A Long Way from Paradise

When the letter with the airline ticket arrived, Abigail didn’t know what to do. She carried it around with her for several days and kept looking at it, on the bus or in her desk at school. At night she put it under her pillow. She knew she would have to tell her mother about it eventually but she needed time to think and she wanted to keep it a secret while she thought. She didn’t want to talk to anyone about it until she had decided what to do.

At first there was a temptation to tear it up and send it back to him with no letter, nothing, just the pieces in an envelope. That would show him how she felt, and serve him right too. But she didn’t. Then she was angry with herself for being so feeble. If she gave in as easily as that, he would only think he could buy her off with a holiday. It was like a bribe to make her forgive him, to pretend everything was all right.

She took out his letter, a bit crumpled now, and read it again.

Darling Abby,

I do wish you’d write to me. I know you’re very cross with me for going away and you’ve every right to be, although I did try to explain why I had to go. But I’d still rather have a cross letter than no letter at all. I miss you very much. Can’t you write and tell me how you feel and I’ll answer you the best I can. It’s awful writing all these letters and never getting a reply. It’s as if my letters have got stuck at the post office and never reached you at all.

I’m enclosing a ticket for you to come out here in the Xmas holidays. All you have to do is ring up the airline for dates and flights. Please come – we’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Apart from that, I think you’d like it here. Now that the rainy season’s over, it’s lovely, warm and sunny. There are brightly coloured birds everywhere that come and steal the sugar at breakfast, and the flowers are amazing – you almost need sunglasses to look at them. Just think – you could be lying on the beach getting a fantastic suntan while all your friends are getting chilblains in the snow.

There was more, but she didn’t read it all again. His letters were always like that, telling her how nice the place was and how much she’d like it, and often enclosing a few snapshots of himself against some scenic bit of landscape. He was always alone, which reminded her of the person who must have taken the photograph. The only difference with this letter was the ticket.

The temptation was enormous: she ached to see him again. Already his image was becoming faint and when she looked at the pictures he seemed somehow unfamiliar. Perhaps it was the unaccustomed suntan, making him appear younger; she tried to tell herself that. But she was afraid he was beginning to look like a stranger enjoying himself on a beach, a stranger who wrote her letters she did not answer. They had never been apart before, so these were the first letters she had ever received from him.

She finally decided to tell her mother when they were washing up. It was easier for them to talk about important things when their hands were busy and they didn’t have to look at each other. Even so, it was hard to get the words out and when she did, they came in a rush.

‘Dad’s sent me a ticket.’

For just a second Mum’s hands stopped moving in the soapy water; then they darted about faster than ever. It was still odd to see them without a wedding ring: as if she and Dad had never been married at all. When she first took it off, Abigail had hoped it meant she was ready to start going out with people again, like the man at work who was always asking her. But it hadn’t turned out that way. It meant she was giving up. She had stopped wearing make-up at the same time, stopped wearing rubber gloves for washing up, like now, as if she didn’t care what she looked like any more.

It was so unlike her: she had always been so smart and modern, keen to look nice, proud of her job. She and Dad had even argued about her dressing up for work. He’d hardly recognise her now, Abigail thought.

‘He wants me to go out there in the holidays,’ she went on, bolder now it was out. She hated having to feel sorry for Mum: it hurt and made her angry. She didn’t want to be grown up and responsible. She wanted Mum to look after her and make Dad come back. ‘But I shan’t go,’ she added sharply.

‘Why not?’ Mum asked, sounding oddly casual.

‘I don’t want to.’

‘Course you do.’ She stopped washing up, wiped her hands and put an arm round Abigail. ‘It’s only natural. Of course you want to see him again.’

Abigail squirmed away. She hated it when Mum hugged her. It didn’t happen very often but it always made her want to cry. She was afraid that if she cried Mum would cry too and somehow that seemed very dangerous, as if it would make everything fall apart. She had never seen Mum cry, though she had heard her often enough through the bedroom wall. She did her own crying at night too, but silently, and sometimes, if she really couldn’t avoid it, in the loo at school. She resented it bitterly: she was sure Dad wasn’t crying. He was too busy enjoying himself in the sunshine with that girl. If he could manage so well without them both, then she and Mum should be able to manage without him.

‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘And anyway, I’d have to see her too and I’m not going to do that. He must be joking if he thinks I’d go out there for a holiday while she’s hanging about.’

Mum went back to the sink. ‘You’ll have to meet her eventually,’ she said, sounding very calm and reasonable.

‘I don’t see why.’

‘Because he’s probably going to marry her.’

‘But you’re not divorced.’ It was a shock, a blow to the stomach, to hear her worst fears put into words.

‘No, but we will be next year.’ Mum emptied the washing-up water and it gurgled away. ‘He’s got a new life out there, lovey, and he’s not coming back. You need to see him. He still loves you, you know. It was me he wanted to leave, not you.’

‘Yes, you told me all that,’ Abigail snapped. Before Dad left, he and Mum had got together and explained it all to her, about how they had got married too young and how they had changed over the years and that was why they had been having a lot of rows until they got very polite and hardly talked at all. Now they were going to separate, but it was all for the best and she would have two homes instead of one and of course they both loved her as much as ever. It was quite a speech, quite a double act: in fact the most united thing she had seen them do in years. But it reminded her of American films and she didn’t believe any of it. They were saying what they thought they ought to say.

She was right. After they’d finished their big speech and while she was still dumb with shock that the thing she’d always feared had actually happened, Mum added sharply, ‘Well, aren’t you going to tell her the rest of it?’

For just a second Dad looked like a cringing dog that knows it’s going to be beaten, then he became very angry. ‘I see. You want to play it that way, do you?’

‘She might as well know the truth,’ said Mum, looking at her nail varnish. ‘She’ll have to know sooner or later.’

