I’ve looked so many times at the face of Leslie Wilson. Grainy black-and-white images of him clutching his wife’s hand. A hollow, faraway look in his eyes. He has a moustache, stubble, jet-black hair, a square jaw. His eyes are black, too, and his cheeks sunken. He looks like a lad, a poor lost young lad. The sort of lad you’d pass every day. Ordinary, average, nondescript. And yet there he was, at the centre of a controversial news story. He had in the early eighties what so many young people now seek, crave. He had instant celebrity.
He also had a natty line in sports casual sweaters. Well. I’ve only seen two of them. Both Le Coq Sportif. I guess I’m generalizing.
In those pictures, in those newspapers, the very few online, I feel so sorry for Leslie Wilson.
He looks like the sort of lad who’d work in your local garage. He looks like he was probably very good to his mother and never strayed far from home. I’ve read so much into those few photographs over the past week, and now he has been in touch and said he wants to meet, I can definitely only see good in those pictures. I want to only see good.
I want Leslie Wilson to be a good person.
I need Leslie Wilson to be a good person.
If Leslie Wilson is a good person it means I can have inherited that from him.
If Leslie Wilson is a good person it means that these recent shocks won’t have been in vain.
Look Rachel, it was all worthwhile. The shock, the weirded-outness. All absolutely fine. Because some good came out of it; you learned that your dad was okay.
Well. A girl could hope, couldn’t she?
He sounded half decent on the phone. Attentive, interested, could hold a sentence together. He said Kelly Hopper got in touch with him last week and explained she had got his details from a police contact and that she was working on my behalf and I wanted to meet. She said she’d give him a day to think about it and then call him back. She had then called him back and he’d jumped at the chance. But then she said something that he found a bit odd. She’d said, ‘I’ll set up the meeting. It has to run smoothly. I’ll take care of everything as I don’t want Rachel to be upset. She’s with child.’
She did, apparently – she used the biblical phrase. Oh well, she is a friend of Tom the vicar.
‘However.’
And this is the weirder bit.
‘In case anything happens to me, I’ll text you her number in a minute.’
Then she’d hung up.
He received the text with my number on, but then never heard from Kelly again. He waited, and waited, and tried calling her back on the number she’d called on. He’d looked her up online and found an office number. Both seemed to be cut off.
Which is when he bit the bullet and called me.
And I am very glad he did. I think. No, I am.
Oh God, what am I doing?
This is obviously going to go hideously wrong. I just know it is.
The afternoon before I decide to meet him I half tell Ben the truth at work. Well, I tell him I’m meeting my dad. I miss out the bit about him being the first man he ever masturbated over. I might save that for another time. Doesn’t feel right somehow.
No shit, Sherlock.
I just pretend he’s come out of the woodwork since Mum died.
‘Oh, out of bad comes good,’ he says.
I see Tracy looking over from behind her computer screen.
‘Yeah, he contacted me.’
She looks away.
God. What is her problem? Just because she warned me not to go digging, the deed was already done by then, the die already cast. This just . . . well . . . happened. It’s not like I’ve tracked down Shirley Burke, is it?
Gimme a break, Tracy.
‘Where are you meeting him?’
‘Euston station. His train gets in there and . . . well, we can walk somewhere from there.’
‘You shouldn’t be walking!’ shrieks Didi. ‘Not in your condition!’
‘Take an Uber,’ insists Ben.
‘On the company?’
The only Uber account I have is a work one. Is he seriously offering to pay for my father and me to go and find a restaurant?
I see him blush.
‘Oh, do you not have your own account?’
I shake my head.
‘Well, stick it through the business,’ he says, acting distracted, checking his computer screen, ‘and then we can sort it out with next month’s wages.’
And then I say something awful. It’s involuntary. As soon as the words come out I wish I’d not said them. I say, ‘God, you’re such a cunt, Ben.’
And it’s so shocking that Didi and Tracy don’t speak. I just notice Didi’s eyes widen and hear all their fingers tapping faster and faster on their keyboards.
