It was nearly midnight when Hayden got home. He tiptoed past the girls’ room, trying not to wake them.
‘Dad?’
The whispered voice of one or other of his daughters was becoming a sound all too familiar when he came home late from a shift. Sighing, he pushed open their bedroom door and went in. Darcie was sleeping but Cara was sitting up in bed, scribbling in her sketchbook by the light of her bedside lamp.
‘You are in so much trouble,’ he whispered. ‘Do you know what time it is, Car?’
Cara shrugged. ‘I wanted to hug you before you went to bed.’
She lifted her arms up, and he leant over her so she could throw them around his neck.
‘Well, I suppose it’s hard to stay mad at you when hugs are on offer,’ he said, cuddling her back.
Darcie was waking up now, rubbing her eyes.
‘I waited up for you as well, Dad.’
Cara snorted. ‘No you didn’t. You’ve been snoring like a big fat pig for ages.’
‘I’m glad one of you has been getting some sleep.’ Hayden went over to the other bed to give Darcie a hug too. ‘Hello, sweetheart.’
‘Dad, can we have a midnight feast?’ Darcie asked, yawning.
Hayden let her go and tried his best to look like a firm, stern father from the 1950s.
‘No, you can’t have a midnight feast. You can go back to sleep right now – you too, Car. It’s far too late for you to be awake.’
‘Pleeeease! It’s not a school night,’ Darcie said. ‘Anyway, we missed you. You should stay and hang out with us.’
Hayden couldn’t help relenting. Brooke was right; his daughters wouldn’t be this keen to share his company forever. There were worse things for them than messed-up sleep patterns.
‘Well, all right. But we can’t make a habit of it.’ He reached into his coat pockets for the two bags of crisps he’d brought back from work. ‘Here, you can have what should’ve been your Saturday dinnertime treat. It’s not exactly a feast but it’s the best I can do.’
‘Yes!’ Darcie ripped hers open while Cara carefully closed her notebook.
‘I’ve got cheese and onion,’ Cara told her sister.
‘I’ve got prawn cocktail.’
‘Halvsies?’
‘Yeah, cool.’
They each exchanged a handful of crisps, not without a liberal distribution of crumbs, and Hayden smiled. It pleased him to see that his girls were the same best mates they always had been, even now they were at different schools. He couldn’t help worrying when he thought about how St Mary’s had driven the two Padgett sisters apart. For all the advantages a private education could bring to Darcie, if he thought it was going to drive a wedge between her and her sister then he’d pull her out tomorrow.
He sat down on the edge of Cara’s bed, letting this moment with his daughters wash over him; freezing a snapshot of it in his memory to keep forever. There weren’t enough moments like this in his life any more.
‘Here.’ Cara thrust her crisps under his nose. ‘You have to have one too.’
‘That’s all right. I’m going to get a sandwich in a minute.’
‘You have to, Dad,’ Darcie told him sternly. ‘Or you can’t be in Midnight Feast Club.’
He smiled and took one. ‘Well, OK. If it’s going to stop me getting kicked out of the club.’
‘Was work good?’ Cara asked him.
‘It was… as good as it ever is. Nothing interesting to report, apart from everyone having to sit in the dark for ten minutes when the power cut out.’
‘Nan says you can leave soon. Now we’re getting money from the Kermit thing.’
‘The Kershaw Fund,’ he said. ‘Well, we haven’t got it yet. Darcie’s teacher says we’re certain to be approved though, which’ll be a big help. Still, I’d like to stay at the pub a while longer. There are lots of other things we have to pay for.’
‘Like what?’ Darcie asked.
‘There’s this house, for a start.’
‘I thought Great-Nana left the house to you and Nan.’
Hayden hesitated, wondering how to explain the concept of mortgages to an eleven-year-old.
‘She left… part of it to me and Nan,’ he said. ‘The rest of it has to be paid for, every month. You see, Great-Nana had to sell a bit of it to pay for the care home she went to live in so not all of the house was hers when she died. And I’m still hoping to get enough cash together to have the loft converted. I don’t think you guys are going to want to share a bedroom forever, are you?’
