VERONICA NEARLY RAN a red light as she drove home on automatic pilot from Holly Grange. She slammed her foot on the brake to come squealing to a stop in the nick of time.
‘For God’s sake, Ronnie, pay attention and get us home in one piece,’ Abi said, lurching back in her seat.
‘I can’t get it out of my head.’ Her mind replayed the words her mother had said. ‘I lied. I told them their father was dead.’
‘Me neither.’
It had taken every ounce of Veronica’s being to stay seated there in that cosy nook next to their mother after she’d offloaded the news her father wasn’t dead, or at least that he hadn’t died when Margo said he had. Nothing they thought they knew was true. Her own revelation had paled into insignificance as her mother worried over the lie she’d told. Abi had gone white beneath her tan makeup and told Veronica if she didn’t get outside into the cool evening air, she was going to be sick. Veronica had waved her away biting her lip as she choked back the questions vying for attention knowing it was futile to ask them because she could see the window to the past had closed once more. The conversation she’d just had with her daughters was lost to Margo. Instead, Veronica had been the dutiful daughter whispering soothing platitudes as she stroked her mother’s arm until, gradually, she’d settled, becoming engrossed in the waltz music on the big screen in front of her.
She’d gotten up and left then, avoiding Danika’s questioning gaze as she walked swiftly through the lounge to the exit, desperate to escape the walls of Holly Grange and the horrible thing she’d learned inside them. She’d found Abi leaning against her car, arms folded across her chest.
‘Do you think it’s true, what she said in there?’ she’d demanded as soon as she saw Veronica.
Veronica aimed her keys at the car. ‘Yes, I do.’ There’d been a rawness on her mother’s face, a peeled back honesty when she’d said what she’d said.
She’d not been sure she should drive straight away as she felt punch drunk and so she’d slunk low in her seat, Abi clambering in next to her as they silently mulled over what to do about what about what they’d learned. Their father was a bigamist—what could you do with that? The boys would be at football practice and Jason had been talking about taking them to Nando’s for dinner. There was no way she could pretend everything was normal and she couldn’t very well tell them what her mother had just revealed. They’d have to stay the night at their dad’s, she decided, and retrieving her phone she texted Jason. The message something urgent had come up with her mother, telling him not to worry she was okay but asking if he could have the boys to stay over tonight pinged off. His reply had bounced through a few minutes later.
‘Can do – you ok?’
How tempting it was to type ‘no’—to go to her ex-husband, lay her head on his shoulder and feel the arms that had once held her wrapped tight around her once more as she poured out what she’d just learned. She couldn’t give in to the temptation though. So, she sent a quick response saying she was fine and just had to sort something out for her mum. Nothing came back so she assumed, he was satisfied with her reply. She’d turned the key in the ignition then and begun the journey home aware of Abi sitting statue still next to her.
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‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING?’ Abi stood in the hallway knocking back a glass of wine she’d helped herself to the moment they’d gotten in the door. She watched as Veronica unhooked the latch and pulled the ladder down from the loft.
‘I want to get up in the attic and I need you to stand at the bottom here so I can pass some boxes down to you so when you’ve finished that,’ she pointed to the wine, ‘put your glass back in the kitchen and help me. I’m going to see if I can find any clues as to where Dad is now in Mum’s old stuff.’
Abi’s eyes narrowed. ‘Mum always said he went to Devon but then who knows if that’s true. Who knows if any of what she said tonight is true and anyway, what are you going to do if you find something?’
A thought occurred to Veronica as she tested the ladder. ‘You saw her face, Abi, it’s true. He might have tried to contact us and she never told us. Have you thought of that?’ Her stomach contracted at the thought. Would she have wanted to hear from him? The answer was yes, because then she’d know it wasn’t her and Abi he’d left, that he’d loved them after all. It mattered to her to know that. ‘I want to see him with my own two eyes.’ She hadn’t thought this through, not at all, and it was pure adrenalin she was running on but she also knew without a shadow of a doubt it was what she wanted to do. Needed to do.
‘He might be dead you know, Ronnie. What then?’
‘At least we’ll know for sure.’
‘And what if he’s alive and well, happily living his double life with another family he wanted more than he wanted us? How do we deal with that and do you upend their lives too? He could go to prison you know.’
‘I know and I don’t know. Stop talking, drink your wine, and help me.’ Veronica clambered gingerly up the rungs and poking her head into the darkened space, she felt like one of those meercats stretching her neck long and gazing about.
‘Watch out for the rats,’ Abi called.
