Our Father Who Are Out There...Somewhere (32 page)

“You’re late,” she says as she opens the front door. David is leading the way down the short garden path. She shoos him out of the way, so that she can watch her two granddaughters, arm in arm, as they make their way from the car to the front gate. Tess bounds out, racing up to Fiona and jumping up at her, getting its little body almost up to Fiona’s chest height.

“Where have you been?” says Alice to David, as she watches Fiona fuss over Tess.

 “Sorry,” says David, lifting the bags across the threshold. “We had a very late night.” He winces as his mother cuffs him round the back of the head, despite the fact she’s more than a foot shorter than him. “Don’t, I’ve got a bit of a headache.”

Alice opens her arms to Lily; her hands shaking so much the silver bangles on her arm jangle a tune. Lily allows herself to be embraced, breathing in the scent of lavender. “Let me look at you,” says Alice, stepping backwards. “My goodness.” 

 “This is all I could have wanted for Christmas,” Alice says, as she directs the girls into the kitchen. Tess keeps jumping up at everyone, desperate for attention. Alice turns to David, “Put the dog in the garden, will you? And take those bags upstairs. Did you remember the air bed? Why don’t you blow it up now so it’s done with?”

“I thought I might have a cup of tea-”

“Oh go on, then I get some time with my granddaughters before your dad gets back from the shop.” David sighs and climbs the stairs.

Alice joins the girls in the kitchen. “I sent your granddad to the shop. I wanted a little bit of time with you on my own first. Would you like a mince pie?”  She pulls the oven door down and pulls out a tray of freshly baked mince pies. “Isn’t this wonderful, Fiona? You will never be lonely again, ever. You will always have someone to talk to.”

“Well if you’d have been more honest with me, Granny,” says Fiona, “I’d have had someone to talk to a long time ago.”

Her grandmother’s cheeks flush red. “I know, I know. But what could I do? It was your foolish father. I could have killed him for what he did.” She brandishes the fish slice she was using to lift the mince pies. “I would have done, if he hadn’t have been so heart-broken. I was very sorry, Lily, to hear about your mum.”

“Thanks,” Lily says, shaking her head as her grandmother offers her a mince pie.

“Are they here?” calls a voice from the hall.

“That’ll be your granddad,” says Alice. She raises her voice, “In the kitchen.”

A tall, handsome man with white hair and eyes that are bright blue enters the room, carrying two large bags of shopping. He puts the shopping on the counter and places a hand on Lily’s shoulder. The heat sinks into Lily’s body. “It’s been a long time,” he says. “You probably don’t remember.” 

Lily wrinkles her nose. He tightens his grip on her shoulder and pulls her into his chest, patting her back so hard she fears it may break.

“Did you remember the cream?” asks Alice, spreading the contents of the shopping bags over the worktops.

Arthur breaks his hold on Lily, stepping back to smile at her. “They’d sold out. Can’t think why so many people are buying cream, what with it being Christmas and all.”

“Oh, that’s just typical. Right, everybody out of the kitchen,” says Alice, just as David joins them, “too many people. Front room everybody. There’s a fire lit. David, will you bring another basket of logs?”

David mutters something under his breath and leads the exodus from the kitchen. He heads for the back door as the others wander through to the front room.

“And how are you feeling, little one?” Arthur asks Fiona, as he unbuttons his coat.

“Well, I’m still a bit upset no one told me…”

“Aye, well if there’s one thing I’ve learnt in this life, it’s not to get involved when there’s women on the warpath. What’s that saying? Hell hath no fury? Hell, they got that right.”

The light from the fire is reflected in the glass baubles on the Christmas tree, like fairy lights. Fiona picks up a photograph from the mantelpiece; it’s of her grandmother, twenty years younger, holding a bundle of blanket. A scrap of red face can just be seen emerging from its swaddling, jaws wide. “I’ve not seen this before.”

Alice wipes her hands on her apron. “That was the only time I ever saw Lily.”

“So why didn’t anyone keep in touch with her?” asks Fiona, putting into words the question that’s plagued Lily all her life.

“It was difficult. Pam moved without telling anyone. We weren’t close.”

“One way of putting it,” says Arthur from his armchair by the fire.

