Our Father Who Are Out There...Somewhere

by AJ Taft

  “No,” says the receptionist. “Nothing exciting like that. It’s mainly divorces, family law.” She drops her voice. “It’s pretty boring to tell you the truth.”

  Lily takes a deep breath and asks in the most casual voice she can muster, “You know the woman who set this place up, Ruth Hurst?”

  The secretary glances over her shoulder, “Yeah.”

  “I think I was at school with her daughter.”

  The receptionist looks puzzled. “Fiona? She goes to the grammar school, same school I went to. How old are you?”

  Lily’s cheeks redden, but she is saved from replying by a door behind her opening. The receptionist jumps and immediately starts talking to Lily in an overloud voice. “So, yes thank you, Miss,” she looks at the piece of paper that Lily has scribbled across, “Miss McDonald. We’ll be in touch if anything comes up.”

  Lily turns and sees a middle-aged man clutching a bunch of files, emerging from a room behind her. She also sees the exit. Her legs weaken, but she manages to make them carry her towards it. She hits the revolving doors running and is spewed out of the exit, sweating. Jo grabs her hand and pulls her round the corner. Lily bends over, her hands on her knees, out of breath. “I did it, she’s called Fiona. Fiona. What a poncy name.”

  Chapter 15

  DAY SIXTEEN (Tuesday) D-DAY– 1

  07:15 AF leaves house.

  Lily sits with her feet on the dashboard, staring at the house through the binoculars.

  “If she kicks off big time, we can always let her go,” Jo says. “It’s not like we can’t get out of it. She’s not going to know who we are. And even if she tells him two girls tried to kidnap her, and he guesses it was you, he’s not going to tell anyone.”

  Lily doesn’t answer. She’s watching a dry-cleaning van pull up at the gates.

  “We’ve got to do it, Lily. This is direct action. It’s our chance to really do something.”

  “Jesus, even the dry-cleaners have the code,” Lily murmurs as the gates part.

  Jo pours a cup of black coffee from the thermos. She takes a mouthful and then passes the cup to Lily. “We can’t sit here forever, just watching. We have to do it.” She picks up the packet of Marlboro from the dashboard but it’s empty. She crumples it up in one hand and passes Lily the notebook. “I’m going to get some fags.”

  Jo heaves herself out of the car. She shuts the door on Lily, who still has her binoculars fixed on the house. She’s watching a small Asian woman unload bags and bags of dry-cleaning from the rear of the van. ‘AM’ opens the door and stands aside to allow the woman to carry them in.

  When Jo gets back to the car Lily asks, “What time is it?”

  “Almost nine.”

  “Why haven’t they left?”

  “Who?”

  ‘“AM’ and ‘TIFF’. They’re still inside.”

  Jo takes the binoculars from Lily. “Maybe they’re sorting out the dry-cleaning?”

  They wait a few more minutes in worried silence. “Shit,” says Jo. “What’s going on?”

  Half an hour passes. “There’s only one thing for it.” Jo starts rummaging in her canvas bag and pulls out a sheet of folded paper. “Here it is.” She smoothes out the creases from the page she stole from Accrington Library’s copy of the Skipton telephone directory. “Right, I need a phone box.”

  “What you going to say?”

  “I have no idea.” Jo checks the time again. It’s almost ten. “Stay here, keep watch.”

  Twenty minutes later Jo is back. “‘TIFF’s ill.”

  Lily’s mouth drops open. “How…?”

  “I pretended to be from a double glazing company. You know those, ‘we’re in your area…’ ‘TIFF’ answered the phone, ever so polite. ‘I’m terribly sorry but I don’t think we’d be interested.’ I said, ‘shouldn’t you be at school?’ And she said she’d had a migraine this morning. I said, ‘oh that’s a shame. Migraines can be terrible.’”

  “Why do posh people get migraines? Normal people get headaches.”

  “I said, how many days do you get off school with a migraine?’ and she giggled and said, ‘only one’.

  “Then I asked if I could speak to her mum and she said, ‘she’s at work’ so I asked to speak to her dad.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I could hear them talking in the background. Then she came back all embarrassed. “I’m sorry he’s really busy at the moment. Shall I take your number and maybe he could call you back?”

