Conditional Love (26 page)

Once inside, we stood in the living room in silence. The bungalow was so damp and cold that we could see our own breath. My eyes took in all the furniture, the pictures and the knick-knacks. I dreaded to think about what lay in wait for us in the bedrooms. The place was full of stuff, it would take us hours to sort through everything.

Emma opened up the writing bureau and groaned. It was heaving with papers. I bet she was wishing she was sitting at her mum’s kitchen table with a bowl of chicken soup in front of her.

I was about to admit defeat and retire to the pub when we heard a ‘Cooee’ coming from the porch. Before we had had a chance to respond, an elderly lady let herself in. She was rake thin, as tall as Emma, but slightly stooped with white hair swept up in an elegant bun.

‘Audrey Davis,’ she pronounced, striding forward with an outstretched hand. ‘From next door.’

I shook her hand and introduced myself and Emma.

‘I found her you know,’ said Audrey, in a stage whisper. ‘It gave me quite a fright, I can tell you. Still, best way to go, in your sleep, no fuss.’

She looked at the roll of black bin bags in my hand. ‘Having a clear out? Good idea,’ she continued without waiting for a reply. ‘I’ve got the number of a house clearance company in my book. Follow me. I’ll make tea and we can get cracking.’ She marched off.

Emma and I stared at each other and then like giggling school girls scurried after her.

Over tea drunk from china cups and walnut cake eaten with cake forks, we devised an action plan. Well, Audrey did. I wouldn’t have dared argue with her even if I’d wanted to. She was like a cross between Mrs Pepperpot and the scary fitness instructor off
The Biggest Loser
.

She had booked the house clearance company to collect everything except Great Aunt Jane’s personal items. A friend of Audrey’s who volunteered for a charity shop was going to take all her clothes and books, and bed linen and towels were going to the local hospice. All Emma and I had to do was pack up photographs and paperwork, and the rest, Audrey would take care of.

Everyone should have an Audrey, I decided, dabbing my finger round my plate to collect the last few crumbs.

‘Shall we?’ said Audrey, striding to her front door.

Emma released the radiator reluctantly and shrugged her jacket back on. ‘She’s even bossier than Jess!’ she whispered in awe.

Audrey offered to tackle the kitchen and within seconds, the clatter of pots and pans filled the little bungalow.

I paused outside my great aunt’s bedroom, my hand on the door. So far I hadn’t dared go in.

‘It doesn’t seem right going through her things,’ I hissed to Emma.

‘She’s dead, she won’t mind,’ she replied with her trademark bluntness. ‘Besides which, she put you through hell by making you meet your dad. You’ve earned the right to be here.’ She squeezed my arm as I pushed open the door.

The bedroom seemed warmer than the other rooms and even after all these months, there was a lingering scent of floral perfume.

I sat down on the pink bedspread and tried to slow my breathing. I wasn’t one for believing in ghosts, but I did feel more of her presence in this room than the others. I shuddered. This place gave me the creeps; my arms were covered in goose pimples.

I did it, Great Aunt Jane. I met him, like you asked. But I’m none the wiser. What was the point? What were you hoping to achieve?

‘I’ll do the drawers and you do the wardrobe,’ said Emma, breaking the spell and galvanising me into action.

Emma started lumping piles of clothes onto the bed. I looked inside the wardrobe. There was a shelf above the hanging rail. At first glance it looked empty, but I could just make out the edge of an object. I fetched the stool from underneath the dressing table. There was a shoe box right at the back and, using a coat hanger, I managed to hook it close enough to reach.

I climbed down off the stool and blew the dust off the box. The lid was broken and there was Sellotape at two of the corners where it had been mended in the past.

I took a deep breath and removed the lid. At the top was a handful of old photographs, some black and white and some colour. I was looking at special moments in the old lady’s life, all mixed up and out of order. My fingers flicked through the pictures greedily, hoping to find something I had never seen – a photograph of my parents’ wedding.

‘Look at this!’ I waved a picture at Emma. ‘It’s my mum and dad!’

