Father Unknown (2 page)

‘I used to bring you into bed with me here when you were a baby,’ Lorna said, turning her head on the pillow to face Daisy. ‘I used to lie and marvel at how perfect you were, and how lucky I was to be given you. You may be a grown women of twenty-five now, but I still think that way.’

She caught hold of one of Daisy’s corkscrew curls and wound it round her finger. ‘You were bald at first, and I always expected your hair to be fair and straight when it finally grew. I never expected a curly red-head.’ She laughed softly, and her hand moved to caress Daisy’s cheek. ‘You are so beautiful, Dizzie, funny, generous and big-hearted too. I’m so very proud of you. That’s why I want you to find your real mother, so she can share my joy and see for herself that I took good care of you.’

As always, Lorna had struck right at the heart of the matter, giving Daisy a reason to do so that she would never have thought of. But she still couldn’t promise, she knew that no other woman would ever measure up to Lorna as a mother.

‘Do you remember when I had chicken-pox?’ she asked, changing the subject because it was just too heavy for her.

‘Mmm,’ Lorna replied as if she was sleepy.

‘I painted on some of the spots with felt tips,’ Daisy admitted. ‘Did you know?’

‘Of course I did,’ Lorna replied, her voice hardly more than a whisper. ‘Daddy and I laughed about it. We thought you might grow up to be an actress. You always liked to make things more dramatic than they really were.’

‘I love you, Mum,’ Daisy whispered.

Lorna murmured something about making absolutely certain of her feelings towards Joel before committing herself to marrying him, and then appeared to be dropping off to sleep.

Daisy lay there beside her for several minutes, but as she wriggled towards the edge of the bed to get up and phone her father, Lorna opened her eyes again. ‘Say goodbye to Daddy and the twins for me, tell them I love them,’ she said in a faint, croaky voice.

Daisy was instantly alarmed by the weakness in her mother’s voice. ‘They’ll be home soon,’ she said. ‘You can tell them yourself.’

There was no response to her words, not a fluttering of Lorna’s eyelids, nor any movement around her lips.

‘Oh no,’ Daisy gasped. In horror she knelt up on the bed, putting her ear to her mother’s heart, but she could hear nothing. She held her wrist but could feel no pulse either. ‘Mummy, no,’ she cried out, looking down at Lorna’s pale blue eyes, which were open and seemed to be focused on something in the far distance.

Her head told her that her mother was dead, yet she couldn’t believe it could come so suddenly, without some warning or a cry of pain.

It was so quiet that she could hear bees buzzing and birds singing in the garden. It was the kind of warm, sunny day that Lorna would once have spent gardening, or washing bedding so she could hang it out to dry. She had always been so practical and predictable, her days governed by a strict routine which was only altered by weather conditions. Daisy had sneered at this once; it seemed so mind-blowingly dull. Yet in the last few weeks she’d come to enjoy routine herself, found a sense of achievement in doing mundane but important tasks. She’d come to believe she had finally grown up.

But she didn’t feel grown-up now. She felt as helpless as a five-year-old, kneeling there on the bed, tears running down her cheeks, not knowing what she had to do.

The shrill ring of the door-bell reverberated right through the house, and Fred began to bark. Daisy rushed out of the room and down the stairs, willing it to be the doctor. It was, and he took one look at her distraught expression and went straight on up to the bedroom.

At eight that same evening, Daisy went to her room, taking Fred with her. She shut the door and lay on her bed sobbing. Fred snuggled up beside her, gently licking at her face as if he understood how she felt.

The last few hours had been so strange and bewildering that Daisy felt as if her whole world had caved in. There was nothing normal to hang on to and the silence was eerie. But worst of all was the way her family were behaving.

The doctor was still here when Dad arrived home unexpectedly early. He said he was driving to his meeting when he had a feeling something was wrong, so he’d come straight home. Yet even though he had responded to a seemingly irrational impulse, he didn’t react in any way when the doctor told him that his wife had passed away only minutes before. He just stood in the hall looking blankly at him.

He continued to behave oddly, kind of stiff and distant. He didn’t attempt to go upstairs to see Lorna, but politely asked the doctor whether he would like tea or coffee. Daisy desperately needed comfort, a hug, to be asked about her mother’s final moments and given some reassurance she’d done all the right things, but she got none of those. The twins seemed to be important to Dad, though, for no sooner had he seen the doctor out than he telephoned the college and asked the principal to send them home immediately.