  “Maybe he could call us back,” Lily repeats, imitating the upper class accent Jo is using. “Or maybe he has no wish to communicate. Capital letters. Underlined.”

  They sit and stare at the house in silence for another twenty minutes until Jo says, “Come on. Nothing’s happening here today. Let’s go home. We need to go over everything one last time. Why don’t you drive?”

  “Drive us home? Are you crazy?”

  Jo climbs out of the driver’s seat and walks round the front of the car to the passenger door. She opens it and nods at Lily to move across behind the steering wheel. “You can do it, Lil.”

  Lily hesitates and then swings her skinny legs over the handbrake and shifts across to the driver’s seat. “You’ll have to tell me the way.”

  They stop at Morton’s sandwich shop on their way home; Lily’s knuckles white and stuck with sweat to the steering wheel. “That was great driving,” says Jo as they pull up outside Lily’s house.

  “Apart from when I nearly hit that motorbike.”

  “Yeah, apart from that.”

  “And that fucking roundabout.”

  “I’m going to get a bath,” says Jo. “Roll us a spliff for afters.”

  When Jo pads down to the front room, a towel tucked around her breasts and another twisted up on her head, Lily is pacing in front of the gas fire. She looks almost shocked to see Jo. “It’s like, there’s no way back for me. I can’t go back to poly and pretend like nothing’s happened. I have to do something or my life is over. I’ll end up like my mother, dying by degrees. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

  “The only thing I’m worried about is you.” Jo opens her mouth to speak but Lily carries on, rushing to get the words out. “You’re the only friend I’ve ever had. It would be shit if you regretted something because of me. That’s the only thing stopping me.”

  “This isn’t just about you, Lil. This is about men and the way they treat women. Honestly, I’m grateful for the chance to be involved. To do something meaningful, instead of watching ‘Corrie’ with all the other zombies out there.”

  “But, what if…”

  “Fuck it, we’re doing it. We’re bloody doing it.” Jo holds up her right arm, her fist clenched in a comrade salute, like at the Socialist Workers’ Party meetings she’s dragged Lily to on a few occasions.

  A strange sensation fills up in Lily. It starts in her stomach and pushes up through her chest into her head. Her eyes hurt, and for a moment she worries she might be sick. Jo hits her on the arm. “Where’s the spliff you were meant to be rolling?”

  “Oh sorry, I forgot.”

  Jo picks up the dope tin from the top of the gas fire and hands it to Lily.

  “Jo?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t know what I’d have done, you know, if you hadn’t shown up...” Lily’s voice falters.

  “Shut up and skin up. And then we need to rehearse your lines again.”

  “I need a drink too.”

  “I’ll sort those out. Let me get my PJs on.”

  “It’s only half three.”

  “I know but I’m shagged. It’s all these fucking early mornings. But you know what they say, early bird catches the worm. I want to be asleep by ten.”

  It’s half past ten by the time Lily has rehearsed her lines enough to know she knows them backwards. While Jo is cleaning her teeth, Lily knocks back one last nightcap, anything to try and extinguish the flames of fear in her sto
mach. When Jo comes back down the stairs, Lily is under the duvet. Jo climbs in next to her and turns out the light.

  Lily switches it back on again at quarter to eleven. “I can’t do it.”

  “What?”

  “What if she recognises me? I mean, what if I look like him? What if she won’t come into the car? I can’t drag her, what if she’s stronger than me? I can’t do it.” Lily sits bolt upright on the mattress and reaches for a cigarette.

  “Calm down, Lily. Breathe.”

  “What if her dad’s told her that I tried to contact him? What if she’s been told to watch out for me?”

  Jo puts an arm around Lily’s shoulder. Lily shakes it off. “I can’t do it, Jo. I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll do it. I’ll get her into the car. You drive.”

  “I can’t drive.”

  “Yes, you can. You’ve had loads of lessons. You’re a great driver,” she lies. “Come on, Lily. We can’t back out now.”

  It takes Jo another twenty minutes to calm Lily down, to the stage where she can switch the light off again, but the fear and excitement in their stomachs means they are still awake when the dawn creeps across the sky.

