Daddy Dearest (20 page)

I’ll never leave my daughter again, I promise. So long as she’s okay, I’ll do everything you say. How many times have I sworn that and come up short? Have you been counting? I don’t even believe in you, although saying that feels like an act of betrayal. I’ve often wondered what people meant when they said they’d found God. Did they mean literally they’d found the towers of heaven and a host of angels? Or were they just exchanging phone calls? If so, how come he never returned mine? Am I that bad? I’d hate to be one of those last minute converts who recant their actions, yet I felt myself becoming one. God loves a sinner. I wonder why that is? Shouldn’t he love someone more virtuous? Maybe heaven needs the numbers; there’s so many going downstairs, he’ll take all he can. It’s nice to see standards are slipping across the board. The afterlife isn’t what it used to be. People are getting in with all kinds of disqualifications.

There were a couple of photographers outside the station. I don’t know if they were there for me or not, but their cameras flashed as I passed. I wondered if they’d be the shots that appeared the next morning, and I’d look as cruel, mean and guilty as the Chinese couple. I pretty much figured I was going to be followed. I imagined plain clothes detectives hiding behind newspapers and mobile phones, and tried to keep myself from running, but as I got near the Sears building, my sense of foreboding grew and my pace quickened.

Please let her be okay.

The key turned in the lock. I was in the lobby. I ran to the lift and pressed the button. I saw my reflection in the mirror. I hadn’t shaved, I hadn’t slept, I hadn’t looked after myself. I hadn’t looked after her. I didn’t really know what I expected. I had visions of my door hanging off its hinges and blunt faced officers guarding the entrance. What I didn’t expect was nothing. But when I got to the seventh floor, there it was: not a sliver of wood or scratch on the frame. For a second, I thought I’d got the wrong floor. Then I thought Sherlock was having me on. He’d bluffed me into getting a reaction. Didn’t they need a search warrant to go through someone’s house?

I put the key in the lock. There was no sound. Where was she? The TV was off; the food I’d left was gone; everything was tidied up. My daughter had vanished into thin air, just the way I’d intended, yet I hadn’t so much as said ‘Abracadabra’. I checked the windows, under the bed, in the wardrobes. She was nowhere to be found. It was then I heard the front door go.

Darling
?

I rushed into the hall.

It wasn’t. It was someone else entirely. She was holding the set of keys I’d given her.

‘Where the hell have you been?’

‘You texted me.’

‘Well, you’re too late.’

She shook her head. ‘No.’

‘What?’

‘They came looking for her. They remembered I had some.’

‘You let them in?’

‘I thought it was best.’

‘For who?’

‘For all of us.’

‘You let them take her?’

She shook her head. ‘No.’

It was only then that it started to sink in. She was telling me my little girl was okay.

‘You have her?’

‘I came when you texted.’

‘Why?’

‘I would have come before.’

‘You left her on her own.’

‘I knew you’d be back.’

‘Anything could have happened.’

‘I thought about that.’

‘Not enough.’

‘I did what I had to. Just like you did.’

She was right, of course. There are circumstances and circumstances and a whole sea of excuses in between.

‘How did you find her?’

‘When I came up, I heard noises in your flat. She was trying to turn the lock. At first I thought it was you. I got the keys from mine. She was sitting by the door quietly. When I asked her what she was doing, she said you told her to stay there.’

Coming from someone else, it sounded even more dreadful.

‘I asked her if she wanted me to stay with her and she said yes. She wanted to go to the playroom. I had to hide her. Not long after, I heard police cars and guessed something was wrong.’

‘Where is she? I need to see her.’

She led me out. I noticed a strong smell of leather in the corridor.

‘Did they come in?’

‘Yes. They wanted to search all the flats adjoining yours.’

‘What for?’

‘I didn’t ask. I had other things on my mind.’

I went to the playroom and opened the door. I fully expected her to be playing on the floor with Jack and Sally but she wasn’t there. Nothing was there. It had all been tidied up. I looked at Rashelle. For a second, I thought she’d done something; had taken matters into her own hands.

‘You said you had her?’

There was the flash of a chrome shower head.

‘I do.’

She opened the door to the boiler room and turned the light on. I could hear the hum of the water pipes and the minute ticking of an electric clock, but otherwise nothing. She reached behind the water tank and knocked gently on the cupboard door.

‘Your Daddy’s here.’

There was no answer.

She knocked again and the door opened slowly. My daughter peered out. She was holding Jack and Sally and a miniature torch. She shone it in my eyes. ‘Daddy?’

‘Yes, darling?’

‘It’s very scary in there.’

‘You won’t have to go in there again.’

She clambered out. ‘Have you got Mummy?’

‘Yes, darling. She’s waiting for us outside.’

I don’t know why I said it; just to keep her sweet, I suppose. You can’t imagine how happy she looked. She threw her arms round me. I was the best daddy in the world.