‘Shut up,’ Veronica hissed back, retrieving the torch she’d shoved in the pocket of her work trousers. She shone it about half expecting to spy small shapes scurrying into the shadows but there was nothing to see, only the boxes she’d shoved up here, out of sight out of mind. She pulled the rest of her body up and crawled the short distance to where the boxes she’d sealed with masking tape, and had the foresight to label clearly with permanent marker, were. She’d learned the hard way if she were to try and straighten up she’d smack her head on the rafters.
For a moment she toyed with the idea of pulling the boys’ two boxes of pre-school memorabilia down. She felt a tug of longing for those precious years. It had been a time of certainty when she’d understood exactly who she needed to be because the boys had made it clear to her. A mother. They were growing up too fast, she thought, recalling Haydn’s flaming face when his voice had cracked alarmingly as he answered Sophie’s question about a band they were both into while they waited for her to finish work on Thursday afternoon. She’d felt for him. It was such an awkward age and once they were through this boy-man phase she suspected it wouldn’t be long before girls started making an appearance on the doorstep.
How tempting it would be to sit on the floor of the living room, if she could find space amongst Abi’s crap, and rifle through their old paintings, to smile at a favourite toy like an old friend. She could pretend the bombshell her mother had dropped was a bad dream. She’d like nothing better than to marvel over how small her boys’ shoes had been or the size of a teeny-tiny hand-knitted jumper she’d once pulled over their heads and gently pushed their pudgy arms through the sleeves of. The evening would disappear if she went down that rabbit hole and the time to do this was now while the boys were away for the night. ‘Stick to the task at hand, Veronica,’ she told herself.
‘Did you say something?’
‘No.’
She shone the torch, scanning the handwritten labels until she located what she was looking for and, pushing the first of the three boxes along in front of her, she crawled back to where the light was shining up through the trapdoor.
‘Abi, I’ll pass it down to you.’
There was no answer.
‘Abi!’ Veronica bellowed, sticking her head through the hole trying to see where she’d gotten to.
Her sister reappeared a minute later.
‘Where did you disappear to?’
‘More wine, to deal with the shock. I’m here now.’
‘Right, well can you take this? There’s three of them. It shouldn’t be too heavy. She passed the box down awkwardly seeing Abi stagger under its weight.
‘It is so bloody well heavy.’ She put it down and pushed it down the hall with her legs into the living room before coming back to repeat the process.
They managed to get the three boxes onto the ground without mishap and Veronica climbed down dusting herself off at the bottom. ‘There’s no point putting it away, I’ll only have to get it down again in an hour or so,’ she said to herself, eyeing the ladder before following Abi through to the front room. Scruffy-bum was poised precariously on the back of the sofa, leg cocked as he industriously licked his bum. Abi had drawn the curtains and kicked the worst of her mess over into the corner of the room by the television, clearing some space for them to sit down and begin going through whatever flotsam and jetsam their mother had been unable to part with.
‘I’ll fetch some scissors, and then give you a hand moving the coffee table out the way,’ Veronica said, disappearing into the kitchen and returning a moment later with the weapon needed to slide down the join in the masking tape. She and Abi took an end each of the coffee table, careful not to tilt it and send the various cups and bowls Abi had neglected to return to the kitchen over as they lifted it, putting it down so it rested flat against the sofa.
‘Right then,’ Veronica said, rubbing her hands together. ‘We are good to go. ‘I’ll start on this one, you can start on that.’
She was sitting cross legged on the floor with a pile of birthday and Christmas cards she’d glanced through next to her along with old address books and ring-binder folders filled with household bills and receipts. She didn’t know why her mum had thought she needed to keep hold of these. She’d turf them, she decided, given the five or was it seven years you were supposed to hang on to this sort of thing was just about up. She’d no need of any of it now.
She’d drawn the short straw, she thought, seeing Abi sipping her third wine in between smiling over old photographs in the album she was pouring over. Sauvignon Blanc and denial were obviously her sister’s coping mechanisms. The next item in her box was a green, hardback notebook and picking it up she already knew what she’d find inside. She was right, she saw, opening it to a random page and eyeing the neat columns handwritten in biro. It was her mother’s weekly household budget. Flicking through it she saw page after page of carefully itemised spending. She could remember her mum sitting at their kitchen table working out what they had and where it had to go, writing in this very book or at least one just like it. Her eyes rested on an entry for new pointe shoes for Veronica and she bit her bottom lip. She’d never gone without, not once, but she was certain her mother had to make sure her girls had everything they needed.
‘I had such a fat face. Look.’ Abi turned the red, leather-bound album to show the Polaroid shot of herself striking a ballet pose for the camera.