  Chapter 16

  DAY SEVENTEEN (Wednesday 12th December 1989)

  D-DAY

  Weather: bright sunshine. Ice cold.

  Spliffs smoked: 1

  07:30 AF leaves.

  08:25 AM leaves.

  12:20 Move to positions

  At half past twelve Jo parks the Mini at the kerbside a few hundred yards past the entrance to the ginnel. She climbs out of the car and blows a kiss to Lily. She crosses over the road and stands at the bus stop, the hood of her parka up. Lily moves into the front seat and chain-smokes as she watches for ‘TIFF’ in the rear view mirror. Exactly on schedule, she turns the corner into the street. As soon as she enters the ginnel, Lily switches on the engine and reverses the car up to the mouth of the ginnel, as Jo pulls off her hood, crosses the road in front of her, and starts to run after Fiona. Lily holds onto the steering wheel as tight as she can, trying to stop her whole body shaking.

  Jo enters the ginnel fifteen seconds after ‘TIFF’. She shouts out after her, “Fiona!”

  Fiona turns round to see Jo. Jo waves her arms in the air. “Wait, stop. I’ve been sent from your mum’s office.” She catches up with the schoolgirl and then stops and pretends to breathe great lungfuls of air. “She’s been taken to hospital. We’ve come to take you to her.” She gesticulates to Lily at the far end of the passageway, waiting in the car with the front passenger door open and the engine running.

  To give Fiona credit, she doesn’t hang around; she starts running immediately towards the car “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” says Jo as she runs alongside her. “One minute she was just standing there and the next thing she just went really pale and clutched her chest.” They reach the car and Jo opens the back door for Fiona. Then she slams the front door shut and climbs into the back seat, next to Fiona. Lily stares at Jo via the rear view mirror. Jo was supposed to get into the front passenger seat. Jo nods at Lily. Lily turns to face the road and takes a deep breath; she can do this. She releases the handbrake and stalls the Mini as she tries to pull away from the kerb. Then she almost floods the engine trying to get it to start. As the sweat starts to form on Lily’s palms, and she’s just about to scream she can’t do it, the car roars into life. She yanks it away from the kerb and they are off.

  “Does Daddy know?”

  “Yeah, I think someone rang him. I don’t know, I just set off for you as soon as the ambulance got there.”

  “Ambulance, oh goodness.”

  Lily and Jo catch each other’s eyes in the rear view mirror, “Goodness?” mouths Lily.

  No one speaks for five minutes. Jo draws flowers in the condensation on the windows. Then Lily hits the road out of Skipton.

  Fiona is in such a state of anxiety, she doesn’t notice at first. “How did you know where to find me?”

  “Your mum said you’d be at school, so we went there first and they said you had a free period, so you wouldn’t be in until one, so we went to your house and guessed you must have left, so I ran after you.” Jo smiles self-deprecatingly.

  It takes another two minutes for Fiona to realise they’ve left Skipton behind. “Where are you going? This isn’t the way to the hospital?”

  Jo takes a deep breath. “Skipton hospital’s full, bed shortage, she’s being taken to the next nearest, which is Accrington.”

  “Accrington?” Fiona is incredulous. Lily raises an eyebrow. Hardly known for its provision of health care services, Accrington is so small it doesn’t even have a McDonald’s.

  “Well not actually Accrington it’s-”

  “Blackburn she means,” says Lily. “There’s a big heart unit there. We’re just going via Accrington. Don’t worry I know the way.”

  Fiona shrinks back against her seat. “I wish Daddy was here.”

  “I’m sure he’s on his way by now. In fact I bet he’s there already, holding her hand,” says Jo.

  “Why didn’t he pick me up?”

  “I’m sure he thought it was best to get straight over there.”

  “But how will he find it on his own?”

  “Perhaps one of the teachers will go with him.”

  “How do you know Daddy’s a teacher?”

  “Aren’t you a bit old to be calling your dad, daddy?” Jo asks.

  “Do you work with my mum?” Fiona looks at Jo’s bleached white flat-top.

  “I’m a work placement student.”

  “And she told you Daddy’s a teacher?”

  A sign at the side of the road welcomes them to Lancashire. Lily exhales and her shoulders drop half an inch.

