by AJ Taft
At three o’clock Jo, Fiona and Lily climb into the Mini and start to drive; their sole mission to find a phone box somewhere that isn’t Lancaster. They arrive in Morecambe by chance; no one really concentrating on where they are headed. Jo parks the car round the corner from a telephone box and they all take a moment to hold hands.
At seven minutes past four, Fiona’s trembling fingers dial the number she knows so well. Her father answers it on the second ring. “Daddy, is that you? Oh, Daddy.”
Fiona’s sobs are loud and noisy, real tears surprising her at the sound of his voice. They fall down her face and into the receiver, making the sound of her voice distort. “I miss you, I want to come home, Ouch…” Fiona screams, as Jo pulls a handful of her hair as rehearsed; to add some realism to the occasion. “They’ve told me to tell you they won’t let me go until you’ve paid them the money. No wait,” Lily pulls her roughly away from the receiver, as she shouts, “I love you, Daddy.”
Jo holds one of Stuart’s socks over the mouthpiece and growls down the phone. “Have you got the money?”
“What are you doing to my daughter?”
“I said have you got the money?”
“Yes, but it hasn’t been easy. Don’t think that I can just keep…”
“We’ll ring tomorrow. No police.”
She bangs down the phone.
Chapter 22
Jo looks at the stopwatch: 1 minute 50 seconds. She locks eyes with Fiona and a great snort of laughter erupts from them both.
“No police, Slam. It was like ‘Hill Street Blues’,” says Fiona eventually. She wipes her eyes and starts to laugh.
“He’s got the money!” Jo screams.
“Can you believe they turned me down for Sandy in Grease?” Fiona asks. “Blummin’ Janet Jeffries got the part. They only gave it to her because she’s blonde… and utterly gorgeous,” she adds as an afterthought. Tears begin to stream down her face again, as she tries to stop laughing long enough to get out her final sentence, “Shame she’s stupid.”
“You were great,” says Jo, her legs crossed to stop herself wetting herself with laughter. “‘I love you, Daddy’ Fan-fucking-tastic.”
Lily wishes she could share the funny side. She doesn’t want to admit it, but she’s starting to feel something like sympathy for Fiona’s dad. She’s not sure why. Squashed between the metal box of the telephone and the door, she pulls a face, which Jo mistakenly interprets as a request for a spliff. Jo pulls a ready rolled one out of her bag.
“Do you know what he said to me? ‘Don’t worry baby, Daddy will sort it all out.’ It’s like I’m twelve.”
Lily frowns as Jo lights the spliff.
“We should have asked for more money. I wonder what the average kidnap demand is these days. Shall I ring the police and ask?” Fiona picks up the receiver and pretends to dial. “Yeah hi, can you tell me… what’s a white, middle-class schoolgirl go for these days?”
“He’s got the money.” Jo blows a cloud of smoke at the ceiling. “Can you believe it? We might actually get eighty-five grand out of this. I might actually be able to pay off my debts.” She looks over to Lily, her eyes dancing with excitement. “We could go on holiday.”
Lily tries to smile. “Holiday?” Now there’s something she hasn’t considered. “Where?”
“I don’t know, anywhere. We could travel the world.”
“Can I come too? I’ve always wanted to go travelling,” says Fiona. “I was hoping to go to San Francisco in my gap year.”
“You’ve got your exams. Once you’ve passed them and done your ‘A’ levels maybe.” Lily pushes the phone box door open a few inches with her bottom. The cold fresh air wraps around her waist, making her stomach ache worse.
Fiona cocks her head to one side. “I’m not going back, you do realise that don’t you? I mean even if we get the money.”
“Don’t be stupid.” Lily shakes her head as Jo offers her the spliff.
“Don’t you be stupid. What did you think was going to happen? You kidnap me, tell me my whole family has lied to me all my life, collect eighty-five thousand pounds and then I just go back and live there like nothing’s happened? Everything has changed; I’ve grown up.”
Jo winks at her. “We know you have.”
