When I Met You

‘Right,’ I say faintly, not trusting myself to say much more apart, that is, from the question from which there’s no escaping. ‘So … what did you do? Why were you in prison?’

Ray inhales and looks up at the ceiling as if deliberating whether or not to tell me.

‘If you don’t tell me, I’ll find out somehow,’ I say, steeling myself to hear what heinous crime my long-lost dad committed all those years ago.

‘All right,’ he says quietly, his huge bulk making our kitchen look smaller than usual. ‘I was arrested for murder.’

‘You murdered someone?’ I sob. It couldn’t get any worse. It all feels so surreal and part of me hopes I’ll wake up in a minute. I know if the floodgates open I won’t be able to close them again so fight to keep calm.

‘Well yeah, but not on purpose. It’s a long story,’ he says sadly. ‘In the end I got done for manslaughter … and arson.’

I can’t look at him. It’s as if the walls are closing in on me, and it dawns upon me that I know virtually nothing about this man who’s standing in my kitchen. This man, who’s taken the liberty of helping himself to milk from our fridge. This monster, who’s telling me now, calmly, that he’s killed someone. What was I even thinking when I let him in the house? I have to get him out, preferably before Mum and Martin get back.

‘Well, now you’ve got out, it’s nice you thought to look us up,’ I say, sarcastically, yet with a hint of caution. I’m a bit worried for my own safety. I don’t want to rile him. He’s just told me he murdered someone. My dad’s a murderer. As thoughts pop relentlessly into my confused head, they’re more like newsflashes.

‘I got out eight years ago,’ he says abruptly.

‘Oh,’ I say, taken aback.

Another shocker I wasn’t expecting. In fact, if this evening takes any more curve balls I’m going to get the bends. Strangely, the fact he’s been out of prison for eight years but has only just got round to looking us up pisses me off even more than finding out he’s killed someone. I know that probably displays an awful lack of perspective but it’s more personal I suppose. Plus I’m probably not really thinking straight.

‘So, why didn’t you come looking for us eight bloody years ago then?’ I demand to know, feeling such a surge of white fury it almost overpowers me. How dare he? How can he say he’s dreamed of this day when he could have had it any time he liked over the last eight years. I’m so angry I feel like screaming.

‘I promised your mum I wouldn’t, but things have changed.’

‘Oh yeah? Great, well what’s happened then? Have you murdered someone else?’ I cried. ‘Or did it just occur to you what a shitty job you’d made of being a dad. Or maybe it’s not something you’ve ever taken particularly seriously so you just thought you’d do it on a whim. Is that it, or what?’

‘I’ve got cancer, Marianne. They’ve given me six months to live.’

And these words change the direction of everything once again. I stare at his face, willing him to be lying but can tell immediately he isn’t. Instead, I see a man who looks strangely resigned to the news he’s just imparted and even though I barely know him the anger dissipates and is joined by crippling sadness at the injustice of the whole shitty, crappy situation.

‘Cancer of what?’ Even though I’m already sitting down, my legs feel decidedly wobbly. I wipe my face as tears fall silently down it.

‘Of bloody everywhere at this stage, but it started in my colon. Cancer of the bumhole basically. Not the most glamorous,’ he jokes, though it’s so far from being funny, it’s tragic. His face is stricken.

‘Right,’ I manage. ‘Well … I’m sorry.’

‘Me too Marianne, me too,’ he says, rolling his green eyes heavenward in order to quell and stave off whatever it is he’s feeling, which can’t be good.

‘Are you scared?’ I ask, curious to know. Was it fear that had made him come back? Was he so selfish that he was only seeking us out because suddenly he needed us? I’m so confused right now I don’t know what to think.

‘No,’ he says simply. ‘I ain’t scared of dying. What does scare me though is not explaining anything to you and your sister. I’ve always left you alone for good reason but lately I’ve realised that might not have been the best plan after all. I’m so sorry I frightened you earlier.’

I think he can tell my brain is completely overloaded because the next thing he says is, ‘Look, it’s a lot for you to take in. I should go now anyway, in case your mum and her bloke get back, but I’m gonna give you my number and if you could just give me a call, maybe tomorrow, I’d appreciate it.’

I must have nodded because he picks a biro up and looks around for something to write on, settling eventually on an old receipt.