The death certificate was on the kitchen table. John picked it up, read it, then finally went upstairs to see Lorna. Daisy heard the bedroom door shut with a very final click, and she suddenly felt completely isolated.

John was still in the bedroom when Lucy and Tom came home. They had their mother’s fair hair and blue eyes in common, but the similarity ended there. Lucy had her mother’s rather stocky build, but her face was set in an almost permanent scowl. Tom was tall and slender like their father and normally had a wide grin.

They were red-faced and panting from running. ‘Is Mum worse?’ they asked in unison.

Daisy burst into tears then. ‘She died a little while ago,’ she blurted out. ‘Dad’s up there with her now.’

Tom immediately came over to Daisy to embrace her. He leaned over till his face was on her shoulder and Daisy could hear him crying softly. But to her astonishment Lucy rounded on her.

‘Was Dad here when she died?’ she asked accusingly.

‘No,’ Daisy sobbed. ‘Just me. Dad came home while the doctor was here.’

‘Why didn’t you get hold of us?’ Lucy demanded, her blue eyes cold and suspicious.

Daisy was in no mood to give lengthy explanations. ‘It all happened so fast. She told me she thought her time had come, and I asked if she wanted me to phone the college and Dad, but she said I wasn’t to. She didn’t want me to phone the doctor either, but I did anyway. He came just a couple of minutes after she died.’

‘You should have phoned us, you had no right to prevent us from being here,’ Lucy snapped, then, bursting into loud hiccuping sobs, she ran upstairs. Tom broke away from Daisy, made a sort of grimace, and quickly followed his twin.

The three of them remained upstairs for over an hour, and Daisy got the distinct impression she wasn’t wanted there with them. It didn’t make any sense, she had never been treated differently before, never felt she was different in any way, and it hurt to think they didn’t know her grief was every bit as great as theirs.

She sat in the kitchen with only Fred for company, and she was still there crying on her own when Dad came downstairs much later. He spoke sharply to her, saying there were things which had to be done, one of which was calling an undertaker to take the body away. Daisy was well aware of that, but she thought he could have spared some time first to ask her how she was, and talk through what had happened.

Not knowing what else to do, Daisy began preparing the evening meal, but Dad just said he didn’t understand how she could think of her stomach at such a time. Yet he and the twins ate the meal later and she was the only one who couldn’t eat anything. After the undertakers had called and taken Lorna away, she was left to clear up the kitchen while they all went into the sitting-room together, and she wasn’t asked to join them.

Joel had been very sympathetic when she phoned him, but he was on duty and couldn’t come round. He said she mustn’t take anything to heart as most people behaved a little strangely when they were in shock.

Now Daisy was alone in her room where reminders of her mother sprang painfully out at her: the many teddy-bears in leotards, one for every gymnastic competition she’d ever taken part in during her teens; the blue frilly dressing-gown Lorna’d made her last year hanging on the door; the beautifully arranged and framed montage of photographs which she had lovingly put together because she said she couldn’t stand any more sticky fixers spoiling the wallpaper.

Had Mum known it was going to be like this once she was gone? Was it only Mum who had been holding everyone together as a family, knowing it would collapse without her? That seemed impossible, but then why had she been so anxious for Daisy to find her real mother?

Daisy pulled Fred tighter into her arms, leaned her head against his fur and sobbed. At least he hadn’t deserted her.

A soft tap on the bedroom door startled her. She sat up and quickly mopped her face. ‘Come in,’ she said, expecting it to be Tom as he often came in to talk to her late at night. But to her surprise it was her father.

He stood in the doorway for a second just looking at her, perhaps noting her red-rimmed eyes. He was a consultant in a company of surveyors who specialized in ancient listed properties, and he often joked that he was becoming like one himself, for his brown hair was speckled with grey and his once lean body was getting flabby. But in fact he was still remarkably young-looking, and handsome for a man in his late fifties; he was fit because he still played badminton and went sailing when he could. But his brown eyes looked heavy now, and Daisy didn’t think she had ever seen him look so miserable or uncertain.

‘We should talk,’ he said softly. ‘I’m sorry, Dizzie, I was so wrapped up in myself earlier, I didn’t think what it must have been like for you.’

