by Peter May
For some reason, she still hadn’t opened the box, or her letter. And the longer she left it, the harder it became to do. She couldn’t really explain it to herself, but she felt sick every time she thought about opening either. She went back down the hall to her bedroom, pausing briefly on the landing at the top of the stairs. She could hear Derek and her mother talking in the lounge below, but the burble of the television masked their words and she couldn’t make out what it was they were saying.
She hadn’t been to school for days, and she knew that sooner or later they would contact her mother. But not yet, evidently. She slipped into her bedroom and shut the door carefully behind her. The Clarks shoebox and the white envelope sat on the bed, beckoning her to come sit beside them and open them up, to reveal the secrets she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to know.
She had not said a word to her mother, about going to the Geddes, or meeting her godfather on the beach at Portobello, and she wasn’t sure she had ever felt quite so alone in all of her short life. Even at the moment of learning about her father’s death, her mother had been there with warm, protective arms. But that umbilical had been cut now for ever. She was adrift on her own in a world vacillating between fear and uncertainty.
Tentatively she sat on the edge of the bed and lifted the shoebox on to her lap. The knot in the string was impossible to unpick and, in frustration, she reached for a pair of scissors on the dresser and slashed through it. The lid toppled to the floor. She peered into the box and, as she had feared, felt disappointment wash over her. There was really very little in it. Pens and pencils, a couple of erasers, a small stapler and a sprung implement with opposing claws for removing unwanted staples. There was a box of Gaviscon double-action antacid tablets, strawberry flavour, a fluorescent yellow marker pen, a small brown resin Buddha. She remembered something very similar to it sitting on his study desk here in the house, but bigger. And she wondered suddenly what had happened to all that stuff.
She lifted out two sheets of folded A4 paper and opened them up. The top sheet was the draft of a letter applying for a job at a university in England. She glanced at the date, and realised it could only have predated his redundancy by a matter of weeks. Or days. Had he seen the writing on the wall? If he’d got the job, would that have meant moving the whole family south? Or were he and her mother already bound for divorce? The second sheet was his résumé. All the jobs he had held over the years, and then a long list of his qualifications. She had not realised that he’d had so many degrees. An M.Sc. in Molecular Biology, a B.Sc. Honours in Genetics, a Ph.D. in Cell Biology. He had also studied ecology, and conducted investigations into chronic neurological conditions in both humans and insects.
She had known none of this about him. The years he must have studied, the jobs he had taken, research projects he had worked on. He left in the morning, he came back in the evening. He was the man she knew at nights and weekends, and on holidays. He was her dad. The other person he’d been had simply never existed for her. What kind of pain and pressure had he kept to himself? The loss of his job, the destruction of his research, a wife who’d been having an affair. Karen had been oblivious, and when it seemed to her that he hadn’t been there for her, she’d accused him of caring only about himself and screamed in his face, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.
She did not even know she was crying until she saw her tears blister the paper she held in her hands. She laid it aside and quickly brushed away the tears with the back of her hand. At the bottom of the box was a picture frame lying face-down. On top of that, a grubby white business card. She lifted it out. It belonged to a Richard Deloit, Campaign Director of OneWorld. Karen had heard of the organisation. A high-profile, very vocal, international environmental group based in London. They were, it seemed to Karen, always in the news. Well known for gimmicks and stunts designed to attract media attention, if nothing else. She could even picture Deloit himself. A glamorous sort of man with curls of palladium white, full of righteous indignation and silky self-confidence, who seemed more impressed by himself than the causes he spoke for. She flipped the card over. There was a mobile phone number scrawled on the back of it, and the words, Call me.
She laid it aside and reached into the box again to retrieve the final item. As she turned it over, she saw that the frame was fashioned from hand-worked pewter and engraved with a Rennie Mackintosh design of interweaving tulips. She caught her breath when it revealed to her the picture it framed. She remembered it well. A photograph taken one year on holiday in France, when she was maybe five or six. She was wearing a pale blue print dress, and a wide-brimmed straw hat with blue ribbon over curling hair, much fairer than she remembered. It fell in soft loops to smooth, tanned, bare shoulders.
She gazed at that smiling, innocent face, and ached inside for those happy days of childhood spent, lost to the turbulence that would come in later years and wreck her young life. Her dad must have had it on his desk. And maybe he, too, had longed for those forgotten days and years when the sun seemed always to shine, and love and happiness just existed, like the sea and the sky.
She refused to let more tears fall, and reached over to place the photograph in its frame on her bedside table, determined to let it remind her that life had once been worth living. That, if she had been happy once, then maybe one day she would be again.
Now the box was empty, and she had no excuse for further procrastination. She lifted the letter and weighed it in her hands. But there was no weight in it at all. At least, not in the paper. The words inside, she knew, would be considerably more laden, and she couldn’t put off reading them any longer.
Suddenly, as if impelled by some outside force, she ripped open the envelope and pulled out the folded sheet from inside. Her fingers trembled as she opened it up and saw, in virgin ink, what may very well have been some of the final words her father ever wrote. Between his writing of them and now, no one else had ever read them.