“They were a different class to us, that’s all,” says Alice. “I think it’s fair to say, Lily, that when your mum and David married, most folks weren’t particularly pleased with the match. I think your grandfather, your mum’s dad, wanted more for her.”

“More money you mean,” Arthur grumbles.

“Your gran had a bit of a soft spot for David. But then he packed in a perfectly good apprenticeship and started up with his music business,” Alice raises her eyebrows.

“No one understood what he was playing at, still don’t,” says Arthur. “He was making a good wage.”

“And then David, well, then it happened.” Alice stresses the word ‘it’, “That was the end of it. All bloody hell broke loose. I think they thought we were all as bad as each other…”

At that moment, David comes into the room, carrying a basket of logs. “What?”

“Nothing,” says Lily.

David kneels at the fire, adding half a dozen logs to it, stoking the wood until big orange flames start to lick up the side.

“I’ve got you a present,” says Alice, walking over to the sideboard. She hands Lily a long slender package.

Lily opens it to reveal a brass coloured toasting fork. Her eyebrows knot as she looks across to her grandmother. “Thank you.”

“It’s tradition,” says Fiona, as she takes another toasting fork from the side of the fireplace, its prongs blackened from years of use. She pulls a small footstool in front of the hearth, and then another one for Lily. Her grandmother hands her a packet of marshmallows and the two girls sit in front of the fire, watching their marshmallows turn to blobs before adding them to their hot chocolate.

“So what’s the plan for you all?” asks Alice. “Will you be going back to Leeds, Lily?”

“I don’t know.” Lily stares into the flames, mesmerised. It takes a moment for her to realise people are waiting for her to expand. “The only reason I went to poly was because I was desperate to leave home. I don’t know what made me pick politics. It’s not like I want to be a politician or anything.”

“Thank goodness for that,” says Arthur. “Bunch of self-serving, power mad hypocrites, every last one of them. Not interested in the working man.”

“Everything’s changed,” says Lily, as she tears her gaze from the fireplace and looks up at her grandparents. “Don’t think I’m relying on you or anything. It’s been great to meet you all, but even if I never saw any of you again, I’m different now. And I want to do something different.”

Her grandmother strokes Lily’s cheek. “Well, don’t think you’re going to get rid of any of us in a hurry,” she says. “What about you, Fiona?”

“I can’t live with Mum on my own,” says Fiona quickly. David opens his mouth to argue but Fiona raises her voice and continues. “Come on, Daddy. You know I might as well be living on my own. She’s never there. I’d have to do all my own cooking.”

“You will have to come to some arrangement with her, Fiona,” says David. “She is your mother.”

“I know. I’m just not going to live with her that’s all. I want to live with Dad and Lily,” she says as the turns to her grandmother.

Her father snorts.

“Why not? It could work.”

Everyone in the room looks at David. He takes his handkerchief from his pocket and cleans his glasses. “There’s nothing I would like more,” he begins. Fiona shrieks with excitement but he holds up his hand. “But, let’s not get carried away. We haven’t got anywhere to live and it could take a long time to arrange somewhere. I’ll have to look into it. And in the meantime, Fiona, you have exams to think about. This is a very important year.” 

Fiona shakes her head and stands up, toasting fork clenched by her side. “I’m not going back home. No way.” 

David looks exasperated, “Fiona…”

“I don’t even want to do my exams. I hate school.”

“What if Ruth calms down and decides she can make room for Lily?” says Alice, standing up to place herself between her youngest granddaughter and her son.

David shakes his head quickly, indicating the subject is closed.

“Well if you’re not going back, you can’t expect me to either.” Fiona shakes off his arm and puts her hand on her hips.

“It seems simple to me,” says Alice. “You must all stay here until you get something set up.”

“Thanks Mum. That’s a very kind offer, but it might take months for me to organise…”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“You don’t have the room.”

“Oh silly me,” says Alice, lifting her hands off her lap. “How we managed to raise three children here, I simply can’t imagine.”

“I may not even be able to get a big enough mortgage.”

“We’ll manage,” says Alice. “Please. It would make me, it would make us both so happy, wouldn’t it Arthur?”

Arthur lowers his newspaper and nods his head. “You’d be like a breath of fresh air.”

“We could get twin beds in the spare room. I’ll clear out the study. No one ever uses it.”

David shakes his head. “It’s too much to ask.”

