Out!

by JL Merrow

  Huh. Tripping over one another, he’d discovered, was not likely to become a problem. Fen seemed to consider the prospect of coming out of her bedroom with the sort of wary caution with which Mark had always regarded the idea of coming out of the closet. They’d moved into the new house at the start of the Easter holidays, which Mark had fondly imagined would give them two weeks of getting to know one another again before term started. He hadn’t anticipated the current level of difficulty in just getting to see his daughter.

  When he’d spoken to Ellen on the phone about his frustrations, she’d sounded oddly smug. “Not so easy, is it, when you’re actually there with her all day?”

  “Am I?” Mark groaned. “I wouldn’t even know. She comes down for meals, but for all I get to see of her in between times, she could be abseiling out of her window and going God knows where.” He’d never really understood the way Ellen had used to complain about the school holidays being too long, back when they were married, but he was beginning to have an inkling. “And she hates me, Ells,” he added. “You haven’t… Well, you haven’t said anything to her about why we split, have you?”

  “What, because I thought telling her that her father’s a homosexual would be just the thing to straighten her out and get her back on the rails?” Ellen wasn’t sounding quite so smug now. “This is typical of you. No, I haven’t said a word about your dirty little secret. As far as she knows, Mummy and Daddy just grew apart, and that’s the way it’ll stay from my end, at least. Have you found yourself a dirty little secret, now, by the way? You’ll have to introduce us. I’m sure we’d have so much in common.”

  Mark winced at her cutting tone. “I’m hardly likely to be seeing someone, am I? Not with Fen living with me now,” he said patiently. At least, that was how he hoped it would sound.

  “And I see she’s got you calling her that made-up name.”

  “I like it,” Mark said. It wasn’t precisely a lie. If it made his daughter a little happier, then he liked it, all right?

  “Oh, you would take her side. Of course, she gets it from you. You always did insist on putting your initials down in full. M. A. N. It’s like you’re trying to convince people.”

  Ouch. Mark bit back a sharp retort. “My middle name’s ‘Anthony’ after my grandad, remember? I have very fond memories of him. So you’ve no idea why she’s so set against me?” he added with very little hope he’d get a useful reply.

  “Probably for the same reason she hates me right now and has done for most of the last year. She’s a teenager, and we’re her parents.” Ellen sighed, a staticky rasp down the phone line. “Look, I don’t want to seem ungrateful for you having her—although why I should be grateful for you finally taking an interest in your own daughter, I don’t know—but you can’t keep ringing me up with problems.” Her tone sharpened. “I thought the whole point of all this was that you thought you knew best.”

  He had done, hadn’t he? Well, more fool him. “Yes, but you must have known I was wrong. As usual,” Mark added wryly.

  There was silence from the other end of the line.

  “Ells?”

  “I hate it when you do that,” she said in a small voice. “Go all reasonable.”

  “Sorry. Won’t happen again. Or at least not before I’ve completely redressed the balance, I’m sure.” He hesitated. “How are you doing?”

  There was the faintest of sniffs. “I’m fine. You?”

  “I thought we’d already established I’m drowning, not waving.”

  “Is there someone else?”

  “No. And there won’t be. Not before Fen’s settled down a bit. A lot,” Mark amended and hesitated. “How about you?”

  “No. There was someone I thought… But no.”

  “Well… Look after yourself, won’t you? Enjoy the peace—although if she spent as much time in her bedroom when she was with you as she does now, I’m surprised you can tell the difference, to be honest.”

  “The peaceful times are the ones you need to watch out for. But I’d better go. Bye, Mark.”

  “Bye,” he said, but the click of her hanging up had already sounded.

  Dauntless, Mark had scanned village notice boards and done Internet searches for local clubs and societies, trying to find things they could do together—and when that met with scorn, he’d tried to find activities Fen could do without him. Something to at least get her out of the house, to exercise her body and direct her mind away from destructive impulses. But after the first few suggestions were met with the sort of derision that could wither an oak tree—“Ballet, Dad? Seriously? Like I’m five?” and “Horse riding? Yeah, right, because I really want to spend my weekends shovelling shit”—he’d given up and found his attention straying to things he might like to get involved in. After all, there was only so long he could spend at the computer typing his magnum opus.

  Mark ignored the fact that so far there was very little magnum about it or, for that matter, opus. That would change when Fen started school. He was certain of it.

  The Shamwell Spartans Fun and Funds Foundation, despite an acronym that, to Mark’s mind, sounded like the sort of noise a balloon might make if you blew it up and let it go before tying the end, had piqued his interest immediately. It had looked like the sort of thing he’d be able to bring his financial acumen to. And it had looked, as the name suggested, like fun. So he’d emailed the chairman, Barry, who’d been encouragingly keen to tell him when and where they’d next be meeting.

  Mark hadn’t thought getting ready for his first Spartans meeting would be in any way difficult, time-consuming or challenging.

  He’d reckoned without his daughter. He knocked on her door to say he was going out, and to please try not to burn the house down with her hair straighteners, to be met with a horrified cry.

  “Daaa-aaad. You can’t go out in that.”