‘There,’ he says.

I take it from him and he crosses the room, clearly planning on making his exit the same way he arrived.

‘Why tonight?’ I ask, a swell of emotion suddenly surging through me as I desperately try to figure out so many things. I don’t want to cry while he’s here.

He shakes his head and smiles ruefully. ‘Didn’t have a plan really. I’ve just been watching the house a bit, you know, trying to figure out the best time to approach you.’

‘Right,’ I say, not knowing quite what to make of that either. I’m pretty sure what he’s just described amounts to stalking, not that it seems to matter very much somehow.

He slides the glass doors open a fraction and as he does the rain howls in again. As I watch him pull on his still wet coat, it occurs to me that I hope he has somewhere warm to go to. And that confuses me even further because a big part of me hates him, and yet this instinct contradicts that. He’s just about to disappear into the stormy night when he stops, turns and says one final thing, and of all the things I hadn’t expected about tonight, including seeing my dad for the first time in decades, finding out he went to prison, discovering he killed someone and is dying of cancer, the thing he says to me as he vanishes back into the storm is the thing that surprises me the most.

‘By the way, I heard you playing earlier Marianne. Through the window. You play beautiful. Bach wasn’t it?’

‘Um … yes,’ I whisper, wondering how on earth my dad, the murderer, could possibly know that.

I wander back to my room in a trance, mind racing as it desperately tries to compute everything it’s found out. My violin’s still lying on the bed where I left it, so I put it and the bow back in its case before sliding it underneath my bed. Then, utterly drained and emotionally spent, I collapse onto the bed and stare at the rain as it smashes against the window-pane, letting the tears slide quietly down my face and onto my pillow.

Seconds later I hear a key in the front door downstairs. Mum and Martin are back. Quickly I switch off my bedside light, plunging my room into total darkness. I can’t face Mum. If she sees me she’ll instantly know something’s up and I’m nowhere near ready to discuss what’s just happened.

I can hear her and Martin giggling and shushing one another, clearly pissed after an unusual Sunday night out to celebrate Sheena and Dave’s wedding anniversary. I’m hoping they’ll go straight to bed, but Martin spends what feels like hours making sure the house is locked up, while Mum crashes and blunders her way around the kitchen, burning toast by the smell of it – it’s always the same when she goes out with Sheena. In front of her she pretends she has the appetite of a sparrow, but then makes up for it when she gets home by eating her body weight in carbs.

What feels like hours later they eventually start making their way up the stairs, though their progress is painfully slow and agonising to listen to.

Mum seems determined to stop on every stair, wheezing with laughter, while saying things sporadically like, ‘Stop it Martin’ and, ‘Don’t, I’ll pee my pants Martin.’

Five long minutes later, they’re finally ensconced in their room, presumably passed out because the house falls silent once again, at which point I succumb to a proper sob. Perhaps a good cry is what I need? It’s been a hell of a weekend. And with that final thought I drift off into restless sleep, wishing I’d appreciated the relative simplicity of life before today.

CHAPTER SIX

The next morning I wake up feeling drained. My very first thought is that I can’t handle work today so I phone Jason and pretend to be ill.

Once I’ve got him off the phone I find the tatty receipt my father wrote his number on and stare at it, trying to absorb what it means. My heart aches in my chest. I’ve spent my entire adult life missing having a dad, wondering why he didn’t love us enough to stay in touch. I’ve coped by repressing as much of these emotions as possible while pretending to the world that I’d have no interest in seeing him again. But him showing up has exposed this lie for what it is. Now he’s come back I am forced to admit it’s all I’ve ever really wanted. Only not like this. As I stare at the unfamiliar handwriting, I find myself thinking how little I know about the person it belongs to. Is my dad evil? He did kill someone after all, and yet if that’s the case, why do I feel so desolate about the fact he’s going to die? It’s all so overwhelming and gut-wrenchingly disappointing. Over the years, in my mind I’ve built him up into a romantic sort of Heathcliff-type figure. A good-looking, charismatic cad. It’s hard to admit, but I’ve often wondered whether Mum was to blame for him leaving. I thought she might have driven him away. One psychic prediction too many, perhaps?

