As we walked, I thought about what Dad must have done to get in this much trouble. I remembered once counting money out on his coffee table in London, stacks of it, at least I thought I remembered. It was an abstract thing, this wedge of soft green dollars, foreign currency to me, used as a tool for the math I always struggled with, so I wasn’t sure if it was real or not. We would work on my mental arithmetic whenever I went to stay with him in London, because he was good with numbers. But the money was just once, I think.
He had a police Identi-Kit too, noses and eyes on clear plastic sheets, which Cait and I would play with, creating composite faces like Guess Who.
But these things didn’t add up to anything.
“What do you think Dad did?” I turned to Caitlin. She was breaking a stick in half with her foot for the dog.
“I don’t know. They always make it out like it was something financial, tax evasion or something,” she said, hurling the stick into the wet green.
“But why would Scotland Yard bother with us if it’s just tax evasion?”
Caitlin rolled her eyes at me as if there was a world of sinister tax evasion I knew nothing about, which was true.
“Mom says they’re just after the money,” Cait said, dusting her hands clean on her school skirt. “That’s the only reason they’re so hung up on finding Dad. And the stupid thing is there isn’t any money left anyway. Or maybe there is and that’s why he’s holding out.”
But I wanted a better story.
“Do you think he could have killed someone? Maybe he did it for Mom, and maybe that’s why she left Dad, because of the guilt.”
Caitlin played out this possibility in her head. “I don’t think Mom would have said he hadn’t hurt anyone if he had, and I can’t see Dad as a killer. I reckon Mom would be more capable of the two of them if she was cornered. Though I don’t think she’d shoot someone, because she’d hate the loud bang—”
“If it was something really bad, would you love him less?” I asked.
I saw Cait toying with the hypothetical. She had dealt with this so differently from me. I had been berserk at times, crazy with missing Dad and worrying. My skin was proof of that. My homeopathist had told me I was lucky I took my stress out on my skin rather than letting it calcify inside.
But Caitlin didn’t have eczema; she didn’t seem to be affected. In between the visits, she barely mentioned Dad and just got on with everyday teenage life. Sometimes I wondered what was wrong with me that I found everything so difficult.
She considered my question for some time. We’d had this conversation before, at least variations on the theme.
“No, I don’t think it would change how I feel about him,” she said. “I don’t know how I feel. I just want him to turn himself in already so this can all be over, and we can get on with our lives.”
I couldn’t believe she had said it. We were meant to be in this together. Us versus them.
“But what was it all for, then? If he just turns himself in, then it would all have been for nothing.”
“Exactly. It’s not like it can go on forever, can it? I’m sick of this. He’s meant to be the grown-up, and he’s too selfish to see what he’s putting us through. He can’t keep running if he wants a life and to see us. I want none of this to have ever happened, but that’s not possible, so the next best thing is to get the whole thing over and done with, and the only way that will happen is if he goes to prison.”
My eyebrows shot up. I hadn’t considered him going to prison. The rare times we did talk about Dad, we used “turning himself in” or “returning to America” like euphemisms, but we never talked about what came next. I didn’t know anyone who had ever been to prison. It was a place that existed in books and movies, not somewhere people I knew were sent. Metal bars and orange jumpsuits, bulletproof glass and visiting-room tears; the things I knew of prison had no weight beyond a shuddering cinematic montage.
“More than anything,” Caitlin continued, “I just want them to leave Mom alone. Why should she have to go through this shit? I mean, where even is she right now? Probably locked up somewhere being questioned by that creep, and all because of something Dad did forever ago for a bit of cash. It’s not fair. And worst of all, he doesn’t even see it.”
She threw the stick again and started walking on. I could see she was worked up.
She stopped, turning back to face me. “Is that awful of me?” Her eyes welled up.
I shook my head and hurried forward to catch up with her. “No, Caity,” I said. “Even if he would just tell us what he did—”
“Or say sorry for all this…” she said, indicating around her.
“I wish we had a way to tell him what was happening,” I said.
“What for? It’s not like he’s going to turn himself in, is it?” Cait sighed. “I hate to think of what they’re doing to Mom right now. We should get back. If she comes home and we’re not there, she’ll be worried.”
The image of Mom in a cell was too much, let alone thinking of her there for hours or for future weeks or future months or an unimaginable length of time. The proximity of that possibility struck me hard, and then the injustice of it. Dad always said the moment Mom was in trouble because of him, he would turn himself in, but that moment was now, and where was he?
We arrived home and the house was empty. I went to fetch my diary from beside my bed, to put words in orderly rows and enjoy the calm that came with it, but there was just an empty space where my diary ought to be. I pulled back the covers, leaving the duvet on the floor, and pushed away my pillows, until the bed was stripped, bare and empty like a surgical table. My fingers flicked through stacks of paper and magazines on my dresser, but I already knew it was gone. It had been disappeared. Taken away in a clear plastic evidence bag with the rest of our memories.
I remembered shortly after I first found out, I had written one long entry about Dad, and later I had written about our first trip to Paris, and then panicked and meticulously crossed it out. Is a diary of a twelve-year-old girl permissible as evidence?
I ran down the stairs to Cait.
“What is it?” she said. I must have looked crazed.
I joined her on the sofa, and she leaned forward to look me in the face, and something about the kindness in her made me start to cry, and then I couldn’t talk, just swallowed gulps of tears. She rested her head on my shoulder and waited for me to stop.
“Hey, what’s happened?”
