An Ideal Wife (23 page)

“I know,” she said. “I know.”

Father. It felt strange even hearing the word. I’d never had a father. Not even a surrogate father. Grandpa hadn’t been around when I was growing up, and I’d kind of gotten used to the idea that I didn’t have a dad, had convinced myself that I didn’t need one. But saying the word brought back a whole bunch of memories—of being at school and listening jealously to the other girls talking about their overprotective fathers, about their dads’ new cars, new jobs…. It had seemed like an exotic world that I would never enter, where the sun shined just a little bit more, where things were all a little bit easier. Fathers, as far as I could deduce with my limited experience, made decisions quickly, were strong, loyal, and protective. When they turned up at school, there was a different energy about the place. I felt awkward around the other girls’ fathers, self-conscious, as though they could tell I didn’t have one. And yet at night I dreamed that mine would come back for me and rescue me. He would turn up with a fast car, an easy smile, and strong arms to wrap around me.

And now here he was. My real-life father. Part of me wanted him to scoop me up in his arms right that minute. I wanted that moment in
The Railway Children
when their father returns from prison and everything’s okay again. I wanted to see Pa Walton striding in, a look of grit, determination, and love on his face. I wanted Harrison Ford, Father Christmas, and my old headmaster, the man who’d told me I could do anything I wanted, who’d told Grandma that it would be a travesty if I didn’t go to university even
if she thought it was time for me to stand on my own two feet. I wanted them all, wrapped up in one person.

Except … Except …

My mother was looking at me tentatively. Lawrence came in and leaned down to look at me. “You okay, kiddo?”

“You’re …” I cleared my throat and stood to stare at him properly. “You’re my father?”

He was older than I’d thought he was when I’d seen only his back. Fifty-something maybe. He had blond-gray hair, a tan, blue eyes. He was slim, fine-boned. Handsome, even.

“Jess,” he said, reaching out his hands. “I can’t tell you how great it is to finally meet you.”

“Really?” I didn’t know what to say, how to react.

“Really,” he said, letting his arms fall back to his sides. Easily. Unfazed. Was I really related to this man? He was nothing like me. He was a stranger. There ought to be something, a feeling or an understanding; we should be looking into each other’s eyes with a deep recognition. Something. Instead, I was staring at him blankly, my nails digging into my palms, aware that everyone was staring at me and expecting something that I couldn’t deliver. “You okay?” he asked, a look of concern on his face. “I guess this is a lot to take in, me turning up like this. I’d have come before, only …”

“Only what?” I asked quietly. “Why didn’t you come before? Why didn’t you get me from Grandma’s?”

He looked slightly uncomfortable. “I guess it was difficult. I didn’t know where you were, for one thing. Esther here … Well, after she left with you, we lost touch. Then I heard she died, and—”

“And you didn’t think that was a good moment to try to track down your daughter? Your flesh and blood?” My voice sounded more irritable than I’d intended it to. I noticed Lawrence shrink back slightly.

“You’re right, of course,” he said, attempting a smile. “I should have. All I can tell you is that I was young. Young and pretty stupid, if I’m honest. I’d moved to the States, and I guess it didn’t feel real.”

“It was real for me,” I said.

“I know. I know that now.”

I took a deep breath. “And now you’re back?” I looked at Mum. “He’s back? With you? After all this time?”

She opened her mouth to say something, but Lawrence got there first. “After all this time,” he said, smiling again. “The three of us, Jess. How about it?”

How about it? My long-lost father had dropped back into my life and wanted to know what I thought about it? I looked at him uneasily.

“If you’re here for a kidney, you can forget it,” I said quietly.

He looked at me strangely. “A kidney?”

I nodded. “I’ve seen
Lost
. I know all about long-lost fathers who turn up out of the blue. And I’m not falling for it. So if you want a kidney, you’re going to have to find some other sucker, okay? Because you’re not getting one of mine.”

