ferrari. She checked her face in the mirror and ran her fingers through her fringe before furtively walking round and climbing into his front seat.

  ‘Thank you for coming to meet me,’ he whispered, sounding relieved.

  ‘Gina said you were heading off, so I thought it best we didn’t leave anything unsaid.’ She nodded, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of a smile.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep last night.’

  ‘Me either. Seeing you unsettled me. And it upset Pete.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He pushed a button on the dashboard. The engine roared.

  ‘Where are we going, Sven? I’ve got things to do. Just say what you need to and then we can go our separate ways.’

  ‘Please, Jacks, drive with me for a bit. For old times’ sake.’

  Jacks sighed and shook her head. ‘Okay, but make it quick.’

  He indicated and pulled out into the morning sun, pointing the car away from the seafront. The car was very low to the ground and seemed to glide along the roads, which were clearly still familiar to Sven. Jacks thought how much Jonty would love a ride in this snazzy sporty number. She felt guilty as she pictured her family, only a couple of miles from them but a whole world away. She was looking at streets that she strolled daily, but it felt different, seeing them from inside the tinted windows of such a beautiful vehicle.

  Sven pulled up by the path that led to the playing field.

  ‘Oh no!’ Jacks laughed, in spite of herself. ‘What are we doing here?’ She shook her head.

  ‘Come on, humour me.’ Sven jumped from the car and opened the boot, from where he pulled two very puffy, silky soft, silver jackets. ‘Put this on,’ he instructed.

  Jacks took the coat, which was as light as a feather, and did as she was told. It was surprisingly warm.

  They sidled through the open gates. Sven marched ahead as they tramped across the playing field, tripping in the dips and stumbling over the uneven tufts. Their clumsiness, and their nerves, made them laugh.

  ‘This is the spot!’ he announced, before sitting down on the wet grass. ‘Come on.’ He patted the ground by his side.

  ‘I can’t. I’m too old for mucking about like this, Sven.’

  ‘Come on! Just sit down!’

  Jacks lowered herself on to the grass and sat, hugging her knees and feeling awkward. They sat in silence for a while, neither wanting to break the magic that had transported them back across time.

  Eventually, when their breathing was in sync, Sven whispered, ‘When I picture you, it’s here, in this field. I still find it amazing that we are so minuscule, so tiny in this great big universe!’

  She smiled ruefully. ‘I remember you telling me how to spot the Pole Star. I still look for it regularly and even now, every time I stare up at that big old star, I think of you.’

  ‘I thought we were going to conqu
er the world,’ he said quietly. ‘Together.’

  ‘Looks like you didn’t need me after all,’ she retorted. ‘You seem to have done all right.’ Her tone was clipped, laced with sarcasm. ‘One thing I just can’t understand: why did you make out you didn’t recognise me at the Boat Show? I was so hurt, Sven. Embarrassed.’

  ‘I wanted to hurt you. God, it sounds so childish. I’m such an idiot and I’m sorry, really sorry. But I wanted to hurt you for not having waited for me. I swore I would never come to you, you would have to come to me, to want me.’

  ‘But it was you that buggered off, not me,’ she said evenly.

  They were silent for some seconds until he shrugged and turned towards her. ‘Thing is, Jacks, I was just a kid. A frightened kid with this big future ahead of me, a future my parents had plotted out for me. And I didn’t know I had options. I may have been acting like the big man, but I was only just eighteen and I was scared.’

  ‘And so was I!’ she said heatedly. ‘Left to literally carry the baby all by myself.’ She clenched her jaw, pictured the schoolboy Sven, tried to put herself in his young head. She softened her tone. ‘And let me ask you one thing, if you had had options, Sven,’ she asked, ‘would you still have gone?’ She held his eye.

  He took a deep breath and nodded at the ground. ‘Probably.’ Shaking his head, he carried on, hesitantly. ‘When I found the courage and called your mum, I couldn’t believe you were already married to one of the sheep-boys. I just couldn’t believe it! I’ve thought about it a lot over the years. I have everything I ever wanted, you know, but last night I could taste that jealousy again, the rawness of it – you picking one of the football team over me…’ He gave a small laugh.

  ‘You might have had options, Sven, but what were mine? Pregnant and single at eighteen – what were my prospects? And don’t you dare call Pete names! He did an amazing thing. He rescued me, gave me a home and a family life. He’s a good man. He was wonderful, did all he could to make things better for me. He was more than I deserved.’ She looked Sven full in the face. ‘He has loved me and your daughter ever since, been the best dad any girl could hope for. We are both lucky to have him.’