Ben looks up slowly from his screen and gazes my way.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. Then realize that actually I’m not. Not in the slightest. Yes, I wish I’d not said it as it gives him ammunition to dislike me. But I do think it, so why not admit to it? And then it all comes tumbling out. ‘I didn’t ask for a taxi. I was quite happy to walk. You told me to get an Uber when you should know full well none of us earns the money you earn, so none of us has our own Uber account, we just have the Venus one. So, no. I won’t take one so you can dock it out of my wages. I’ll walk. Like I walk everywhere else.’
Not sure I do walk absolutely everywhere, but hey ho, he’s not to know.
‘Look, I know you’ve had a hard time of it lately—’ he goes to say, but I cut in.
‘Hard time? Hard time? You don’t know the half of it, Ben, you great big knob.’
Didi and Tracy appear to be sinking further down into their desks, as if there is some sort of magnetic force pulling both women into them.
And then it all spills out. How I haven’t just lost my mother, I’ve lost my complete identity – okay, so I’m laying it on a bit thick, forgive me, but it’s Ben and he’s – you know – an absolute prick – and how I was abducted as a newborn baby and kept away from my parents in a place called Loggerheads. LOGGERHEADS. And how I was all over the news. Et cetera, et cetera. And how he is punishing me for being a woman and being pregnant by docking my wages, how he has no concept of human suffering or emotion. In fact, I tell him, he’s an emotional retard.
‘We shouldn’t really use that word,’ Didi says, grimacing.
‘Oh, do one, retard,’ I snap at her. And she looks even more surprised than ever.
And of course, then, to really ladle it on I end with . . .
‘And now, Ben. I am going to meet my father for the first time. And what is going to be running through my head?’
‘I don’t know.’ He’s so sheepish. GOOD.
‘I’m going to be sitting there, thinking. My boss had his first wank over you. So thanks for that, Ben, you know. Nice one, babe.’
He is now the colour of a beetroot. I actually feel a bit sorry for him. Yes, he said something ridiculously ‘him’, but there was no need for me to call him on it and then give it to him with both barrels, whilst calling my assistant a retard. I am clearly taking out all my recent frustrations on him, and a little bit on Didi.
‘If I’d known he was your dad,’ Ben is saying, ‘I would never have said that about . . . you know what.’
I nod. I get that.
But then he adds . . . ‘Have you got a photo of what he looks like now?’
I want to punch him.
Leslie Wilson is still good-looking. I spot him immediately as he emerges from the platform with all the other arrivals from Birmingham New Street. He is carrying a small bouquet of flowers. His eyes are still dark; he looks almost Italian. And although he must be in his late fifties he has only recently started greying at the temples. Ben’d have a field day. He once came into work wearing a T-shirt that read ‘DADDY ISSUES’.
Well, he’d have them now, that’s for sure.
He’s not wearing sports casual any more. But he is wearing quite a trendy North Face anorak, jeans and – wow – Kickers. His hair is a bit Paul Weller. If I didn’t know already I’d say he was an old rocker, or someone who used to be in a Britpop band. The drummer. The roadie.
But then I realize I have no idea what he does for a living. He could well have been in the charts and I never knew. But it feels impolite to ask him just yet.
He could be Liam Gallagher’s older brother.
Okay, so that would make him Noel Gallagher. I’ll rephrase.
He could be Noel Gallagher’s older brother.
But I know that he’s not, as I know he’s not from Manchester.
It’s like I know him instantly. Well, it’s not like I’d have spotted Leslie anywhere. But there is something familiar about him, if that doesn’t sound trite. He still looks like that lost lad, except there’s a paunch at the waist, and wrinkles on his face, which only make him look more rugged.
‘Leslie?’ I say, because he is eagerly looking around to see which waiting woman might be me.
Then his eyes light up and he does a God, how stupid am I? look, because of course I am the only woman waiting by the platform entrance who looks in any way heavily pregnant. And I have told him on the phone that I am heavily pregnant. Anyway, the flowers are practically a goner because he drags me in to him for a massive bear hug and they get squashed between us. The realization that this is happening then sends us both into fits of nervous, embarrassed, I don’t know you but this is kind of hilarious even though it’s not kind of laughing, that only strangers who don’t want to be strangers can do.