The nickname had started with the twins when they were babies and couldn’t say Daisy properly, but it had remained in use because of her nature. Compared with her father and the twins, who were academically minded, Daisy was dizzy, she flitted from interest to interest, never mastering any of them. If she read a book it was always a light, racy one, and she liked comedy, dancing, skating and gymnastics, anything fast-moving and visual. Yet one of her greatest attributes was her ability to forgive and forget too, and as soon as she saw her father was hurting, she forgot her own bruised feelings.

‘It’s okay, Daddy,’ she said. ‘Come on in.’

He perched on the edge of the bed and petted Fred as he asked her a few questions about what had happened. Daisy explained how Lorna had insisted she wasn’t to call him or the twins.

‘Just like her,’ he said sadly, fondling Fred’s ears. ‘I suppose I couldn’t have got back any quicker anyway. But I wasn’t prepared for it to be so sudden, Daisy. Last night she seemed so well.’

‘And she was fine when I helped her into the bath this morning,’ Daisy said, leaning against her father’s side. ‘She was talking about planting some new chrysanthemums for the autumn. I went in to see her later and I thought she was asleep, that’s when she said she thought it was the end and she wanted me to hold her hand.’

Daisy broke down then, and her father pulled her into his arms. ‘She’s going to leave such a big hole in all our lives,’ he said sorrowfully. ‘We would have been married thirty years next month, and I always supposed we’d grow old together.’

She felt better now he was holding her and behaving the way he normally did, and they talked for some little while about who they ought to tell right now, and who could wait until tomorrow.

‘I’m dreading having to repeat it again and again,’ he said wearily, running his fingers through his hair. ‘But as there’s no need for a post-mortem, the funeral can be quite soon.’

‘I could phone some people for you,’ Daisy offered.

‘No,’ he sighed, ‘I must do it. Her friends would be hurt to be told by anyone but me. But tell me, aisy, what did you two talk about before it happened?’

She hadn’t intended to tell him about any of that, not for a while, but now she had no choice.

Her father grimaced. ‘She had been saying that to me for some time,’ he said. ‘You know how she was, Daisy, she wanted to make everyone happy, tie up all the loose ends. You know her own mother died when she was only nine, and her father remarried a couple of years later. She didn’t get on with her stepmother and I think her father took the line of least resistance and refused to talk to Lorna about her mother. That left her with a lot of unanswered questions. I suppose she thought you felt the same.’

‘I don’t,’ Daisy said stoutly. ‘I’m not the least bit interested in my birth mother. I’ve got everything I want in this family, even if Lucy is nasty sometimes.’

‘She’s just a bit jealous of you,’ he said soothingly. ‘I think she has the idea that your mum favoured you. It will pass.’

‘I hope so, Daddy,’ Daisy said in a small voice. ‘She’s got Tom after all, they do everything together. I’m the one out on a limb.’

‘Neither of them will be going back to college until after the funeral, so we’ll all have time to talk and get things off our chests,’ he said as he got up off the bed. ‘But I’d better start making those phone calls, and I think maybe you should get into bed. It’s been a very harrowing day.’

Daisy did fall asleep quite quickly, but she woke later and switched on the light to see it was only two in the morning. Unable to get back to sleep, she went downstairs to warm some milk.

Daisy had left home many times in the past, to share a flat with friends, to live in a bed-sitter on her own, and once with a boy she wanted to marry, but however much she craved complete freedom, this house and her mother had always drawn her back. It was a spacious Victorian family house, with large bay windows, beautiful leaded lights and all the best features of that period. Lorna and John hadn’t changed it much. The dining-room floor had been stripped and varnished a few years ago, the kitchen had been extended and modernized, but as Lorna and John had always loved Victoriana, comfortable velvet couches, sumptuous William Morris prints and well-polished wood, it was probably very close to how the original designer had intended it to look.

Most of their neighbours were wealthy people now, but it hadn’t been that way when Daisy was small. In those days Bedford Park was very much a middle-class family area and almost everyone had three or four children. They went in and out of each other’s houses, stayed overnight, played and went to school together. Their parents had all been friends too, and Lorna was the one who kept it all going, organizing coffee mornings, supper parties and events in the garden during the summer.