Cara shrugged. ‘That’s OK. We like sharing.’
He smiled. ‘I’m glad about that. Still, I think we’d all appreciate a bit more space.’ He nodded to Cara’s sketchbook. ‘What’re you drawing, Car?’
‘A portrait.’ She opened it to show him. ‘It’s good, isn’t it?’
‘All right, Miss Modesty.’ He frowned. ‘Is that the lady we met at the rec on Wednesday?’
‘Yeah, it’s Brooke.’
‘It is good. You’ve got her eyes just right,’ Hayden said, his gaze skimming over the sketch. ‘What made you want to draw Brooke?’
‘She had an interesting face. The other lady was prettier, but I thought Brooke had a better drawing face.’
Darcie nodded. ‘I thought she looked interesting as well. I kept trying to talk to her but she seemed sort of shy.’
‘Is she shy at work?’ Cara asked her dad.
Hayden ran a finger under his collar. ‘Shy’ was probably not the word he would’ve used for Brooke when she was wrapping her legs around his thighs in the beer cellar earlier.
‘Er, no,’ he said. ‘No, she’s not shy at work. I think she’s just a bit nervous around children.’
‘Why, what’s scary about children?’
He shrugged. ‘Dunno, their snotty noses and weird hair?’
‘Shut up!’ Cara said gleefully. ‘That’s better than having snotty hair and a weird nose, like you.’ She held up a palm to her sister, who high-fived it.
Hayden laughed, putting a finger to his lips. ‘All right. Not so loud with the father abuse, please.’
‘Dad, I made up a plan,’ Darcie said, brushing crisp crumbs off her duvet.
‘What plan is this?’
‘A plan to make more money, so you wouldn’t have to work all the time. And it’s dead easy, too.’
‘Does this plan involve lottery tickets at all?’
‘No. I thought of that but you only have a one in forty-five million chance of winning, I checked online. My plan’s loads better.’ She folded her arms with an air of satisfaction. ‘All you have to do is get married! Then your wife would have a job too, so it wouldn’t be so hard to pay for things. And if Nan got married as well, then that’s another person, so we’d have even more money.’
‘OK,’ Hayden said, his mouth quirking. ‘And who are these poor suckers— I mean, these lucky people who me and Nan are going to get married to?’
‘There’s loads of people you could marry,’ Darcie said dismissively. ‘Like Bianca Smith-Howson’s mum. She’s got loads of money, and Molly Sollis said she heard Bianca’s mum say to her mum at the parents’ night that she wouldn’t mind a bit of rough if it’s got an arse like that. I don’t know what the first bit means but I think she was saying she likes your bum.’
Hayden raised an eyebrow. ‘Was she now? Well, I’d thank Bianca’s mum to watch her mouth around my kids. Sorry, Darce, that’s a definite no.’
‘You could marry one of those ladies from your work,’ Cara said. ‘I don’t mind if Max and Livvy come to live with us. It’d be cool to have a new brother and sister.’
‘We’re packing plenty of us into this three-bedroom bungalow. Any preference as to which one I marry, or shall I just flip a coin?’
Cara shrugged. ‘Brooke maybe, so I can draw her. I bet she’s not really scared of children. Max told me she’s funny when she stops being shy. He thinks she’s dead cool.’
‘Well, I think that’s enough trying to marry your dad off to every eligible spinster in a ten-mile radius.’ Hayden stood up and kissed each of them on the forehead. ‘Goodnight, loves. Get some sleep now, eh?’
‘Dad?’ Darcie said as he prepared to leave.
‘What?’
‘Me and Cara don’t mind, you know. If you get a girlfriend.’
He smiled. ‘Especially if she’s rich, right?’
‘No. Just… one you like. Someone nice who’s fun to have around.’
‘Yeah, you haven’t had one for ages,’ Cara said. ‘Not since Year Seven.’
‘Oh, I’m sure I’ve had one or two since then,’ Hayden said. ‘I distinctly remember getting dumped by Joanna Summerfield in Year Eleven the morning of my first GCSE exam, for one.’