  Jo brazens it out. “She must have done.”

  “And what about you? Are you on placement too?” Fiona addresses Lily directly for the first time. Their eyes meet in the rear view mirror and Lily flinches under her gaze. “Do I know you?”

  Lily can feel the sweat running down her back. She wishes the clapped out Mini would drive quicker, as she wants to be back home. She’s finding driving much easier at forty miles an hour. Her hands are feeling clammy on the steering wheel and she’s gagging for a drink. “You don’t know me.”

  “What’s going on?”

  At last there is Accrington, a jewel in the crown. Lily has never been happier to see her home town in her whole life.

  “Stop the car, I want to get out.”

  “Ok Fiona, we’ve not been exactly straight with you,” Jo begins. “But the good news is your mum’s fine. She’s not in hospital; she’s not been taken ill. We just wanted to have a chat with you about a few things. When we have, we’ll take you straight home again I promise.”

  “I want Daddy.”

  “Will you stop calling him Daddy,” Lily snaps. “For God’s sake. How old are you?”

  “Sixteen, nearly.”

  Lily turns their car into her mother’s council estate and feels a huge wave of relief sweep her body. She pulls up at the kerb outside the house, mounting it slightly and nudging a lamp post as she does so.

  Fiona’s face pales. She twiddles a pigtail round and round her forefinger and thumb. “Where are we? What are we doing here? Who lives here? What’s going on?”

  “I’ve told you we just want to chat to you for a bit.” Jo leans across her and pulls the door handle. The back door opens a couple of inches.

  Fiona shrinks back against her seat, bracing herself with her hands on the back seat. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to go in that house.” Her voice has risen an octave.

  “Don’t be so rude,” says Jo. “That’s Lily’s home.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… I just want to go home.”

  Lily turns off the engine and speaks to Fiona via the rear view mirror. “I will take you home in a short while, but first I want to show you something. This is my house. I want you to come inside with me and see wh
at it is I want to show you, and then you can go home.”

  “Daddy will be very worried if I’m not home by four o’clock.”

  Lily’s never met anyone who speaks like this. Contrast this with, ‘daddy has no wish to communicate’, capital letters, underlined. She takes a very deep breath. “Then we must make sure you are home by four o’clock. It’s twenty past two. So long as we set off by twenty past three we’ll be fine.”

  “An hour? What do you want to show me that’s going to take an hour?”

  “Look.” Lily pulls the keys out of the ignition and swivels round in her chair to face her. “Just get in the house, Ok?” The adrenaline of the day has now collected in a queasy mass in her stomach, and she needs to stand up, to get out of this car, to get home. Funny how today is the first time this house feels like home.

  Lily gets out of the car and yanks the back door open wide. She stands and waits for a few moments, but Fiona doesn’t move. Lily puts one hand on the roof of the Mini and ducks her head down so she is at the same level as Fiona. She speaks quietly but firmly. “You can either step inside or I will drag you in by your hair. It’s your choice.”

  Fiona turns to Jo, beseeching her with her eyes. Jo tries to smile a reassuring smile at her. Fiona’s bottom lip starts to wobble.

  “We’re not going to hurt you,” Jo adopts the voice of a mother talking to a small child, “honestly.”

  Fiona glances from Jo to Lily and then pulls herself out of the car. She stands in front of Lily. Fiona’s dark brown eyes stare into Lily’s for a moment, challenging, defiant. Lily doesn’t look away. Fiona tuts loudly and then turns towards the house, flicking her dark brown fringe across her face, her head held high. Jo scrambles out of the car after her, pausing only to grin at Lily before chasing after the schoolgirl. Lily bangs the car door closed, closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, before following the two of them up the path.

  Chapter 17

  Lily’s hands are shaking so much she has trouble getting the key in the lock. When she finally manages to push the door open, Jo propels Fiona across the threshold first. Fiona looks like she’s going to go willingly, until the smell hits their nostrils and her hands grab onto the doorframe. Jo gives her an extra shove - two firm hands in the centre of the girl’s back and she’s through. Lily steps into the hallway quickly behind them and shuts the front door. She locks it and gives the key to Jo. Jo pockets it.