Our Father Who Are Out There...Somewhere

by AJ Taft

  Lily doesn’t answer, but glances up at the clock on the kitchen wall, it’s quarter to five. Stuart flicks the switch on the side of the kettle and it starts to boil immediately. He looks across at Lily. “Are you having second thoughts?”

  “When I was a kid I thought everything would be alright once I left home. You know, once I was away from my mum.”

  Stuart comes to sit at the table with her. Lily moves her chair so that they’re not directly opposite each other, so that she isn’t face to face with him.

  “From what Fiona’s said, I think I’d have thought the same too.”

  “Every other kid on my estate left school at sixteen. They used to rip the piss out of me for doing ‘A’ levels.”

  “Yeah, well I bet they’re not laughing so much now.”

  “I had this teacher, Miss Lewis; she kept on at me to go to college. She knew things weren’t great at home. She said I’d have the world at my feet if I got to college. She said I’d meet all these interesting people, my life would change. She was so passionate about it. I didn’t want to let her down, although it freaked me out, her passion. I’m not used to passion.”

  Stuart doesn’t speak, but he nods at her, encouraging her to go on.

  “But life didn’t change. I met Jo. That’s the one good thing, but the rest is just the same. Accrington, Leeds. It’s just the same. School, poly. It’s still a bunch of people telling you what to think.”

  “Do you miss your mum?”

  “I never had a mum. She left me. Just like my dad. He left for another woman; my mum left for a doner kebab and a crate of Special Brew.”

  “It’s hardly free choice though, is it? No one chooses to be an addict.”

  “That’s bullshit. She chose alright. Every morning she chose to start the day with a two litre bottle of coke and a couple of cold pizzas. I was getting myself ready for school aged seven, because she chose to drink herself unconscious every night. She could have stopped anytime she wanted to; she just didn’t want to.”

  “Maybe she felt she couldn’t stop.”

  “She knew she was killing herself. It’s not ok to eat a whole loaf of bread and three packets of bacon for breakfast.”

  “Whereas a spliff and a cup of tea is a nutritious way to start the day?”

  Through the fug of smoke, Lily stares at Stuart for the first time since he sat down. “What do you mean?”

  Stuart swallows before speaking. “I mean, I don’t think your mum decided to leave you,” he stresses the word ‘decided'. “Not in a conscious way. For some people, addiction is an illness. A friend of mine, his dad died when he was a kid. He felt the same way you did. He really believed that his dad chose to leave him and he was so angry with him. But no one chooses to get cancer. Just like no one chooses to be an addict.”

  Lily stubs out the spliff in the ashtray. “Are you saying you think I’m an addict?”

  “When was the last time you woke up and didn’t smoke a spliff?”

  “It’s spliff, it’s hardly chasing the dragon.”

  “Well, neither is eating a plate of chips.”

  “Five plates of chips.” Stuart shrugs. “That’s what she’d order from the chippy,” Lily pushes back her chair and stands up. She holds up five fingers, like a starfish. “Five portions of chips. They used to order special polystyrene trays in, just for her.”

  “I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

  Lily storms out of the room. Stuart listens to her feet clatter down the stairs and hears the front door slam.

  He’s still sitting in the same chair in the kitchen when Lily returns over an hour later, although even Lily notices it’s much cleaner than it was when she left. All the washing up has been done and put away, and the worktops are clear. Lily’s shoulders are hunched from the cold. Stuart stands up as soon as she enters the room. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I said; open mouth, insert foot, that’s me. I’m always being pulled about it. Look, I made you a spliff.”

  He holds up the fattest, most badly rolled spliff Lily has ever seen. A small dusting of tobacco falls out of one end as he holds it aloft. Lily allows herself a small smile. She’d rather die than admit it, but one of the reasons she came back was because when she’d stormed out, she’d left her tobacco on the kitchen table and she didn’t take her wallet. “Ok,” she says, ignoring the spliff, but reaching for the tobacco packet. “Thank you for saying sorry.”

