After Ever After

by Rowan Coleman

  ‘And I do too,’ I say.

  In an instant he breaks the spell between us and laughs.

  ‘I knew it,’ he says. ‘I’m never wrong. I’ll see you Monday.’ He heads for the hallway.

  ‘No, Gareth! No. Don’t come back here any more! I said no!’

  By the time I’ve caught up with where he should be he’s gone. I didn’t even hear the door shut.

  ‘Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck,’ I whisper, wondering exactly what I’ve done as I head back to my guests. My cheeks are flushed, my heart is pounding, but despite my discomfort I feel awake and aroused in a way I haven’t felt with Fergus in a long time. It feels terrible.

  ‘Lunch is ready!’ I say, feeling the shakiness in my voice.

  Fergus looks at me carefully. ‘You look like you’ve been slaving over a hot stove,’ he says lightly.

  ‘Well, I have!’ I answer defensively. ‘In a way. The stove is hot and I have been over it.’

  ‘I know,’ he says with a smile. ‘It’s just I’ve never seen what that looks like before.’

  Everyone laughs and I smile. I smile really, really hard.

  As Fergus is fiddling about with his coffee machine trying to make cappuccinos when all anyone really wants is instant, I count how many people I’m supposed to be having a chat with in the next couple of hours.

  Chat one: my dad, probably concerning my mum’s death, although for the first time in years I’ve seen him actually take part in a social event instead of sitting on the sidelines drugged up on diazepam waiting to be taken home. I mean, he’s not suddenly transformed himself into a fatherly Oscar Wilde when it comes to conversation or witty repartee, but he’s been involved and engaged, even discussing old London buses with Mr Crawley, who seems to know something about everything. As for Joy, she seems to be a master of making people feel at ease. Within a few minutes of entering the house she had Camille and Clare involved in a conversation that had them both in hysterics until they turned naturally to conversation with each other. So chat one with my dad. With any luck he’s having too much of a good time to remember it.

  Chat two: with Camille about Dora. Dora has been fine. She’s stayed with her one can of lager, sipping it almost regally throughout lunch, persistently refusing a glass despite Georgina’s attempts to foist one upon her. As the meal progressed she seemed to relax a little, and if it wasn’t for the fact she only had one can of low-alcohol lager I’d say she was a little tipsy. She even played pee-bo behind a tea towel with Ella, something unprecedented in our times. Maybe having seen her for a good couple of hours this afternoon, Camille and I don’t need to talk about her after all.

  Chat three: with Dora. She saw Gareth and me talking and I don’t know what she saw or what she thinks she saw, but she’s known me the longest and she only has to look at my face to see exactly what’s going on. I’d like to keep that chat with Dora, I’d like to know what she thinks is exactly going on, because I’m not entirely sure myself.

  And finally chat four: scheduled with Fergus after everyone has gone home. Chat four about money and about me getting a job, I hope, and I suppose I’d better tell him that I’ve sacked Gareth. At least I think I’ve sacked him. And then after we’ve got that out of the way, I’m going to make him feel cherished and loved just like Georgina said I should. I’m going to seduce him.

  The heat of the kitchen has steamed up the rain-cold windows, the dark afternoon throwing them into a silvery relief, as if the whole house is covered in ice. The conversation around the kitchen table seems to be going on without me and I let myself drift far away from the hum of guests, trying to keep all sharp edges firmly out of focus. Even though it’s only four o’clock, I’ve already had a large brandy and then another one, so that the events of this morning seem far away now and ever so slightly unreal, as if they’d happened to someone who looks a bit like me and isn’t me at all. Oh no, hang on, that is me.

  ‘Kitty, love.’ My dad appears at my shoulder like a ghost, making me jump.

  ‘Shit, Dad,’ I say, sitting up in my chair. ‘Sorry, I was miles away.’ Miles and miles away, which is exactly where’d I’d like to stay right now.

  ‘I thought maybe I could have a word?’ Oh, chat number one, then.

  ‘Sure.’ I nod encouragingly, hoping it’s not the sort of chat that’s going to involve me leaving the table.

  ‘Maybe next door?’ Dad asks me cautiously.

  ‘Of course, Dad,’ I say, unable to mask my reluctance. ‘Um, Fergus, get those chocolates out. I’m just going to have a word with my dad.’