‘Well done, Daddy. Now we can go on holiday.’

I couldn’t bear to look at Rashelle. Her face was drawn and the colour in her cheeks had faded from tart red to pallid pink. Her beige dress, the one that contained her best, hung loosely about her shoulders. It seemed scarcely possible that she’d lost weight so quickly. I knew what she was thinking and knew I’d only made it worse for myself.

‘I have to go tonight.’

‘Where will you go?’

‘I don’t know.’

We were lying on the bed waiting for time to run out. There were questions I wanted to ask her, things I wanted to say, and as always there wasn’t enough time. I felt her breasts and wanted to turn her over, but my flesh was unwilling. It wasn’t just about my little girl. It was about my wife. Somehow, it seemed a worse betrayal than when she was alive. Our kissing was laboured, our teeth kept banging; I tasted things on her breath desire wouldn’t wipe away: plaque, asthma, wine, the fetid remains of dinner. And yet she’d made the effort. She looked wonderful, earthy, womanly. I almost forgot the things she’d done.

‘I can’t help you. I think you should tell them.’

‘They’ll jail me.’

‘For what?’

‘For all the things I’ve done. Wasting police time. False imprisonment. Murder.’

The last came out by accident. It must have been on my mind.

‘You weren’t responsible for her death.’

‘A jury won’t see that.’

She went momentarily quiet. ‘It’s horrible not being believed.’

She put her head on my chest and I untied her strawberry blonde hair. It felt like soft flax in my hands. I examined the roots and saw strands of grey shooting from her skull. For once, I didn’t baulk. I covered them. I’ve done the same with my own. I will be grey before I’m bald, I think, not that it’s much consolation. When you get old, there are only runners-up prizes.

‘Is that what happened with your daughter?’

She lifted her head up. I guess it wasn’t exactly subtle. ‘How do you mean?’

I hate being challenged. I hate having to explain myself. ‘I just wondered.’

‘I told you everything.’

‘The whole truth?’

‘Yes.’

‘What about custody? You told me you were given it.’

I wouldn’t have blamed her for being cross. What business was it of mine?

‘They made up lies about me. Terrible lies. Why are you asking me all this?’

For an instant I saw the pain and anger behind the affability. She’d nursed them quietly all this time. Was I really going to upset her?

I felt the question come and could do nothing to stop it.

The look she gave, I thought she was going to kill
me
. For a second, it was very believable what the prosecution alleged. ‘It was a mistake to tell you anything.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you’re like the rest of them. You’ll never be satisfied. You’ll keep going until you get to what you think is the truth.’

‘It was all I was asking for.’

‘You want me to say I killed her? You want me to say she slipped in the bath when I got cross with her? You want me to say I was sick of her whining and the constant comparisons with her father? You want me to say I picked up the shower head and hit her?’

I was shocked. She looked at me and all pretence of love or affection or concern was gone.

‘Of course not.’

‘I loved my daughter.’

I’m sure she did. Just like I did. She turned her back on me. We lay side by side, yet a mile apart. Where before there was warmth, there was now only a spent fire. How many of my relationships have gone that way? I’d alienated the last person who was willing to help me. I watched the clock move inexorably round to midnight and realised I’d be forever in the dark about her.

I heard my daughter stir in the playroom. It was nearly time. I went in to see her and told her to get dressed. She was cute and sleepy and a bit uncoordinated. I had to help her with her vest and top. In her hand she clutched the picture of the handprints.

‘Is Mummy waiting?’

‘Yes, darling.’

‘I can’t wait.’

We were going to take the fire escape. I’ve only been down there a few times and never saw anyone except a couple making out there once. She was on her knees giving the guy a blow job. I’m a bit of a voyeur at times, and not averse to watching women doing depraved things, but that was gross. She was pretty in an office kind of way and he was a great, fat thing with stupid goggle-eyes and glasses. I’ve never been able to fathom how matches like that work. I know I’m no movie star but I’m not retarded. Maybe I’d have had more luck if I was.

I helped her with her coat and gave her a kiss. As we were about to leave, the bedroom door opened. I’d hoped to get out without waking Rashelle.

‘It’s not going to work.’

‘I have no choice.’

‘You can tell them.’

I had a sudden flashback of the first time we met, when I wanted her to come into the flat. There was that same unwritten, one-sided tug between us. I was still desperate and she was still keeping her distance. The only difference was, she was no longer happy. I’d wrought my usual trail of destruction.

‘You couldn’t check the corridor for me?’

She didn’t move.

‘I understand. Just look after her for a second, will you?’

I looked out. The corridor was quiet. Two fire doors divided me from the far end. In all, it was about fifty metres. I walked down it to make sure no one was around, then checked the fire door at the end. It had one of those push bars on it. Once you were through, you couldn’t get back. I opened it and listened. The stairwell was brick and cold and silent. A walk down to the bottom and we were out.