  “I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

  The sound of an alarm clock reverberates around the flat. Lily hears Jo swearing. Minutes later Fiona jumps through the doorway, wearing a black jumper, black leggings and a black balaclava. “Freeze!”

  Lily almost drops the cup of tea she’s holding. “Fiona, you scared the shit out of me.”

  “Do you like it? I got four of them from the market.”

  Jo stumbles down the stairs rubbing her eyes, and sits next to Lily at the kitchen table. Jo reaches for the cigarette packet as she looks up at Fiona, “Cool. You look like Batman.”

  “I got one for everybody.”

  “Why?” asks Stuart.

  “To disguise ourselves.”

  “You don’t think maybe people will notice a group of four people wearing balaclavas?”

  “They were only a pound each.”

  “Fiona, you’ll have to stay here,” says Stuart. “If your dad has called the police, they will all have seen a photo of you.”

  “That’s why I bought the balaclavas. I’m not staying here on my own, no way.”

  With Stuart’s bicycle strapped to the roof of the car, Jo drives to the graveyard, Fiona in the back seat wearing one of Stuart’s large, hooded tops. They park the car in a small lay-by, and walk up to the huge wrought iron gates. A big rusty padlock is attached to a chain, but the gate isn’t locked. Stuart pushes it open, wheeling his bicycle up the overgrown, cobbled path. Thick bushes line either side and he pushes his bike purposefully towards one. “I’ll stash this in here. No one will see it.”

  The path leads further up the hill into the ramshackle graveyard. Lopsided gravestones compete for space, amongst the weeds and the brambles. The sun streaks through the valley, making the morning frost glisten. Lily and Stuart weigh up the site, walking down each of the overgrown paths while Fiona and Jo hide among the tombstones, jumping out on each other with their balaclavas on, pretending to be hit men.

  “Ok?” asks Stuart.

  Lily takes one last look around. She likes it here, up above the town. There are a million places to hide, and it feels safe; a good place to keep secrets. She nods.

  “Come on then, let’s go and find some food. We should get back here no later than one.”

  They buy fish and chips in the town centre, and eat them down by the river. The warmth and smell of the chips wrapped in newspaper makes Lily feel safe.

  At one o’clock, Stuart walks Lily back up the hill, while Fiona and Jo stay out of sight in the car. Lily lights a cigarette, but the hill is so steep she can’t waste the lung space on smoking. She’s already sweating. As they turn the last bend in the lane, they see three cars parked up by the gates and one more further on, blocking the lane. “Shit, is that the police?”

  They both flatten themselves against the wall at the side of the road. “It’s a funeral,” says Stuart. “Look, there’s the hearse.”

  They squeeze past the cars and look through the gates. A black swarm of people hover at the far end of the graveyard. Lily sees the bald head of a vicar in the centre of the throng. She turns to Stuart, sees the expression on his face, a mix of horror and bewilderment. He tries to say something, but the words don’t seem to want to come out. Lily starts to laugh, really laugh, and before she knows it tears are running down her cheeks. Stuart takes hold of her by the elbows. “It’s ok, Lily.” He stares into her eyes until she stops laughing and remembers to breathe.

  “It’s good; you can hide out a bit, mingle. Look for the guy carrying a bag or briefcase and looking uncomfortable. If
you lose your nerve you don’t have to go through with it, just blend in the crowd. Lucky you wore black.”

  Lily relights her half-smoked cigarette and tries to smile. She’s never worn anything else.

  “You’re going to be fine,” says Stuart. Lily takes three drags on her fag before flicking it high up into the air. What the fuck. She kisses his cheek. Then she straightens her shoulders and strides into the graveyard without looking back.

  No one asks Lily any questions. She’s good at blending, avoiding conversation. She makes no eye contact and threads her way through until she’s at the far end of the graveyard, a few yards back from the rest of the mourners. Lily turns and watches the widow, a small yet statuesque woman, wearing a black hat and shocking pink lipstick, framed at each side by two tall men. Children as young as four or five years old mingle with the crowd, to remind people that in the midst of death, life keeps on.