“Can’t you see what it would mean to us? We’ve never had the chance to know Lily. Stop being so bloody selfish.”

David looks over to Lily. “What do you think about all this?”

Lily can’t stop a grin from stretching itself across her face. “I think it would be great.”

David holds up his arms in defeat. “Well, if you two can put up with sharing a room and not tearing each other’s hair out, then why not? Obviously, we’ll have to clear it with your mother.”

Fiona runs across to him and throws herself at him, knocking him back into the settee.

The 11
th
of January falls on a Friday. Lily tiptoes across the bedroom. It’s so dark that even though the distance between the two single beds is less than six feet, negotiating the obstacle course of discarded clothes, shoes, the flex of the hair dryer, bottles of nail varnish and other debris is almost impossible. She stands on a plastic hair slide and shouts out in pain. Fiona wakes up.

“What are you doing?” she mumbles sleepily.

“Happy Birthday, sweet sixteen!” says Lily, rubbing her foot. “I was trying to surprise you.” She puts the present she was carrying onto Fiona’s single bed and pulls back the curtains. Daylight shows what she was up against. “Maybe we should tidy up a bit.”

Fiona lifts her head up off the pillow to look at her present. “I’m not tidying up on my birthday. It’s a special occasion. Means no chores.”

“I thought you doing chores would make it a special occasion,” says Lily, only half joking. She hasn’t seen the floor of their room since David built the flat pack single beds  two weeks ago. Lily’s used to mess, but only her own mess. She’s never shared a room before. In fact when she was a child she had the whole top floor of the house to herself, as her mother got too fat to climb the stairs. The cramped quarters of her grandparents’ house are taking some getting used to. “What time’s Stuart coming?”

“He said he’d meet me after school. Do you want to come?”

Lily shakes her head. “No, I promised Gran I’d take Tess for a walk. What time do you think he’ll go?”

“You can’t just avoid him.”

“I don’t want to see him today, that’s all. Open your present.”

“I told Mum we’d go there for tea,” says Fiona. “She’s actually finishing work early. So you’re safe, he won’t be coming here.” Fiona sits up and pulls the present onto her knee. “Mmm, heavy,” she says, nodding appreciatively.

Tess scrabbles down the side of the hill, chasing after the scent of rabbit. Lily follows a few hundred yards behind, turning away from the lake and into a section of the park she hasn’t been to before. By the time she catches up with Tess, they’ve left the park, over a small bridge over the river and onto a cobbled road Lily hasn’t seen before. She’s just about to turn round and go back, when she notices one of the houses has a ‘To Let’ sign in the garden. It’s a small, stone built cottage, with a small dormer window in the roof. All the curtains are drawn and there’s no car outside, so Lily walks down the drive and round the side of the house. A long, narrow garden backs down onto the woods. At the end closest to the house is a tumbling down garage, and what may have been an outside toilet. Lily turns to face the back of the house and sees old wooden French doors, in need of a coat of paint, which lead onto a small stone patio. She walks back to the front of the house and commits the name of the letting agent to memory. “Jarvis and Jones,” she recites to herself all the way home.

When the details for Fern Cottage arrive in the post the next day, Lily is on her own in the house. Fiona had rung last night to say she and Stuart were staying over at Ruth’s house. She’d sounded quite touched at the lengths her mother had gone to to celebrate her birthday. Apparently, she’d taken them both out to the poshest restaurant in Skipton and told them they could order anything they liked, much to Fiona’s delight. So Lily had had her first night sleeping alone since Boxing Day. Bizarrely, after feeling desperate for her own space, she’d hardly slept at all. Kept waking up drenched in cold sweat and not knowing where she was. Awful dreams where she was paralysed, or in a coffin being buried alive.

David had gone round to Newlands first thing in the morning, possibly sensing the thaw in relations, and hoping it might be a good time to sort out a few issues. Lily had overhead one telephone conversation a few days ago, where she’d gathered that if David didn’t return the ransom money by the end of the day, Ruth would involve the police. He’d disappeared with the suitcase less than half an hour later.

Alice and Arthur had left after breakfast to visit friends over in Gargrave. Lily spends most of the day smoking cigarettes in the tiny back garden and burying the stubs in the rosebeds. When David turns up, in the late afternoon, Lily waves the prospectus at him almost as soon as he steps through the door. “Look at this.”