When I remembered back, that birthday at Greenham marked the first major turning point of my life. It had been a day of firsts, both good and bad: first demo, first kiss, first arrest, first body search.
First time I learned what I’d been too self-obsessed to realise; that I was about to lose my dad.
I couldn’t take it in. In fact, to begin with, I thought it was some kind of sick joke; perhaps a punishment for me absconding to Greenham and getting arrested on my birthday, leaving just a note.
Samantha and I, and all the other women, had been released with a caution at 2.00 a.m. I’d rung home from a payphone outside the police station, reversing the charges. Dad had answered, wearily, and hadn’t said a word while I apologised down the phone, suddenly mortified at my reckless behaviour. I saw myself from high above, a small, dirty bear in wellies, tear-stained and sobbing in a phone box.
Samantha waited outside, wandering a little way down the road when she heard my sobs. I was glad that she was still there, and more glad that she was being discreet. It was all so embarrassing, but a combination of delayed shock, tiredness and Dad’s familiar voice combined to set me off, and I cried so much that Dad had to keep telling me to take deep breaths as I ‘sorried’ until I almost puked. When I told him I’d been arrested and released with a caution for public-order offences, at first he assumed I had been arrested in Salisbury after a raucous birthday celebration with my friends.
‘Reading? Why did they bring you to Reading?’ I heard the alarm in his voice.
‘Because that’s the nearest police station to Greenham Common,’ I hiccupped.
‘Greenham Common?’
Mum, who’d obviously woken up and joined Dad at the phone at the bottom of the stairs, squawked in horror. I pictured her ear jostling for receiver space next to his.
‘Yes. I told you that’s where I was!’
‘No you didn’t!’ Mum shrieked. ‘What the hell were you doing there?’
‘I left you a note. In Pete’s room.’
‘Pete went straight out after dinner. We thought we heard you both come back about midnight, but it must just have been him.’
Oh shit. None of them had seen the note. They hadn’t even been aware I’d gone. This made me feel both better and worse.
‘So you thought I’d just ignored the birthday dinner?’
‘Yes,’ Dad said mildly down the phone. ‘For reasons we couldn’t quite fathom.’
I heard Mum snort at his restraint, and it made me cry harder. I’d have preferred her outraged censure to Dad’s understated disappointment.
‘Daddy,’ I said, even though I’d stopped calling him ‘Daddy’ when I was thirteen, ‘please could you come and pick me up?’
Bless him, he did come. He said he’d pick me up from Reading Police Station at four o’clock. Samantha and I drank stewed brown tea in an all-night cafe in town, talking nonstop, and then wandered back to wait outside the station at the appointed time. He arrived at bang on 4.00 a.m., pulling up in our bottle-green Ford Escort. I’d never been so pleased to see him. We dropped Samantha off at the camp – I’d been hoping she’d want to come back to Salisbury with me, but she said all her stuff was in her tent – and then embarked on the empty road home.
‘She seems like quite a character,’ Dad said, after Samantha had slammed the rear passenger door and chirped her goodbyes, telling me she’d see me soon, thankfully not trying to kiss me in front of him.
‘She is.’ I pulled off my wellies and put my sweaty feet up on the dashboard. They smelled, but Dad didn’t remark on it. ‘I only just met her, yesterday. She lives in Salisbury too; that’s how we got talking. She really looked after me, it was so kind of her. I – I left Pete’s rucksack there. She’s going to bring it back.’
Dad was silent for a while, an unlit pipe clamped between his lips as he drove carefully along the deserted duel carriageway.
‘I could ask you what you were thinking, and why you did it,’ he said. ‘Your mum was in tears earlier when she realised you’d gone out before your birthday dinner. She spent a long time cooking that for you, you know. Pete was there, but it wasn’t the same without you.’
My own tears immediately returned to my eyes. Mum and I had a fractious relationship, but I hated the thought that I had made her cry. I hadn’t thought she’d be that bothered.
‘I seem to be upsetting her a lot recently,’ I said, wiping the back of my hand under my nose. ‘I understand about the dinner, and I’m sorry. I’ll tell her I am. But why did she have a fit yesterday morning, about me not wanting to pick up that stupid magazine from the newsagents? And why’s she always yelling at me?’
Dad sighed. ‘That wasn’t about you. Not yesterday. She was upset about something else.’
‘What?’ I tried not to sound belligerent, but did anyway.
There was a long pause. Dad’s eyes were fixed on the dark road.
‘Dad, what is it? You’re not getting divorced, are you?’
‘It’s nothing like that, love.’ He sounded so sad.
‘Please, just tell me.’
‘Well, Mum wanted you to go out because we had to phone the hospital at eight-fifteen for some test results.’
‘On…?’
‘On me. I haven’t been feeling very well lately. You’ve probably noticed that I’m very tired at the moment and a bit yellow-looking? And I’ve had this awful backache?’
Apart from witnessing him clutching his back and groaning occasionally, I’d been oblivious, but I nodded.
‘I had a few tests at the Infirmary a couple of weeks ago. I can’t … I’m sorry, but…’
His voice suddenly sounded as if someone had their hand clamped around his throat while he was trying to be sick. My heart clenched with fear.
‘No,’ I whispered.
Dad changed down a gear to take a corner and the Escort shuddered.
‘Darling girl. I’m so sorry. When we rang up yesterday, they told us to come in. So we did. And the consultant told us. I’m afraid it’s … it’s cancer. Pancreatic cancer.’
I burst into tears again. I wanted to jump into his arms but he was driving, so I hugged myself instead, wrapping my arms tightly around my body till my hands were clutching my own shoulder blades.
‘But … but, they can operate, right? Can you have a … a transplant? A pancreas transplant?’
Dad smiled faintly. ‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘It wouldn’t work. It’s already spread to my liver and kidneys and spine.’
‘No, no. No!’ I railed, rocking. This couldn’t be happening. ‘What else can they do?’
Over the engine noise, I heard the gulp as he swallowed hard.
‘Nothing, unfortunately. The trouble with this type of … of, cancer’ – he extruded the word with difficulty – ‘is that you don’t get any noticeable symptoms of it for a very long time. They think I’ve had it for months, maybe even years. And once it spreads, it’s impossible to treat. It’s really too late to do anything.’
‘Oh, Daddy.’ I plucked uselessly at the sleeve of his tweed jacket, almost howling, regretting every snappy word and stroppy flounce I’d ever said and performed. Every possible thing I’d ever done to cause him sorrow.
‘The dinner. My birthday dinner…’ I’d blown out what was probably the last birthday dinner Pete and I would ever have with him. ‘I wouldn’t have gone off to Greenham if I’d known. I swear I wouldn’t.’
‘Of course, darling girl. Of course.’
I cried the rest of the way home, pulling up my knees and sobbing into them until the fur was matted and humid with my tears.
Once Dad had finally killed the engine and coasted into our driveway, we both climbed stiffly out of the car, and I saw for the first time how thin and weary he looked, how hunched and pained. I ran into his arms, the tears still coming thick and fast, and we stood hugging each other outside the house in the pre-dawn chill, me still in wellies and the stupid bear costume.
‘Come on,’ he whispered eventually. ‘Get yourself to bed for a few hours. And, Meredith?’
‘Yes?’
‘Please … look after Mum for me. When I’m gone.’
‘I will, Dad, I promise.’