The Bad Mother (12 page)

Yet she felt a frisson of excitement. She knew she ought to disown it, but could not. There was a malign glamour, an almost sexual charge, attached to the idea of such moral and physical extremity. It gave her a heady sense of power. Tessa thought back to when she had first asked Erin about her father, drinking coffee together and looking out at Pamela’s sheltered garden. How naive she had been to assume her journey would be uncomplicated, its outcome inevitably positive. Suddenly she did not necessarily want it to be so simple. No explorer setting out into unknown terrain truly wished for a tame or uneventful experience. She too wanted to be free to develop in new and unexpected directions, to be tested, and survive, as an individual alone in an unknowable world. She knew for certain that she would not turn her back on whatever experience lay ahead. The murderer who was locked up somewhere in a prison like this was her
father
. Truth was
truth. It had no obligation to be benign. It might be terrible. But she would end up stronger for not turning away.

Her mobile pinged, interrupting her thoughts, and she lifted it out of her bag: a text message from Lauren, reporting that she hadn’t yet been robbed or murdered. Tessa’s stomach turned over. She opened the car window to let in some air, texting back a smiley face. She felt ill. What nonsense was she selling herself? What was she doing here? How could she envisage allowing any possible contamination between a prison inmate and her teenage daughter? She watched as a group of officers came out of the gaol and walked towards her. Some were women, but a couple of the men had shaven heads. All wore sturdy black boots, and as their black anoraks flapped open she could see their thick leather belts. Their solidarity as they moved past the car, their show of strength, betrayed the realities of their working day. Prison life was not romantic, it was tough.

She tried to imagine how she would feel if Hugo were beyond those walls, a Hugo she had never met. Whatever he had done, she would have no choice but to refuse to believe that he ought to be shunned or forgotten. Roy Weaver had come into her life, his existence forcing upon her a realm of experience she had never asked for and did not wish to accept. She could choose to drive away and never look back. She knew that was the best thing, the right thing, to do. But it was impossible to unlearn the fact of his existence. This other father had entered her life, and she had to find a place for him.

Tessa sat in her car as the officers drove away and the area became quiet again. She was here because somewhere behind a similar wall was part of who she was. Part of her children too, and
their
children. To spend the rest of her life in ignorance was unthinkable. Some of the exhilaration she had felt while driving kicked back in. Her ambitions had never been world-shattering, but she was no coward, and she had to be prepared to take this thing on, wherever it led.

By the time she reached home, Tessa’s decision to start the process of making contact had taken on an inevitability that made it seem natural and right. Mitch was out, and she had an hour or so to herself. Ignoring everything else on her desk, she immediately went online to find the official website through which she could request information about which prison Roy Weaver was in. It was, she had already learnt, up to him to consent to the disclosure of his whereabouts. She hesitated over the question on the form asking her to give the reasons for her enquiry. Unknown relative? Long-lost daughter? Daughter he never knew he had? It felt unreal, mad, the kind of avowal that no one could take at face value. But what else could she say? The form felt intimidating, as if she were entering a quasi-judicial hinterland where any mistake might slide her helplessly closer to this parallel punitive world.

She got up from her desk. This was a bad idea. She circled the small room, trying to decide. Should she go ahead? If she did, what could she put down on the form other than the truth as she knew it? She was struck by
sudden doubt: other than Erin’s rosy-tinted account, she had no proof that this man had ever been Erin’s lover, let alone that he was in fact her father. What if it was all complete nonsense, some lie Erin had for some reason concocted to tell her mother and now come to believe?

Yet all the time she knew that she would send the form, would declare that she believed Roy Weaver to be her biological father, and that the reason for her enquiry was to discover the truth.