‘Look at you!’ he says, all Brummie, which makes me laugh in itself. It sounds at once so alien, yet at the same time it feels like coming home.
Blimey, there was me taking the mick out of Tracy’s birth family being from Solihull. And look at me now!
He rubs my cheek, taking in my face, as if searching every inch of it for some sort of recognition. I don’t know if he finds it but he grabs me in for another hug, only this time he makes sure he puts the flowers behind my back so they remain unsquashed. And this time as he’s hugging me I feel his body jerk and I realize he’s starting to cry. I hold him there and, quite quickly really, the tears subside. He pulls away from me and hands me the flowers.
‘Sorry, sorry. Promised myself I wouldn’t do that,’ he says, taking a hankie from his coat pocket and wiping his eyes.
‘Thank you,’ I say, sniffing the flowers like people do in movies.
‘You don’t have to thank me for anything, sweetheart.’
‘How old are you?’ I ask, incredulous. He looks so young.
‘Fifty-five, babs. I was a nipper when we had you.’
Gosh. He’s as old as I feel!
He indicates the flowers and says, ‘I’m a bit crap with flowers so I have to be honest. The missus chose them.’
‘You’re married?’
‘For my sins.’
‘Have you got any other kids?’
He shakes his head. ‘She’s got a problem with her tubes.’
I nod. I’m his only child. No wonder he’s bloody crying.
We walk across the concourse of the station hand in hand.
Oh my God, I am walking across Euston station hand in hand with a complete stranger.
I never hold hands with people.
I hated holding hands with Jamie.
Later he would go on to say, ‘Was it because you had an inkling?’
‘An inkling of what?’
‘That I was gay.’
‘No, I just hate holding hands in public. Sorry.’
He’d seemed most put out.
We walk to Pizza Sophia, which is just across the road from my flat, and a ten-minute walk from the station. It does the best pizzas in the area and everyone seems authentically Italian (and if they’re not, then they’re very well cast). And I think, well, working-class bloke in London for what might be his first ever time . . . He can’t be intimidated by some homely pizza.
‘You live round here? Very posh, bab.’
‘I’ve done all right for myself.’
‘So! When’s the baby due?’
‘Week before Christmas.’
‘And d’you know if it’s a boy or a girl?’
‘No.’
‘Oh well, maybe you could call it Noel or Noelle.’
And we laugh. We laugh so casually. Anyone else in the restaurant would just think we were casual friends. Or a normal father and daughter meeting for a catch-up.
And let’s be honest, this is way different from that.
There is a chasm between us that we must cross.
‘I’m so sorry I never tried to find you before. Mum told me she got pregnant by a one-night stand.’
He rolls his eyes again, and the smile instantly drains from his face. ‘That’d figure. She was a fantasist, your mum. If I’d not been with her when you were taken, I’d have said she’d made the whole thing up.’
I never had Mum down as a fantasist. Okay, so she hoodwinked me my whole life, but – oh God, I guess he’s right. It’s just usually I’d assume a fantasist would make up slightly more glamorous stuff.
I’m Joan Collins’ cousin but we don’t speak.
Tina Turner stole her act from me.
One of my ancestors was Peggy Lee.
‘Where did you think I was?’
‘New Zealand.’
Oh good. I was right. I was right!
‘She told me she was going over there for a fresh start. And I believed her. Well, of course I believed her. Why wouldn’t I? We were both of us recognized wherever we went, but more so with her. I just wanted to get back to normality and the rot had set in with both of us. Then I . . . well, I went and made a fool of myself . . .’
‘How?’
‘Oh, I had an affair with a woman who took a shine to me. I had my head turned. I played the field a bit. So Linda was angry with me. We split up. She said she was shipping you both abroad. And she felt it was best to make a clean break.’
‘How did that make you feel?’
‘Oh, I was glad to see the back of her, don’t get me wrong. I mean, I know she was your mam and that, but fuck me, she was hard work.’
‘Well, I have first-hand experience of that.’
He then reaches out and takes my hand.