  Lily cranes her neck to see the watch on a mourner’s wrist. It’s twenty past one; forty minutes to go. She decides to have a cigarette to calm her nerves and finds a table type gravestone, tucked away amongst the brambles. She can see for miles across the valley. The world seems frozen, crystallized. No one can see her as she sits down, enjoying watching the mourners in their moment of goodbye.

  And then she turns her head and sees him. A lone man carrying a small suitcase, his hand shielding his face from the bright sun. A woman turns to speak to him, and Lily watches him say something and shake his head. Then the vicar speaks up and everyone falls silent, heads bowed. Lily can’t hear the words, but she knows the sentiment, as the vicar invokes God’s blessing on the newly departed. Then everything goes quiet and Lily feels suddenly closer to it, whatever it is, then ever before in her life. She has this sense that everything, every moment of her life, has been constructed to bring her to his place. Euphoria sweeps up inside her and threatens to make her shout out. She puts a hand on the tombstone to steady herself and closes her eyes. When she opens them again, she sees the widow throw a flower into the grave, before turning to look up at her family and smile. Suddenly it’s like someone has pressed play on the video recorder. People start to move, to chat, to embrace. And as the people start to melt away, to the fleet of black cars blocking the small country lane, only Lily and her father remain. He hasn’t seen her - won’t until she stands up - so she takes the opportunity to study him further. He looks older than he did in the school playground, the day they followed him to work. Fiona has told her he’s forty-four years old, three years younger than Lily’s mum. He looks at his watch and frowns.

  Lily puts out her third cigarette, takes a deep breath and stands up. As she begins to pick her way through the overgrown paths, he takes a seat on a bench that faces away from the gravestones, out across the valley, still unaware of her presence. She creeps up behind him and only when she is standing a few inches behind him does she speak, “Hello.”

  He startles but doesn’t turn round. She clambers over the rough ground and sits down next to him, staring straight ahead. He turns to look at her. “Are you here to…”

  “Before you ask, I don’t know anything about your daughter. I’ve just been told to come here, collect the money and then take it to the guys. I was told to tell you that if I don’t meet them at the time I’m supposed to, you will never see her again.” Her heart is thudding against her chest. She takes a breath and turns to face him. “Sorry.”

  She takes off her sunglasses to stare at him and he flinches, his dark brown eyes mirror her own.

  “What’s your name?” he asks.

  “Like I’m going to tell you my name.” She clenches her fists but doesn’t break her gaze.

  “How old are you?”

  “How old do you think I am?”

  He looks away from her, back out across the valley, his eyes following a kestrel as it hovers in the sky. “I think you’re approximately nineteen years and...” he does some mental arithmetic, “four months?”

  She holds her breath and closes her eyes. Nothing happens. When she opens them again, he’s standing in front of her. “If I hand over this suitcase to you, am I going to get my daughter back? Fiona…” he adds hastily, to avoid any confusion, “in one piece? As in how she was before any of this started?”

  Lily puts her sunglasses back on. She looks away from him, beyond him, across to the valley. “She’ll be returned to you unharmed, unchanged, they said.”

  He offers the suitcase to her, holding it in one hand, his arm fully extended. “Here’s the money. When will I see Fiona?”

  Lily bites her teeth into her lips as hard as she can. “Tonight.”

  “I’ll be waiting. You tell your friends if she’s not back by 6pm, I will report them to the police.” And he turns on his heels and strides out through the gate away from her, back down the hill.

  Lily’s lips are dark, bruised from the cold. Her fingers are too cold to roll a cigarette. She concentrates on the tree halfway down the valley, that looks like it’s been blown sideways. It’s spent its life in gale-like winds and yet it clings on. What kind of life is that; to exist at ninety degrees?

  Lily is surprised to see Stuart standing in front of her. “We saw his car leaving at the bottom of the hill,” he says. “We’ve been waiting ages.”