  ‘Lovely cornicework,’ Dad tells me as we make our way to the living room.

  ‘Mmmmm, Mr Crawley. He’s fantastic,’ I tell him, and I settle down on the sofa. I feel a little drunk and sleepy. I’d really like to be asleep right now in the half light of a wet summer evening, curled up on my sofa, and to forget about everything.

  ‘So?’ I say brightly, blinking myself awake. ‘What do you want to talk about?’

  ‘You,’ Dad says, out of the blue. Dad hasn’t talked about me in, well, since Mum. He’s talked about Mum a lot, himself frequently, the injustice, futility and unfairness of it all often – but never about me specifically.

  ‘Me?’ I say, feeling uneasy.

  ‘Yes you.’ He sits by my side and takes my hand. ‘I’ve been a terrible father to you …’ he begins.

  ‘No, Dad, you haven’t,’ I say, but I don’t mean it.

  ‘After your mum, I don’t know what happened to me. You must understand, Kitty, that I meant to be strong for you. I promised her. I promised your mother that I’d never let you miss having a mum, that I’d be your mum and your dad, but I failed so badly, I know I let you down.’

  I run my fingers across my forehead. It looks like this might be about him and my mum after all.

  ‘Dad,’ I say almost impatiently, ‘even if you had tried, no one could have stopped me missing Mum, not even you. Not even Nan, if she’d still been around.’

  Dad pats the back of my hand.

  ‘I’m not explaining myself very well. Joy says that the only way I’m going to rebuild our relationship is to clear it all up once and for all.’

  I shake my head, not understanding him.

  ‘Dad, nothing happened between us. I mean, obviously something did happen, but nothing specifically between us,’ I say again, hoping that Fergus or someone, anyone, will interrupt us.

  ‘Yes it did, something did happen,’ Dad says insistently. ‘It’s just that you didn’t know about it.’

  I look at him. In the ever-decreasing half-light, his face looks grey and ashen. A shiver runs up and down my spine.

  ‘I tried to put it out of my head, forget about it. I’d look at you and see how hard you were trying, just a little dot, you were trying so hard to be all grown-up. I tried, Kitty, not to feel the way I did, but I couldn’t make it go away. I loved your mum. I loved her so much, and God forgive me I wished it hadn’t been her …’ He trails off, staring at me as if seeing me for the first time.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I say uneasily.

  ‘The ambulance men, they said that if she’d been found sooner, even just a few minutes sooner, they might have saved her.’ He is clasping my fingers in his dry hands and I pull my hand from his, feeling instinctively ill at ease.

  ‘Yes, I know that. Of course I do,’ I say, even though I’m not actually sure if I have ever known that on a conscious level. ‘But what’s this got to do with me?’

  ‘I blamed you,’ Dad says simply. Shockingly. ‘I blamed you for not finding her sooner. In a funny sort of way I blamed you more than I blamed him.’

  I shrink back from him as if I were only seven again.

  ‘You blamed me?’ I repeat.

  ‘I know. I know it was wrong, you were only a child. How could you know she was there waiting to be found, waiting for you to save her? How could you? But all I could think about was how much pain she must have been in and how she must have been hoping
, waiting for help, waiting for someone to find her, and that when you did find her it was too late.’ His face is cold, angry and hard. For the first time ever it is as if his mask has slipped and for a second I can see that he’s hated me, hated me, for all of these years.

  I only know that I’m crying when I taste the tears on my lips.

  ‘I can’t believe you came here today to tell me this, to blame me for my mother’s murder?’ I pull myself off the sofa. ‘Don’t you think I know that it’s my fault? Don’t you think I blame myself, have done every day since it happened?’ I stumble to the door and punch on the light switch, filling every corner of the room with artificial yellow light. Dad stands, clasping his hands together.

  ‘I’m not trying to hurt you, sweetheart, I’m trying to help you. I do know, yes I do know that. After it happened I tried to love you, no I did love you, but I just couldn’t show it. I didn’t treat you like a daughter. I left you to it until the grief and the anger became so much part of me I couldn’t remember what it was like to live without it. I was weak, I wasn’t the man you needed me to be.’

  He reaches out his hand to me.