‘But saying goodbye to you was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do. I’d lost you once. Didn’t seem fair to have to lose you again.’
‘Did you ever try and keep in touch?’
He shakes his head.
‘You just vanished . . . off the face of the earth. She promised she’d write with an address and send pictures. But she never did. It was horrible. I lost you twice. Once was bad enough, but . . .’
‘Well, you’ve got me back now.’ And with that I’m much more soppy than I ever thought I could be. He takes my hand again and gives it a little squeeze.
‘I hope so, bab.’
‘What do you do for a living?’
I know. So weird. Asking your own dad what he does for a living. This whole thing is too surreal.
I just know he’s going to say he’s a scaffolder, or a bricklayer, something reassuringly manual and working class. So I am quite taken aback when he says, ‘I’m a drug and alcohol counsellor in a private rehab clinic in the Lickeys.’
‘The what?’
‘The Lickeys.’
‘Oh.’
He smirks and explains it’s a nice bit of countryside near Birmingham.
‘After your mam left and took you with her, I had nothing. I sold the house and moved into a flat and spent the profits on wine, women and song. Oh, and cocaine. Well, anything I could get my hands on. I went to a very dark place.’
‘But you came out the other side?’
‘Eventually. Took a while, mind.’
‘And now you help other people in similar situations?’
‘I try to. Although of course, up till now I thought I’d never meet anyone who’d been through something quite so similar as me.’
I nod.
‘But then of course I met you. And even though you won’t remember a thing about it. You’re one more person involved in that story, in that bit of my life. And I’ve never had that in my adult life. Well, this part of my adult life. My clean, sober bit.’
‘Someone to share it with?’
‘I guess so. It’s hard to articulate really.’
‘I know what you mean.’
Our pizzas arrive, but we’re so engrossed in the conversation we don’t even thank the waitress, except for a quick nod of the head.
‘For so long it’s felt like it never actually happened. It was so long ago now, you . . . you don’t see things online about it as it was all pre-internet. It’s not something most people remember. So it’s like I made it up. Made it up as an excuse to drink. Or snort whatever.’
‘It did happen,’ I tell him. ‘It happened to me and it happened to you. It happened to Mum as well. It’s just a shame she never bothered to tell me.’
He shakes his head. ‘I can’t actually believe that, bab.’
‘Well, I guess denial was an easier place for her to settle.’
‘It must’ve taken so much effort, though, keeping up the pretence. The new names, all that.’
‘I guess so. And it goes some way to explain why I always felt I was looking at her through perspex or something. Hard to get to. There was definitely a division between us and I assumed she just didn’t like me.’
He ponders these words. We eat in silence a while.
‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘I’m really comfortable with silence. Because of my work. Time to reflect. But I appreciate it can be disconcerting for some.’
My God, my dad is really brainy.
He uses words like ‘disconcerting’, ‘appreciate’ and ‘reflect’.
Yikes. Suddenly he puts down his knife and fork.
‘D’you wanna know what’s freaking me out?’
‘What?’
‘When Shirley took you. When she tried to pass you off as her own. Obviously she couldn’t call you by your real name.’
‘Aha?’
‘So she called you . . . and this is too weird . . . Rachel.’
‘What?’
‘It’s true.’
‘Really? Bloody hell. Did Mum know this?’
He nods.
This is too much.
‘So it’s not just coincidence?’
He shakes his head.
‘I guess it was a name she thought you were used to hearing.’
I think about this. This is too bizarre for words. Mum latching onto something Shirley Burke had done. You’d have thought she’d want to run a mile from anything associated with her.
‘Did you go to Shirley Burke’s trial?’ I ask.
He nods vehemently as he takes a bite of his pizza.
‘I wanted to see the guilt in her eyes. I think I had fantasies about trying to kill her. But as always, I was too much of a coward.’ Then he adds, and it sounds like he’s joking, ‘Maybe one day!’
‘What was she like?’
‘She was a little girl playing dress-up, that’s what she felt like. She was completely out of her depth. If I thought Linda was a fantasist, she met her match in Shirley Burke. I mean, what did she think she was trying to achieve?’