I’ve invented everything though, convincing myself along the way that I’ve based these notions on more than just my own pathetic daydreams. As it turns out, Ray’s more roguish looking than handsome and now that he’s really here it’s obvious that the truth is far more unpalatable and complicated than I could ever have guessed. I’m going to have to reappraise everything I’ve ever thought. Do I even want to get involved? If he’s telling the truth, he’s only going to end up dying on us anyway.

As this incredibly bitter thought enters my head I feel ashamed. God it was all such a mess. What the hell was Hayley going to say when she found out? Should I even tell her given that she’s pregnant? I don’t want to stress her out. I decide then just to sit on it for a while. My head is too scrambled to make any decisions.

Downstairs the usual morning chaos is in full swing. Martin’s leaving for work and Mum’s nagging Pete to eat more than just a piece of toast for breakfast.

‘My little soldier can’t survive on toast alone. Do you want me to make you a quick bacon sarnie my lovely? Or how about a bit of scrambled?’

Pete grunts by way of reply and looks annoyed when she ruffles his hair, which he’s clearly spent hours doing. Moments later he gets down from the breakfast bar, picks up his rucksack of books and drags himself off to college, giving me a cursory glimmer of a smile in passing, oblivious to Mum’s incessant commentary and fussing. As ever Mum seems to feel it’s necessary to see him right out, so that she can yell her goodbyes from the drive.

Once this daily ritual of over-the-top mothering is over, she makes her way back into the kitchen and sighs contentedly before asking brightly, ‘So, how are you this morning?’

Today Mum’s dressed in a bright turquoise tracksuit, which she’s accessorised with beads and her favourite silver and Perspex wedges. She simply doesn’t do flat shoes and only takes her beloved wedges off if she’s about to get into bed, the bath or a swimming pool. Sometimes she even wears them on her exercise bike. ‘Not working today, Marianne? I thought your day off was Wednesday.’

‘No,’ I mumble, as I fix myself a bowl of cereal while wondering how on earth to broach the subject that her ex-husband is out of prison and has reappeared, in our back garden. ‘Are you a bit happier about Hayley’s news now you’ve had a chance to think about it?’ I enquire disapprovingly, buying myself time more than anything.

Mum tuts and rolls her eyes despairingly at the mention of my sister. ‘Course I’m happy Marianne, I’m ecstatic,’ she says, sounding anything but. ‘And if that didn’t come across, well then I’m sorry. I just don’t want Hayley to wake up one day and realise she’s missed the boat. She’s so talented but if I’m totally honest, sometimes I wonder whether she’s got the right attitude for showbiz, you know?’

‘If she hasn’t got the right attitude for showbiz,’ I say, spooning Shreddies into my mouth, head still whirring, ‘She’s probably not cut out for it, is she?’

Mum’s face looks tired underneath all the make-up. I can tell she’s hung-over from last night. ‘Look,’ she says as she flaps around, tidying up. ‘Is it wrong that I want you girls to do something exciting? Something glamorous, obviously. I haven’t turned into one of those feminists with hairy armpits or anything, but I want you to be fulfilled. I want you to do something worthwhile, like beauty therapy or ideally, in Hayley’s case anyway, performing. As it is I’ve got two daughters in their thirties, one with bags of talent but no ambition and another who wants to be some sort of hippy. Frankly Marianne I’m praying you’re going to get inspired at some point and start taking hairdressing more seriously. If you did, you could have your own salon one day.’

I roll my eyes, not in the mood for a lecture.

‘All I’m saying is that when your dad upped and left, I realised I’d wasted my life being a girlfriend and wife to him. I was so young, still am really, but life has passed me by and I’ve never had anything to fall back on. I don’t want that for my girls.’

The fact she’s even referred to her past life with Ray is very unusual. I seize the opportunity to turn the conversation back round to him.

‘So, when my dad left, did you ever wonder whether there was more to it than him just wanting to … get away?’ I ask tentatively, searching Mum’s face for clues. Knowing she lied to us all these years is a hard pill to swallow and not something I’ve had the chance to even consider until this very second.

She looks away and busies herself with heaving the vacuum cleaner out of the cupboard and plugging it in. This all gives her time to think. I see that now and find myself wondering how I could have been so dense all these years not to have noticed her rubbish attempts to conceal the truth. Angry suddenly, and determined to get an answer, I get up and pull the plug out of the wall just as she’s started vacuuming.

