After You (7 page)

My father was Will Traynor.

Lily’s mother had apparently told her Will had not wanted anything to do with her. But surely he would have mentioned something to me. We had no secrets from each other. Weren’t we the two people who had managed to talk about everything? For a moment I wobbled: had Will not been as honest with me as I’d believed? Had he actually possessed the ability simply to airbrush an entire daughter out of his conscience?

My thoughts were chasing each other in circles. I grabbed my laptop, sat cross-legged on the sofa and typed ‘Lily Hawton Miller’ into a search engine, and when that came up with no results, I tried again with various spellings, settling on ‘Lily Houghton-Miller’, which brought up a number of hockey-fixture results posted by a school called Upton Tilton in
Shropshire. I called up some of the images, and as I zoomed in, there she was, an unsmiling girl in a row of smiling hockey players.
Lily Houghton-Miller played a brave, if unsuccessful defence.
It was dated two years ago. Boarding-school. She’d said she was meant to be at boarding-school. But it still didn’t mean she was any relation of Will or, indeed, that her mother had been telling the truth about her parentage.

I altered the search to just the words ‘Houghton-Miller’, which brought up a short diary item about Francis and Tanya Houghton-Miller attending a banking dinner at the Savoy, and a planning application from the previous year for a wine cellar under a house in St John’s Wood.

I sat back, thinking, then did a search on ‘Tanya Miller’ and ‘William Traynor’. It turned up nothing. I tried again, using ‘Will Traynor’, and suddenly I was on a Facebook thread for alumni of Durham University, on which several women, all of whose names seemed to end in ‘-ella’ – Estella, Fenella, Arabella – were discussing Will’s death
.

I couldn’t believe it when I heard it on the news. Him of all people! RIP Will.

Nobody gets through life unscathed. You know Rory Appleton died in the Turks and Caicos, in a speed-boating accident?

Didn’t he do geography? Red hair?

No, PPE.

I’m sure I snogged Rory at the Freshers’ Ball. Enormous tongue.

I’m not being funny, Fenella, but that’s rather bad taste. The poor man is dead.

Wasn’t Will Traynor the one who went out with Tanya Miller for the whole of the third year?

I don’t see how it’s in poor taste to mention that I may have kissed someone just because they then went on to pass away.

I’m not saying you have to rewrite history. It’s just his wife might be reading this and she might not want to know that her beloved stuck his tongue in the face of some girl on Facebook.

I’m sure she knows his tongue was enormous. I mean, she married him.

Rory Appleton got married?

Tanya married some banker. Here’s a link. I always thought she and Will would get married when we were at uni. They were so gorgeous.

I clicked on the link, which showed a picture of a reed-thin blonde woman with an artfully tousled chignon smiling as she stood on the steps of a register office with an older, dark-haired man. A short distance away, at the edge of the picture, a young girl in a white tulle dress was scowling. She bore a definite resemblance to the Lily Houghton-Miller I had met. But the image was seven years old, and in truth it could have portrayed any grumpy young bridesmaid with long mid-brown hair.

I reread the thread, and closed my laptop. What should I do? If she really was Will’s daughter, should I call the school? I was pretty sure there were rules about strangers who tried to contact teenage girls.

And what if this really was some elaborate scam? Will had died a wealthy man. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that somebody could think up an intricate scheme by which to leach money from his family. When Dad’s mate Chalky died of a heart attack, seventeen people had turned up at the wake telling his wife he owed them betting money.

I would steer clear, I decided. There was too much potential for pain and disruption if I got this wrong.

But when I went to bed it was Lily’s voice I heard, echoing into the silent flat.

Will Traynor was my father.

‘Sorry. My alarm didn’t go off.’ I rushed past Richard and hung my coat on the peg, pulling my synthetic skirt down over my thighs.

‘Three-quarters of an hour late. This is not acceptable.’

It was eight thirty a.m. We were, I noted, the only two people in the bar.