His eyes widened in surprise, then he grinned. “Okay, well, that’s good to know. No kidney. I’ll … bear it in mind. In the future, if I ever wind up needing one.”

I realized he was laughing at me. His eyes were twinkling the way Max’s did when he was teasing me.

“It’s not funny,” I said stiffly.

“No, it’s not,” my father agreed, his mouth still creasing upward. “Well, only a little bit.”

“Not at all.”

“What about something smaller?” he asked.

I frowned. “Smaller? What do you mean?”

“I can see how you wouldn’t want to give me a kidney,” he said thoughtfully. “Big operation, nasty scar. But could you maybe give
me a wisdom tooth? Or, I don’t know, your appendix maybe? Something you don’t need so much?”

I looked at him uncertainly. “No.”

“Nothing?” He shook his head and whistled. “Man, you’re tough. Esther, are you hearing this? Not even a wisdom tooth for her old man.”

My mother, who seemed rather flummoxed, looked at him anxiously. “I don’t understand,” she said. “You don’t want her teeth, do you? Why would you want her teeth?”

I caught my father’s eye. And immediately I had a flash of something, of a life that could have been: of in-jokes, of teasing Mum, of being part of something that couldn’t be broken.

Except it hadn’t existed, I reminded myself. And it
had
broken. It had never really been in the first place.

But I knew one thing: He was my father. It wasn’t his eyes, or his lips, or his hair color, or anything else. It was his sense of humor. Grandma never got my humor, nor did Mum. They thought I was being stupid or ridiculous. They rolled their eyes and changed the subject or looked the other way.

“You can have a bit of toenail, if you really want,” I said drily, looking up at him warily. In the pit of my stomach was something approaching excitement, and it scared me.

“Toenail.” He nodded thoughtfully. “And would there be strings attached, do you think?”

“I’d be wanting a cup of tea for that.” I shrugged. “And probably a biscuit.”

“Esther? We got biscuits here?”

My mother nodded. “Of course we have biscuits. But I still don’t understand,” she said. “Why do you want a toenail? Jess, is there something going on here that you’re not telling me?”

I allowed myself a little smile. “No, Mum,” I said. “Nothing at all. But you,” I said, turning back to my father, “you have got some explaining to do.”

He met my eyes and looked at me seriously. “And that’s exactly what I’m going to do,” he said, sitting down at the table and motioning for me to do likewise.

I looked at my watch. “Now?”

“Why not now?” Lawrence said, returning my smile.

Why not? I thought for a moment. Any moment now, Chester could arrive, discovering my mother and Lawrence. Any second now, Russian Mafia agents could bang on the door, demanding Ivana’s trunk. Any minute, Eric might fail Milton Advertising’s ethical audit on the basis that its acting chief executive abandoned ship in the middle of an interview. And Max was no doubt lying in bed waiting for me to arrive full of apologies, bearing muffins. I knew what I should do. I didn’t have time to sit here and find out about the father I’d never known about.

Then I looked back at him. “Okay, tell me,” I said. “Tell me everything.”

“RIGHT, THEN.” MY FATHER—it felt weird using the word in relation to me—smiled broadly. “Well, my name is Lawrence, as you know. Lawrence Green. Born just outside London, lived there most of my preadult life. Went to school in Oxfordshire, then on to university in London—the London School of Economics. Got myself a degree in politics and economics, got interested in technology, and stayed on to do a master’s in business studies. And that’s when I met your mother.”

I looked at her. “You said he was a doctor,” I said accusingly.

“Did I?” she said rather coyly. “Yes, you’re right.” She turned to my father. “You
were
a doctor, weren’t you? Training to be one?”

He raised his eyebrows. “I was planning to do a doctorate.”

“There, you see?” Mum said.

She placed some hot mugs of tea down on the table. Giles and Helen took theirs silently; they’d even scraped their chairs back a bit, evidently aware that this was a family thing, that they were here to play supporting roles only. My father winked at Mum; she offered him a faltering smile and joined us at the table.