‘Hey,’ says Mum, looking annoyed. ‘You know I don’t like talking about that time, so let’s drop it shall we? Plug me back in.’

I shake my head. I can’t do it. I can’t pretend and don’t see why I should have to any more. ‘I know he went to prison,’ I say steadily.

Mum freezes and even though her back is to me at this point, her shoulders go rigid, so I know she’s heard what I just said.

‘Who told you?’ she asks, her voice little more than a whisper. When she turns to face me, her skin has gone a rather strange colour. The colour of a mushroom. Not the black bit, the grey bit obviously.

‘I found it on the internet,’ I say, not sure I should deliver all the facts just yet.

‘Right,’ she says, swallowing. She looks momentarily confused because of course the information isn’t online or I would have found it long ago, but then she seems to accept that it must be.

‘Why didn’t you tell us? Why have you lied to us all these years?’ To my horror my eyes start filling up. ‘You had no right.’

Abandoning the vacuum cleaner, Mum sinks down onto one of the stools at the breakfast bar and for a second seems close to tears herself. Taking a deep breath she runs her immaculate peach fingernails through her hair.

‘How could I tell two young girls their dad was a criminal? You were four Marianne, are you telling me you would have understood that? That you would have liked to have known he was a villain?’

I consider this for a while. ‘OK, I understand why you didn’t tell us when we were little. But later, when we were older, didn’t we deserve to know the truth then?’

‘And how would you have felt? You believed what I’d told you. What day would have been the right day to break my daughters’ hearts?’

I swallow. ‘I don’t know. Look, I get that it was hard for you Mum. I really do. Being left to deal with everything must have been awful, but surely it would have been better at some point to tell us the truth? At least we would have known he didn’t leave us out of choice. As it is I’ve spent my entire life staring at pilots in the airport, scanning their faces for family resemblances. I haven’t even been to Australia because I thought it had too many unpleasant associations.’ I wail, as these side effects of the whole situation occur to me.

‘I’m sorry, all right,’ says Mum, sounding more angry than sorry. ‘But I was ashamed too you know. My husband was a low-life criminal and I put up with it, and turned a blind eye for years. I was still so young when he went down, far younger than you are now,’ she adds pointedly. ‘And I was heartbroken if you must know. I lost my husband that day, just as you lost a father. He let me down,’ she shouts and her voice becomes quite shrill.

‘I know,’ I reply quietly.

Mum pauses as she tries to find the right words to express what she wants to say. ‘Look, the one right thing I did was have you girls, and the day he went, I realised you deserved better than the start you’d had. I wanted better for you. So I started afresh. We were better off without him anyway.’

‘Were we?’ I stammer. ‘Surely that wasn’t your decision to make alone? Like it or lump it that man is our dad and if we’d known he was in prison then maybe we could have decided for ourselves whether we wanted him in our lives or not. Don’t you think we had a right to that choice?’

‘No, I don’t actually,’ says Mum plainly. ‘I had to do what I thought was right, for all of us, and it wasn’t flaming well easy I can tell you.’

‘Why wasn’t it?’ I sob. ‘I want to know, all of it. I need you to tell me what happened. You owe me that at least.’

Mum looks at me for a while and it’s as if the day she’s been dreading for so many years has finally arrived. Maybe it’s even a relief for her because she doesn’t put up any more of a fight. Instead she just tells me everything. And for once, I can tell it’s the truth.

‘When I met Ray, your dad, at school, he was the lad everyone looked up to. He was … what’s the word? He was … charismatic. All the girls fancied him,’ she says, looking vaguely glassy eyed. ‘And when he picked me, when he could have gone out with anybody, I couldn’t believe it. But he was a troublemaker Marianne and by the time we’d left school he was already up to no good. Not that I knew quite what a bad crowd he was in with. All I did know was that by seventeen he was one of the only lads who had their own car and that he always had money to take me out. He dressed really nice too, looked after himself. Anyway, I’d got myself a job working for my mate Tracy’s mum in her shop, only Ray didn’t like me working. He said it was up to him to look after me and I suppose I liked his old-fashioned values in a way. I mean, I liked my job too, but I liked being looked after better. I was probably a bit lazy to tell you the truth.’