  Mark frowned at his daughter, recumbent on the bed, phone in hand, surrounded by an unlikely amount of pillows, cushions and stuffed animals. He wasn’t very up on modern teenage tribes, but whatever Fen was—Emo? Goth?—it seemed to necessitate black clothes, black hair, and, whenever she could get away with it, black nails and lips. Oh, and tight T-shirts and skirts so short they probably had a complex about shrinking into nothing and disappearing. In the matter of unsuitable clothing, Mark felt he had very good grounds for considering she didn’t have a ripped-stockinged, Doc Martened leg to stand on.

  “What’s wrong with it? I thought it fit rather well,” he added, smoothing the sweater down over his (thankfully still flat) stomach.

  Fen actually put her phone down and sat up straight. A stuffed frog tumbled unheeded to her sheepskin rug. “It’s grey. Worse. It’s sludge-brown grey. It’s horrible. And it matches your hair. You look like you need dusting.”

  “It’s taupe, actually,” Mark corrected, crossing his sludge-brown grey arms defensively. “And what do you mean, it matches my hair? My hair isn’t grey.”

  “Yeah, right. You keep telling yourself that, Dad.” She gave him a searching look that made Mark feel acutely uncomfortable. “You need… I dunno. Warm colours or something. Red, or purple maybe.” For some reason, she blushed. “Haven’t you got anything that’s not boring to wear?”

  “Does it matter? I’m not going on a date. It’s just going to be a roomful of men who like the odd drink while raising money for charity.”

  “So it’s just an excuse for a piss-up?”

  “Language. And no, they raise a lot of money for local causes.”

  “So why’s it all men?”

  “Probably because they all have daughters or wives who got fed up with them hanging around the house and told them to go and do something?”

  Fen flushed. “Yeah… I didn’t mean that, Dad. Not really… It’s just, you never used to just sit and watch telly. It’s weird, that’s all. Like you’re not you anymore.”

 
Mark thanked God once more he hadn’t told her he was gay. “Of course I’m me. Just…a more relaxed me.”

  Fen eyed him for a moment, something of a speculative look in her eye, then with a breezy “Okay,” she turned her attention back to her phone. “See you later, yeah?”

  Dismissed. Mark blinked, then roused himself to go and change his sweater.

  Chapter Five

  When Mark got back home after his first Spartans meeting, the house was silent. After calling out, “Hello?” and receiving no answer, he ran up the stairs with a certain amount of trepidation and knocked on Fen’s door.

  Thankfully, there was a surly call of “What?” from within, so she hadn’t sneaked out for a spot of underage drinking or vandalism, or whatever young people did for amusement in the village.

  “It’s me. Dad. I’m home.”

  Silence.

  “Can I come in?”

  “I’m on the phone.”

  “Oh. Anyone I know?”

  “Daa-aad. I’m on the phone.”

  “Oh. Right.” Mark hovered for a moment outside his daughter’s bedroom door, then knocked again.

  “What?”

  “Don’t forget it’s your first day of school tomorrow.”

  “I know. Duh.”

  Mark bit back the admonition to get an early night and crept back downstairs. It was natural, he told himself, that Fen wouldn’t be interested in how his meeting had gone, or if he’d met anyone worth talking about. Not that he’d have told her about Patrick in any case, of course. There was nothing to tell, not really, and there wouldn’t be anything.

  But it might have been nice just to exchange a few words, now he was no longer living alone.

  When he came back up to go to bed an hour or so later, no light seeped under the bottom of Fen’s bedroom door, so he had to hope she was asleep. He set his alarm—two weeks had, it transpired, been just long enough get out of the habit of early rising—and turned out his own light.

  Did Patrick talk to his mum when he got back home? Did he mention meeting Mark? And oh God, how pathetic was Mark that he was—perhaps, in some very mild way—obsessing over someone who still lived with his mum? Still, house prices in the village were surprisingly stratospheric. Perhaps she didn’t have a very highly paid job and needed him to help with the mortgage.

  Perhaps Patrick didn’t have a very highly paid job and needed help with the mortgage? Mark wondered what he did for a living. He should have asked Barry. If he’d tried a little harder, he was almost certain he’d have been able to get a word in edgewise. Not that Barry’s history of the Spartans and all their worthy deeds hadn’t been interesting. It had just been a little long. And perhaps not the sort of thing Mark could have interrupted without risking making his interest in Patrick mortifyingly clear.

  No, on reflection, it was better he hadn’t asked. Because he wasn’t interested in Patrick. At least, no more than in a purely academic sense.

  A faint glow from the street lamps outside limned Mark’s curtains with cold, white light. A few cars still crawled over the speed bumps on the High Street, the noise of their engines barely audible through the double glazing. Occasional passing youths shouted and laughed. All around Mark, here in the heart of the village, his neighbours slept, watched late-night television, or did their bit to ensure the continuing growth of the village population.

  Odd, how in the midst of humanity, one could feel so alone.

  Mark turned over. Eventually he slept, and dreamed of nothing he could remember in the morning.