‘Your version, you mean,’ Dad said.

‘Just the facts,’ said Mum.

Abigail wanted to scream and run away, but she didn’t move.

‘He’s got this girl at work.’ said Mum. ‘She’s one of the waitresses and she’s twenty-six and he’s going away with her.’

‘God, you’re a bitch,’ said Dad.

‘I mean really away,’ said Mum. ‘Far away. They’re going to run away to an island in the sun and live happily ever after.’

‘Shut up,’ Dad yelled. Abigail put her hands over her ears. She pictured the waitress as someone with wild hair and a slightly tarty, cross-eyed look, rather like Karen Black in Five Easy Pieces. She was desperately embarrassed to think of Dad with a girl.

‘I know it’s a shock,’ Dad said to her gently, ‘and I’m sorry, but I’m sure once you meet her –’

‘I’m never going to meet her,’ she said. ‘I hate her.’ Dad had become disgusting and ridiculous, like vicars and schoolteachers you read about in the papers when they ran off with teenagers.

‘I’m sorry,’ Mum said. ‘I shouldn’t have told her like that.’

Abigail rocked herself to and fro, the way she did when she had a painful period, to make the backache go away. Her parents became united again. They tried to hug her but she wouldn’t let them. They apologised to her as if she were grown up. They made tea and tried to persuade her to drink it.

‘I’m going to bed,’ Abigail said. In some perverse way she almost enjoyed seeing how guilty and miserable they looked. When she got to her room she put on a record very loud, knowing that for once they wouldn’t dare ask her to turn it down. She lay on the bed and tried to think about what had happened but none of it seemed real. The music drowned it out.

Dad moved into a bedsit and she was supposed to visit him at weekends but then she found out that the girl was sharing the bedsit with him. Julie, her name was. After that Abigail wouldn’t visit him any more and they had to meet in parks and coffee bars.

He tried to explain about the island, how it was a great opportunity. He tried to make it sound like work, not a glorious holiday.

‘Julie has friends there and they’re opening a small hotel. I’d be in charge of the restaurant. It’d be almost like having my own place.’

The name still hurt, making her sour. It seemed to intrude into every conversation they had. ‘I don’t see why. You’d still be working for someone else, just like now.’

‘I know it’s a long way,’ he said, picking up what she hadn’t said, ‘but you could come out there in the holidays. And if you go to college next year I’d only see you in the holidays anyway.’

All that was true, but surely he didn’t imagine that made it all right. She punished him by saying she had to go home early to do extra homework, since he was so keen she should go to college, and she wouldn’t have time to see him on Sunday. She thought he sounded almost like someone of her own age when he talked about the restaurant, and it made her angry.

‘He always wanted his own place,’ Mum said when she mentioned it. ‘When we got married, that was what we were going to do.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘It cost too much. And I thought – oh, it sounds silly now, but I thought working together would be a mistake.’

Abigail wondered why she didn’t say it was simply more fun to work in publishing, to start as a secretary and become a press officer. It was liberated; it was glamorous. It fitted in with all Mum’s ideas about women being entitled to exciting jobs. Abigail agreed with her. But how had Dad felt about it? By the time he got home from the restaurant at night, Mum was asleep, and by the time he woke up in the morning, she had gone to work. It had only left Sundays for them to be together, and after they had read the papers and argued about who was going to cook, there was hardly time to do anything except watch television. Cooking seemed such a silly thing to argue about, but they always did. Either Dad complained that the last thing he wanted to do on his day off was cook, and Mum replied that she’d done it for six days already and why should she keep a dog and bark herself; or Dad went out of his way to stop Mum cooking by finding fault with what she cooked and saying he might as well do it, at least he’d get it right. Sometimes Abigail cooked, just to shut them up, but it didn’t seem to make the atmosphere any better, so more often she went out.

‘They’re probably arguing about something else,’ said her friend Lorna, who listened to lots of phone-in problems on the radio and considered herself quite an expert. ‘I expect it’s sex or money. It usually is. Do they shout a lot?’

‘They used to,’ Abigail said. ‘But they stopped. They haven’t had a proper row for ages.’ At first she had been relieved: it had been awful to lie in bed and listen to their raised voices. But now that Lorna made her think about it, the silence she had welcomed as peaceful did in fact have an ominous aspect. She didn’t count the Sunday arguments as rows: they were only bickering.

The night before he left, he took her out to dinner as if she were grown up, but she couldn’t eat much because her throat was so tight with trying not to cry. He kept saying they’d soon be together again and she mustn’t feel he was deserting her because he loved her more than anything in the world.

Not more than anyone, though, she wanted to say. Not more than Julie, or you wouldn’t be going away with her. But she couldn’t say it. She couldn’t hurt him the way he’d hurt her, and besides, she didn’t want him to agree with her.

‘It wasn’t something I did, was it?’ she said instead. She’d been longing to ask that because the idea hung about in her mind, although Lorna said it was childish, the sort of thing kids got in their heads. It was always coming up on her phone-in programmes and Abigail was too old to think like that, she said. People got divorced all the time and it was sex and money and boredom, nothing to do with their children. Abigail wished she thought Lorna was right.

‘No,’ he said, ‘no, you mustn’t think that. Promise me you won’t, not ever.’ And she saw tears come into his eyes. She was horribly embarrassed but relieved as well, as if he was crying for her and she could believe him now. He gave her a big, tight, almost suffocating bear-hug (the sort she had liked as a child, squealing with fright) when he took her home, and she couldn’t cry at all. She kept thinking of Mum inside the house with the radio turned up loud, and Julie back at the flat waiting for him to come home and help her with the packing. Perhaps he would say, ‘God, that was awful,’ and she would put her arms round him and say, ‘I know, darling, I know, but it’s over now, don’t think about it.’