She gets up from the breakfast bar at this point and comes to sit down at the table next to me. She swallows hard and I can see it’s difficult for her to talk about this time in her life. Or rather how unused to it she is. I remain silent, not wanting to put her off her stride. I’m still so full of mixed emotions but need to hear what she has to say.

‘Then I got pregnant. Your dad had just turned eighteen by this point but I was still only seventeen. Anyway, a week after I told him I was expecting he asked me to marry him, at your Nan’s house, in his room, and I said yes. It doesn’t sound very romantic but actually, at that stage, we were really in love …’

Mum pauses for a second and sniffs before staring into the middle distance.

‘You all right?’ I ask flatly.

‘Yeah, it’s just funny talking about it. Seems like a lifetime ago now. Stick the kettle on will you Marianne? I’ll have a milky coffee, but use my sweeteners.’

‘So what happened then?’ I ask, getting up to make her coffee.

‘Well my mum, your Nana, was furious that I’d got myself preggy, so I moved into Ray’s mum’s and it was only really then that I properly realised what sort of people he was mixed up with. He was forever popping out on some business or other but it was obvious he was up to no good. Not that I did anything about it. I knew we’d soon have a mouth to feed, so it was easier to accept the money without asking how he’d got it I suppose.’

‘How had he got it?’

‘Extortion, burglaries, credit card scams. You name it, he did it. Though he was never involved with drugs. Ever,’ she says adamantly, like that made everything else perfectly OK.

I give her her coffee.

‘Thanks, lovey,’ she says dolefully. ‘Anyway, we were all right for a while, happy really. Then, when Hayley was tiny and you were on the way we eventually got our own house off the council. You know, the one in Hackney, and at that point Ray became less discreet about his business than he was when we were living at his mum’s. People were always coming round ours at funny times, often in the middle of the night. It used to drive me mad. I’d see cash changing hands but all business conversations used to take place behind closed doors. Ray used to say he’d tell me things on a strictly need to know basis, though I obviously didn’t need to know very much because I was permanently in the bleeding dark.’ She laughs at this and rolls her eyes with mock frustration as if she were talking about something really silly and trivial as opposed to turning a blind eye to her husband’s criminal activity.

She gets up to fetch her biscuit tin and frowns for a second as, upon opening it, she discovers how depleted her supplies are. Still, she must be equally as engrossed in what she’s saying because she just takes a biscuit without saying anything.

‘Of course, I’d know when he had a really big job on because before he’d leave he’d tell me where I could find cash if I needed it. Give me the name of someone I could go to if I needed help and that. I used to hate it when he got like that though. I wouldn’t sleep a wink, wondering whether he was ever coming back, but he always did, and he’d always have a nice present for me and something for you girls.’

I must give her a disapproving look because she suddenly looks quite shame-faced. ‘I know I know, but like I said, I was young and by this point I was bringing up two little girls and besides, he was my man Marianne. It wasn’t my place to question. I mean, I should have done, I know that now, but at the time it just wasn’t the way people like us operated. Anyway, when you were four and Hayley must have been six, there came a night when things didn’t go to plan. Your dad had something big on. I knew it was big because he was all jittery for weeks and I couldn’t say anything right. I remember that night so clearly. Before he left I told him I had a bad feeling but he wouldn’t talk to me or tell me anything. You know how I’m a bit psychic don’t you?’

I frown. I don’t. She’s not.

‘Anyway, this time your dad didn’t come home for a week. Longest week of my life that was and when he did come back he was a changed man. He told me he was wanted by the police and that things had gone seriously wrong.’

Mum looks away, as if the end of the story is going to tell itself.

‘Go on,’ I say frustratedly.

She stares mournfully into her coffee. ‘He’d been paid to arson a warehouse by someone so that they could claim on the insurance. Though normally he wouldn’t have done a job like that himself, or at least that’s what he told me after, but he owed a bloke a favour you see and he was the sort of bloke you didn’t muck about, so … Anyway, it all went wrong. Ray thought the security guard had left the building to patrol the grounds, but he hadn’t. He’d gone back in, though to this day no one knows why. Maybe he’d heard the phone ringing? Or needed the loo? Or fancied taking his thermos flask with him? Something like that.’