The noise of Bel’s phone jolted her awake in the darkness. ‘Patsy?’
She dragged herself upright and turned on the bedside light. Her screen said it was only eleven fifteen, she’d been asleep barely an hour.
‘It’s your dad,’ her neighbour said. ‘Banged on the door, breathless and complaining of chest pains. He’s on the sofa and seems a bit better now. But I’ve called an ambulance.’
‘Oh my God. I’m so sorry. I’ll come straight over.’
‘Maybe better if I pick you up. They’ll take him to Truro – the Penzance place only does minor burns and stuff.’
Bel tried to focus but failed.
‘Listen, I’ll see him into the ambulance and text you when I’m on my way.’
But as Bel’s head cleared she knew she couldn’t wait. Throwing on her clothes, she biked to the main road, where she called Patsy again. The ambulance hadn’t arrived so she kept going, riding like a madwoman: legs pumping, hair flying, breath coming in harsh rasps as she shot down the dark lane to the village. It crossed her mind as she rode that this was yet another act in the play of her father’s manipulation: using his frailty to garner her sympathy when he knew he’d transgressed. But she couldn’t be sure. One of these days – maybe this one – it would be for real.
Her father was lying on his back on Patsy’s sofa. His colour was certainly poor and his breathing laboured. She knelt on the floor beside him and took his cold hand in hers. ‘Dad?’
His eyelids flickered open but he said nothing, just clutched at her fingers.
‘What happened?’ she asked gently.
‘Couldn’t breathe,’ he muttered. ‘Thought I was a goner.’
‘The ambulance is on its way,’ she said.
This seemed to galvanize him and he struggled to sit up. ‘Christ. Don’t let them take me to hospital, Bella. Those places are teeming with bugs. I really will croak.’
‘You’ve got to get checked out, Dad. You look terrible.’
This elicited a peaky smile from her father. ‘Thanks, girl. Just what a fella needs to hear.’
‘I’m serious.’
Dennis lapsed back against the cushions. ‘I had a skinful, that’s all. I’m fine now. Don’t fuss.’
Bel turned to Patsy, bewildered. Her friend just shrugged.
‘Dad …’ Bel tried again, but he interrupted her.
‘I was in a panic.’
‘About what?’
‘Leaving you.’
Bel barely had time to digest this before a vehicle was braking outside, headlights sweeping the room, doors banging.
At the sight of the masked paramedics, her father sat up straighter and smiled warmly. ‘Sorry, gentlemen. Apologies for dragging you out at this time of night on false pretences,’ he said, instantly adopting a plummy, imperious tone. ‘Had too much to drink, I’m afraid. Worried about having to get up early and go back to London in the morning. Nothing remotely wrong with me.’
Bel reckoned her father’s assessment of his condition was pretty close to the mark – he wasn’t faking it, exactly, but neither was he having a heart attack. The spruce young guys in their green uniforms, though, did not look convinced. One sat beside Dennis and began to ask him gently probing questions about chest pains and passing out.
Dennis answered them all with a cheery denial. ‘I’m getting on. Can’t take my drink like I used to,’ he assured them, with a cavalier laugh, reiterating, in case they hadn’t got the message, ‘I’m not going to hospital.’ He even refused to climb into the ambulance for an ECG: the test for a suspected coronary. ‘You’ll shut the doors and drive off with me,’ he insisted, paranoid to the last.
In the end, they gave up. ‘We can’t force him,’ the one called Tim told Bel. ‘A lot of older people aren’t comfortable going to hospital since the virus.’ He shrugged. ‘See how he is in the morning. If you’re still worried, bring him over to A and E and we’ll run some tests.’
Bel thanked them both and saw them out, aware of her heart beating too fast, her jaw clenched as she and Patsy helped Dennis to his feet and made their way slowly back to the cottage. Her father appeared much revived once the paramedics had conceded to his wishes. In fact, he seemed jaunty and rather pleased with himself.
‘Saw off those over-zealous twelve-year-olds,’ he said, as he flopped down in the orange chair.
Bel tried to persuade him upstairs. ‘Don’t feel like bed yet,’ he insisted. ‘All the excitement’s given me a second wind. Any chance of a cuppa, sweetheart?’