It wasn’t their wedding, but both of my parents were in the photograph. If I’d been looking for proof that my parents had once been happy, I hadn’t found it. My mum looked about eighteen; she was wearing a blue and white stripey dress and white stilettos. She was standing next to two boys with a glass in one hand, her head thrown back in laughter. Terry, on the other hand, was a picture of abject misery. He was standing on the far edge of the group, scowling like a grumpy teenager. He had a long curly fringe covering one eye, the other eye was trained on my mum. Whatever she had found funny, he clearly didn’t share the joke.

‘Looks like the writing was on the wall, even then,’ said Emma. ‘What else is there?’ She took a handful of pictures out of the box and rifled through them.

My eye was drawn back to the box. Underneath the pictures, I could make out something pink, an envelope. I plucked it out with trembling hands and stared at it. It was addressed to me, care of my great aunt. There was another envelope just like it, this time in white. And underneath that several more. All with my name on them.

All at once, I knew exactly who the sender was. The hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention as I slipped my finger under the flap and ripped it open.

‘Sophie?’

My legs gave way and I sank back onto the bed.

Happy sixth birthday Sophie, love Daddy.

He hadn’t forgotten me. I tore open the next one while Emma picked up the first.

Happy seventh birthday Sophie, love Daddy.

He had remembered my birthday. Not just my thirty-third.

Happy eighth birthday Sophie, love Daddy.

Terry had cared about me.

‘Bloody ’ell,’ said Emma, collecting up all the torn envelopes. ‘There’s a card here for every birthday from six ’til you were twelve.’

It didn’t make sense. Why start at six? Why stop at twelve? As far as I could remember I had never received a card from my father. It wasn’t something I was likely to forget.

‘She wanted me to find these,’ I said, looking up at Emma through eyes brimming with tears. ‘She warned me that she was meddling, in her letter. I think this was what she meant.’

These cards didn’t fit with my mum’s side of the story. According to her, he had never shown the slightest interest in his wife or daughter after they split up. This little pile of birthday wishes proved otherwise. There were so many questions needing answers. Or were there? I was torn; what would I really achieve by digging up the past? Terry was back in America and Mum wasn’t speaking to me. Would knowing all the facts about their break up change anything?

I collected the cards up and was about to put them back in the box when I heard Audrey tutting loudly.

‘There doesn’t seem to be much activity in here,’ she said, tapping her toe as she leaned on the doorframe. ‘The kitchen is all packed up!’

Her beady eye noticed the box on the bed and the cards in my hand. ‘Ah.’

‘Do you know about these?’ I asked, springing to my feet.

The old lady looked uncertain for the first time.

‘I thought my dad had never bothered with me.’

‘Jane used to say that Terry was always one for sticking his head in the sand. Anything for an easy life.’

I felt a twinge of recognition in that description.

‘So what happened then, what’s the story?’ asked Emma, flopping down on the bed.

Audrey shook her head. ‘It’s not my story to tell. That’s why she wanted Sophie to meet him. It’s up to her to decide whether she wants Terry back in her life. Now come on, let’s get this room finished.’

It was getting dark and we were exhausted by the time we piled back into the mini and headed back to the flat. I had shoved the birthday cards in my bag. I had no idea what I was going to do with them yet, but they were too extraordinary to leave behind.

‘Marc’s coming over later,’ I sighed. For once I wasn’t looking forward to his company. All I wanted was a hot bath and a chance to make sense of my swirling thoughts.

Emma harrumphed. ‘He was conspicuous by his absence today I notice.’

‘He said he would have helped, but he’d promised to watch the football in the pub with his mate and didn’t want to let him down.’

She curled her lip and tutted. ‘For someone with such a capacity for tolerance where he’s concerned, I’m amazed that you can’t bring yourself to give your dad a second chance.’

For once I didn’t argue with her. I was beginning to feel the same way myself.

twenty-nine

Three o’clock. I was convinced that Donna somehow tampered with the clocks in our department to slow down the hands of time. It felt like I’d been at my desk for at least eighteen hours.

My state of mind probably didn’t help; I couldn’t concentrate on anything. Ever since finding that stash of birthday cards, my uneasiness had been accumulating like the used teabags in our kitchen sink.