Carly had left: she hadn’t even bothered telling Richard to his face. She simply sent a text message telling him she would drop the sodding uniform in at the end of the week, and that as she was owed two weeks’ sodding holiday pay she was taking her sodding notice in lieu.
If she had bothered to read the employment handbook
, he had fumed,
she would have known that taking notice in lieu of holiday was completely unacceptable. It was there in Section Three, as clear as day
, if
she had cared to look. And the sodding language was simply unnecessary
.

He was now going through the due processes to find a replacement. Which meant that until due processes were completed it was just me. And Richard.

‘I’m sorry. Something … came up at home.’

I had woken with a start at seven thirty, unable for several minutes to recall what country I was in or what my name was, and had lain on my bed, unable to move, while I mulled over the previous evening’s events.

‘A good worker doesn’t bring their home life to the workplace with them,’ Richard intoned, as he pushed past me with his clipboard. I watched him go, wondering if he even had a home life. He never seemed to spend any time there.

‘Yeah. Well. A good employer doesn’t make his employee wear a uniform Stringfellow’s would have rejected as tacky,’ I muttered, as I tapped my code into the till, pulling the hem of my Lurex skirt down with my free hand.

He turned swiftly, and walked back across the bar. ‘What did you say?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Yes, you did.’

‘I said I’ll remember that for next time. Thank you very much for reminding me.’

I smiled sweetly at him.

He looked at me for several seconds longer than was comfortable for either of us. And then he said, ‘The cleaner is off sick again. You’ll need to do the Gents before you start on the bar.’

His gaze was steady, daring me to say something. I reminded myself that I could not afford to lose this job. I swallowed. ‘Right.’

‘Oh, and cubicle three’s a bit of a mess.’

‘Jolly good,’ I said.

He turned on his highly polished heel and walked back into the office. I sent mental voodoo arrows into the back of his head the whole way.

‘This week’s Moving On Circle is about guilt, survivor’s guilt, guilt that we didn’t do enough … It’s often this that keeps us from moving forward.’

Marc waited as we handed around the biscuit tin, then leaned forward on his plastic chair, his hands clasped in front of him. He ignored the low rumbling of discontent that there were no bourbon creams.

‘I used to get ever so impatient with Jilly,’ Fred said, into the silence. ‘When she had the dementia, I mean. She would
put dirty plates back in the kitchen cupboards and I would find them days later and … I’m ashamed to say, I did shout at her a couple of times.’ He wiped at an eye. ‘She was such a houseproud woman, before. That was the worst thing.’

‘You lived with Jilly’s dementia for a long time, Fred. You’d have to have been superhuman not to find it a strain.’

‘Dirty plates would drive me mad,’ said Daphne. ‘I think I would have shouted something terrible.’

‘But it wasn’t her fault, was it?’ Fred straightened on his chair. ‘I think about those plates a lot. I wish I could go back. I’d wash them up without saying a word. Just give her a nice cuddle instead.’

‘I find myself fantasizing about men on the tube,’ said Natasha. ‘Sometimes when I’m riding up an escalator, I exchange a look with some random man going down. And before I’ve even got to the platform I’m building a whole relationship with him in my head. You know, where he runs back down the escalator because he just knows there’s something magical between us, and we stand there, gazing at each other, amid the crowds of commuters on the Piccadilly Line, and then we go for a drink, and before you know it, we’re –’

‘Sounds like a Richard Curtis movie,’ said William.

‘I like Richard Curtis movies,’ said Sunil. ‘Especially that one about the actress and the man in his pants.’

‘Shepherd’s Bush,’ said Daphne.

There was a short pause. ‘I think it’s
Notting Hill
, Daphne,’ Marc said.

‘I preferred Daphne’s version. What?’ said William, snorting. ‘We’re not allowed to laugh now?’

‘So in my head we’re getting married,’ said Natasha. ‘And then when we’re standing at the altar, I think, What am I doing? Olaf only died three years ago and I’m fantasizing about other men.’

Marc leaned back in his chair. ‘You don’t think that’s natural, after three years by yourself? To fantasize about other relationships?’

‘But if I had really loved Olaf, surely I wouldn’t think about anyone else.’

‘It’s not the Victorian age,’ said William. ‘You don’t have to wear widow’s weeds till you’re elderly.’