They couldn’t say goodbye. When she disentangled herself from the hug, she ran up the path to the door as fast as she could and let herself in without looking back. Mum called out, ‘Abby?’ and she called back, ‘Mm,’ which was all she could manage without breaking down. Mum’s voice sounded strange too and she didn’t say any more, but let Abigail run upstairs to her room without asking if she wanted a hot drink or anything, the way she usually did.

Abigail thought she would lie awake for hours but she didn’t. Exhausted by the evening, she fell asleep almost at once, only to wake early, at peace for a moment, before she remembered that there was something bad to remember. It was a sensation she had previously only associated with exams.

She lay in bed, staring at the clock and picturing Dad at the airport, with Julie a self-satisfied blur beside him. She imagined them so hard that they became like people in a film. She concentrated on wishing Julie dead and when that didn’t work, when the Julie-figure simply wouldn’t collapse, no matter how much she willed it, she pictured instead Dad changing his mind, and that seemed to work better. She could see him shaking his head and saying, ‘It’s no good, I can’t do it, I just can’t leave them.’ Then he was running away from the departure lounge, leaving Julie alone. She didn’t follow, in Abigail’s film; she just looked sad and resigned, admitting defeat. In her heart she knew it served her right.

Dad sprinted through the airline terminal, not bothering to ask about getting his luggage back. All he wanted was to get to a phone. Abigail lay very still, almost holding her breath, waiting for the phone to ring. The silence went on and on.

Presently Mum came in with a cup of tea, not something she usually did, and sat on the edge of Abigail’s bed, as if Abigail were ill. Together they watched the clock racing on to departure time.

‘I thought I’d make pancakes for breakfast,’ said Mum, who usually didn’t have time to make anything. ‘Would you like that?’

Abigail felt empty rather than hungry but she couldn’t let Mum down. They both had to get through the next hour somehow.

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘That’d be great.’

As the weeks passed, it was odd getting used to Dad not being there, getting used to being just the two of them, although he had never been there very much really, which ought to have made it easier. She didn’t notice so much on Sundays because she usually went out and in any case it was a relief not to have him and Mum going on about who cooked lunch. But weekdays were awful, the time between four thirty when Abigail got back from school and six thirty when Mum came in from work. That had always been their special time, before Dad left for the restaurant, when they could watch silly programmes on television and talk about the day, cuddling up together on the sofa. The house became unbearably empty then.

Abigail took to hanging about after school with Lorna, mooching around the shops. They couldn’t go to Lorna’s house because her Mum would find them something useful to do. She didn’t believe in idle hands. Wandering around Woolworths with Lorna, Abigail was shocked to find herself suddenly longing to steal something, for the first time in her life. A lipstick or some nail varnish. She was puzzled as well as shocked because she didn’t wear lipstick, she didn’t like the feel of it on her mouth, and she couldn’t wear nail varnish because she still bit her nails. In fact she only wore eye make-up, but it was not eye makeup she wanted to steal. She didn’t tell Lorna in case she produced some theory about it from one of her phone-in programmes.

Mum said they had to tell Mr Williams the headmaster that Dad had gone away. Abigail argued, but Mum said he had to know. She wouldn’t say why. In case I do something weird, Abigail thought resentfully, like stealing from Woolworths. So he can Make Allowances. Perhaps Mum was right, but she hated it all the same. It seemed to make everything more final. There were lots of people at her school whose parents had split up, but she had never imagined herself as one of them, had even enjoyed feeling comfortably superior. Now she had suddenly joined their ranks and she felt unclean and embarrassed, as if she had been found with nits in her hair.

Mum had promised her no one else would know but overnight the whole school seemed to find out. At least, that’s how it felt. Lorna swore she hadn’t said a word and Abigail couldn’t very well ask Mr Williams, but someone must have talked because people started coming up to her to sympathise or make jokes. Michael was one of them. ‘Sorry about your Dad, Abs,’ he said. ‘Maybe your Mum can get it together with my Dad and then we’ll be brother and sister.’ He winked at her, and she wasn’t sure if he was trying to be nice or nasty. She had gone out with him for a while after his mother ran off with the man next door, leaving Michael and his father alone, and she had liked the kissing and cuddling and the sense of importance that came from going out with someone other people fancied, someone who looked like Sting. But Michael had wanted her to go to bed with him when his father was out at work and she was frightened. She knew she wasn’t in love with him and she wanted the first time to be with someone special; she also wanted to look forward to going to college, not worry about getting pregnant.

‘You’re old-fashioned,’ Michael had teased her, and she lost her temper.

‘I think it’s old-fashioned to do something just because everyone else is doing it,’ she said. She wasn’t sure she meant it but it sounded good. ‘I think you should make up your own mind, and anyway, if you really liked me, you wouldn’t mind waiting.’

But he hadn’t waited, he had shrugged his shoulders and gone off, saying he’d phone her, and now he was going out with Tracey, who was on the Pill.

She’d been meaning to ask Dad about it, whether she’d done the right thing and whether boys always behaved like that. It was easier to talk to Dad than Mum, and in any case he ought to know more about how boys thought. But she’d put it off, waiting for the right moment, and now it was too late. She almost wished she had got pregnant, or fallen off Michael’s motorbike, so Dad would have been really worried about her. He might even have come rushing back.

When she didn’t answer his letters, he started ringing up. She had not expected that: it was as if she imagined the island as a place too primitive to have telephones. Or perhaps it was that once he got on the plane she pictured him in limbo, falling into a dark hole somewhere, like the Bermuda Triangle, dropping off the edge of the world. Or even, more simply, that he and Mum had argued so much over the phone bill in London that she never dreamed he could ring up from the Caribbean. But of course Julie wouldn’t nag, would she? Phone bills would mean nothing to Julie. She would be smiling all the time and encouraging him in whatever he wanted to do.