“I don’t mean like that. For your information, we didn’t even do it. We just stayed up all night talking. We talked about me moving here, getting a job. What am I doing at school anyway? All the subjects I’m doing: biology, chemistry, physics, Mum chose for me. She thinks there should be more women scientists.” Fiona hesitates before adding, “Women are terribly under-represented in the field.” The telephone box is filling with smoke. “But it’s not me.”
Lily feels like the walls are closing in.
“I want to drop out and go to beauty school… joke.” Fiona adds, when she sees the expression on Lily’s face. “But drama school maybe. Come on, you didn’t think you could just pluck me out of my life for a couple of days and then send me straight back to it, untouched.”
Lily starts picking at the scab on her arm.
“Did you?”
“Is it foggy out?” asks Jo.
Lily wrests the spliff from Jo’s lips, hitting her elbow on the metal shelf as she does so; catching herself right on her funny bone. She rubs her arm and pushes at the door of the phone box. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I feel like Superman. Where are my tights?” Fiona starts to giggle. She tries to speak, but whatever she wants to say gets lost. She crosses her legs and bends double, screeching with laughter. Lily pushes her out of the telephone kiosk. Fiona gulps some fresh air and tries to stand up. “I think I’ve just become a dope smoker. Will you make one for me? I feel fabulous.”
Jo sits down on the bench outside the kiosk and starts unloading the tobacco packet, her dope tin and cigarette papers out of her bag.
“Stop it,” says Lily.
“What? She wants a spliff. ‘TIFF’ wants a spliff.”
“She’s only fifteen.”
“I’m nearly sixteen.”
“Oh I am sorry,” says Jo. “And how old were you when you had your first one?”
Lily thinks for a moment. Her automatic response is that she was older than Fiona, but thinking about it, she’d been eleven. Dave Marsh had given it to her, telling her it was a roll up. It was the same evening she’d got pissed for the first time, up at the ramshackle garages, where cars weren’t so much parked as abandoned. Most of the estate’s young teenagers hung out there, before graduating to the Dog and Duck. “That’s not the point, its illegal.”
“It’s illegal for you to do it too,” says Jo, not unreasonably. “And I’m not sure kidnapping, or demanding money with menaces is exactly law abiding either. What’s up with you?”
“Let’s just get back to the flat. You can’t skin up here anyway. Someone might come.”
Jo looks up the deserted back alleyway. The Mini is parked at the top of the street. They haven’t seen a soul since they arrived.
“Come on.” Lily marches on ahead, to the car.
Jo shrugs her shoulders and puts the tobacco packet back into her bag. Fiona holds out a hand and helps Jo to her feet. They follow Lily up the cobbled back street, Fiona’s giggles periodically erupting, like snorts, punctuating the silence.
Lily doesn’t speak all the way back to the flat. As Fiona lets them in with the spare key Stuart gave her, Lily realises how tired she is. She starts to say that she’s going to go straight to bed, when Stuart appears at the top of the stairs. “I was expecting you ages ago. What happened?”
“He’s got the money,” says Fiona as she takes off her boots. “Mmmm, that smells delicious, what is it?”
“Really, he actually said he’s going to pay?”
“I was so nervous, but I did it. You should have heard me, ‘Daddy, Daddy, please rescue me.’ I was great.” Fiona leads the way up the narrow staircase into the hallway where Stuart stands, his bare feet poking out from t
he bottom of his soft blue jeans. She stands on tiptoe to kiss him.
“Modest too,” says Jo, pushing open the kitchen door, her nose following the smell like the ‘Bisto’ kid. The others follow.
Fiona takes a seat at the kitchen table. “We said, well Jo said, we’d ring him tomorrow. We need a plan. I’m starving. Have you got a map?”
Stuart puts a plate in front of her and smiles as she grabs a knife and fork. He gestures at Lily and Jo to do the same. Jo doesn’t need asking twice. Lily sits down next to Jo and watches Jo remove a piece of chewing gum, before picking up a fork. Lily looks up at Stuart. “What is it?”
“Toad in the hole. Haven’t you had it before?”