My darling Karen,
I have no idea how to apologise for the pain I must have caused you. I know I never lived up to the father you wanted me to be, and I won’t make excuses for that now. One can always find excuses for one’s own failings, but when you reach the place that I have reached there is no room left for self-delusion. I know that suicide will have invalidated my life insurance, but I also know that your mother’s relationship with Derek will have ensured financial security. One of the great regrets of my life is that I failed your mum. I hope you didn’t blame her. I don’t. And, who knows, maybe Derek has been the father to you that I couldn’t. But however much you might hate me for what I have done to you, I want you to know that I love you, and that I always have, even if I couldn’t be the dad you deserved. Maybe one day, when the dust has finally settled on all of this, we can find again the happiness we knew when we were both so much younger.
Dad.
Karen sat with the skin tingling all across her scalp. Every fine hair rose on the back of her neck and on both arms . . . find again the happiness we knew . . . How could they find happiness again when he was dead? She read the letter once more, quickly, hungrily, and every nuance of tense, every choice of word screamed only one thing. He wasn’t dead. Her dad was alive. He had written this letter thinking that she would not read it for another year, by which time he was assuming she would know things she didn’t know now. Primary among these being that he wasn’t dead. That he hadn’t committed suicide. It was a post-revelation apology, an appeal, however tentative, for some kind of rapprochement. Asking for her forgiveness and a second chance.
*
Karen’s mother was less than pleased with her. ‘Derek lives here now, too,’ she’d said when Karen demanded to speak to her alone.
‘Well, come upstairs, then.’
But her mother had dug in her heels. ‘Anything you’ve got to say to me, you can say here and now. Derek and I have no secrets between us, and nor should you.’
‘Oh, well, forget it, then!’ And Karen had started for the hall.<
br />
‘No, it’s okay.’ Derek had been the one to pour oil on troubled waters. He stood up. ‘I’m for an early night, anyway.’
He half-smiled at Karen’s mum as he left the room, but Karen refused to meet his eye. And now that he’d gone, she wasn’t quite sure where to start.
Her mother stood, arms crossed defensively, a face like thunder. ‘Well?’
‘Why didn’t you ever tell me that dad had been sacked two months before he went missing?’
Whatever her mother might have been expecting, it wasn’t this. She unfolded her arms and blinked, surprised, at her daughter. ‘Well, that’s nonsense.’
‘It isn’t. He was kicked out of the Geddes Institute weeks before his boat was found out on the firth.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Chris Connor.’
A name that came out of the blue and struck her mother like a slap across the face. She shook her head, green eyes filled with confusion. ‘Chris . . . ? When were you talking to him?’
‘I went to the Geddes a couple of days ago.’
‘Why?’
Karen pulled a face. ‘Why do you think?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Karen, why can’t you just let it go? Your dad’s dead. Get over it.’
Karen almost bit her tongue in trying to hold back the truth. Instead, she said, ‘Are you telling me you didn’t know he’d been sacked?’
‘No, I didn’t. Why wouldn’t he tell me something like that?’
‘You didn’t know what he was working on, then?’
Her mother sighed in exasperation. ‘I don’t know. Something to do with bees. He’d been coming home with stings all over his hands. What kind of nonsense has Chris been putting in your head?’
‘It’s not nonsense! Dad was doing experiments on the effects of insecticides on bees. When he came up with something the industry didn’t like, they got rid of him. Forced him out of the institute by threatening to withhold its funding.’
Her mother shook her head. ‘I don’t know what Chris’s game is, but this is pure fantasy.’
‘No, it’s not!’ Karen shouted so violently at her that her mother took a half-step back, almost as if she had been physically assaulted. In the silence that followed, Karen glared at her, breathing hard. ‘He gave me a letter that my dad wrote and asked him to give me when I was eighteen.’
‘Well, he was a bit premature then, wasn’t he?’
‘After I went to the institute, he decided to give it to me, anyway. I opened it tonight.’
Her mother crossed her arms again. ‘And?’
Karen steeled herself. ‘He’s not dead.’
Her mother gasped her disbelief, turning her head away, shaking it and raising her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’
‘He’s not!’
‘Oh, don’t be so bloody stupid!’ She drew a deep, tremulous breath. ‘Karen . . . I’ve been talking this over with Derek . . . and we both think it’s about time you saw a psychiatrist.’ She blurted it out before she could stop herself. What might have been discussed as one of many possible approaches to dealing with her troublesome daughter was suddenly right out there, top of the agenda.
Karen felt the skin on her face redden, stinging as if she had been slapped on both cheeks. ‘Go to hell!’
She turned and stalked out of the room. Her mother’s voice came after her, laden with regret at words spoken in haste and anger. ‘If there’s a letter, show it to me.’
Karen swivelled on her heel in the doorway. ‘Oh, yeah. So you can accuse me of making it all up. Writing it myself. Cos, of course, I’m off my fucking head!’