Abigail knew who it was on the phone before Mum said anything, just from the look on her face. A look of hope, turning swiftly into disappointment and resignation. Her face crumpled up, making her look at once like a child and an old woman, the way people always said babies looked like Winston Churchill. Abigail was scared: if Dad still had the power to do that to Mum’s face, what might he do to Abigail? She backed away from the phone as Mum said, ‘Yes, she’s here’ and held it out to her. She shook her head.

‘Come on,’ Mum said, ‘he wants to talk to you. Don’t be silly.’

Abigail put her hands behind her back. The temptation was so strong, the longing to speak to him, to hear his voice saying he missed her, maybe even saying he was coming home, he’d made a mistake. She couldn’t do it. She was terrified of breaking down and making a fool of herself. And she didn’t want to hear how happy he was on his beautiful island with Julie. She wanted to punish him for going away and leaving her. She wanted to make him as miserable as he’d made her.

‘I’m sorry, David,’ Mum said into the phone, and to Abigail’s surprise she really did sound sorry. ‘She won’t. It’s no good.’ There was a pause. ‘Yes, I’ll tell her.’ She hung up and turned to Abigail. ‘He sends his love,’ she said. ‘And he misses you. Why wouldn’t you speak to him? You’re hurting yourself as much as him, you know.’

Abigail was shaking. She could see Mum moving towards her to give her a hug and she wanted the hug desperately but she also didn’t want it. It would only make both of them cry.

She turned and ran out of the room, but she noticed as she ran that she felt something else besides shaken and tearful, a new sensation. She felt powerful.

After that she made a plan. She decided never to answer the phone in case it was Dad. Refusing to speak when Mum took the call was one thing; hanging up on him would be quite another. She didn’t think she could manage that. So she arranged with Lorna to ring once and hang up, then ring back, so she’d know who it was. Lorna was the only person who rang her often. She felt safe then; she thought the system was foolproof.

The call when it came caught her off-guard. She was home early from school, not roaming round Woolworths trying not to steal, because Lorna had gone to the dentist. Abigail rang her at five to see how she was. Lorna always made a big fuss at the dentist and she liked Abigail to take her suffering seriously.

‘He’s a butcher,’ said Lorna, sounding as if she still had a mouthful of wadding. ‘Let me ring you back. I want to make a cup of tea and take some aspirin first.’

Abigail hung up, amused. She didn’t really believe Lorna was in agony. When the phone went, five minutes later, she was so relaxed, so sure it was Lorna, that she picked it up at once without waiting for the signal.

‘Abby?’

She froze. He sounded so close he could have been phoning from the restaurant.

‘Abby, I know it’s you, don’t hang up, please.’

She couldn’t. She wasn’t even tempted. She hung on to the phone as if it might escape, and shut her eyes, imagining Dad with his arms round her. He had the sort of caressing voice that always made you feel he was hugging you. It was something to do with being Welsh.

‘Did you get the ticket?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you coming?’

‘I don’t know.’ And the next moment: ‘Yes, of course I am.’

She heard him give a great sigh as if until that moment he had been holding his breath.

‘When?’

‘I don’t know. As soon as I can.’ She felt as if her brain had a life of its own, not safely confined in her head but darting about all over the place, out of control. ‘But I can’t leave Mum for Christmas.’

‘Yes, you can, she won’t mind.’

‘No, I can’t.’ But already she was beginning to feel she could.

‘No, of course you can’t,’ he said then, sounding resigned, as if she were another adult making adult decisions.

‘How about the twenty-seventh?’ she said. It began to be real, once she named a date. ‘If I can get a flight.’ How she regretted all the time she had wasted. What if they were all booked up?

‘Fine. Terrific,’ he said. ‘Whatever you say.’

An idea came to her then, hearing those words. ‘The only thing is,’ she said, ‘can it be just us? I don’t want to meet her, I can’t. And it’s not fair on Mum.’

There was an agonising pause. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s a bit difficult, it’s such a small place and we’re both working here …’

‘Please,’ she said.

‘All right, caryad. I’ll do my best.’

Triumph surged through her. She felt as if she had rubbed Julie’s unknown face in the dust, trodden on her, banished her. They talked for some time after that about how much they missed each other and when she hung up she felt warm and comforted. Mum knew as soon as she came in.

‘You’ve spoken to him,’ she said. ‘I’m glad.’

‘I said I’d go out there after Christmas,’ Abigail said. ‘Is that all right? You don’t mind, do you?’

‘Of course I don’t mind,’ Mum said, smiling. ‘But I think you should go sooner. It’s crazy to go all that way for ten days. Go as soon as term ends and you can have three weeks out there.’

‘But what about Christmas?’ Abigail said.

‘To tell you the truth,’ Mum said, not looking at her, ‘I’ve always wanted to spend Christmas in an hotel. To be waited on, and not have to cook. To meet new people. To catch up on sleep. This could be my big chance. Go on, you book your flight. Get the first one you can.’

After that it all became real very soon. She felt like Alice Through the Looking Glass: everything went into reverse. From refusing to go, from being static and miserable, she was flung into a world of action and excitement, racing about trying to sort out her ticket and buy clothes, arousing envy among her friends. At first there were no seats to be had, but before she had time to slump into gloom and despair, the travel agent came up with a cancellation. Someone had gone down with appendicitis.

‘I can come on the nineteenth,’ she said, shaking with joy, when Dad rang again. ‘Someone got sick.’

‘Hurrah,’ Dad said, and they both laughed.

‘Aren’t we callous?’ she said, feeling guilty but elated.

‘Who cares?’ said Dad, sounding suddenly very young.

Mum bought her a new bikini and a sundress, and she got herself some sandals. Lorna gave her a pair of sunglasses, very smart, that got darker or lighter according to the weather. She was touched because Lorna was generally both poor and mean, and the sunglasses must have been expensive. She let news of her trip leak round the school and soon she was floating on a warm tide of envy.