As Fiona fills Stuart in on the details of their telephone conversation with her father, Lily cuts up the pork sausages into small slices. She pushes the pieces around in the gravy for a while, stacking them up like pennies.
“I can’t believe he’s going to pay,” says Stuart.
The red, Formica topped table is only just big enough to seat four. Stuart sits at the top of the table, Jo facing him at the opposite end. “I need a beer,” says Jo. “Anyone else?” Lily nods. The table falls silent as the others eat. Lily drinks her beer silently, head bowed. “Delicious,” says Jo eventually, pushing her plate away. “Respect.”
“You not hungry again, Lily?” Stuart asks. She shakes her head and mouths ‘sorry’ and pushes herself up from the table. Once the others have cleared their plates, they join her in the front room. Fiona has Stuart’s road atlas clutched under one arm. Lily is sat, Buddha-like, rolling a spliff. The others spread the road atlas across the coffee table and kneel around it, their heads touching.
“So, do we go for somewhere small and quiet, so there’s less chance of the money getting nicked?” asks Jo. “Or somewhere busy, less chance of attracting attention?”
“You need loads of people,” says Stuart. “You can always disappear in a crowd; a train station or something.”
Fiona shakes her head. “But then the police could be watching you and you’d have no idea. It needs to be dark.”
Lily lights the spliff and lies back on the floor. Small, smouldering specks of dope keep falling from her spliff, burning her face. She flinches but perseveres, allowing herself to drift away from the conversation.
“That’s no good,” she hears Fiona arguing when she drifts back. “What if the police are watching and arrest her? It has to be dropped somewhere and collected later.” Lily raises her head slightly so that she can see Fiona’s inflamed cheeks, her pouty lips. She watches as Fiona reaches across the table to take a cigarette from Jo. Lily collapses back on the floor, frowning as another shower of sparks hits her chest.
As the conversation grows more heated around her, Lily sits up, using her stomach muscles alone to pull her up from her prostrate position on the floor. She pats out the embers that have fallen down the front of her shirt. “I’ve just thought of something.”
“What?”
“Remember when Aunt Edie rang? You know, that first night. She said she knew my dad had another baby because one of her friend’s daughter’s was having a baby at the same time. They were in hospital together.”
“So?”
“Well, her friend’s daughter’s baby was called Bernadette Briggs. She was at the same school as me, but a year below.”
“So?”
“So, if she was born at the same time as my dad’s other child, that child will also be a year younger than me.” She looks at Fiona. “Not three and a half years younger.”
Fiona stares at her elder half-sister. “You mean he’s got another child?”
“What else can it mean?”
No one speaks. Lily crushes the spliff out in the ashtray. “Maybe Aunt Edie got mixed up,” says Jo. “You know how old people get.”
“I’m going to do it,” says Lily, feeling her resolve set like concrete.
“Do what?” asks Jo.
“I’m going to take the money from him.”
“That’s way too risky,” says Stuart.
“What if he recognises you?” asks Jo.
“How’s he going to recognise me? He’s never even seen me. And I don’t look like him.” Jo opens her mouth, and then considers whether she’s brave enough to tell Lily she looks like her mother. She closes her mouth again. “And besides,” says Lily, “even if he does know it’s me, he’s still going to go along with it, because all he cares about is whether Fiona knows his secret.”
“What if he refuses to hand over the money until Fiona’s back with him?” Stuart’s cheeks are flushed and his voice seems louder than usual.
“I don’t care about the money.”
“There’s too much that can go wrong.” Stuart gets up off his knees and sits back on the settee behind him. “It’s hardly the right environment for your first meeting with your father.”
“I have to do it, Stuart.”
“What if the police are there and you get arrested?”
“I’ve kidnapped a minor, got her drunk and stoned. I’ve demanded money with menaces. I’ve driven a car without a licence or insurance. Don’t you think I’ve already considered the ‘I might go to prison’ angle? At least I wouldn’t have to worry about how I’m going to pay the rent next month.” Lily tries out a smile; it convinces no one. She stands up. “You’re all always telling me I have nothing to lose. I don’t care about prison. It’s like, my mum died and my first thought was great, I get to meet my dad. So, I’m fucking going to meet him.”