I made my way back. I could hear a TV from one of the flats and put my ear to the door. Already my natural caution was urging me to stop. Don’t take the risk. How often have I listened to that voice and regretted it? How often have I taken the road most travelled, been politic when I should have done what I really wanted? It’s hard to live with sometimes; but it’s harder still to change your ways. The voices in the flat robbed me of my strength.

If it wasn’t for my daughter running down the corridor towards me, I think I’d have slunk back. Rashelle came out and looked at me as if to say what could she do. I had a feeling she let go of her deliberately, but what could I say? I grabbed my daughter’s hand and ran. I held the doors open for her and we never looked back. This was the holiday I’d promised. We got to the fire escape door and pushed. It closed with a metallic clang. It had a fitting air of finality about it, like a cell door closing. We were seven storeys and fourteen stairwells from freedom.

My daughter hadn’t yet learned to take the stairs one step at a time. She put one foot down and then the other before attempting the next. I was tempted to carry her, and kept tugging her, but the cold stone frightened her and she wouldn’t let me go any faster. I dreaded any sound, any movement, any voice. I dreaded
her
voice.

‘Daddy, hold on. I can’t run.’

‘You’ll have to.’

‘I’m going to fall.’

‘You’re not going to fall. Just hurry up.’

It was one of those ridiculous conversations I have with her. I know she’s not capable of doing what I want - she’s not as dextrous, fast, or strong as me - but I tell her anyway: I have to get somewhere fast. If I could just have slowed down, bringing her up would have been a whole lot easier. I could have gone at her pace and maybe learned a thing or two about the world in the process. Life was not the rush it was when you were a teenager - that was a false dawn; nor was it the thrill of the first pay cheque, or the first house you bought; that was another transitory shot in the arm; life was the sober realisation that the whole thing would continue without you and that the only thing that mattered - if anything mattered - was what you left behind. That sounds really traditional and uninspiring and very far from the person I thought I was and would be. I thought I’d be a rebel and live on the edge. I didn’t think I’d be a part of anything. But you change and start deriding the person you were, the way you once detested the kind of person you were going to be. For most people, the most important thing they leave behind is their family, and I was no exception.

I’ve heard it said that people live through their children, and others live for their children. Some people even appear to live in spite of their children. I belong to the middle group, though if I’d been successful, maybe I’d have belonged to the last. I’d like to have impressed my little girl with success the way I wanted to impress my parents. I sometimes wonder what they thought when they brought me into the world. Were their expectations as high; was their disappointment as great? Their world seemed very different. When I dragged my daughter down those steps, I felt the same difference between us. My world was slipping away as hers was coming into being.

There was a smell of piss coming from the bottom. I couldn’t help but think of the seven circles of hell and how we were getting closer to it. The smell got stronger and I saw needles and broken bottles and ruptured condoms on the floor. My little girl pointed to them and thought they were balloons. She wanted to blow one up. How could I explain to her what it really was? How could I explain to her that drink was bad, drugs were bad, and sex was dirty unless it was a part of a loving and committed relationship, when I’d spent a lifetime practising the opposite? She’d find out soon enough but I didn’t want that to be then. I really didn’t want it to be ever, but I knew you had to give her some independence. Men are naturally more protective over their daughters. It’s such a hypocrisy. We spend a lifetime wanting women to be dirty whores - or is that just me? - then hope they’ll exhibit the restraint of Mary. I can remember lying awake at night dreaming of popping every girl in my class, bent over the science lab table. What the hell was I thinking? Maybe we get so hot under the collar because we remember how bad we were.

We came to the fire doors at the bottom. I put my ear to them and listened. I could hear the hum of the generator and the sound of distant traffic. I pulled my little girl’s coat about her and held her hand. She looked up at me in a slightly bemused way.

‘Is this real, Daddy?’

It was odd she said that. I was thinking the same thing myself.

‘Yes, darling.’

‘I keep thinking it’s a dream.’

I pushed open the doors and felt the cool night air touch my face. Once we were out, there was no going back. My fingers held on for as long as they could, then they slipped from my grasp and the latch fell back into place.

I looked about me. The car park was deserted. I glanced up at the CCTV camera on the back of the building and tried to keep out of sight. I’d no idea if they’d fixed it after my wilful vandalism but I wasn’t about to take the chance. I didn’t need to. My daughter was doing it for me.

‘Dad, I think I need a poo.’

‘What?’

‘I have a tummy ache.’

I looked down at her despairingly. How many times had she done that to me - at the denouement of a film, or in the middle of a shop with my hands full of shopping, or at the beach with the nearest toilet a half mile away? It’s always a poo, never a wee. Why couldn’t she just hold it in? ‘You’ll have to wait.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You should have gone when you were in the flat.’