‘Huh,’ said Michael, ‘it’s all right for some.’

Abigail smiled. You should have stuck with me, she thought. I shall come back brown and beautiful, and you’ll be sorry. Tracey had sandy hair and freckles.

She was so excited it was like being drunk, which she had been only once in her life, but nicer because there was no hangover to follow. Everything had to be done in a hurry because she had left it so late to decide. At the airport she felt a great wave of pity for Mum, who looked suddenly small and alone, still insisting that she was really looking forward to spending Christmas in an hotel.

‘You could go to Aunt Isabel,’ Abigail said, worried about her.

‘I know. But this is what I want. I’ll be fine. You have a good time, that’s all. Really enjoy yourself. Don’t punish him any more. Talk to him. Relax.’

Abigail nodded. They hugged, both smiling and tearful. She wanted to say she would bring him back with her, that she was going on a rescue mission, but she was afraid to raise Mum’s hopes, in case it could not be done.

‘Give him my love,’ Mum said, as she turned to go.

The fantasy persisted on the long flight, haunting her through the noisy film and recurring meal and drinks, piercing through the music on her head set. She got tired and she dozed but wasn’t sure if she was ever completely asleep, if the image of Dad saying yes, he wanted to come home, was her imagination or a dream. The only reality she was sure of was that he would be there at the airport to meet her, bronzed and smiling and alone; he would put his arms round her and she would hug him and that would make it all right. They would have time to talk about everything.

But when she landed she couldn’t see him anywhere. The crowd thinned out, the pale tourists and the black residents, and still he wasn’t there. How could he be late? How could he spoil it all?

A girl came up to her, smaller than herself, a sun-tanned girl with dark hair, wearing jeans and a T-shirt and no make-up. She smiled but she looked sad.

‘Hullo,’ she said gently. ‘You must be Abigail. I’m Julie.’

The empty beaches below them were glaringly white in the sun, and the sea water was the colour of peacock feathers, a blue-green so dazzling that it hurt Abigail’s eyes and she had to put on the new glasses, Lorna’s extravagant present. It was a good excuse, but she needed them anyway, to shield her from Julie. She didn’t think she was going to cry because she was still too stunned to believe what Julie had said. Luckily they did not have to talk any more now: the growling of the tiny aircraft, like an airborne terrier, made speech impossible. It was taking them from the big island to the small one, where in a sense she still believed Dad would be waiting with his arms outstretched.

Faced with Julie, and groggy from the seven-hour flight and all the anticipation, she had at first been furious and uncomprehending. How could he send Julie to meet her? He had promised. It wasn’t like Dad to break a promise.

‘I know,’ Julie had said, as if hearing the thought, or perhaps Abigail’s face had said it all. ‘I’m sorry it’s me. I know he said we wouldn’t have to meet, only – there’s been an accident.’ Then Julie’s own face crumpled up, reminding Abigail oddly of Mum, although they weren’t alike. It was the same look, of someone whose world had just ended, of someone with nowhere to go to be safe. Abigail stared at her, silent. She knew the word accident meant something worse, something more final, although she couldn’t believe it.

‘We were diving off the boat,’ Julie said, ‘and he didn’t come up and then, when he did, he … wasn’t all right.’ She started to shake; she clasped her hands together and looked at the floor. All around them people moved about the small airport: there were unfamiliar smells of heat and dust, fruit and flowers. Abigail felt very strange, as if she might wake up at any minute.

‘They think it was a heart attack,’ Julie said. ‘We did everything we could. We did the kiss of life and everything. But they think he had a heart attack under water.’

Never to see Dad again. Not to be hugged, not to be told it was all right, he was coming home. It was too much to bear. She sat on a bench, speechless. It couldn’t be true. Julie must be telling her lies. It was a spiteful trick, just to upset her, because Julie was jealous at being left out.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Julie said. ‘I couldn’t ring you, you’d already left. And I didn’t dare ring your mother. I didn’t know what to do. You were on the plane when it happened. There was nothing I could do.’

Abigail kept shaking her head, to brush Julie’s words away, as if they were bees trying to settle on her.

‘I didn’t know how to tell you,’ Julie said. ‘I had to come and meet you and I didn’t know what to say. I still don’t.’ She looked at Abigail pleadingly; she seemed almost to expect sympathy.

‘It’s all your fault,’ Abigail heard herself say. She hadn’t known the words were in her mouth, waiting to leap out. ‘I hate you, I hate you, you made it happen.’

‘I know,’ Julie said in a desolate tone. ‘That’s how I feel too. It’s all my fault.’

After that there was nothing to say. They sat on the bench side by side and the silence spread out.

‘He wouldn’t have been here but for me,’ Julie said. ‘That’s what you mean, isn’t it?’

Abigail didn’t answer.

‘But don’t you see?’ Julie went on angrily. ‘I’ve lost him too. I loved him as much as you did. It’s the same for both of us.’ She started to cry.

It occurred to Abigail that Julie wasn’t grown up at all, that she was like Lorna with her phone-in programmes, someone who enjoyed listening to real life but never expected to have to take part in it. She was suddenly furious with her father for lumbering her with someone of her own age who was going to be no help to her. If you had to do this, she thought, enraged, you should have left me with Mum, who could help me bear it. But Julie was twenty-six. She was supposed to be grown up. She had stolen Dad and let him have an accident, but she was behaving like Lorna with toothache. Abigail felt confused. She was so angry with Julie that she wanted to kill her and at the same time she felt Dad might arrive at any moment and make it all right. Julie’s tears seemed theatrical: they embarrassed her. Dad couldn’t really have had an accident, not now, not when she’d finally come to see him and bring him home. She couldn’t be never going to see him again; that simply wasn’t possible.