  * * * * *

  The next day started so promisingly. Mark was up in plenty of time to get Fen to St. Jude’s, and when he knocked on her door, she responded with “I’m getting dressed, all right?”

  Apparently, for teenage girls, getting dressed was something that took upwards of half an hour. Mark was prepared to concede that a pair of tights might be fiddlier to put on than the average pair of trousers, but surely it shouldn’t take this long. What the hell was she doing? He knocked on her door again, a little more sharply.

  “What?”

  “You’re not going to have time for breakfast at this rate.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Was this the first sign of anorexia? Fen seemed, if anything, a little on the plump side, but did that mean anything? “It’s going to feel like a long time until lunch,” he cautioned.

  “So I’ll take a snack. Jeez. I’m not five, Dad.”

  He had to call her three more times before Fen finally emerged, stomping down the stairs with sulkiness evident in every step.

  “Finally,” Mark said, glancing at his watch more to telegraph his impatience than to actually tell the time, which he knew to the minute already. “You’ll be lucky…” He trailed off, staring at his daughter.

  Fen now had purple hair. Mark was ninety-five percent certain this hadn’t been the case last time he’d seen her. He’d have remembered.

  “What the—what on earth have you done to yourself?”

  “I dyed it. Last night. Duh.”

  Ye gods. Mark was never going out for the evening again. Combined with the fuchsia—no, maroon, damn it—school uniform and the early morning, Fen’s hair was making his eyes water. “They’re not going to let you go to school looking like that.”

  “Why not?”

  “The uniform rules said hair of a natural colour.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not like they’re gonna send me home once I’ve got there. They’ll just have to deal with it.” She folded her arms, the mulish expression Mark was becoming all too used to marring her pretty face. “And anyway, if I try dyeing it back, I’ll be well late. You don’t want me to get a detention on my first day, do you?”

  Mark sighed. “Put your shoes on. I’ll go start the car.”

  The roads between Shamwell and Bishops Langley, which had seemed so quiet whenever Mark had driven along them before, were practically gridlocked at eight fifteen in the morning. By dint of tailgating the car in front and speeding ruthlessly through the thirty-mile-an-hour zone, Mark managed to roar up in front of St. Jude’s at the dot of eight forty, which was when school started.

  “Right, you’d better run. Have a good first day, and I’ll see you at—”

  The slam of the car door cut off his words. Fen had already gone.

  Mark had just inched his tedious way back home through the rush-hour traffic when he got a phone call.

  “Mr. Nugent? This is the secretary at St. Jude’s. I’m afraid we’re having to send Florence home. She’ll need to do something about her hair. The school rules are quite clear about permitted colours.”

  He sighed and got back in his car.

  * * * * *

  Neither of them was very chatty on the way home. Fen’s face was as sullen as ever, but it had at least lost all trace of smugness, as well it might. Mark had, in a few choice words when he picked her up from the school office, made it quite plain to her how immature she was being, risking her second chance for the sake of fashion.

  Fen had, in a few even choicer words, made it plain that fashion was nothing to do with it: “It was a statement, God, you just don’t get it, do you?”

  Mark had explained that her actions reflected on him, her father, for whom this was all rather embarrassing.

  Fen had pointed out that her hair was, like, literally nothing to do with him, God, and why was it always about him and not her?

  Mark had had quite a few other things he’d have liked to mention, but the Teenager Taming website he’d been looking at had said to remember he was the adult and act accordingly. Mark wondered, though, if the author of the site had ever been subjected to such overwhelming temptation to say I told you so.

  Arriving back at their house, Mark parked the car and pulled the handbrake on with a jerk that was perhaps a little harder than necessa
ry. “We’re going straight to the chemist, and we’re going to get something to dye your hair back with. Which you will do straightaway.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Not ‘whatever’.”

  “Jesus, I said I’d do it, all right?”

  They walked—or, in Fen’s case, stomped—towards the chemist’s shop, which proudly proclaimed its existence in the village since the 1800s and still seemed to have the original window display. Their route led them past the village baker’s shop, from whose open door emerged an enticing aroma of iced buns and coffee, the chatty sounds of a business doing a brisk trade—and Patrick.

  He was carrying a takeaway cup and something in a paper bag, and Mark had almost walked straight into him.

  Patrick smiled, his eyes bluer than ever in the weak spring sunshine. “Whoops. Nearly got you, then.”

  Mark flushed.

  Fen narrowed her eyes.

  Damn it. “Oh, hello. Fancy meeting you here,” Mark said weakly, and God, could he sound any more ridiculous?

  Patrick raised an eyebrow. “All right, Mark?”

  “Uh, how are you? This is my daughter,” he added. “Florence. Fen. I mean, her name is Florence but she likes to be called Fen.” Oh God. He was babbling like a complete idiot.

  From Fen’s muttered “Daaa-aaad,” she thought so too.

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Patrick. Gotta go now, but maybe I’ll see you around, yeah? Like the hair,” he added as he left.

  “Who’s that?” Fen asked sharply.

  “Oh—just someone I met last night. One of the Spartans.” Mark held the door of the chemist’s open for his daughter.

  “He’s a bit young, isn’t he? I thought it’d all be old people like you.”