‘Well, I’m off to bed, even if you’re not, Dennis,’ Patsy stated, shooting a sympathetic smile in Bel’s direction.
Bel thanked her friend, apologizing again for the disturbance. Her heart was really pounding now, as she turned back to the stove. She felt almost queasy. Handing her father his mug of tea, she retreated to lean against the rail of the Rayburn, the stove warm on her bottom, trying to steady her breath and calm her pulse.
But instead of becoming calmer, she found herself beginning to shake. Yet another pointless, wearying melodrama had dragged her back to her father’s side, for the sole purpose of focusing on him, him, him. Fury was swelling, swirling, snowballing inside her and there was absolutely nothing she could do to stop it. Nothing, she realized, she wanted to do, even though the sheer power of it was unnerving.
Then Dennis began to laugh. She didn’t know what he was laughing about and she never found out. But something in the smug, mocking tone of her father’s mirth acted on Bel like the ring pull on a can. And the fury exploded out.
Time seemed suspended. There was silence, except for the loud fizzing of Bel’s rage in her head. Then she heard herself begin to speak.
Her voice was absolutely calm, her words sharp and clear as the light on the sea in the morning. Her mother was by her side: she could feel her supporting her, giving her strength. ‘I have something to say, Dad,’ she began. ‘And I need you to listen. I mean really listen.’
She saw her father’s face fall with a mixture of surprise and incomprehension, but plunged on, sentences piling out of her mouth succinct and fully formed. ‘You say you love me. And you bang on about people not respecting you. But you don’t respect me. You never have, not in my entire life.’ A slow, solid breath filled her lungs. ‘When I’m with you, I feel bullied – everything’s always on your terms. I feel put down – you tease me, tell me I’m fat and wear shit clothes, that I’m weak in the head. You casually call me, your own daughter, a “bitch”.’
Her father seemed to wince at the word, but she had more to say. ‘You’re always trying to control me, Dad. You assume I’ll do what you want, never giving a damn about my own wishes.’ She paused, shaking, to take one more deep breath. ‘And the worst thing is, I’ve been so scared of your vicious temper, frightened it’ll finally boil over – like it did when you actually hit me – that I can’t fight back.’
Bel watched as her father’s face darkened and he began to speak. But she thrust out her palm to prevent him. ‘This isn’t a discussion. I don’t want a fight. I don’t even need you to agree with me, Dad. In fact, I’m sure you won’t.’ She levelled her gaze at him, feeling the strength of her words buoying her, like a crowd of hands holding her aloft. ‘I just needed you to hear my truth, once and for all.’
Her father stood up, blinking rapidly, spluttering in his need to defend himself. ‘You’re being ridiculous, Bella, I never –’
But she shook her head vehemently. ‘One more thing.’ He subsided immediately at her tone. ‘You know I love you, Dad, but please understand this. I will never let you to treat me like that ever again.’
Her voice seemed to echo around the dark room, vibrating like cymbals in the warm air. She could hear her mother quietly applauding.
Dennis looked stunned and was clearly speechless. He stumbled backwards, feeling for the orange chair, and slumped into it. His breathing was short in his chest, his cheeks coloured dark red.
Bel picked up her phone from the counter and put it into the pocket of her jeans. Her legs felt as if they would barely carry her as she turned towards the door.
‘Where are you going at this time of night? Is it that Louis again? Has he put you up to this?’ He was trying to sound threatening, but his voice was reedy and uncertain. It held none of its normal domineering authority.
‘He left for Oxford yesterday, Dad.’
Her father took this in as Bel reached the door, his look suddenly alarmed. ‘So where are you going?’
Bel waved but didn’t answer, because at that precise moment she didn’t know.
‘Bella …’
His voice quavered anxiously behind her, but she kept walking. In the porch, she snatched her dry robe from the hook and shoved her feet into her trainers. She wasn’t going to Patsy’s or Harris’s or even JJ’s van tonight. Her friends had borne the brunt of her chaos – very kindly, very patiently – for too long. This was something she would sort out for herself.