‘She means since we were in Year Seven,’ Darcie said, rolling her eyes. The idea of their parent ever having been young enough to be in Year Seven himself was clearly too far-fetched to be entertained.
Cara nodded. ‘Not since Kirsty or whatever her name was. And you only dated her for, like, two months. It’s a bit sad really.’
Hayden nodded. ‘So I’m a big loser. I’ll remember to include that in my dating profile.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ Darcie told him indulgently. ‘You ought to get one soon, though. Otherwise you’ll be too old and all the best people will be married.’
He laughed. ‘I’ll see what I can do. Night, girls. I love you.’
‘Love you too, Dad,’ Cara mumbled as she snuggled under her duvet.
Darcie yawned. ‘I’m glad we stayed awake.’
Hayden closed the door gently and went to the kitchenette to make himself a supper of a ham sandwich and cup of tea. Pam was in the open-plan living room, reading a book.
‘Hiya Mum,’ he said. ‘You’re up late.’
‘Mmm. It’s a real page-turner, this,’ Pam said, waggling her thriller at him. ‘I only planned to read a chapter. Four hours later, I’m nearly finished. If you ask me, the ex-husband’s masseuse did it.’ She inserted a bookmark. ‘Girls are still awake, then?’
‘Heard us chuntering, did you?’ He flicked on the kettle. ‘Yeah, they waited up for me again. They need to stop doing that.’
She shrugged. ‘They miss spending time with you.’
‘I know. I try to be cross with them, but it’s sweet they still want a hug from their dad before they go to sleep. You having a cuppa before bed?’
‘Go on.’
He brewed a couple of cups of tea, handed one to his mum and sat down.
‘Why don’t you quit the pub now, love?’ Pam asked him. ‘The Diana Kershaw grant’s certain to be approved, you’ve got a bit in the bank, Carol-Ann’s paying her child support again. Things aren’t as desperate as they were.’
‘Yeah, Carol-Ann’s payments are going to be a big help. I’m glad she found a job.’ He sipped his tea thoughtfully. ‘Do you think it’s odd that the girls never ask about her?’
‘Why should they? She never asks about them.’
‘Don’t get defensive, Mum. It’s a normal, healthy thing for them to want to know about their mother. They used to ask about her all the time, but now they never seem to mention her.’
‘I suppose it goes through stages,’ Pam said. ‘It’s natural that curiosity should give way to resentment or indifference now they’re growing up. There’ll be more questions one day.’
‘Watching them with those Padgett girls made me realise how much they miss out on, not having a mum-aged person around.’ He glanced at her. ‘I mean, they’ve got you, thank God. I don’t know how I’d have coped bringing them up totally alone. But the way they latched on to Brooke and Rhianna, it did make me think they could do with a younger female presence in their lives now they’re getting older; someone they could see as a role model.’
‘Yes. It’s a shame they’ve got no aunt, really.’ She fixed him with a piercing look. ‘But you didn’t answer my question. Why don’t you quit the pub? You could afford to.’
‘I’d just… like to stay on for a bit, that’s all.’
‘And I know why. It’s that girl you’re stuck on, isn’t it? The child-hater.’
‘She’s not really a child-hater. It’s just lack of experience that puts her on edge. Once she got used to them, I bet she’d be great with kids.’
‘Well, do you deny that’s why you want to stay?’
He pressed his eyes closed. ‘No. You’re right, Brooke is a big part of it. But it isn’t just her. It’s the pub.’
Pam frowned. ‘What about the pub?’
‘I suppose… I’ve got invested in the place. Brooke and Rhianna have come up with all these ideas for giving it a boost, and they told me I was part of the team, and I really feel like I am now, you know? That I can’t go without seeing it through.’
‘But mainly it’s the girl.’
‘Well, yes, mainly it’s the girl,’ he admitted. ‘She’s part of a package, though. The pub, her sister, her mum… as much as I’m desperate to spend more time with my children, I just want to hang on a bit longer and see how things work out.’