  ‘Kitty, I’m trying to tell you I was wrong. I’ve been wrong all these years, and so have you. I know it wasn’t your fault, I know that. I’ve hurt you maybe more than you’ll ever get over, and I’m sorry. I’ve hurt your mother and I’m sorry. I feel like I’ve been asleep for a hundred years, asleep trapped in a nightmare, and only now am I beginning to wake up. I wake up and see you shining so brightly, with your own home and your own family, everything you’ve created and achieved on your own despite me, and I’m proud of you, so proud of you, Kitty.’

  He touches his hand softly to my cheek.

  ‘I’m so proud of you, Kitty. I’ve never told you before. That’s all I wanted to say.’

  I back away from him as far as I can.

  ‘You’re lying,’ I say angrily, furious. ‘You’re lying because you want that back, all that pretence of the father and daughter team. I saw what you really thought of me, Dad, I saw it just now in your face and I’ve always known, even back then, even as a child; it’s only now that I realise what it was. I thought you were, I don’t know … isolated by grief or something.’ I struggle to express myself, my words rushing out in a jumble. ‘That you were still mourning, that you were too sad to love me. But you didn’t want me because you hated me, you hated me, your little girl!’ My voice rises sharply and I’m aware of a lull in the hum of conversation from next door.

  ‘Kitty.’ Dad comes towards me and I find myself raising my hands over my face. ‘Please, Kitty, that’s not true. It was true once, yes, and if you saw that, I’m sorry. It’s not true now, Kitty. All I want is for us to begin again. It’s late, I know, terribly late to begin to make it up to you, but not too late, I hope … Kitty?’ His words wash over me and all I can see is that look on his face, that terrible angry look.

  ‘Everything all right?’ Fergus’s voice dilutes the atmosphere in an instant as his head appears around the door, and I rush into his arms.

  ‘I want Dad to go,’ I say quietly. ‘I want him to go now.’

  Fergus looks at me in puzzlement. ‘What’s happened, Kitty, what’s he said?’

  My dad’s face seems to crumple and age before me. ‘Fergus, I think I’ve upset her. I didn’t mean to … I was trying to explain things … make things right … and …’

  I shake myself loose of Fergus’s grip.

  ‘And you said that it was my fault that Mum had died, and you said that you hated me, that you’d always hated me.’ Even now I can’t remember if that was what he said, but it is all that I can hear. I feel Fergus’s presence behind me and his hand on my shoulder.

  ‘You can’t come into my home and speak to my wife that way,’ he says, his voice dangerously low. ‘For years the only thing you’ve ever done is drag her down, and I’ve watched her drag herself out of the life you gave her and become a wonderful woman and a perfect parent, despite having no support from you at all. I won’t have you try and drag her back down again. I won’t let anyone do that to her ever again, do you understand? You’d better go.’

  Suddenly I see him for the old man he is, his shoulders bent, his skin papery and dry, and I wish with all my heart that our lives could have been different, that we could have just been a father and daughter having lunch every weekend like we always did.

  ‘Fergus, please. Don’t make me leave like this,’ my dad pleads, but my shoulders stiffen stubbornly under Fergus’s hands and he reads my resolve.

  ‘Just go. Just go. You can wait in the hall. I’ll get Joy’s and your coats and drive you to the station myself.’

  My fingers find Fergus’s and I squeeze them hard before leaving the room and hurrying up the stairs to the cool quiet of the bathroom to splash myself with water. I want to cry. I want to cry until I am dry as a desert, but I can’t. Maybe it’s the shock, or the brandy, or Gareth, but now that Dad’s gone I can’t seem to feel it any more, at the moment at least. Dora pushes the door open.

  ‘What happened?’ she asks me blankly.

  ‘My dad, as usual, fucking me up.’ I glance up at her sweat-sheened face. ‘Look, let’s not get into this now, I need time to … I just don’t want to think about it now. It’s too hard.’

  Dora shrugs, experienced after years of understanding how I cope with difficult feelings, and sits on the edge of the bath.

  ‘I quite like your kid,’ she says, languishing against the door she has shut behind her, still nursing her one can of lager. ‘I think it’s because she’s more human and less like the thing out of Eraserhead.’

