No Going Back (16 page)

I sat up again.

“You won't go without saying goodbye, will you, Dad?”

Still no reply.

C
RISIS

I
woke with a start. Sat up. Looked at the corner of the room. The chair was empty. What had I done? I didn't really want him to go. I wanted to have him with me for ever and ever. How could he not know that?

As I slouched down the stairs in my dressing gown the whole house felt churned up with emotion. Guilt, anger, grief. They were all swirling around, buzzing in and out of the nooks and crannies like those mortar bees that eat away at houses. I just knew that I would never forgive myself for sending him away like that. But when I stepped into the kitchen Dad was standing by the window, reading the paper over Gran's shoulder. He lifted his hand in a little wave and sent me a smile. It was a smile full of regret and nervousness. ‘I'm still here,' the smile said, ‘is that okay?'

I smiled back, gave a small nod. I wanted to rush over and hug him, to feel his arms wrapping around me and hear him telling me that everything was okay. Fathers and daughters fell out. Sometimes they fell out big time like my friend Abi and her dad but you could always make up, even after years and years. It just took someone to be brave, to make the first move, for someone to stay put when you told them to go. Gran looked up from the article she was reading, gazed at my dressing gown and put the paper down on the table.

“How are you feeling this morning?” she asked, looking over the top of her glasses.

I reached for the cereal. “Fine. Thanks.”

“You don't look fine.”

“Thanks.”

Mum bustled into the kitchen with a list in one hand and a basket in the other.

“I'm going to the farmers' market,” Mum said to me. “I thought you might like to come. It'll do you good to get out of the house, to take your mind off things. You'll have to hurry up and get dressed though. I've got a lot to do.”

I wasn't ready for another intense conversation with Mum and once she had me in the car there would be no getting away from it.

“I'll stay here with Gran.”

“She'll be all right left for a while. Won't you, Mother? You've been moving a bit better recently.”

Gran shifted in her chair and winced. She was making a really good job of looking pathetic.

“Yes, I have, but do you know, Liz, I feel a bit weak today. It must be all the upset. It's not good for you when you get older. If Laura could stay with me I'd feel much happier.”

Mum looked annoyed. I stared down at my toast.

“All right then,” she slightly snapped, “but we'll have a proper talk when I get back, Laura. You can't avoid me for ever.” She turned to Gran. “And don't think I haven't cottoned on to what you're up to. I'm surprised at you, Mother! You're the one who's been on at me all these years to tell Laura the truth and now I want to explain things to her properly you're putting obstacles in my way.”

Before Gran had the time to reply, Mum had
stormed out of the room.

“Why don't you go with her?” I mouthed to Dad, picking up the box of cereal and heading for the pantry.

He followed me, blowing the door almost closed so that Gran couldn't hear me whispering.

“I hoped we could spend some time together today,” he said.

“Maybe later,” I said. He looked anguished. “I just need a bit of space, that's all. I'm glad you're still here.”

He leaned very close. I was sure I could feel breath coming from his mouth as he spoke. “I wouldn't have left you, Laura, even if I could. I'm not going to leave you again. We can sort this out. I know we can. We can get back to where we were before.”

I nodded. “Maybe. You just need to give me time.”

“Then I'll go to the farmers' market this morning,” he said. “I'll do whatever you want me to do. I want to make it up to you, Laura. To show you how sorry I am.”

“Yes,” I said. “I know you do.”

After Mum and Dad had gone I went into the garden and sat on the swing seat. I closed my eyes and rocked myself gently as I thought about my
parents and Amanda and Daisy. I'd been there for about ten minutes when Gran appeared, treading carefully over the cobbles. I moved across and she sank down next to me.

“So,” she said, watching one of the swallows swoop in and out of its nest under the eaves, “is he still here?”

“Who?”

Then she turned and looked me straight in the eyes. “Don't play games with me, Laura. You know exactly who I mean. Your father.”