An hour ago, or maybe it was only five minutes, I couldn’t really tell,
The Herald
’s Twitter account had hit fifteen thousand followers. Last week, this event would have had me tweeting my own trumpet to all and sundry. Today I barely even muster a follow-back to my new Twitter friends.

Last night was as bad; I was so preoccupied with my thoughts that when Marc called, interrupting
Come Dine with Me
to ask if he could come over, I turned him down flat. He hadn’t been very impressed, but for once I didn’t care.

I had pretended not to see the silent conversation between Jess and Emma that followed. Through a series of facial expressions using raised eyebrows, wide eyes and contorted mouths and finishing with a snigger, the exchange had gone as follows:

‘That’s not like her!’

‘He won’t like that.’

‘It’ll do him good to know where he stands.’

‘I agree, she shouldn’t drop everything just for him.’

Snigger. ‘Especially not those.’

I sighed and looked up from my doodling to check the office clock again.

The problem was that I couldn’t make sense of my father’s behaviour. I’d assumed that my parents’ divorce had simply been particularly acrimonious, hence my father disappearing without trace. But finding those birthday cards, which bizarrely only started from my sixth birthday, hinted at something more mysterious.

This was getting ridiculous. I had to do something to drag myself out of this pithering. I made a list of what I knew.

Fact one: I had millions of unanswered questions.

Fact two: there was no way Mum going to answer them.

Fact three: Great Aunt Jane knew more than she let on in her letter and she wanted me to find out the truth for myself.

Hardly the finest piece of deduction; however, the list led me to a gut-churningly inevitable conclusion: if I really and truly wanted to get to the bottom of the situation, I was going to have to eat my words along with a large slice of humble pie and contact my father again.

Unfortunately, Terry was several thousands of miles away and I had refused to take a note of his contact details.

Of course! Mr Whelan could help me out there. Donna was out at a meeting, so I brazenly plucked my mobile phone from my bag and dialled the solicitor’s number.

‘Mr Whelan is on annual leave,’ explained the receptionist apologetically. ‘Can you call back next week?’

‘I don’t need to speak to him directly. I’m only after a telephone number.’

‘I can’t give out confidential information, I’m afraid.’

‘It’s not confidential, it will be in my file. I just need my father’s phone number.’

There was a pause on the line. I didn’t blame her for hesitating. It didn’t say much for our relationship that I had to ask a solicitor for my own father’s contact details.

‘It’s very important,’ I added hopefully.

‘Handing out numbers is highly unorthodox. What if there’s an injunction out preventing you from making contact? I’d be an accessory.’

I suppressed a tut. ‘I’m sure a detail like that would be in the file.’

‘Hmm.’ She was coming round, I could tell. Time for a white lie.

‘Actually, it was Mr Whelan himself who suggested I ring my father. I can’t stress enough how important it is that I speak to him urgently.’

‘Oh, all right,’ she sighed and I heard some shuffling and tapping on the keyboard. ‘Here we go. Mr Stone.’

She rattled off the number and I scribbled it down with a pounding heart.

I shut myself in my bedroom and spent a good five minutes double checking that I had worked the time difference out correctly and trying to get my hands to stop trembling. I knew my father lived in Nevada, but not a lot else. By my reckoning it would be midday there. What if he didn’t answer? What if he reacted as badly as I did when he surprised me with a phone call at work?

I was still ashamed about that. Whatever else might or might not have happened in the past, Terry was now a widower and instead of showing respect, I had said some very cruel things.

I flicked my eyes over the list of questions I had prepared as a prompt in case nerves got the better of me. Then, with fluttering heart and trembling hands I dialled the number.

Instead of the long single ring tone, like I’d heard on American TV shows, it rang out as a double, just like in England. That wasn’t what I’d expected.

‘Hello?’

Weird! The voice on the other end was male, but even from that solitary word, I could tell it was too young to be my father.

‘Oh hi, I was looking for Terry Stone.’

‘This is his son, Brodie Stone. I’m afraid my father is no longer staying with me.’

I panicked. I dropped the phone from my ear and covered the mouthpiece with my hand. The soft American drawl was unmistakeable in a longer sentence.