Dad sprinted through the airline terminal, not bothering to ask about getting his luggage back. All he wanted was to get to a phone. Abigail lay very still, almost holding her breath, waiting for the phone to ring. The silence went on and on.
Presently Mum came in with a cup of tea, not something she usually did, and sat on the edge of Abigail’s bed, as if Abigail were ill. Together they watched the clock racing on to departure time.
‘I thought I’d make pancakes for breakfast,’ said Mum, who usually didn’t have time to make anything. ‘Would you like that?’
Abigail felt empty rather than hungry but she couldn’t let Mum down. They both had to get through the next hour somehow.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘That’d be great.’
As the weeks passed, it was odd getting used to Dad not being there, getting used to being just the two of them, although he had never been there very much really, which ought to have made it easier. She didn’t notice so much on Sundays because she usually went out and in any case it was a relief not to have him and Mum going on about who cooked lunch. But weekdays were awful, the time between four thirty when Abigail got back from school and six thirty when Mum came in from work. That had always been their special time, before Dad left for the restaurant, when they could watch silly programmes on television and talk about the day, cuddling up together on the sofa. The house became unbearably empty then.
Abigail took to hanging about after school with Lorna, mooching around the shops. They couldn’t go to Lorna’s house because her Mum would find them something useful to do. She didn’t believe in idle hands. Wandering around Woolworths with Lorna, Abigail was shocked to find herself suddenly longing to steal something, for the first time in her life. A lipstick or some nail varnish. She was puzzled as well as shocked because she didn’t wear lipstick, she didn’t like the feel of it on her mouth, and she couldn’t wear nail varnish because she still bit her nails. In fact she only wore eye make-up, but it was not eye makeup she wanted to steal. She didn’t tell Lorna in case she produced some theory about it from one of her phone-in programmes.
Mum said they had to tell Mr Williams the headmaster that Dad had gone away. Abigail argued, but Mum said he had to know. She wouldn’t say why. In case I do something weird, Abigail thought resentfully, like stealing from Woolworths. So he can Make Allowances. Perhaps Mum was right, but she hated it all the same. It seemed to make everything more final. There were lots of people at her school whose parents had split up, but she had never imagined herself as one of them, had even enjoyed feeling comfortably superior. Now she had suddenly joined their ranks and she felt unclean and embarrassed, as if she had been found with nits in her hair.
Mum had promised her no one else would know but overnight the whole school seemed to find out. At least, that’s how it felt. Lorna swore she hadn’t said a word and Abigail couldn’t very well ask Mr Williams, but someone must have talked because people started coming up to her to sympathise or make jokes. Michael was one of them. ‘Sorry about your Dad, Abs,’ he said. ‘Maybe your Mum can get it together with my Dad and then we’ll be brother and sister.’ He winked at her, and she wasn’t sure if he was trying to be nice or nasty. She had gone out with him for a while after his mother ran off with the man next door, leaving Michael and his father alone, and she had liked the kissing and cuddling and the sense of importance that came from going out with someone other people fancied, someone who looked like Sting. But Michael had wanted her to go to bed with him when his father was out at work and she was frightened. She knew she wasn’t in love with him and she wanted the first time to be with someone special; she also wanted to look forward to going to college, not worry about getting pregnant.
‘You’re old-fashioned,’ Michael had teased her, and she lost her temper.
‘I think it’s old-fashioned to do something just because everyone else is doing it,’ she said. She wasn’t sure she meant it but it sounded good. ‘I think you should make up your own mind, and anyway, if you really liked me, you wouldn’t mind waiting.’
But he hadn’t waited, he had shrugged his shoulders and gone off, saying he’d phone her, and now he was going out with Tracey, who was on the Pill.
She’d been meaning to ask Dad about it, whether she’d done the right thing and whether boys always behaved like that. It was easier to talk to Dad than Mum, and in any case he ought to know more about how boys thought. But she’d put it off, waiting for the right moment, and now it was too late. She almost wished she had got pregnant, or fallen off Michael’s motorbike, so Dad would have been really worried about her. He might even have come rushing back.