I was too tired to lie. “Yes… and no.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“I tried to take him to London. That's why I went, to get rid of him for a while. I heard you on the phone to the vicar and…” My voice petered away. “I couldn't let that happen. I couldn't let you exterminate him.”

“You
tried
to take him to London. I take it you didn't succeed?”

“Yes, I did actually. It wasn't easy but in the end he came with me and I told him to stay there, with Penny.”

“But let me guess,” Gran continued, “he didn't do as he was told.”

I shook my head. “I thought he had and then he appeared in my room last night.”

“So where is he now?” Gran asked, scanning the garden. “Perched in a tree, messing up my potting shed, lying on the grass in front of us?”

“He's gone with Mum to the farmers' market. I told him I needed some space.”

Gran looked suddenly alarmed.

“So he's in the car with her?”

“Yes.”

I don't know why but a sudden chill went through my heart, like when you've had ice cream that's too cold.

“Why?” I asked. “Shouldn't he be?”

She didn't answer, just started picking at a bit of loose cotton on her skirt.

“Gran, what is it? What's the matter?”

“Nothing.”

She was lying, trying to protect me from something.

“Gran, tell me what's wrong.”

She smoothed the folds of her skirt and traced
a finger around the pattern. “I know that you think you probably know everything, Laura,” she blurted out, “but when your father died in that accident there wasn't anyone else involved.” The words came so fast they almost merged into one another.

The cold feeling was like a shard of ice now. Maybe I was about to have a heart attack like Grandad. “I don't know what you mean. Mum said that he swerved to avoid a car that was pulling out of another lane on the motorway.”

“No,” Gran said softly. “That's not true. He may have swerved to avoid something, a fox or a rabbit maybe, but there wasn't another car nearby. He was going too fast, Laura, and he turned the car over and crashed into the central barrier. It's as simple as that.”

Now my throat was all constricted.

“He was on the way back from seeing
her
, the other woman,” Gran continued, more slowly now, more measured. “She'd just had the child and I suppose he was running late.”

“He'd promised me a bedtime story,” I whispered. “It was my fault he was rushing.”

Gran put her hand on my knee. “NO!” It came out so forcefully that I jumped. “Don't say that, Laura. Don't think that. It's not true. Your father always drove too fast. To be honest, it was an accident waiting to happen.”

I tried to take all of this in and then I thought of Mum. I put my hand over Gran's. It was trembling slightly.

“It'll be all right, Gran. He's not driving this time. Mum is. Besides, he's not stupid and he's been in the car with her before, a couple of weeks ago. He won't do anything to hurt her.”

She tried to smile. “I'm sure you're right, Laura. I'm sure he's changed.”

“He has. When your tablets went missing he helped to find them.”

She looked surprised. “Then I'm sure everything will be just fine and I'm just a silly old woman who's worrying us both for nothing.”

But it wasn't fine. Mum had said that she'd be back at one o'clock, one-thirty at the latest. By ten to two, Gran and I should have been starving but we weren't. We were too worried to eat. I'd tried Mum's
mobile five times but there was no reply.

“Contact your father,” Gran said. “Doesn't he hear you when you call? Isn't that how he ‘came over' in the first place?”

“Yes,” I replied. “But he doesn't always respond.”

“Try,” she begged.

I cleared my throat and stood in the middle of the kitchen. “Dad,” I called as loudly and clearly as I could. “Where are you? Are you with Mum? Can you let us know that everything's all right? We're really worried.”

I stood, my head tilted back, eyes fixed towards the ceiling where a small jagged crack had broken through the wallpaper. Gran was very still. I think we were both holding our breath. Listening. Waiting. Hoping. But there was no sound apart from the hum of the fridge and the ticking of the clock and beyond that the deep, hollow space of silence.

“Dad, please!” I tried again. “If you can hear me, just let us know that you're both okay.”

I shook my head. “It's no good. I'm sorry.”

Gran covered her face with her hands briefly and then sat up ramrod straight. She was looking
really pale so I opened a tin of soup.