‘Happiness?’
‘Her boyfriend saw right through it. He was there as a witness. Bit of a twat, if you ask me. Oh, it all came out, how Shirley had been stalking them. Well, his wife mostly. Hate mail. Talking to her neighbours. She’d even turned up at his mother-in-law’s funeral.’
‘What, and kicked off? Oh God, she sounds nuts.’
‘I don’t know. Think she just observed from afar. She came out with all this herself on the stand. Like she was showing off how clever she was. When in fact the jury were just thinking – you complete and utter fruit bat.’
‘Blimey.’
‘And they called her sister in too. She had more nous about her. I quite warmed to her; she seemed sane in comparison. But Shirley had cut herself off from her family so they’d not seen her in the latter part of her pretend pregnancy, and they’d not visited her with the newborn baby.’
‘So her family were normal, then.’
‘Dead normal. I remember her mum was there every day, sitting ashen-faced in the public gallery. She did once shout out, “Control yourself, Shirley!”’
‘What?’
This sounded like a trial from a soap opera.
‘Well, she went to pieces on the stand. Hysterical, she was. Made a right show of herself, didn’t warm herself to any of the jury there. Give her her due, though. She did change her plea.’
‘What, she was going to plead not guilty?’
‘She did plead not guilty. Silly bitch.’
‘But everyone knew she took me.’
‘On the grounds of diminished responsibility. Tried to make out she was bonkers. But trust me. I’ve met loads of loonies in my time. What she did was bonkers, no doubt about it. But she was just manipulative. Thought the world revolved around her. A lot of mad people do believe that.’
‘A lot of psychopaths, too,’ I say, trying to sound like I know what I’m talking about. ‘Like a certain President of the United States.’
He chuckles. ‘Mentioning no names!’
‘Exactly.’
‘Sadly, in his case, he might be right. The world does revolve around him.’
He sighs.
‘And for a very short while it did.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Revolve around her.’
We share a sad smile and eat in silence for a bit.
‘How long did she get?’
‘Ten years, bab.’
And he gives a look that says it should’ve been longer.
‘Do you know what happened to her?’
He shakes his head.
‘I was obsessed with her for a while. I did. I wanted her dead. If they’d had the flaming death penalty over here I’d have been first in the queue to give the injection, press the button.’
‘She did a very bad thing.’
‘Aye, she did. You’re right there. But I know myself very well now, bab. Sorry. Feels weird calling you Rachel. It’d feel weird calling you Diana, mind.’
‘Bab is fine,’ I say.
‘But it wasn’t that with me. It wasn’t that she’d taken you. You were well looked after from the sounds of things.’
Oh good, that wasn’t just a press story, then.
‘I wanted to kill Shirley Burke because she’d dented my macho pride. She’d come into our garden, onto our premises, and got one over on me. Made me feel less of a man, see. No matter how much people argued with me. No matter how many mates told me they’d have done the same thing. She’d taken the piss. And that offended me more than her hiding away with you for weeks on end.’
I nod. I get it. I really do.
‘Sorry. I’m probably being a bit too honest here. But life’s too short for bullshit.’
‘So you don’t know where she is now? Even if she’s alive?’
He shrugs, which I find a bit non-committal. Either he does or he doesn’t.
‘She was released. And I was gutted. And I still wanted to kill her. I’d follow her around.’
‘What?!’
‘I was obsessed with her. She’d wrecked my life. I wanted to wreck hers.’
‘Where was she living? Where was she from?’
‘Manchester way, Oldham. But then I had to let go.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I don’t remember half of it myself. So I don’t explain it very well. It was when I was drinking a lot. I went there thinking I’d sort her out. But truth be told I just sat in a boozer round the corner from hers and drank myself into oblivion. Slept on a park bench. Eventually the police were onto me and . . . well, they said it wasn’t a good idea to be hanging round there, no matter how much sympathy they had for me.’
This story. This life. It doesn’t fit with the sprightly, clean-cut man in front of me. The handsome matinee idol gone slightly to pot. This man with his clean fingernails and his shiny white teeth does not look like the sort of man who has ever slept on a park bench.