  I muster a smile and sit down on the loo.

  ‘Hasn’t that gone disgustingly flat?’ I say, nodding at the lager, hoping not to be interrogated about my red-and-white-streaked face, but Dora doesn’t seem to notice it, or if she does she says nothing.

  ‘Oh yeah, I finished it ages ago.’ She fishes a half-vodka bottle out of her bag and pours a good measure into the can. ‘But the good thing about vodka is it never goes flat. And before you ask why the can, it’s because Camille kept going on at me on the way up here and she’s bound to think I’m using again just because I like a little drink every now and then. Jesus.’

  I open my mouth to reproach her, and find that I just don’t have the energy.

  ‘By the way, your dad was wrong, really wrong back then, but from what I overheard I think maybe when you’ve had a chance to think you’ll see he’s trying to do the right thing. Either that or I’m so bollocked I’m hallucinating.’ She burps fragrantly into her hand.

  I decide on the latter and change the subject, knowing how capable Dora is of hurting people without knowing the reason why. Especially when she’s drunk.

  ‘Camille will know, you know. She’ll just be more pissed at you for trying to hide it from her.’

  Dora shrugs and slides down the side of the bath to repose on Fergus’s New England-style white floorboards.

  ‘So, how long have you been doing the dirty on the Prince, Cinders?’ she sniggers.

  ‘Dora!’ Please, Universe, God even, give me a break, just one. ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ And even though I’m telling the truth, my voice carries a high false note.

  ‘I saw you canoodling with him. Don’t blame you, he’s fucking dishy. I’d shag him.’ Her voice bounces loud and clear off the tiles.

  ‘Dora!’ I hiss, crouching down to her level. ‘I am not shagging Gareth. If you must know, he sort of made a pass at me, and he didn’t even do that really, and anyway I told him to get lost. I sacked him, for fuck’s sake!’ Dora’s eyes regard me, empty of expression.

  ‘Oh, okay. Why did you look like such a quivering wreck, then, when I caught you at it?’

  I turn my head away abruptly and stand up.

  ‘Dora, you might think you’re funny, but you’re not. You’re fucking with my marriage, okay? What if Fergus heard you saying all this bullshit? Just shut the fuck up.’

&
nbsp; ‘Ohhhhhhh.’ Dora pretends to shake. ‘That’s me told, then.’ She struggles to her feet. ‘I might go to bed, where is it? In there?’ She wobbles out of the bathroom and into the guest room. ‘Night!’ she says before closing the door on me.

  It’s just six o’clock. Now is the time when everyone is supposed to be leaving, not inviting themselves to stay the night. I look at the closed door feeling utterly exhausted, and wondering what everyone down there must think of me.

  ‘Darling!’ Fergus calls up the stairs. He must not have gone to the station after all. ‘Come and look at Ella!’

  I shake Dad and Dora out of my hair, put my happy face on and hurry down the stairs, hoping it’s nothing that will require a trip to casualty. As I rush into the room, I see that my baby has pulled herself up on the sofa and is standing there clinging on to the edge, wobbling back and forth.

  ‘My baby!’ I say, and her proud smile eclipses every other moment of the day.

  ‘She’ll be walking soon, you mark my words,’ Daniel says softly.

  ‘And then you’ll be more tired than you are now!’ Mr Crawley laughs gently, taking my arm and squeezing it softly, and in an instant I know that he’s telling me he’s there if I need him.

  ‘And you can buy her shoes!’ Camille claps her hands with glee.

  ‘Might as well leave her there,’ I say to Camille as she puts her coat and hat on.

  ‘She was drunk on vodka!’ she repeats in disbelief. ‘I don’t know about this. What do you think?’

  I shake my head and shrug. ‘I don’t know either, but look, I’m pretty sure she’ll be there until the morning so I’ll catch her when she’s sober and try to talk it over with her properly. I’ll call you, okay?’

  Camille pulls her hat on. ‘Are you okay, or are you at the not-talking-about-it stage? I mean, I don’t want to butt in, but, well, we all pretty much heard everything.’

  I smile at her levelly.

  ‘I’m at the not-talking-about-it stage. I just need to adjust again, I’ll be okay. He’s not really been my dad for years, so it makes no difference really. Nothing to talk about right now.’