When she didn’t answer his letters, he started ringing up. She had not expected that: it was as if she imagined the island as a place too primitive to have telephones. Or perhaps it was that once he got on the plane she pictured him in limbo, falling into a dark hole somewhere, like the Bermuda Triangle, dropping off the edge of the world. Or even, more simply, that he and Mum had argued so much over the phone bill in London that she never dreamed he could ring up from the Caribbean. But of course Julie wouldn’t nag, would she? Phone bills would mean nothing to Julie. She would be smiling all the time and encouraging him in whatever he wanted to do.
Abigail knew who it was on the phone before Mum said anything, just from the look on her face. A look of hope, turning swiftly into disappointment and resignation. Her face crumpled up, making her look at once like a child and an old woman, the way people always said babies looked like Winston Churchill. Abigail was scared: if Dad still had the power to do that to Mum’s face, what might he do to Abigail? She backed away from the phone as Mum said, ‘Yes, she’s here’ and held it out to her. She shook her head.
‘Come on,’ Mum said, ‘he wants to talk to you. Don’t be silly.’
Abigail put her hands behind her back. The temptation was so strong, the longing to speak to him, to hear his voice saying he missed her, maybe even saying he was coming home, he’d made a mistake. She couldn’t do it. She was terrified of breaking down and making a fool of herself. And she didn’t want to hear how happy he was on his beautiful island with Julie. She wanted to punish him for going away and leaving her. She wanted to make him as miserable as he’d made her.
‘I’m sorry, David,’ Mum said into the phone, and to Abigail’s surprise she really did sound sorry. ‘She won’t. It’s no good.’ There was a pause. ‘Yes, I’ll tell her.’ She hung up and turned to Abigail. ‘He sends his love,’ she said. ‘And he misses you. Why wouldn’t you speak to him? You’re hurting yourself as much as him, you know.’
Abigail was shaking. She could see Mum moving towards her to give her a hug and she wanted the hug desperately but she also didn’t want it. It would only make both of them cry.
She turned and ran out of the room, but she noticed as she ran that she felt something else besides shaken and tearful, a new sensation. She felt powerful.
After that she made a plan. She decided never to answer the phone in case it was Dad. Refusing to speak when Mum took the call was one thing; hanging up on him would be quite another. She didn’t think she could manage that. So she arranged with Lorna to ring once and hang up, then ring back, so she’d know who it was. Lorna was the only person who rang her often. She felt safe then; she thought the system was foolproof.
The call when it came caught her off-guard. She was home early from school, not roaming round Woolworths trying not to steal, because Lorna had gone to the dentist. Abigail rang her at five to see how she was. Lorna always made a big fuss at the dentist and she liked Abigail to take her suffering seriously.
‘He’s a butcher,’ said Lorna, sounding as if she still had a mouthful of wadding. ‘Let me ring you back. I want to make a cup of tea and take some aspirin first.’
Abigail hung up, amused. She didn’t really believe Lorna was in agony. When the phone went, five minutes later, she was so relaxed, so sure it was Lorna, that she picked it up at once without waiting for the signal.
‘Abby?’
She froze. He sounded so close he could have been phoning from the restaurant.
‘Abby, I know it’s you, don’t hang up, please.’
She couldn’t. She wasn’t even tempted. She hung on to the phone as if it might escape, and shut her eyes, imagining Dad with his arms round her. He had the sort of caressing voice that always made you feel he was hugging you. It was something to do with being Welsh.
‘Did you get the ticket?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you coming?’
‘I don’t know.’ And the next moment: ‘Yes, of course I am.’
She heard him give a great sigh as if until that moment he had been holding his breath.
‘When?’
‘I don’t know. As soon as I can.’ She felt as if her brain had a life of its own, not safely confined in her head but darting about all over the place, out of control. ‘But I can’t leave Mum for Christmas.’
‘Yes, you can, she won’t mind.’
‘No, I can’t.’ But already she was beginning to feel she could.
‘No, of course you can’t,’ he said then, sounding resigned, as if she were another adult making adult decisions.
