After their dinner of fish and chips on Thursday night, Martha and Sophie withdrew tactfully to the kitchen sink, leaving Ella alone with David, on the pretext of an extra cup of coffee, to give them the chance to talk privately.
Ella hadn’t as yet taken advantage of the privacy to talk about the subject in her mind, but since the bank account was sinking dangerously, she was forced to mention money.
‘David.’
He came to attention.
‘Mum?’ He smiled at her. ‘Come on, spit it out.’
‘It isn’t easy, talking about money, but I have to. It’s about Sophie. She’s been paying full board since he left. She insisted, it’s just a couple of fortnights, of course, and I accepted it, though I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to make a fuss, but I haven’t spent it, I’ve gone on banking it for her. We did that for you and Caroline, remember, and gave it to you when you married. But it’s got to the point – I can’t really keep the house on what he’s putting in the account unless I do use Sophie’s money and I don’t think it’s right. I hate worrying you about this, but if he’d offer maintenance for Sophie, it would show he cared about her. I don’t want her to hate her father. It isn’t right. It’s terrible to hear the way she talks about him.’
‘She sounds bright enough.’
Sobered as he was, he smiled over Sophie’s brightness.
‘That makes it worse, that she can hate him and not worry about it. It seems so hard-hearted. But he isn’t helping.’
‘Have you written to him about it?’
‘Yes, but he answered that he’d made allowance for that already. He doesn’t understand how much it costs to keep a house. I suppose it’s expensive, living in a motel and eating in restaurants and that’s all he has to spare, but even if he cut into capital … he can’t want her to despise him.’
‘Dad isn’t living in a motel. He hasn’t been since that first week. He moved in with her but of course that wouldn’t do. It was just a bachelor pad. Now she’s managed to sublet it and they’ve moved into a bigger unit. I had dinner there last week. Alone. Martha isn’t in to doordarkening yet. We’re debating the issue. I think Martha has to support me. Why am I blathering on like this? Shock. Shock. I never expected this of Dad.’
‘You never know, do you?’
She was terrified by her anger. It was like a tall, black wave rearing, threatening her … she could lose her footing, drown in it, and she never knew where it might be waiting to rise.
‘Well, Max is right, after all,’ David was saying. ‘He keeps on about getting a solicitor. There’s a woman he knows who’s good and isn’t expensive. Mary Duckworth. What do you say, Mum? Shall I make an appointment with her?’
‘It would take some of the weight off you.’
‘I’ll talk to Dad about Sophie, too. He must want to do the same for her as he did for us.’
‘He always cared for your welfare. He never grudged you anything you needed.’
That orthodoncy had cost hundreds of dollars.
‘You’re a Trojan, Mum.’
You wouldn’t say that if you could see into my mind. You wouldn’t want to know me – that disgusting face coming and going like an advertising sign and not even doing its job – no discharge of rage any longer. If I found myself in the same room with that lying bastard I’d take an axe to him.
‘Credit where it’s due,’ she said briefly. ‘It’s Sophie I’m worried about, not your father.’
‘Some women would be trying to turn Sophie against him.’ He added bitterly, ‘This business of the money – it’s not him, it’s her. I’d swear to that. She’s got him hypnotised. Oh, I’m never going to understand it.’
Remembering the tone of that one’s communications, Ella doubted that he was under hypnosis, but if thinking so made it easier for David, he was welcome to the idea.
‘I don’t like asking you to do this.’
‘Who else?’
Caroline, she thought. She would have expected Caroline to show responsibility, David to slide away with an amiable, apologetic grin.
No doubt, Max’s relationship with that one … being a colleague, made it difficult for Caroline, but she had never let personal considerations stand in the way of duty till now.
And Max was clearly sympathetic to her cause.
People were mysterious, even one’s own children.