“So you were at LSE. Did you two go out for long?” I asked. “Were you serious?”

He met Mum’s eyes again goofily. “I was serious,” he said.

Mum opened her mouth, then closed it.

“Then?” I prompted.

“Well, then you came along. Or, rather, the prospect of you.” He cleared his throat and took a slug of tea.

“And?” I persisted.

“And.” He sighed. Then he looked me in the eye. “I’m not going to lie to you, Jess. It wasn’t what I was expecting. It … it threw me, I don’t mind saying. I wanted to do the right thing, of course I did. But we were having fun, your mother and me. It was never going to be—”

“You weren’t serious,” I said flatly.

“Nothing was serious in those days,” he said, shaking his head. “Nothing.”

I digested this. “So?”

“So,” my father continued, putting down his mug, “we did the best we could, I guess. But it wasn’t exactly working. I had no money, your mother wasn’t happy living in my tiny room, I couldn’t get any work done … I mean, you were amazing. Truly, utterly amazing. You had the cutest smile, and you used to lie on this cushion looking up at me like … like a little angel. But it was hard. The sleeping. The—”

“The expectation that I would do everything single-handedly,” Mum chipped in.
“That
must have been hard for you.”

My father looked rather uncomfortable. “Look, I’m the first to say I didn’t do a great job. I wanted to. I just … I didn’t know how to. Not back then.”

I looked at him carefully. “You mean you did it again? You were better the second time?”

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I got married. Later. Much later. Had three children. And a dog.”

“A dog.” I nodded slowly. “You got a dog.”

He grinned ruefully. “I tell you what, if you think a baby’s a pain in the ass, you try having a puppy. You can’t put a diaper on a puppy. Can’t put a puppy in a playpen. Well, you can try, but
they just crap all over it. And the clothes aren’t half as good. Jeez, I tell you, never again. N-E-V-E-R.”

I nodded, keen to cut him off. I didn’t want to hear about his little domestic idyll, thank you very much. “So. You had me; it wasn’t working out. What happened next?”

“Sorry,” he said. “You’re right. I always jump around too much when I’m telling a story. Bad habit.”

He looked at me as though expecting me to say something, but I didn’t. I waited.

“Right,” he said. “Okay. Well, you know, we tried. We really did. But then one night your mother decided to take off.”

“I decided to look after the best interests of my child, you mean,” Mum said tersely.

“She left. Moved in with another guy,” my dad said, a sad expression on his face.

“And that’s it? You didn’t come looking for us?” I demanded.

“I tried, I guess. Kind of. But your mother made it clear that she was better off without me, that both of you were. She moved into some swanky apartment and got some other guy to pay for everything. I figured you were better off. To be honest, I was kind of relieved.”

I digested this for a few seconds. “Relieved,” I said eventually. “Well, thanks for the honesty.” I turned to Mum. “The swanky apartment—that was the rich guy? The one you suckered in? Told him he was the father?”

Mum looked down at her tea. “Darling, in times of need, we do what we can. Sometimes we have to bend the truth slightly.”

“Bend it?” I asked incredulously. “You did a 360-degree turn.”

“I thought we were talking about your father,” Mum said. “Weren’t we?”

“Hey, that’s pretty much all there is to tell,” he said. “A few months later I got offered a place to do my doctorate in the States and off I went. End of story.”

“End of story?” I looked at him carefully. “I don’t see how.”

“You don’t?” He seemed a bit embarrassed. “No, I guess you don’t. Look, I’m not proud of skipping off like that, but I thought it was the right thing to do, you know?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t mean that. I meant why are you back now? Why aren’t you still in America with your wife and children and dog? What, you were just surfing Facebook, saw Mum’s photograph, and decided to ditch them all?”

“I, uh … Well, let’s not get bogged down in detail, huh?” he said dismissively. “The point is, I’m here now, and we’re all going to have a great time getting to know one another again. What do you say, Jess?”