“You know what Mum's like,” I said. “She's probably met someone she used to go to school with and they're having a coffee somewhere.”

“She'd have phoned to let us know,” Gran said.

“Maybe there's a problem with her phone. Maybe she's broken down in a place without signal.”

“It's ringing, isn't it?” Gran replied.

There was no answer to that. She was right. We managed a few mouthfuls of soup and a bit of bread but it tasted metallic and I was beginning to feel sick. I kept going to the front door and looking up and down the road to see if there was any sign of her, as if looking would suddenly make her appear. At quarter to three Gran announced she was going to ring Aunt Jane.

“Isn't she at some conference today?” I said, covering Gran's legs with a blanket, even though it wasn't particularly cold. “Why don't I go and find Uncle Pete? He'll know what to do.”

“He's harvesting the top field. You know how he hates to be disturbed. The weather's set to change too. He needs to get it done.”

I shrugged, beginning to feel desperate. Surely Mum was more important than a few grains of wheat but the way they'd given us the cold shoulder recently I didn't want to bet on it.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked. “Ring around the hospitals?” That was what they did in films, wasn't it?

She shook her head. “No, I'll do it.”

But I could see she wasn't up to it. There was the sound of a car pulling into the drive at the side of the house and I ran to the window.

“Please let it be Mum,” I prayed, but in my heart I knew that the engine didn't have quite the same note.

“Who is it, Laura?” Gran called. “Is it Liz?”

“No,” I tried to shout back, although my voice felt weak. “It's the vicar.”

“Oh my goodness,” Gran said. “I'd completely forgotten that he'd said he was calling in to see me.”

By the time I led Reverend Tim through to the sitting room and explained the situation, tears were streaming down my face. Ever since Dad's accident
I couldn't bear people being late. My mind just zoomed into overdrive and I suppose that I was overwrought from the previous day but I totally went to pieces. Sam had been sitting in the front seat of the car and that's where I'd wanted him to stay but his dad called him inside. He looked at me and sort of smiled. I know he was trying to be reassuring and I should have been grateful but I was too panic-stricken to appreciate anything except the sense of dread that had taken over every cell of my body. I wanted to be rational, to be in control, to tell myself that I was being silly. But when you've lost one parent you always feel as if you're on a precipice, as if the slightest tilt of the landscape could make your world slide towards catastrophe again. When I was little and having nightmares Mum used to reassure me. “Lightning doesn't strike in the same place twice,” she had said.

And I had wanted to believe her. Then I read about a man on a golf course who'd actually been struck by lightning – twice. So I knew that bad things could happen to you more than once in your life. Reverend Tim draped an arm around my shoulders and pulled
me closer to him. He flourished a pristine white handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it into my hand.

“I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for this,” he said and his voice was melodic, almost as if he was reading out a psalm, but it was calming too. “So, let's not panic and start imagining the worst.”

He pressed his fingers gently into the top of my shoulder as I dried my eyes.

“Laura, I want you and Sam to go and make some tea while I ring around a few places. Can you manage to do that?”

I nodded. But to be honest I'd rather have done it on my own.

“It'll be okay,” Sam said, as I spooned tea into the teapot and waited for the kettle to boil.

“You don't know that,” I replied.

We stood in an awkward silence and I wished he'd go back to the sitting room. Maybe if I didn't talk to him he would.

“I wish you'd told me about your dad.”

I rearranged the tea towels on the front of
the range. He obviously wasn't picking up on my subliminal messages.

“You'd have thought I was nuts.”

“No, I wouldn't. My dad deals with that sort of thing all of the time.”

“I didn't know that then.”

He put the sugar bowl on the tray. “Is that why you gave Gloria back, because of your dad?”

“How did you know that?”

He shrugged. “You seemed so besotted with her. There must have been a good reason for you to suddenly turn up on my doorstep, a few minutes after setting off home, and thrusting the box into my arms without any explanation.”