She turned right out of the gate towards the beach. It was black as pitch, the houses along the lane long closed up for the night. But Bel liked walking in the dark, once her eyes had adapted. It was warm, even so late, and quite still, the stars bright in the July sky. A light breeze coming off the sea rustled the leaves in the gardens she passed. It was the only sound until she hit the beach and heard the lazy swishing of the waves on a tide far out across the sands.
For a while Bel walked along the shore, wrapped in her robe, playing over in her head her statement of intent. You don’t have to yell, Harris had said. And she hadn’t. Be clear and you will be heard, Patsy and JJ and Harris had all said at various times and in various ways. Well, she had been very clear. Whether her father had heard was quite another matter. But she realized his reaction wasn’t the point. It was not to change her father that she’d said those things but to change herself. Now she sensed a cool, still emptiness in her body, as if a breeze had blown through her, taking with it the piled-up frustration and fear of many years. If I can just hang on to this feeling, she thought.
Walking to the place by the rocks where she and JJ had barbecued sausages, she sat down. The sand was cold and she cuddled into her voluminous robe, suddenly feeling excessively tired. Gradually, she sank back, until her head, encased in the hood, rested on the sand. I’ll just lie here for a minute, she thought, lulled by the distant hum of the sea.
The next thing she knew, the sun was poking its head above the horizon to the east, the calm water, now more than halfway up the beach, a glossy, undulating expanse of silvery-pink. It was a beautiful day. Bel groaned as she uncurled her stiff, cold limbs. Her neck ached, her right toes had cramp, her face felt damp from the night air. She levered herself upright with effort and shook off the sand. Checking her phone, she saw there were no messages, no cry for help from her father – a small mercy.
As she began to climb the rocky steps, breathing hard, the prospect of another day wrangling with Dennis was not a pleasant one. But she knew she’d made peace with herself the night before. She would cope. She would tell him her plan again. He would accept it.
The cottage was quiet when Bel entered, the stove gone out. She stood for a moment, listening to the silence, knowing her father must still be asleep. She longed to rip off her damp clothes, have a shower and lie down in her own bed. But she would have to wait until he was awake before showering, and maybe a lot longer for a night under her own duvet.
She set about riddling the ash box and laying new kindling over a couple of fire-lighters, then went out to the wood store for more logs. The process was so familiar to her now that she did it on autopilot, remembering with a smile how frightened she’d been the first time. As she set a match to the stove now, she had a strange instinct that something felt out of kilter in the house. She looked around as the kindling caught, suddenly nervous, then quickly closed the stove and crept upstairs.
The wooden door of her bedroom door was half ajar. When she peered tentatively inside, she found it was empty. The bed was rumpled, obviously slept in, but there was no sign of her father. Or, on further inspection, his case and clothes.
Bel sat down on the bed, bemused. While she’d been sleeping on the beach, her father had obviously packed and left. She thought back to her walk up the lane just now. She hadn’t noticed if the green Jaguar was in its usual space in the car park but, then, she hadn’t been looking. Pulling out her phone, she left a text: Fell asleep on the beach. When I got back you were gone. Let me know you’re OK x.
Is he really attempting the long drive back to London with a hangover and hardly any sleep? she asked herself, knowing she should be worried. But she found she couldn’t get worked up about his sudden departure. In fact, shameful as it was, she was feeling a blissful surge of relief, drinking in the silence as she sat there on her own bed, in her own house, all by herself for the first time in what seemed like ever – but was, in fact, only a couple of weeks. The air no longer felt strained and toxic. Her nerves were not primed to defend her. There was peace.
She jumped up and immediately stripped the bed, carrying the armful of linen downstairs to take across to Patsy’s washing machine, which sat in a lean-to between their houses, so Bel could use it without bothering her friend. It’s a hot day, they should dry by tonight, she thought. Then she remembered Harris. He might wonder where she’d gone. She sent him a quick text. I’ll call him later to explain properly.
Bel needed to be at work by eight. It was Saturday, but she was doing an extra shift, her last before she became the official farm-shop baker. Tracey, who usually did weekends, was off because of childcare problems. But she had time for a tepid shower and change of clothes, maybe a quick coffee and bacon sandwich at Martine’s. Bel was suddenly ravenous.