32

The fuse that had been burning for sixteen years had reached the charge at last and my family was blown apart.

It was my father who left home, although mother would have preferred to make that gesture: fill a suitcase, bang the front door, there, do your own ironing, I’m not spending another night under the same roof. But she couldn’t very well leave my grandmother behind in the enemy camp. So it was up to my father – somewhat belatedly – to do the decent thing. He didn’t want to go: he had abased himself thoroughly and done his penance many years ago now, or so he thought, but my mother’s forgiveness turned out to have been a loan, rather than a gift, and she was now calling it in.

He hardly took anything with him, and chose the most wretched accommodation that could be imagined, as if he couldn’t really believe what was happening, and wouldn’t admit that it could last. I went to visit him there after a couple of weeks: he was renting a bedsit in a large Victorian house about three miles away. There was a strip of carpet on the stairs so worn that on every tread you could see the wood beneath. In the hallway was a dead weeping fig in a wicker stand and a pile of unsorted post on the doormat. The tenants would obviously rifle through the mail, take out what was theirs, and chuck the rest back on the floor.

Father’s room was on the second storey. It had brown paintwork and porridge-coloured walls pockmarked with drawing-pin holes and tiny blobs of blu-tack. Some of the pins still had fragments of paper attached, from posters torn down in a hurry. It was the sort of place you would be quick to leave. There was a single bed over which was spread a knitted blanket from home, a table with his school work and typewriter on, a chipboard wardrobe which was standing at a diagonal in one corner to hide a boiler, and a hand basin with a seaweed green streak from tap to plughole. Under the basin was a Baby Belling, the oven part of which father was using as a filing cabinet. He didn’t seem to be intending to cook. From the smell of the room and the wrappers in the bin I deduced he must be living on kebabs and curries.

I made a move to the large sash window overlooking the dustbins and whirligigs of the neighbouring gardens.

‘Can we open this a bit?’ I said. The heat was stifling, and added to the kebab smell was one of unwashed laundry and pipe smoke.

‘It’s nailed shut,’ said father. ‘Presumably to prevent any occupants hurling themselves out in despair.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘Sorry. How’s your mother?’

‘All right.’

‘Good, good. And your granny?’

‘I’m still not living there,’ I admitted. I hadn’t stayed overnight at home since I had made my discovery. Unable to confront my parents to their faces I had left a cowardly note which gave me an opportunity to vent some of my anger without fear of an open confrontation.

Last night I met, by accident, my half-sister. I am still in a state of shock – not so much at her existence, but at the fact that you kept it a secret from me for so long. In particular I can’t forgive Granny for the lie she told me about my having had a sister who died. This was cruel and unnecessary. I’d prefer to stay at Frances’ house until I have sorted my feelings out.

love

Abigail.

This note had been through many versions – some long and histrionic, some cold and terse. The ‘love’ was a great concession. It hadn’t occurred to me that my parents might separate over it. Mine! Who hardly ever even argued, and who never raised their voices. I was thinking only of myself and the apologies I was owed.

The Radleys accepted my arrival without a murmur, and treated me with the respect due to someone who has, against all expectations, brought drama into their household. That my family should have risen up and proved itself tragic and interesting seemed like an affront to nature. The strangeness of things was underlined that Sunday by all the Radleys, plus Auntie Mim, Nicky and myself, sitting down to a lunch of roast beef, cooked by Lexi, during which conversation was co-operative and civil, while a few miles away my parents were tearing their marriage apart.

Within twenty-four hours of my father’s expulsion, mother was on Frances’ doorstep begging me to come home. Rad answered the door.

‘Hello, R … er, is Abigail there?’ Mother had always had an aversion to nicknames: she simply couldn’t bring herself to articulate something that wasn’t actually on a birth certificate. I couldn’t very well invite her in to the Radleys’ for a heart-to-heart, so we walked down to the high street looking for somewhere to sit. She suggested the Wimpy Bar – my first indication that she was in a desperate mood.

‘Please come back,’ she said, trying not to cry. ‘There’s no need for you to go too.’ We stirred our tea with plastic rods. Neither of us felt much inclined to drink it.

‘Why has Dad left now? I don’t understand. If you’ve always known about Birdie, what difference does it make that I know?’ I’m the injured party now, I wanted to shout.

‘It makes all the difference. It’s easier to forgive something in private. Soon everybody will know.’ A young woman manoeuvred past us with three toddlers on reins like a pack of dogs, and mother lowered her voice – as if they might be interested in eavesdropping on our family secrets! ‘Everybody at church, and the surgery, and my Wednesday group.’ Her chin gave a tremble.

‘How will they find out? I won’t tell anyone.’

‘You’ve already told Frances, haven’t you?’ she said. ‘And the whole family now knows, I suppose.’