Veronica managed a grin at her sister as a three or four year old. ‘Chipmunk cheeks.’
‘I wanted to be just like you,’ Abi said. ‘But I knew I was never going to be as good as you were at dancing so I didn’t even try.’
‘Did you?’ Veronica put the notebook down. She was surprised; she’d never had a sense of adoration from her sister. Yes, she’d follow her about but all her friends who had younger sisters would also bemoan the fact they never got any peace from them.
‘I idolised you. All my friends thought you were amazing when I was growing up. This gorgeous ballerina who was going to be famous. I was super proud of you.’
‘You never said. I always thought you thought I was pain.’
‘Well that too, obviously.’
They looked at one another and this time Veronica laughed.
‘You took so much of Mum’s attention. I was always relegated to the background and I resented it. Not so much you but the ballet.’
‘At least Mum left you alone to get on with things. I could feel the weight of her expectations on my shoulders right from that very first class.’
‘But you loved it and you were a natural. She could see that, she just wanted you to fulfil your potential.’
‘I think she wanted me to fulfil her potential too. You’ve heard her sing; she should have been on the stage. And I did love it but I probably would’ve loved it more if I didn’t have to keep proving myself.’ She remembered the way Abi had seemed to have their parents wrapped around her finger when she was small. ‘I was always envious of you.’
‘Why? What was there to be jealous of?’
‘All you had to do was flash those baby blues of yours and you’d get your own way with Mum and Dad.’
‘Well, it didn’t do me any good where Dad was concerned, did it? Because he left anyway.’
‘I suppose. Abi, I’m sorry I wasn’t a better big sister back then.’
‘We were both dealing with the Dad shit in our own way.’
‘AD,’ Veronica said softly.
‘What?’
‘It’s how I always think of the time after he left, After Dad.’
Abi nodded.
They lapsed into silence as they went back to their respective tasks. Veronica pulled out a wodge of letters secured by a rubber band, feeling a jolt of excitement. There was bound to be something in this lot, she thought, taking off the band and sorting through them. She was right, she thought, holding the envelope addressed to her mother in her father’s handwriting up to the light. ‘Oh my God, Abi. Jackpot! Look,’ she waved the envelope at her. ‘It’s from Dad.’ She turned it over in her hands and saw the address. ‘He sent it from an address in Bridgwater.’
‘Where’s that?’ Abi’s skin was a mottled pink and white.
‘Somerset.’ Veronica had been there once with Jason. They’d stayed in a B&B and it made her shiver to think she’d been so close to her dad as they’d bumped the twins along in the pushchair wandering the historic old town’s streets. What would she have done if she’d seen him?
Abi shuffled over and Veronica pulled the notepaper from the envelope angling it so as they could both read it.
The letter was short and to the point with no opening pleasantries.
Margo, I don’t know how you found me but you’re not to contact me again. I’ve drawn a line under that part of my life and moved on. I asked you for a divorce so I could marry Karen but you wouldn’t agree to it and in the end I decided to take matters into my own hands. She knows nothing about you or the girls and I want it to stay that way. Me and her, we’ve a baby on the way and I’m stretched tight so if it’s money you’re looking for, there is none. I’ve made a fresh start and that’s what you and the girls need to do too. It would be better all round for all of us if you pretended I was dead.
Phil
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IT WAS A COLD LETTER and Veronica shivered as she dropped it watching it flutter to the floor. Abi gave a choked sob and her own throat tightened as her eyes began to sting as the memory of the father she’d always held in a haloed light began to fade.
‘How could he just wipe us away?’ Abi asked.
Veronica pulled her close and rested her chin on her sister’s soft hair. ‘Who knows, Abi. Maybe he had a breakdown. They weren’t happy for a long time, him and Mum but I do know we’ve cried enough tears over him.’ Even as she said it her own cheeks were wet. She hugged Abi tight just as she had when their mother had given them the news their dad, was dead. Now, she wished he could have stayed that way.
‘What about Mum? Does this change things with Mum?’
‘Only if we let it.’
‘She did it for us didn’t she? She thought it would be easier for us to accept he was dead than to know he’d decided to scratch us from his life.’
‘Yes, I suppose she did, and what a thing to have carried around with her for so many years.’
‘What do we do, Ronnie?’
‘We drive to Bridgwater tomorrow and see him for ourselves.’
‘Confront him you mean?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Poor Mum.’ Abi sniffed.
‘Poor all of us,’ Veronica added, thinking how so many paths taken led back to their father.