‘I don’t know what you want to do now you’re here,’ Julie said, blowing her nose. ‘Do you want to ring your mother? Or go straight home? Or come to the island? I don’t know what to say for the best. You must be so tired and it’s such a shock – I just don’t know.’ She put her head in her hands and left the decision to Abigail.

So now they were in the little plane whirring and buzzing above the blue-green water, sitting side by side and not speaking. When they landed, they drove in Julie’s ancient car along a dirt track across the island. Somewhere Dad waited, Abigail felt, to tell her this was all a bad joke, a mistake, a false alarm. The car shuddered over pot-holes in the road and Julie’s hands shook on the wheel. Abigail thought she could drive better than that and she hadn’t even taken her test yet.

Crossing the island, they lost sight of the sea; there was only the lush vegetation that Julie said was a banana plantation, as if it mattered, and the dazzling flowers. The sun hammered on the roof of the car, and Abigail’s head throbbed with exhaustion and grief. Then they rounded a bend and (it seemed very sudden after the long journey) they had arrived at their destination. A beach of soft white sand littered with pink shells. Half a dozen thatched cabins a few yards from the water, and everywhere an abundance of red and purple flowers like the ones Dad had told her about, exploding like fireworks. Out at sea, several boats drifted at anchor and on the beach half a dozen couples lay browning in the sun. Abigail wondered if they knew yet that there was no one to cook their dinner. She felt suddenly hysterical and yet she still half expected to see Dad come running to meet her. If she started to laugh, would Julie think she was heartless and peculiar? But why did she even care what Julie thought?

Julie’s friends emerged from a large white building behind the huts on the beach. The man had grey hair and a beard and was wearing frayed denim shorts, like somebody trying to look young; the woman had bleached frizzy hair and wore a kaftan. They both looked sympathetic but distracted, as if they had got more than they bargained for when they asked Dad and Julie to join them. They looked heavy with responsibility, and glanced anxiously from Julie to Abigail and back again. Wondering how we’re getting on, Abigail thought bitterly. Whether I’m going to be a nuisance. Whether I’ve taken it well. She felt it was rather like Mr Williams the headmaster being asked to keep an eye on her.

‘Cathy and Morris,’ said Julie. She sounded exhausted. ‘And this is Abigail.’

‘Oh, my dear,’ Cathy said, advancing. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Abigail stepped back, afraid Cathy might be going to touch her. After a moment Cathy held out her hand and Morris did the same, so Abigail shook hands with both of them. So long as they don’t put their arms round me, she thought. So long as nobody does that, I might just be all right. I might just be able to get through this on my own.

‘It’s terrible, terrible,’ Morris said, getting her luggage out of Julie’s car. She had the impression that they were both extremely embarrassed and didn’t know what to say to her.

‘But don’t you look alike,’ said Cathy in a sudden surprised voice. ‘You could be sisters.’

‘Please, Cathy, don’t.’ Julie sounded quite sharp. ‘That’s the last thing she wants to hear.’

They offered her food and drink but she had consumed so many different things on the plane, although it already seemed a lifetime ago, that all she could manage was some fruit juice. Morris carried her luggage to one of the huts on the beach and left her alone with Julie. Inside it was surprisingly cool, with a fan over the bed; there was a bathroom, and she even had a fridge of her own. But there was fine mesh on all the windows, which made her feel like the Sunday joint in her grandmother’s larder on long-ago trips to Wales when she was a tiny child.

She was suddenly very tired, tired to the bone, the sort of tiredness she felt she might die of, and perhaps that would be the best thing.

‘Shall I leave you alone now?’ Julie asked.

Abigail nodded. She lay on the bed for a bit but she couldn’t sleep so she unpacked her things instead. She kept thinking what a paradise the place would have been with Dad: the sea right outside her door and the thick white sand, the pink shells and the palm trees, the flowers and the little boats. It was easy to see why someone would run away to such a place.

She sat and watched the sun setting over the sea, turning the sky all shades of pink and orange, purple and red, until it finally disappeared so abruptly that she almost expected to hear a plop. Then the tropic night came down with darkness as sudden as a drawn blind, heavy with stars.

She hurt all over, like the time she had had flu. Mum had given her pills and drinks, let her sleep, changed the sheets, tempted her appetite with ice cream. But she had felt sore everywhere. She had been hot or cold but never just right, whatever Mum did, whether she brought a cold flannel or a hot-water bottle. She had dreamed strange dreams and wanted Dad to be there. When she woke, he was bending over the bed.

‘How’s my lovely, then?’ he said, and suddenly she felt better, her fever gone, her skin no longer aching. Dad was magic. Mum had done all the work but Dad was magic.

Not any more though.

She slept at last beneath the whirling fan and dreamed of Dad coming out of the sea, holding out his arms. She woke screaming, soaked in sweat, and Julie came running in.

‘It’s all right, it’s all right,’ she kept saying, and tried to hug Abigail.

‘No, it isn’t,’ said Abigail, and lashed out at Julie, catching her quite a heavy blow on the arm. ‘It’ll never be all right again.’

Julie subsided on to the bed. ‘No,’ she agreed, sounding unperturbed by the blow, even calm and fatalistic. ‘That’s true.’

Abigail sobbed and punched the pillows. ‘I had a nightmare,’ she said. ‘He was coming out of the sea.’

‘It’s not going to happen,’ said Julie. ‘I only wish it could.’

‘Go away,’ said Abigail. ‘Just go away and leave me alone.’

‘I’m only in the next hut,’ said Julie, going. ‘Call if you need me. I don’t sleep much.’