Stuart storms out of the front room and slams the door behind him.
“What’s up with him?” Lily turns to Fiona.
Fiona shrugs. “He worries too much.”
“Ok,” says Jo. “If you’re going to do it, where’s the place?”
“Somewhere quiet, just me and him. I’ll say I’m the messenger for the bad guys. I’ll say these blokes have paid me to come and collect a suitcase, I don’t know why and I don’t want to know why. I’m just in it for the money. And he may suspect it’s me, but he won’t know. He’ll still have to consider the possibility that it could be someone else.”
“Do you think we asked for enough money?” Fiona wonders out loud.
“I was thinking that,” says Jo, doodling a swag bag on the side of the map. She draws a dollar sign on the front. “He didn’t have much trouble getting it together, did he? Maybe we should ask for more?”
Lily shakes her head. “All my life I’ve wanted to meet my dad. Other kids wrote to Father Christmas asking for Barbie dolls and Girl’s Worlds. I wrote asking for a dad,” she looks over at Fiona and her voice falters, “and it’s great to have met you, but still, I started this madness, I have to finish it.”
Chapter 23
Stuart trips over a pair of boots that have been left on the top step, and falls flat on his face in the hallway. Fiona steps out of the front room as he crashes to the floor. “Where have you been?”
“I needed some air.” He rolls over and lies on his back, his face red from the cold night. “Where is everyone?”
“Jo’s gone to bed; Lily fell asleep on the sofa.” Fiona kneels on the floor next to him and strokes his face; the beer fumes rising from him, stronger than scent. “You’re freezing, wait here.”
She steps over him and into the kitchen. Ten minutes later she’s back carrying a tea tray. His eyes are closed and he doesn’t stir as she steps over him again to take the tray up the attic stairs and into his bedroom. Moments later she returns and pulls him by the arm, half leading him, half dragging him up the stairs.
In the bedroom, Fiona sits Stuart down on the bed and feeds him toast and Marmite. She puts a large mug of hot chocolate by his side. When he’s swallowed his last mouthful of toast he says, “Do you think we should let her…”
“I don’t think we can stop her.”
“But she’s so fragile. What if he has rung the police and she gets arrested?”
Fiona shakes her head. “It’s wh
at they both need. As soon as Dad sees her he’ll come round, I know he will.” She kneels by his feet and begins to unlace Stuart’s trainers.
“God, I wish I had your faith, Fiona. What if he has her arrested?”
“He’s not going to have his own daughter arrested.” She pulls off both his trainers. She can feel the coldness of his toes through his socks. “It’s weird that he won’t just be my dad anymore.”
Stuart drains his hot chocolate and shivers. “It’s freezing out there.”
“I could warm you up.” She kneels up, her eyes dark beneath her fringe. She stands and leans the weight of her body against him, tipping him backwards onto the bed, as she brings her lips down on his, soft and tentative.
A few minutes later he tries to sit up. “I don’t think we should be doing this, Fiona.”
“Shh.” She puts her finger to his lips. “I really, really want to.” Her lips press down on his again and she runs a hand up under his shirt, feeling the smooth skin of his chest. As her fingers brush past his nipples, a moan escapes his lips. She pushes harder against him, using all of her strength, until he’s flat on his back on the bed. Her hands tremble as she sits astride him and undoes the buttons on her shirt.
Afterwards, Fiona curls up in his armpit, breathing in the smell of sweat and Right Guard. Her fingers toy with his underarm hair and her legs entwine with his own. She waits until he’s fallen asleep before she whispers to him, “I’m never going home.”
The sound of the delivery van, unloading the day’s produce at the bakery across the street, wakes Fiona. It’s still dark outside. She wraps a sheet around her and floats downstairs to the kitchen. Sitting on the worktop, smoking a cigarette while she waits for the kettle to boil, is Lily. She looks miles away.