Although the official website warned her a reply might take weeks, when the phone rang around six o’clock Tessa irrationally hoped it might already be a response, and so it took her a moment or two to realise it was Evie’s mother, asking if Tessa had heard from the girls. They had not come off the prearranged train, and Evie was not answering her phone. Recovering from the first plummeting drop into fear, Tessa called Lauren, her heart hammering in her chest as she waited to hear her daughter’s voice. Lauren answered after a couple of rings and explained sheepishly how Evie had left her phone in the changing room at a clothes shop, and by going back to look for it they had missed their train; the phone could not be found and Evie, by then in a state, could not remember her mother’s mobile number, stored on the lost phone. Lauren had idiotically delayed calling Tessa in the hope of avoiding a telling-off, but they were now safely on a later train.

Her hands shaking with relief, Tessa called Evie’s mother to explain and recognised the same edge of terror in the other woman’s voice. She sank into the nearest chair, unable
to believe her own wilful stupidity. The very thing she most feared – that some predatory, violent man would harm her precious daughter – she had herself conjured into their lives.

SEVENTEEN

Pamela found Hugo in what he called his den, originally the inadequate third bedroom. It had a view across the front garden to the river marshes that pleased him, and in it he had recreated a semblance of the office he had vacated at the brewery. She wasn’t quite sure how he passed his time in here – reading crime novels he borrowed from the library, she suspected – but guessed he liked the bit of structure spending an hour or two at his desk gave his day when they had no other plans.

He moved a box file off the old kitchen chair for her and she sat down, folding her hands in her lap.

‘Time to talk?’ he asked.

She nodded. She never found it as easy as he did to put things into words; there always seemed to be an unwelcome finality in doing so, and once something had been said it could not be taken back. Better to say nothing, or very little, than to risk saying the wrong thing. Even though the secret was now out and there was no reason to hold back, old habits died hard.

‘What are we going to do?’ she asked in reply.

‘Nothing.’ He smiled sadly. ‘What can we do?’

‘Stop her seeing this man!’

‘How?’

Pamela stared at him in mute appeal, and he reached out to pat her hands. ‘There’s nothing we can do, my love. At least, so far as we know, he’s not aware of her existence.’

‘But what if he is? Or she does decide to contact him?’

‘She may not. But whatever she decides, we have no right to stop her.’

‘What if he’s dangerous?’

‘Then we do our best to protect her. As we’ve always done,’ he added.

‘No! We mustn’t let this happen. You must talk to her, Hugo. Stop her.’

Hugo gave a bitter laugh. ‘All those years I did nothing because you and your mother insisted that was the way it had to be. And now you want me to act!’

‘I’m afraid we’re being punished,’ she said.

Hugo withdrew his hand. ‘For what?’

‘Everything.’ Pamela wished she’d had a bit more Dutch courage before she’d come upstairs. ‘She was never ours,’ she said. ‘I’ve dreaded this day ever since we took her.’

Hugo pushed his chair back, his mouth set in a hard line. ‘Stop it, Pamela! If you want to think like that, you should never have agreed to take Tessa in the first place. It’s no good to anyone, this endless guilt and regret.’

‘Will Tessa ever forgive us?’

‘We should have told her. I always said that. But what’s done is done. She knows we love her, and that’s all that counts.’

Pamela shook her head, rubbing her hands around in her lap. ‘But this man …’

‘Her father.’

‘We know nothing about him.’

‘What does Erin say?’

‘I haven’t been able to get hold of her. She must be off on a trip. She hasn’t been answering her phone.’

‘Well, she obviously gave Tessa enough information to track him down. And if he is Tessa’s father, then we just have to focus on that, not on his conviction. He’s doing his time.’

‘You’re
her father. It’s not fair on you!’

‘We have to leave Tessa free,’ said Hugo. He took hold of his wife’s hands again, trying to contain their restless movements, but she pulled against him, releasing herself from his grasp. ‘We believed before we were doing the right thing. We can’t interfere again.’

‘And what if this man has done terrible things before? Other crimes?’

‘Then that’s the way it is.’

‘What if she can be hurt by what he’s done?’

Hugo shrugged. ‘We’ll just have to hope that if she does contact him, he’ll feel as any father would.’

Pamela felt a surge of rage against Hugo’s reasonableness. Fearing her own anger, she stood up. ‘Ok. But I worry about you too.’