After she had gone, Abigail wished she hadn’t sent her away. The night outside seemed very black and the sea didn’t sound as friendly as it had before. Her throat was dry and her eyes felt gritty, so she got up and bathed them and had a drink of water from the fridge. There was a bowl of fruit on the table and she felt suddenly hungry, so she ate a banana and a mango. They tasted different from the ones she had had in England: richer, more creamy, spiced with sunshine. Odd disconnected thoughts came into her mind: fruit laid out in the greengrocer’s at home; Dad teaching her to swim when they went on holiday to Wales, and telling her never to be afraid of the sea but always to treat it with respect.

Then she noticed the spider. It was big by English standards, hugely black against the white wall over her head. She watched it with horrified fascination as it crawled for a bit, then scuttled suddenly, then settled down and spread out as if it had all the time in the world. She got as far away from it as she could and waited till her heart had stopped thumping, while she considered what to do. At home Dad had always removed them for her in a bunch of tissues while Mum told her not to be so silly. She knew they were harmless and possibly more frightened of her, but what use was that knowledge when she was terrified? She couldn’t sleep in the room with it; she daren’t put out the light. She would have to sit all night and stare at it, when it was the last thing she wanted to see. But if she took her eyes off it for a moment and it moved, she would never be sure where it had gone.

Suddenly she was very tired as well as trapped. Only in the next hut, Julie had said. Call if you need me. So how had Dad intended to keep them apart, so they never met?

It was awful to need Julie, but there was no one else. And if she waited too long, the creature might get between her and the door so she couldn’t get out. Already it was moving lazily in that direction. Making up her mind in a hurry, before she had time to hesitate, she ran to the door and flung it open, her feet plunging into the surprisingly cold soft sand. ‘Julie,’ she called. ‘Julie.’ She was ashamed of herself but she yelled quite loud.

Julie came out of her hut at once. It was almost as if she had been expecting the call. ‘What is it?’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’

They stood on the beach looking at each other. Still Abigail half expected Dad to come out of the sea or the hut and join them. ‘There’s a spider in my room,’ she said. She felt brave just using the word: at home she would have called it a creepy, which seemed to make it less menacing, but Julie wasn’t to know that, unless of course Dad had told her.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Julie, as if it were her fault. ‘They don’t often come in, so near the sea. Shall I get rid of it for you?’

They went back to the hut together and several moths followed them in, but Abigail didn’t mind that. ‘It’s over there,’ she said.

‘Oh yes, I see,’ said Julie, unperturbed. She scooped it up gently in her hand and tossed it out of the doorway, closing the door after it like a weary hostess. ‘I used to hate them too but I’ve got used to them now.’

‘I know it’s silly,’ Abigail said, grateful and resentful. She couldn’t get the words ‘thank you’ to come out of her mouth.

‘It’s not silly at all,’ said Julie. ‘It’s just one of those things. I’m still frightened of worms but at least they don’t turn up in your bedroom.’

Abigail found herself looking at Julie for the first time. She hadn’t really seen her before; she had been too busy hating her. She saw a face that was calm and friendly, tired and sad. She didn’t look at all like the film-star waitress, tarty and cross-eyed. In fact she looked rather like some of the younger teachers at school, like someone Abigail might have trusted, if she hadn’t taken Dad away and killed him.

‘I can’t believe it either,’ Julie said. ‘I can’t believe I’ll never see him again. I know you hate me and I don’t blame you, but you must believe I loved him. And you had him for seventeen years. I only had him for a year.’

‘What about my mother?’ Abigail said. She felt it was somehow unfair, invoking Mum when it should be just between the two of them, but she wanted to hit back with everything she had.

‘I’m sorry about her, of course. But he told me it was over. They were really separate, even though they still lived in the same house.’

‘And you believed him?’ Abigail was shocked. Was Julie lying to her, or had Dad been lying to Julie? How could Mum and Dad have been separate? They never used the spare room, even when they had a row. And why had Mum cried so much when he went away?

‘Why shouldn’t I?’ Julie said. ‘He wouldn’t lie to me.’ She swayed slightly on her feet. ‘D’you mind if I sit down?’ she asked almost humbly. ‘Only I feel a bit faint. You see, I’m going to have a baby.’

In the late morning Abigail sat on the verandah savouring the unfamiliar taste of paw-paw for breakfast and wondering how she could even eat when Dad was dead. Julie had talked far into the night about the baby and how thrilled Dad had been about it and how she had only ever wanted a husband and a family, not a career. Eventually they had both fallen asleep, Abigail in the bed and Julie across the end of it, like a guard dog, Abigail thought when she woke in what was left of the night and saw her there. In the morning Julie was gone.

Now she came across the sand barefooted with a letter in her hand. ‘Look what I’ve found,’ she said, pleased like a child. ‘I was looking at his things to cheer myself up and I found this. It’s for you. I haven’t read it.’

Abigail took it from her. She felt very strange, almost numb. A letter from Dad. Now. When he wasn’t there any more. When she couldn’t answer him. Julie went away. Tiny green lizards flickered up and down the wall. Abigail began to read.

Darling Abby,

If you won’t answer my letters and you won’t speak to me on the phone, what can I do to reach you? Are you even reading my letters?

You’re my only hope. How can I approach your mother direct after all I’ve done to her? But you must know how she feels. D’you think there’s any chance, any remote hope she might even consider letting me come home?

The familiar handwriting was a shock, almost a bigger shock than the words. It made Dad seem alive.

I’m not going to pretend I don’t love Julie any more because I do, but I’ve never stopped loving your mother. It’s quite possible, indeed fatally easy in my case, to love two people at once, only in different ways, as you’ll probably find out when you get older. I don’t expect you to believe me now and I don’t suppose your mother will believe me either, as I’ve hurt her so much. But she hurt me too when she made me feel her job was more important than our marriage, when she was too tired to make love, when she didn’t care that the hours we both worked meant we hardly spent any time together.

There were sailboats and windsurfers out at sea, and beyond them a big boat from which people dived. Abigail wondered if that was the boat that Dad had been on when it happened.