She took the stairs two at a time, and saw a startled-looking Derek standing at the far end of the hall as she stormed into her bedroom and slammed the door shut, locking it behind her. Two strides took her to the laptop, and she selected a Marilyn Manson album to blast out at full volume. Then she threw herself face-down on the bed, wrapping her pillow around her head to shut out the music and the banging on her bedroom door, her mother’s voice shrill and hysterical somewhere far beyond it.
*
She supposed she must have cried herself to sleep, for she had no recollection of the album coming to an end, or the silence that followed it. Her mother must have given up trying to reason with her through the door long ago.
She rolled over on the bed and lay staring up at the ceiling. Her dad was alive, whether her mother wanted to believe it or not, and she had no idea which of the two conflicting emotions of joy and fury had gained ascendancy over the other. Initial euphoria had given way to a searing anger. How could he have done this to her? Faked his suicide and put her through two years of hell believing that he was dead, and that she was somehow responsible for it. Which, in turn, had subsided with the realisation that, as usual, she was only seeing things from her own selfish perspective. For her dad to do what he had done, he must have had powerful cause. And that it was linked in some way to the research which had got him fired and physically ejected from the institute seemed beyond doubt.
The fog of mixed emotions was starting to dissipate, and she began to think more clearly, in spite of the throbbing headache that had come with the spilling of her tears. If her dad was alive, where was he, what was he doing? She needed to know. She needed to find him. And she knew that she was entirely on her own. Who was going to believe her? Certainly not Derek and her mother. Clearly they thought she was disturbed, in need of psychiatric treatment. And psychiatrists, she knew, liked to give you drugs to dull the senses and mute the emotions. Well, nobody was going to make her take any pills. She wanted all her senses about her. But where to begin?
She lay with her eyes closed for several long minutes before she remembered the business card in the shoebox. She sat upright and leaned over to lift the box from the floor. The card was lodged in amongst all the pens and pencils. When finally she retrieved it, she flipped it over to look again at the two words which implored, Call me. Okay, she thought, I will.
She grabbed her mobile from the bedside table, pausing only briefly to glance again at the photograph of herself with the blue dress and straw hat, before focusing on dialling the mobile phone number on the back of the card.
She listened to it ring several times, certain that it was about to go to voicemail, when suddenly it was answered by a sleepy, gruff, male voice that barked out across the ether. ‘Hello?’
She blinked, and glanced at her digital bedside clock, realising with a start that it was almost one in the morning. She very nearly hung up, but forced herself to stay calm. ‘Is this Richard Deloit?’
There was a pause at the other end. ‘Who wants to know?’
‘My name is Karen Fleming. I’m Tom Fleming’s daughter.’ She had no idea what reaction to expect, if Deloit would even know or remember who Tom Fleming was. This time the pause was even longer. But when finally the man responded, his voice was low and threatening, and very much awake.
‘Do not ever call me again, do you understand? Never.’ And he hung up.
*
The mornings were darker now, and there was only the faintest of grey light in the sky when Karen stepped silently from her bedroom, a small backpack dangling from one hand. She closed the door silently behind her and tiptoed down the stairs. Avoiding the third step from the bottom, which always creaked, like standing on wet snow.
In the downstairs hall, she waited for several long minutes, listening for any sign that either Derek or her mother were awake and might have heard her. But the silence in the house was thick, almost palpable. Yellow light from the street lamps outside fell in through glass in the front door and lay on the hall carpet in long, subdivided rectangles. She moved through it like a ghost, into the living room. Derek’s jacket still hung over the back of the chair where she had seen it the previous evening.
In an inside pocket, she found his wallet. There were two credit cards and a bank card visible when she opened it up. Those he used most often, she suspected. She unclipp
ed an internal flap and turned it over. There were three more cards. One was the membership of a gym. One was his driving licence. And the third, another credit card. The one he was least likely to miss immediately. She slipped it out of its sleeve and checked the expiry date. It was valid until the end of the year. But there was still the problem of the PIN number. When people had several cards, she knew, they would write their PIN numbers down somewhere. Everyone lived in an age now where too much was expected to be committed to memory. PIN numbers, passwords, user names. Impossible to carry it all in your head.
She searched through the rest of the wallet, more in hope than expectation. It would be foolish to keep the numbers with the cards. But you’d want them with you. She thought for a moment. His phone!
She found his iPhone 6 in another pocket, and was relieved to discover that he hadn’t PIN-protected it. Idiot! She went straight to his address book and tapped in his name. In the notes field, below phone numbers and address, were all his PINs, along with several passwords and user names. Nothing if not predictable. Karen found the PIN she wanted and closed her eyes for a moment, committing it to memory. Five was the key, then two. Five, plus two, minus two, plus two. 5735. She returned phone and wallet to his pockets, then opened up her mother’s handbag, which lay on the table. She took £25 from her purse. Some cash to get her on the road. Then moved silently back out to the hall.
She laid her backpack on the floor, lifted her hoodie from the hall stand and pulled it on. Then she slipped her arms in turn through the straps of her bag and swung it on to her back.