‘It’s not about what we want any more.’ He managed a weary smile, not meeting her eyes. ‘It never should have been.’

She bent to kiss his cheek and went downstairs to the kitchen in search of something to deaden her apprehension.

Later, she once again dialled Erin’s number in Sydney and once again got her answering machine. This time she left a message: ‘Erin, it’s me. I have news. Tessa has found Roy Weaver.’ Pamela paused for so long that the device automatically cut her off. She rang back before her mouth became too dry to speak. ‘Please call me back, Erin darling. Talk to me. This time I’ll hear whatever you want to tell me. I will listen to what you want to say. I promise.’

EIGHTEEN

The reply from the Prison Service arrived in early May. It supplied the name of the establishment, HMP Wayleigh Heath, and Roy Weaver’s prison number, LH5238. Over the previous few weeks Tessa had almost persuaded herself that Roy Weaver would not reply. After all, it was preposterous to expect him to entertain her claim nearly four decades after an event he must surely have forgotten. Indeed, she’d rather hoped not to hear back so that she could quietly let the whole subject drop, while telling herself she’d done all she could. Yet, as she read the sparse information, she was taken aback by the intensity of her relief. Her father had opened the way for them to meet. He did want to know her! Until that moment, holding this document in her hands, she had not honestly considered how she would react if he had refused, and could now admit how painful a rejection would have been. She had been naive not to believe that the instinctive need to know one’s paternity would overpower any argument against bringing this dubious man into her life.

In the grip of this emotion Tessa drew a sheet of the B&B’s headed paper towards her, and picked up a pen. It seemed far too formal to send a printed letter. She hesitated over the wisdom of giving him her address before reassuring herself that he was behind bars – she and her family were perfectly safe. What should she call him – Roy or Mr Weaver?
Dear Roy
, she wrote.
You will already know why I want to contact you. I have reason to believe you might be my biological father
. She paused: did ‘biological’ sound too cold? Or did it convey sanity and realism? She let it stand.
My mother, who now lives in Australia, is Erin Girling. She has told me that you met one another in Felixham when you were on holiday there in the summer of 1974, and that you are my father
. Tessa broke off to consider how she might lay her hands on a photograph of Erin in 1974, to jog Roy’s memory, then realised she would have to ask Pamela, and decided it could wait. She also brushed aside the rapid calculation that Erin, then only a year or so older than Lauren, had not in fact turned sixteen until the very end of August. She thought for a while, pondering what more she could add.
I have very little information, so if this is not you, then I apologise for writing. If you agree that my mother is correct, then I hope we can correspond further
. She signed off,
With best wishes
, folded the sheet into an envelope and copied out the address provided.

She locked the letter from the Prison Service into a filing cabinet and decided to take her own letter to the post immediately, so that neither Mitch nor Lauren could stumble across it and be curious about the significance
of the address. She slipped out of the house and into spring sunshine dancing off the sea. White horses raced into shore and small white clouds scudded across a blue sky. Beneath the promenade a man was repainting a beach hut the colour of lemon sherbet. She posted her letter in the red box set in the wall by one of the many flights of steps that led down to the beach, and walked on along the front. She was not yet ready to go back to work, and there were some errands she could run in town. The preoccupation of the morning had blinded her to the outside world, but she also felt vividly alive, sensing some possibility of completion, of comfort and self-explanation, that lay waiting over the horizon. The world had only to keep turning in order to bring it to her: it was as natural as the tides.

Roy Weaver replied by return of post.
Dear Tessa
, he wrote on lined prison notepaper. The envelope was ordinary, cheap and anonymous, but the letter it contained bore his name and prison number in preprinted spaces in the top corner.
I don’t know what to say! I do remember that long-ago summer in Felixham, and a lovely girl I was half in love with, so I suppose it is entirely possible that what your mother tells you is true. I have sadly remained childless, so the idea that you might be my daughter is thrilling – though goodness knows, I don’t deserve it. I enclose a Visiting Order. If you would care to come and see me, then ring and book a visit on any day that suits you. Warmest regards, Roy Weaver
.