  He sits down next to her on the bench and puts his arm across her shoulders, trying to pull her into his embrace, but her body is rigid, frozen like the grass. “Lily, tell me what happened.”

  Lily continues to stare at the tree.

  “Lily?”

  Lily speaks in a flat monotone. “He knew who I was and he didn’t ask me anything. He handed me the money like I was some kind of prostitute. All he cared about was whether Fiona knew who I was.” Her gaze is unwavering, fixated on the tree; its branches pushing back against the wind.

  “He’s fucked up; look at the life he has. His wife treats him like a doormat, he’s living a lie.” Stuart gingerly strokes her hair. “He’s not worthy of you. You have so much more courage. All he has in his life is Fiona, and she’ll leave sooner or later, and then he’ll have nothing and he knows it. That’s why he’s scared, he’s scared of losing her same as he lost you.”

  Stuart stands up and holds out his arm to Lily. She hesitates and then allows him to pull her up to standing. He threads her arm through his and together they stroll back down the hill, blinded by the sunlight. Fiona is leaning out of the car window, her balaclava pushed up to her brow. When she sees them round the bend, she calls out, “How did it go?”

  Lily opens the car door and climbs into the front passenger seat, next to Jo. She stares out through the windscreen. “All he was bothered about was that Fiona doesn’t find out who I am.”

  “Did he know who you were?” Fiona asks.

  “Yes.”

  Stuart climbs into the back seat of the car. Fiona looks to him, waiting for an explanation. He shrugs his shoulders. She turns to Lily again. “He knew you were his daughter?”

  Lily continues to stare at some indistinguishable blot on the landscape. “He knew who I was.”

  “How do you know?”

  Lily speaks in a monotone. “Because he asked me how old I was and I said ‘guess,’ and he said ‘nineteen years and four months.’” A surge of irritation rubs over her, making her itch.

  “But…”

  “He knew who I was, now drop it.”

  “And he didn’t...” Fiona falls silent as Stuart shakes his head and puts his finger to his lips. The colour drains from her face as she pulls the balaclava off the top of her head.

  Lily examines her fingernails. “But I got the money… Shit! I’ve left the money.”

  “What?” says Jo.

  “I left it by the bench.”

  “And my bike,” says Stuart.

  “I don’t believe you two,” says Jo, as she turns the key in the ignition and hurtles the car back up the hill. She brakes so hard the tyres screech, as she pulls up outside the churchyard gate. They all turn to look at Stua
rt. He dives out of the car and into the graveyard. The suitcase still stands on the ground by the end of the bench. His eyes scan his surroundings before he grabs the case and runs back to the car.

  “Come on, let’s get away from here,” he says as he jumps back into the car, sweat beading on his forehead. “I’ll pick my bike up tomorrow.”

  It takes Jo several attempts to turn the car around in the narrow lane. “Come on,” says Stuart, “Get a move on.”

  Once Jo has got the Mini pointing back down the hill, Stuart flicks the suitcase open. Jo glances behind her and screams as the Mini veers across the road. When she regains control of the car, she shouts, “Eighty-five thousand smackers.”

  Chapter 26

  Once she’s parked the Mini in the car park round the back of Stuart’s flat, Jo leaps out of the car, opens the rear door and takes the suitcase from Stuart. The others follow her into the flat and up both flights of stairs into the attic. She sits on the double bed in Andre’s bedroom and opens the suitcase. She removes one of the neat bundles; one thousand pounds, and fans herself with it, before putting it to her nose and inhaling. She whistles. “Direct action, in action. Who says crime doesn’t pay?”

  Stuart looks over her shoulder. “Wow, that’s a lot of money.”

  “Look Lily,” says Jo. “You’re rich.”

  Lily shrugs her shoulders.

  “You’re owed it, Lily,” Stuart says. “It’s rightfully yours.”

  Lily sits on the floor by the small garret window, looking down on the street below. She watches a couple arguing across the street. “By the way,” says Lily, “he said if you’re not home by six he’s ringing the police. I think he meant it.”