‘I need one now.’

I got down on my knees. My voice was breaking with the stress and it was all I could do not to scream at her.

‘I don’t care. We’ve got to get away from here and we’ve got to go now. You can do your poo later.’

I dragged her along, trying to keep as much to the shadow of the building, but she couldn’t keep up and started to whinge, saying it was going to come out. I whispered to her to shut up, but even that echoed upwards. Anyone could hear it. I took her to the part of the building where the rubbish was collected. There was a small wall there which she could hide behind.

I’m afraid I was quite rough with her. I picked her up and dropped her on to the tarmac so that she winced. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean it at all. ‘There. Hurry up.’

She looked around at the rubbish and water and piss and didn’t fancy it. To be honest, I couldn’t blame her. Squatting over that, you’d need smelling salts.

‘I want to go to the flat.’

‘You can’t. You have to do it here.’

‘I can’t. It’s dirty.’

‘You’ll be okay. Just hurry up.’

I loathe the chavs who piss against my building. I loathe the drunken ladettes who throw up and squat there at two in the morning. There’s just no excuse for it. Their actions are a by-product of their general loathsomeness. If Stilettos or Rashelle or even my daughter were to piss against the building, I’d not be as condescending or truculent. Indeed, if Stilettos were to take a piss against the wall, I may even take a picture or video of it. How bad is that? The call of nature is universal. I look down on those who don’t measure up. I’ve known actors and actresses who took more smack than a council estate junkie yet I’ve never judged them the same way. I’ve been to swish, society parties where men and women shed their clothes with Caligulan excess and never judged them the way I do the sixteen-year-old chavs fondling each other outside nightclubs. I suppose it was the manner in which they did it - their lack of sobriety, education, intelligence - which really made me choke. I often feel there are less of us than them. By us, I mean people of intelligence and refinement - old-fashioned in the way my parents and their parents were: polite, understated, politic, gentlemanly. Didn’t we have that reputation once? Isn’t it grand to think we did? Maybe our arrogant aristocracy still have it? You know they’re all up to no good, but there’s the pretence and façade to maintain, and I think Edward and Victoria and even Elizabeth saw the importance of that.

I am no Orwell, thank God, and I am no Marx, though I have read their work, but I understand where they come from. Even I am piqued by the excess of the upper classes and the terrible division of labour, and the lack of opportunity for the working man. I want to man the barricades, carry the placards, cut off heads, bring fire and insurrection to the country. It’s just I don’t believe in the working man. The romantic ideal of the working class was an invention of the educated elite. I remember reading that once. When I think of where my parents came from, and the values they brought to the table, I can see a glimmer, but it’s fast disappearing. Everyone’s gone soft on state handouts and easy living. You don’t need to work any more. The chavs don’t work. They have more than their parents or their grandparents had, yet they have no sense of society or value as far as I can see.

You wonder why I’m telling you this? You wonder what it’s got to do with anything? I’m telling you it has everything. You see, it is what I am and it is what my daughter will be.

‘I can’t, Dad.’

I helped her pull her knickers up. With her coat on, she had them all in a tangle. Just as I did, the street was lit up with headlights. One of those mini street sweepers was making its way towards us. She got excited and wanted to go and see but I kept hold of her. I tried to keep her behind the wall. Then I thought maybe I could hide her behind me - perhaps the guy driving the thing would think I was just taking a piss there? She struggled in my arms. Why was everything so difficult with her? The noise was deafening. The headlights shot across the road as it swerved from pavement to pavement. Soon it would be on us. I didn’t think I had a choice really. I ran with her to the side of the building where the bins were left out. There was a little ramp there that led down to the basement. We were very exposed now. Anyone passing across the car park would see us. My daughter seemed to weigh heavier with each stride and I could feel her slipping from my grasp. I came to the doors and dropped her to the ground again. The street sweeper passed the wall where we were and was heading towards us. I could see people on the other side of the car park.

We were trapped. It was then I realised what she really meant.
It’s not going to work
. Of course it wasn’t. I got my phone out and called her. She was all I had left.

She picked up immediately. She knew what was going to happen.

‘I need you to open the basement doors.’

‘I don’t know where they are.’

‘Where the bins are. There are some double doors on the other side of the room.’

‘I’m not getting involved.’

‘If you don’t, I’m going to lose her.’

My daughter started to cry. I was starting to cry. We were both terrified. Rashelle hung up. I tried again but she didn’t answer. I swore and hit my hand on the door.

The people I saw were crossing the car park. They looked over in our direction but they didn’t stop. Maybe they didn’t recognise us? The street sweeper passed. I turned my back, tried to keep my daughter from view. That didn’t stop, either. I was mentally calculating how long it would take her. Ten seconds to the end of the corridor, a few more to call the lift, twelve seconds down, then maybe a minute to find the doors. She could be here in two.