She gave my shoulders a squeeze—this was one of the moments that qualified for a hug.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“My diary’s gone,” I said.
Her face was blank for a moment, and then her eyebrows creased in acknowledgment.
“I’m sure there’s nothing—”
“I’m not sure…” I said, afraid of her censure.
We sat there for a moment, looking toward the switched-off TV.
“It doesn’t matter,” she declared, and I looked up imploringly. “Whatever you wrote, it doesn’t matter. As Mom says, whatever will be will be, and there’s fuck all we can do about it.”
“I feel awful. I can’t stop thinking it was my fault somehow, that they found Dad because of me, because it was my birthday and they knew we’d be together, and now they have my diary, and I don’t know what I wrote, and I can’t even think about prison…” I trailed off.
“This is no one’s fault but Dad’s, Ty. Even if you wrote an entire confession in your diary of everything you know, which really isn’t much, and even if they could possibly use that as evidence, even then, it still wouldn’t be your fault.”
I didn’t reply for a few moments.
“Gah!” I made a guttural noise. “Things are pretty shit right now.”
“Could be worse.”
“Really?”
“Totally,” she said with confidence. “Apart from both our parents probably going to prison, life isn’t that bad.”
We laughed.
“Bastards, shitheads, cunts!” she shouted to the walls. “If anyone’s listening, that’s for them.”
I gave a wet laugh. “Tossers, dickheads … schmucks!”
We carried on until we ran out of insults.
We played Rock Paper Scissors sitting cross-legged on the floor staring intently into each other’s eyes. The aim of the game wasn’t to win but to guess what move the other was going to make and do the same. We were trying to develop our telepathic skills.
We made a round of tea and switched on the TV to watch Neighbours at 5:35 pm like every other day, lying head to toe on the sofa, with Poppy in the middle, her head resting on Caity’s shoulder.
“Do you think if Mom and Dad go to prison, they’ll let us stay here and look after each other?” I asked Caitlin.
“No. They’d take the house away and send us to live somewhere else.”
“What, like, social services? Or would they let us go live with Evan in Nottingham?”
“Dunno. Living with your little sisters is probably pretty uncool at uni.”
“Do you think they’d separate us?”
She was silent.
“I think they’d try not to.” She squeezed my foot. “There’s no point thinking about these things until they happen.”
The gate chinked outside, and we both sat bolt upright on the sofa. Poppy ran toward the front door, and we followed. A silhouette keyed in the code, and we took a step back to allow the door to swing open, and there was Mom.
She looked haggard, crushed, and surprised to see us waiting for her like this.
“Bastard Andrew Sloane,” she said, by way of explanation, already walking toward the kitchen. “I’m fine, I’m fine. I just need a cup of tea, and then I may go to bed.”
* * *
Mom had been formally charged now for assisting an offender and money laundering, not that she told us these things back then, but we knew she was in trouble, and we knew they were trying to take the house away from us. They wanted to prove that it had been paid for with Dad’s criminal funds, but it hadn’t. Mom always taught us to keep our own money separate from a man’s, just in case, and it was her house, fair and square. She just had to prove it, which would mean tracing the money all the way back to the 1960s, when she paid for her first-ever house in New Rochelle, New York, with a down payment earned from her role in Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter.
Mom was furious. I could see her anger pulsing under her skin, hardening with time like knots in deep tissue that stayed with her for years. I think she was as angry with herself as she was with Dad.
Andrew Sloane was angry too. He was angry they had missed Dad at the resort, and he blamed Mom for his escape. Scotland Yard didn’t know where Dad was, but they knew exactly where we were, and they weren’t going to leave us alone until they found him.
* * *
I have very few memories of these months. I don’t start a new diary until May 1996, and I don’t write about Dad. I don’t mention our situation at all until June, when I’m invited on holiday to Spain with my best friend, Anna, and her family, and I’m worried I won’t be able to go because Scotland Yard hasn’t returned my passport yet.
At Christmas a blue-and-white china windmill arrived in the post from Holland, which played “Tulips from Amsterdam” as the spokes went round. Dad sent us a letter too, perhaps with the windmill, perhaps later. He included photos of our final day trip around Saint Lucia. I tried to imagine him somewhere out there in the Caribbean or Europe, in a photo printing shop, dropping off the roll of film, then his hands tucking the pictures into an envelope for us, and now they were here, in my hands. There is a picture of Dad with Caitlin and me sitting on either side of him taken by the boat driver; Dad is squinting into the sun, an arm around each of us, with the majestic Pitons rising out of the water behind us. Cait is looking up at Dad’s face, and we’re all bronzed and happy. In another, Caitlin and I pose with the man who sold us the volcanic rock necklaces. That necklace is stowed in my box of precious things still.
The letter is written on yellow legal paper, and reads:
My Darling Daughters,
Here are the pictures of one of the happiest days of my life. Sadly, I have had to leave paradise to decide which direction to go. I am glad you were able to share some of that special time with me, although it was much too short.
Tyler, I am sorry your birthday got fouled up, but at least we were together. I was so proud of you both with your diving. I am sure we will get to dive together another time, another place. That is if I can catch up to you both. Maybe even back in the Bay sometime in the future.
Give Evan my love and tell him about Saint Lucia. You two became part of the community. I am happy that you saw me working and shining, if only for just a short time.
I will be content just to know that you are well and together. If you miss me, just think of that wonderful time together and know that it will surely happen again. Life is long and full of surprises.
Much much love,
Dad
xxxxxxx