‘I had to. Rad was with me at the time. I’ve got to talk to someone, anyway. If you hadn’t lied to me in the first place –’

‘We never lied!’ She was unswervable on this point. ‘We just decided it was something you never needed to know. I didn’t know Granny had made up that awful story. That day when you said you’d found a photo in Dad’s wallet, she just told us she’d calmed you down and made you promise not to mention it ever again. I’m furious with her.’ Her mouth collapsed. ‘Nobody’s talking to anybody now.’ I held her hand across the table as she reached for a tissue. I could sense us being observed with interest by the two girls behind the counter. A brown skin had formed on the top of my tea. I scored a cross in it with my stirrer.

‘It was all done for you. We’ve tried to give you a happy childhood.’

‘I know, I know. I am happy,’ I quavered. ‘I just wish you’d told me before I found out like that.’

‘We weren’t to know you’d ever run into her. It seemed so remote.’ There was a pause while she exchanged her wet tissue for a dry one.

‘Did you ever meet the woman?’ I asked, in some trepidation in case this provoked more tears.

‘No. Never,’ she said. ‘She was a student teacher at the school. Your father was supposed to be looking after her because she was finding things difficult. It was just a one-off thing. It wasn’t an affair. And he confessed immediately. And we were all right. But then she told him she was, you know, going to have a baby.’ Her voice became watery again. ‘And it was just awful.’

I could hear her talking as if from a great distance. We were sitting in the Wimpy Bar, my mother and I, talking about my father, who wore a tie every day, even on holiday, who wouldn’t park on a yellow line, getting someone pregnant. I suddenly felt overwhelmed with pity for her. It seemed so obvious now that my parents’ marriage hadn’t been conventionally happy – had in fact been cold and empty. And it was plain that years of acting out a forgiveness she didn’t feel, for my sake only, had diminished her, and made her thin and sharp and bitter.

‘You were only one and a half. I made him choose. Us or Them.’ I watched the skin on my tea re-form itself. She squeezed my hand. ‘And he chose you.’

Father offered me a cup of tea. He had bought a tiny travel-kettle from Boots, which he filled at the handbasin. He hadn’t brought anything useful with him from home, and wouldn’t buy anything that smacked of long-term independence. This was an acceptable compromise: the sort of purchase you might make with the next fortnight in mind, but no longer.

‘These things are rather handy,’ he said, indicating the tea-bags as he dropped them into mugs. He was pleased with this discovery. We always had leaf tea at home, warmed pot, tea-cosy, china cups. Frances wouldn’t even have recognised loose leaf – she’d looked in the caddy at our place once, and said, ‘What’s that? Snuff?’

Dad fetched the milk from the window sill where it had been standing in full sunlight. He sniffed it and pulled a face. When he shook the carton I could hear the slip-slop of jelly against cardboard and the bile rose in my throat. ‘Black’s fine,’ I said.

‘Isn’t it time you moved back home?’ He carried the wet tea-bags over to the bin in a spoon, leaving a trail of drops. ‘Your mum must be missing you. And you shouldn’t be taking all this out on her.’

‘I will if you will.’

‘She doesn’t want me back yet. It’s too soon. I’m better off here for the moment so she can have some time to herself. Anyway, the Radleys can’t put you up all summer.’

‘They don’t mind. I’m like a daughter to them,’ I said without thinking, and could have bitten my tongue off when I saw the hurt expression come and go on his face in a fraction of a second.

‘I’m so sorry about all of this,’ he said, lifting his shoulders in a gesture of helplessness. ‘Whatever you think of me, you know how much I … care about you. I didn’t want to lie to you, but telling you seemed even worse.’

‘Birdie knew all about me.’

‘Well, naturally, her predicament was rather different. You’ve spoken to her at some length, I gather.’

‘Yes.’

‘How is she? Is she well?’

‘Yes. She looks just like me. And you.’

‘Ah.’

‘Why did you stop going to visit her?’

‘I saw her when she was a baby, and I used to take presents over at Christmas, and Easter eggs and so on.’

Easter eggs, I thought, a memory struggling to be born.

‘But of course it used to make your mother unhappy, and when Birdie was old enough to ask questions she started to find my visits confusing and upsetting, so Val, her mother, told me to stop. I still sent money for a few years after that, but then that was returned, so I assumed she had got married.’ He raised an enquiring eyebrow.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But they got divorced a couple of years ago.’

‘Ah, well, it’s the national sport.’ And he gave a ghostly smile.

‘So all those times when you go off in the car, you’re not going to see them.’

He seemed astounded by this suggestion. ‘No, of course not. I haven’t seen either of them for at least twelve years. When I go out, I just … go out.’

How could you have done it? I wanted to say, but I could see what agony this conversation was for him, and I didn’t have the will to probe any deeper. As I left he scribbled down the number of the pay-phone in the hallway on the back of an envelope and gave it to me. ‘You can call me at any time,’ he said. ‘If it’s not me who answers, just ask for room five and one of my fellow prisoners will come and knock on the door.’

‘Do you know any of them?’

‘We nod on the stairs. Some people leave angry messages on the bathroom door about the cleaning rota. It’s rather like being in university digs again. Only without the fun.’