Our Father Who Are Out There...Somewhere (36 page)

“Where are you? Have you got the tea bags?” her father’s voice sounds grumpy.

“I,” Lily walks into their new kitchen diner taking off her coat. Alice is standing behind the breakfast bar, five mugs lined up. Arthur and David are wrestling with the flat pack set of drawers they bought yesterday from MFI. When Lily doesn’t speak, the two men look up at her.

“How’s Fiona getting on?” asks Alice. “Any sign of my bedroom carpet yet?”

“She’s not coming. She left a note.”

“I beg your pardon,” says David, standing up and reaching his hand out for the white envelope Lily is holding out. There’s a printed picture of kitten wearing a bow tie on the front. He reads the note, the colour draining from his face as his eyes scan the letter. “I don’t sodding believe it.”

He looks around the room. No one has moved. “Her mother’s put her up to this. I bet my life on it.”

Alice steps around the breakfast bar, but David shouts at her, “She’s gone to Paris. I’ve never heard anything so fucking stupid in my life. Give me the phone.”

“It’s not connected,” says Alice, her voice timid.

“Come on, son,” says Arthur. “Calm down.”

“I need to stop her. Where’s she flying from?”

“I don’t know,” says Lily. “She didn’t say.”

“You mean you saw her?”

“She got a taxi.”

“And you didn’t stop her?”

“Well, I tried,” begins Lily, feeling the colour rush to her cheeks.

“You tried?”

“What can I do? She’s sixteen. I can’t force her to come.”

“So you gave up? Well, you are your mother’s daughter.”

Lily feels like her face has just been slapped.

“You just sat and watched her get into a cab without even asking where she was going?”

“Don’t you dare bring my mother into this,” says Lily in a very quiet voice.

“David, please,” begs Alice.

“Did you plan this? Did you want Fiona out of the way? What is it? Are you jealous? You have to steal her boyfriend and destroy her family?”

“You know what,” says Lily. “You can fuck off. Say what you like about me but not my mum. Because you know what, at least my mum stayed. She was there. She might not have been a teacher or a lawyer, but she was actually fucking there. And she listened. Perhaps if you listened more and talked less-”

“That’s enough.” David’s voice is steady. “I don’t want to hear any more from you.”

“I think we all need to calm down,” says Arthur. “There’s no sense-”

“What are you going to do?” says Lily to David. “Send me to my room?”

He looks at her with such anger, such dislike that Lily suddenly can’t bear to be in the same space as him. Her place is in Leeds, with Jo. She turns and runs from the room. Her hold-all is lying in the hallway, at the foot of the stairs, waiting to go up. She grabs it and runs out the front door. Fiona’s bike is lying where she left it, at the gate. David follows her out of the house. “Wait, Lily.”

But Lily shakes her head. “I can’t do this. I’m sorry.”

 “You’ve ruined my life.” David slams his fist against the wooden door frame.

She puts the hold-all on her back like a rucksack and mounts the bike. As she pushes off out of the gate, she notices that the clouds don’t seem so heavy anymore. She speaks quietly, almost to herself. “Well, then I guess that makes us even.”

“What am I supposed to do in this house, on my own?” he calls after her.

Lily is half way down the small lane. She turns in her saddle and shouts to him, but she’s so far away she’s not sure he will hear her. “You’ll figure it out. I had to.”

She sits back down on the seat and concentrates on crossing the T-junction ahead.