‘If it was me that died, I’d hate the thought of Olaf falling in love with someone else.’

‘You wouldn’t know,’ said William. ‘You’d be dead.’

‘What about you, Louisa?’ Marc had noticed my silence. ‘Do you suffer feelings of guilt?’

‘Can we – can we do someone else?’

‘I’m Catholic,’ said Daphne. ‘I feel guilty about everything. It’s the nuns, you know.’

‘What do you find difficult about this subject, Louisa?’

I took a swig of coffee. I felt everyone’s eyes on me.
Come on
, I told myself. I swallowed. ‘That I couldn’t stop him,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I think if I had been smarter, or … handled things differently … or just been more – I don’t know. More anything.’

‘You feel guilty about Bill’s death because you feel you could have stopped him?’

I pulled at a thread. When it came away in my hand it seemed to loosen something in my brain. ‘Also that I’m living a life that is so much less than the one I promised him I’d live. And guilt over the fact that he basically paid for my flat when my sister will probably never be able to afford one of her own. And guilt that I don’t even really like living in it, because it doesn’t feel like mine, and it feels wrong to make it nice because all I associate it with is the fact that W— Bill is dead and somehow I benefited from that.’

There was a short silence.

‘You shouldn’t feel guilty about property,’ said Daphne.

‘I wish someone would leave me a flat,’ said Sunil.

‘But that’s just a fairy tale ending, isn’t it? Man dies, everyone learns something, moves on, creates something wonderful out of his death.’ I was speaking without thinking now. ‘I’ve done none of those things. I’ve basically just failed at all of it.’

‘My dad cries nearly every time he shags someone who isn’t my mum,’ Jake blurted, twisting his hands together. He stared out from under his fringe. ‘He charms women into sleeping with him and then he gets off on being sad about it. It’s like as long as he feels guilty about it afterwards it’s okay.’

‘You think he uses his guilt as a crutch.’

‘I just think either you have sex and feel glad that you’re having all the sex –’

‘I wouldn’t feel guilty about having all the sex,’ said Fred.

‘Or you treat women like human beings and make sure you don’t have anything to feel guilty about. Or don’t even sleep with anyone, and treasure Mum’s memory until you’re actually ready to move on.’

His voice broke on
treasure
and his jaw tautened. We were used, by then, to the sudden stiffening of expressions, and an unspoken group courtesy meant that we each looked away until any potential tears subsided.

Marc’s voice was gentle. ‘Have you told your father how you feel, Jake?’

‘We don’t talk about Mum. He’s fine as long as, you know, we don’t actually mention her.’

‘That’s quite a burden for you to carry alone.’

‘Yeah. Well … That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?’

There was a short silence.

‘Have a biscuit, Jake darling,’ said Daphne, and we passed the tin back around the circle, vaguely reassured, in some way nobody could quite define, when Jake finally took one.

I kept thinking about Lily. I barely registered Sunil’s tale of weeping in the baked-goods section of the supermarket, and just about raised a sympathetic expression for Fred’s solitary marking of Jilly’s birthday with a bunch of foil balloons. For days now the whole episode with Lily had taken on the tenor of a dream, vivid and surreal.

How could Will have had a daughter?

‘You look happy.’

Jake’s father was leaning against his motorbike as I walked across the church hall’s car park.

I stopped in front of him. ‘It’s a grief-counselling session. I’m hardly going to come out tap-dancing.’

‘Fair point.’

‘It’s not what you think. I mean, it’s not me,’ I said. ‘It’s … to do with a teenager.’

He tipped his head backwards, spying Jake behind me. ‘Oh. Right. Well, you have my sympathies there. You look young to have a teenager, if you don’t mind me saying.’

‘Oh. No. Not mine! It’s … complicated.’

‘I’d love to give you advice. But I don’t have a clue.’ He stepped forward and enveloped Jake in a hug, which the boy tolerated glumly. ‘You all right, young man?’

‘Fine.’

‘Fine,’ Sam said, glancing sideways at me. ‘There you go. Universal response of all teenagers to everything. War, famine, lottery wins, global fame. It’s all
fine
.’

‘You didn’t need to pick me up. I’m going to Jools’s.’