I probably shouldn’t be writing to you like this but who else can I turn to? You’re in the middle of this mess and you do love us both – at least I hope you do.

The thing is, Julie is pregnant. We didn’t plan it but she’s so thrilled I had to pretend I’m thrilled too. In a sense I am – new life can’t fail to be exciting and it’s always a compliment when a woman wants to have your child – but in my heart I feel terror. Suddenly it’s not a love affair any more. I had such a precious fantasy of Julie and me running away to the sunshine with no responsibilities, just each other and the restaurant, and now it all begins again, trying to be a husband and father.

This must sound terrible but I’m trying to be as honest as I can. If I have to be married, I only want to be married to your mother, and if I have to be a parent, I only want to be a parent to you.

The thought of Julie’s child reminds me of your childhood. I can’t do better for another child – I only want to make up to you for all the times I let you down. It’s asking too much to make me live through all that again with another child instead of you.

I must be such a disappointment to you as a father and I don’t know how to explain. There aren’t any excuses but sometimes middle-aged people go a little crazy and want to be young again and they find someone they think can make that miracle happen for them. It can’t be done of course but by the time they find that out they’ve caused a lot of pain and perhaps it’s too late to repair the damage.

I don’t know what I’m saying really – I can’t leave Julie if she’s pregnant and yet I’d rather stay with her if she wasn’t. I’m not making sense. You must be thinking very badly of me by now if you’re reading this at all. I suppose what I really mean is, I want the best of both worlds, to be back with you and your mother, but still to see Julie at the restaurant. I’m terrified at how fast my life has changed and I don’t know how to cope with it. I just go from one unbearable situation to another.

The letter ended there. He must have stopped writing it when he knew she was going to visit him. She sat for a while just holding the pages. When she had stopped crying she read it again, but it still made no sense to her. She felt frightened, that adults didn’t know what they were doing any more than teenagers did, so there was no hope for her; she was only going to grow up into a greater muddle, like Dad.

One thing was clear, though. He didn’t want Julie to be pregnant. She had only to show Julie the letter and all her happy memories would be ruined. She’d see what Dad was really like, how he wanted Mum back, and maybe Julie as well, but not her baby.

It would be so easy. She had it in her hands, the power to hurt Julie, to punish her for all the trouble she had caused. She could just say, ‘Read this,’ and Julie would be destroyed. The letter had been lying in Dad’s room like a, landmine and she had only to set it off with a touch.

Eventually Julie came back. Her face looked soft and hopeful; she said gently, ‘Was it a nice letter? Did it help?’

Abigail hesitated. She could see plainly in Julie’s face how much she had loved Dad. The letter burned in her hand.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s a lovely letter. Thank you.’

Julie smiled. ‘I’m so glad,’ she said. ‘D’you want to ring your mother now?’

Abigail shook her head. ‘Not yet,’ she said.

‘I’m going out in the motor boat,’ Julie said. ‘Come with me. You can’t just sit here. He’d have wanted you to do something.’

They took the boat to another beach. Their feet made fresh marks in the white sand where no one had been before them. There were huge greyish lizards among the trees; they looked very old. Julie said they were iguanas. They seemed friendly but shy. The water was very clear and Abigail wanted to swim.

‘You don’t think I’m heartless, do you, coming here?’ Julie asked. ‘Only we used to come here a lot. I’m sure he’d want me to bring you here.’

‘No, I don’t think you’re heartless at all,’ Abigail said. ‘I’d like to swim.’

They swam side by side, a little way apart, and she felt her tears flowing easily into the salt water, as if they belonged. The sea was warm and clear and buoyant.

‘There’s a coral reef out there,’ Julie called to her. ‘You can see all kinds of fish. Amazing colours.’

Back on the beach they lay on their towels in the sun.

‘What happens next?’ she asked Julie, when she felt brave enough.

‘I’m not sure. They may want to have an inquest before the funeral.’

‘Will I … I mean should I see …?’ But she couldn’t say the words.

‘You can,’ Julie said. ‘But I shouldn’t if I were you. Remember him the way he was.’

When they got back to the hotel Abigail rang her mother. She held the letter because it seemed to give her courage. She told Mum what had happened, but they had a bad line and she had to say it twice, which was painful but in an odd way calming.

‘Oh no,’ Mum said. ‘Oh no.’ And there was a long silence.

‘He was writing a letter,’ Abigail said. ‘You can read it when I get back. It’s addressed to me but it’s meant for you really.’ She felt herself starting to cry again but they were healing tears this time. ‘It’ll make you feel lots better.’

There was more silence from Mum, then she said in a sort of blurred voice, ‘Should I come out for the funeral?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Abigail said. ‘You’d only get tired and upset and spend a lot of money. And what would be the point?’

Mum sighed, sounding relieved, as if she were the child and Abigail the adult, telling her what to do.

‘I thought about coming home early,’ Abigail said, ‘but I think I’ll stay on. I might as well just be here for a bit, the way we planned it. I feel closer.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Mum said. ‘You must do whatever you think best.’

Abigail didn’t mention the baby. Time enough for that when she got home. She needed to be in the room with her for that: Mum might need a hug. Meanwhile she would sit in the sun with Julie and talk about Dad the way they both remembered him, and get brown the way he had promised her she would. She could do that for him at least. She would collect shells and walk through the icing-sugar sand and photograph the iguanas with their ancient faces and stare at the coloured fish and the coral reef through Julie’s snorkeling mask. She felt oddly at peace. Nothing worse could happen to her now. And there would be the child. In a way Dad was still there: he would go on in her, and in her brother or sister, whichever it turned out to be. Julie had destroyed something but she was creating something too.

Abigail sat in the sun and looked at her nails. She had forgotten to bite them for two whole days and they were beginning to grow.

‘I shall stop biting my nails,’ she decided. ‘I’m really too old to do that any more.’