‘How about the twenty-seventh?’ she said. It began to be real, once she named a date. ‘If I can get a flight.’ How she regretted all the time she had wasted. What if they were all booked up?
‘Fine. Terrific,’ he said. ‘Whatever you say.’
An idea came to her then, hearing those words. ‘The only thing is,’ she said, ‘can it be just us? I don’t want to meet her, I can’t. And it’s not fair on Mum.’
There was an agonising pause. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s a bit difficult, it’s such a small place and we’re both working here …’
‘Please,’ she said.
‘All right, caryad. I’ll do my best.’
Triumph surged through her. She felt as if she had rubbed Julie’s unknown face in the dust, trodden on her, banished her. They talked for some time after that about how much they missed each other and when she hung up she felt warm and comforted. Mum knew as soon as she came in.
‘You’ve spoken to him,’ she said. ‘I’m glad.’
‘I said I’d go out there after Christmas,’ Abigail said. ‘Is that all right? You don’t mind, do you?’
‘Of course I don’t mind,’ Mum said, smiling. ‘But I think you should go sooner. It’s crazy to go all that way for ten days. Go as soon as term ends and you can have three weeks out there.’
‘But what about Christmas?’ Abigail said.
‘To tell you the truth,’ Mum said, not looking at her, ‘I’ve always wanted to spend Christmas in an hotel. To be waited on, and not have to cook. To meet new people. To catch up on sleep. This could be my big chance. Go on, you book your flight. Get the first one you can.’
After that it all became real very soon. She felt like Alice Through the Looking Glass: everything went into reverse. From refusing to go, from being static and miserable, she was flung into a world of action and excitement, racing about trying to sort out her ticket and buy clothes, arousing envy among her friends. At first there were no seats to be had, but before she had time to slump into gloom and despair, the travel agent came up with a cancellation. Someone had gone down with appendicitis.
‘I can come on the nineteenth,’ she said, shaking with joy, when Dad rang again. ‘Someone got sick.’
‘Hurrah,’ Dad said, and they both laughed.
‘Aren’t we callous?’ she said, feeling guilty but elated.
‘Who cares?’ said Dad, sounding suddenly very young.
Mum bought her a new bikini and a sundress, and she got herself some sandals. Lorna gave her a pair of sunglasses, very smart, that got darker or lighter according to the weather. She was touched because Lorna was generally both poor and mean, and the sunglasses must have been expensive. She let news of her trip leak round the school and soon she was floating on a warm tide of envy.
‘Huh,’ said Michael, ‘it’s all right for some.’
Abigail smiled. You should have stuck with me, she thought. I shall come back brown and beautiful, and you’ll be sorry. Tracey had sandy hair and freckles.
She was so excited it was like being drunk, which she had been only once in her life, but nicer because there was no hangover to follow. Everything had to be done in a hurry because she had left it so late to decide. At the airport she felt a great wave of pity for Mum, who looked suddenly small and alone, still insisting that she was really looking forward to spending Christmas in an hotel.
‘You could go to Aunt Isabel,’ Abigail said, worried about her.
‘I know. But this is what I want. I’ll be fine. You have a good time, that’s all. Really enjoy yourself. Don’t punish him any more. Talk to him. Relax.’
Abigail nodded. They hugged, both smiling and tearful. She wanted to say she would bring him back with her, that she was going on a rescue mission, but she was afraid to raise Mum’s hopes, in case it could not be done.
‘Give him my love,’ Mum said, as she turned to go.
The fantasy persisted on the long flight, haunting her through the noisy film and recurring meal and drinks, piercing through the music on her head set. She got tired and she dozed but wasn’t sure if she was ever completely asleep, if the image of Dad saying yes, he wanted to come home, was her imagination or a dream. The only reality she was sure of was that he would be there at the airport to meet her, bronzed and smiling and alone; he would put his arms round her and she would hug him and that would make it all right. They would have time to talk about everything.
But when she landed she couldn’t see him anywhere. The crowd thinned out, the pale tourists and the black residents, and still he wasn’t there. How could he be late? How could he spoil it all?
A girl came up to her, smaller than herself, a sun-tanned girl with dark hair, wearing jeans and a T-shirt and no make-up. She smiled but she looked sad.