‘And what would you do if you met her now?’
‘What would I do if I met her now?’
‘Aha.’
‘Oh, that’s simple.’
‘What?’
‘I’d kill her.’
He takes a swig of his Diet Coke, and then continues to eat his Fiorentina with a runny egg. Suddenly he says, ‘Rachel, I’ve got a confession.’
His change in tone alarms me.
‘What?’
‘Me and your mum weren’t getting on during the pregnancy. I’d already started hitting the bottle.’
‘That’s okay. She’d drive anyone to drink.’
‘The day Shirley took you, I was pissed. Well, it was a national holiday. That’s why Linda turned her back on you. She wasn’t washing up. She was rowing with me about starting drinking so early. She blamed me.’
‘It’s okay.’
‘She said all sorts. Said if I’d not been pissed and we’d not been rowing we’d’ve known a complete stranger was walking off with you.’
‘It didn’t cause the abduction though, Les.’
He looks so stunned that I would think this.
‘Thank you,’ he says. Then says it again, before adding, ‘You don’t know what it means to me to hear you say that.’
‘Shirley Burke did this. Not Mum. Not you. And not your drinking.’
‘I hate her, Rachel.’
‘The feelings are still that raw?’
‘Rachel. Look at you. I’ve missed out on all this.’
He motions with his hand to show he means my whole body.
‘I never saw your first day at school. Exams. Boyfriends. I never saw you blossom, I just see the end result. And then on top of all that, it sounds like you had a gruesome childhood.’
‘Oh, it wasn’t that bad.’
‘You weren’t close to your own mum, and whose fault is that?’
‘Shirley Burke’s.’
‘So forgive me if it sounds a bit harsh. But yeah. I’d push that bitch under a bus tomorrow.’
He calls the waitress over and orders another Diet Coke. I think that is the end of it. I am about to change the subject to something jollier – mass genocide, maybe – when he continues.
‘I could kill her, you know. I could kill her tomorrow. And just knowing that, d’you know what that gives me?’
He’s leaning in towards me a bit now. Like mafia bosses do in gangster movies.
‘It gives me power.’
I am speechless. I have no words. I honestly do not know what to say, so I find myself nodding in slow motion. I may as well be underwater, I am going so slow.
He continues to eat.
‘How d’you mean? You could kill her tomorrow?’
‘This is good pizza.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I have her mother’s address.’
I gulp. It’s what people do in cartoons, but I am doing it now. Who knew? I am a gulper. At times of stress, receiving surprising information . . . I gulp.
‘I made some friends. When I hung around those pubs all those years ago. They might be alkies but they’re decent people. Fucking decent people. And they keep me in touch. Plus there’s the electoral register. I check that every now and again. And her mother, Mrs Mary Burke, she still lives where she always lived. Seven-three-nine Springfield Avenue, Oldham.’
‘That must be a long road.’
‘Well, it’s a long story, isn’t it? My friends tell me Mary doesn’t see too much of Shirley. But they must see something of each other, eh?’
‘Eh,’ I find myself echoing.
‘All it’d take would be to break in. Or get one of them to break in . . .’
He’s starting to – not quite scare me – but he is alarming me somewhat now. This is all turning rather cloak and dagger, rather Machiavellian. I preferred it when he was being avuncular. But then is he being any different from how I have been since I found out what happened? And this man before me has had to live with the incident, those lost times, for thirty-odd years.
‘Break in and go through her stuff. Find an address book. And bingo.’
‘Bingo,’ I say, unconvinced. And slightly weary.
‘Do you want to find her, bab?’
I think. I know he’d do it for me. I know he’d lead me to her, dead or alive.
‘Do you think she’s alive?’
‘They reckon she is. And they’d know.’
I think some more. I’m obviously taking too long as he says it again.
‘You don’t have to tell me now. But if you do want to see her. I’ll get you to her.’
I take a deep breath. Then I say it.
‘No. No, I don’t want to meet Shirley Burke.’
‘Fair dos.’
‘Once upon a time I thought I did. But I don’t think I need or want to now.’
And then we discuss mass genocide.