33
In one way, it all made sense. Jen had always had a memory, deeply buried somewhere, of her father getting teary-eyed one Saturday, saying goodbye. She had always dismissed it, assumed that she had invented it to make herself feel better.
In another, it was the most unimaginable thing she could ever have heard. She simply couldn’t take it in. It was like hearing the rules of the universe – the quarks and the strings, and the idea that all the matter in the world came from something the size of a pinhead. You could follow the words. You could even accept that what you were being told might prove to be the case. But that didn’t mean you understood it. It didn’t mean you could process that thought and fully comprehend it.
‘I don’t believe you,’ she said, when Rory told her.
‘Then don’t,’ he said, flatly. ‘It’s better if you don’t.’
‘Mum would never … I mean, hiding presents, maybe, but …’
‘I never blamed her. I drove her to it. I was staying out all night. I was drinking. We were unhappy.’
‘And then you left.’
‘Yes. I tried to keep on being there for you but then, one day, I’d had a couple of beers before I got there – I wasn’t drunk, but I suppose she could smell it on my breath – and that was it. She told me she was taking me to court.’
‘I don’t remember any of this.’
‘Why would you? We tried to protect you from it. Anyway, things were different then. Everything was loaded to the mother’s side, and they agreed with her. Stopped my visitation, and that was it.’
‘That was it? You didn’t try to … I don’t know, overturn the ruling?’
‘Of course I did. I cleaned up my act. Gave up drinking. Tried to have the decision reversed, but Elaine wouldn’t have it. Threatened she’d call the police if I ever came round again.’
Jen had tried to imagine her mother so fired up with anger and revenge that she would choose to deny her her father, rather than give him anything.
‘I don’t want you to blame your mother, Jenny. It would never have happened if I hadn’t been so … I know that, for a fact. I ruined our marriage, not her. Who could blame her for wanting to punish me in the worst way she knew how?’
‘Why have you never told me any of this before?’
‘What would have been the point? I’m glad you’re close to your mother. I wouldn’t want to get in the way of that.’
Jen had exhaled loudly. ‘So what am I meant to do with this information now?’
‘Nothing. You asked me. I told you. There’s nothing to be gained by it going further than this room.’
‘Shit. I wish I didn’t know.’
‘Sometimes,’ Rory said, ‘ignorance is bliss. If you ask me, the truth is overrated.’
‘I’m sorry, Dad.’
‘For what?’
‘Me too,’ he said, and that was the closest she had ever come to hearing him express real regret for the way things had turned out.
As she left, about twenty minutes later, keen to be back to familiar ground, and having run out of things to say, she gave him a quick hug, something she had never done before. Well, since she’d been an adult, at least.
‘How are you doing for money?’ she asked as she put her jacket on.
‘Well, my pension … you know …’
She handed him a ten-pound note out of her purse.
‘I’ll try to come again.’
‘That would be nice,’ he said, and he sounded like he might mean it.
Jen wasn’t sure if she really would, though. She had enough complications in her life.