‘Hullo,’ she said gently. ‘You must be Abigail. I’m Julie.’
The empty beaches below them were glaringly white in the sun, and the sea water was the colour of peacock feathers, a blue-green so dazzling that it hurt Abigail’s eyes and she had to put on the new glasses, Lorna’s extravagant present. It was a good excuse, but she needed them anyway, to shield her from Julie. She didn’t think she was going to cry because she was still too stunned to believe what Julie had said. Luckily they did not have to talk any more now: the growling of the tiny aircraft, like an airborne terrier, made speech impossible. It was taking them from the big island to the small one, where in a sense she still believed Dad would be waiting with his arms outstretched.
Faced with Julie, and groggy from the seven-hour flight and all the anticipation, she had at first been furious and uncomprehending. How could he send Julie to meet her? He had promised. It wasn’t like Dad to break a promise.
‘I know,’ Julie had said, as if hearing the thought, or perhaps Abigail’s face had said it all. ‘I’m sorry it’s me. I know he said we wouldn’t have to meet, only – there’s been an accident.’ Then Julie’s own face crumpled up, reminding Abigail oddly of Mum, although they weren’t alike. It was the same look, of someone whose world had just ended, of someone with nowhere to go to be safe. Abigail stared at her, silent. She knew the word accident meant something worse, something more final, although she couldn’t believe it.
‘We were diving off the boat,’ Julie said, ‘and he didn’t come up and then, when he did, he … wasn’t all right.’ She started to shake; she clasped her hands together and looked at the floor. All around them people moved about the small airport: there were unfamiliar smells of heat and dust, fruit and flowers. Abigail felt very strange, as if she might wake up at any minute.
‘They think it was a heart attack,’ Julie said. ‘We did everything we could. We did the kiss of life and everything. But they think he had a heart attack under water.’
Never to see Dad again. Not
to be hugged, not to be told it was all right, he was coming home. It was too much to bear. She sat on a bench, speechless. It couldn’t be true. Julie must be telling her lies. It was a spiteful trick, just to upset her, because Julie was jealous at being left out.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Julie said. ‘I couldn’t ring you, you’d already left. And I didn’t dare ring your mother. I didn’t know what to do. You were on the plane when it happened. There was nothing I could do.’
Abigail kept shaking her head, to brush Julie’s words away, as if they were bees trying to settle on her.
‘I didn’t know how to tell you,’ Julie said. ‘I had to come and meet you and I didn’t know what to say. I still don’t.’ She looked at Abigail pleadingly; she seemed almost to expect sympathy.
‘It’s all your fault,’ Abigail heard herself say. She hadn’t known the words were in her mouth, waiting to leap out. ‘I hate you, I hate you, you made it happen.’
‘I know,’ Julie said in a desolate tone. ‘That’s how I feel too. It’s all my fault.’
After that there was nothing to say. They sat on the bench side by side and the silence spread out.
‘He wouldn’t have been here but for me,’ Julie said. ‘That’s what you mean, isn’t it?’
Abigail didn’t answer.
‘But don’t you see?’ Julie went on angrily. ‘I’ve lost him too. I loved him as much as you did. It’s the same for both of us.’ She started to cry.
It occurred to Abigail that Julie wasn’t grown up at all, that she was like Lorna with her phone-in programmes, someone who enjoyed listening to real life but never expected to have to take part in it. She was suddenly furious with her father for lumbering her with someone of her own age who was going to be no help to her. If you had to do this, she thought, enraged, you should have left me with Mum, who could help me bear it. But Julie was twenty-six. She was supposed to be grown up. She had stolen Dad and let him have an accident, but she was behaving like Lorna with toothache. Abigail felt confused. She was so angry with Julie that she wanted to kill her and at the same time she felt Dad might arrive at any moment and make it all right. Julie’s tears seemed theatrical: they embarrassed her. Dad couldn’t really have had an accident, not now, not when she’d finally come to see him and bring him home. She couldn’t be never going to see him again; that simply wasn’t possible.
Triangles Page 10