‘You want a lift?’

‘She lives, like, there. In that block.’ Jake pointed. ‘I think I can manage that by myself.’

Sam’s expression remained even. ‘So, maybe text me next time? Save me coming here and waiting?’

Jake shrugged, and walked off, his rucksack slung over his shoulder. We watched him go in silence.

‘I’ll see you later, yes, Jake?’

Jake lifted a hand without looking back.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘So now I feel a tiny bit better.’

Sam gave the slightest shake of his head. He watched his son go, as if, even now, he couldn’t bear to just leave him. ‘Some days he feels it harder than others.’ And then he turned to me. ‘You want to grab a coffee or something, Louisa? Just so I don’t have to feel like the world’s biggest loser? It
is
Louisa, right?’

I thought of what Jake had said in that evening’s session.
On Friday
Dad brought home this psycho blonde called Mags who is obsessed with him. When he was in the shower she kept asking me if he talked about her when she wasn’t there.

The compulsive shagger. But he was nice enough, and he had helped put me back together in the ambulance, and the alternative was another night at home wondering what had been going on in Lily Houghton-Miller’s head. ‘If we can talk about anything but teenagers.’

‘Can we talk about your outfit?’

I looked down at my green Lurex skirt and my Irish dancing shoes. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘It was worth a try,’ he said, and climbed onto his motorbike.

We sat outside a near-empty bar a short distance from my flat. He drank black coffee, and I had fruit juice.

I had time to study him surreptitiously now that I wasn’t dodging cars in a car park or lying strapped to a hospital gurney. His nose held a tell-tale ridge, and his eyes crinkled in a way that suggested there was almost no human behaviour he hadn’t seen and, perhaps, been slightly amused by. He was tall and broad, his features coarser than Will’s somehow, yet he moved with a kind of gentle economy, as if he had absorbed
the effort of not damaging things just from his size. He was evidently more comfortable with listening than talking, or perhaps it was just that it was unsettling to be on my own with a man after so much time because I found I was gabbling. I talked about my job at the bar, making him laugh about Richard Percival and the horrors of my outfit, and how strange it had been to live briefly at home again, and my father’s bad jokes, and Granddad and his doughnuts, and my nephew’s unorthodox use of a blue marker pen. But I was conscious as I spoke, as so often these days, of how much I didn’t say: about Will, about the surreal thing that had happened to me the previous evening, about me. With Will I had never had to consider what I said: talking to him was as effortless as breathing. Now I was good at not really saying anything about myself at all.

He just sat, and nodded, watched the traffic go by and sipped his coffee, as if it were perfectly normal for him to be passing the time with a feverishly chatting stranger in a green Lurex mini-skirt.

‘So, how’s the hip?’ he asked, when finally I ground to a halt.

‘Not bad. I’d quite like to stop limping, though.’

‘You’ll get there, if you keep up the physio.’ For a moment, I could hear that voice from the back of the ambulance. Calm, unfazed, reassuring. ‘The other injuries?’

I peered down at myself, as if I could see through what I was wearing. ‘Well, other than the fact that I look like someone’s drawn all over bits of me with a particularly vivid red pen, not bad.’

Sam nodded. ‘You were lucky. That was quite a fall.’

And there it was again. The sick lurch in my stomach. The air beneath my feet.
You never know what will happen when you fall from a great height.
‘I wasn’t trying to –’

‘You said.’

‘But I’m not sure anyone believes me.’

We exchanged an awkward smile and for a minute I wondered if he didn’t either.

‘So … do you pick up many people who fall off the tops of buildings?’

He shook his head, gazed out across the road. ‘I just pick up the pieces. I’m glad that, in your case, the pieces fitted back together.’

We sat in silence for a while longer. I kept thinking about things I should say, but I was so out of practice at being alone with a man – while sober at least – that I kept losing my nerve, my mouth opening and closing like that of a goldfish.

‘So you want to tell me about the teenager?’ Sam said.

It was a relief to explain it to someone. I told him about the late-night knock at the door, and our bizarre meeting and what I had found on Facebook, and the way she had run away before I’d had a chance to work out what on earth to do.