Written in the Stars (29 page)

‘Come on: you Jane, me Tarzan?’ I laughed as he beat his chest. ‘I’ll be with you all the way,’ he murmured, taking my hand.

Moments later we were standing on a platform, high up in the treetops, enveloped in a mossy green cloak of leaves, autumn sunlight filtering through like a path of molten gold.

Kieran was behind me, his hands rested gently on my waist. ‘You can do it, Bea, I know you can do it. You’re completely safe, you’re not going to fall. No one is going to let you fall. Come on, just close your eyes and imagine yourself at one with the forest. The trees are your friends. And I’ll be right behind you. One jump and you’ll be safely at the other side.’

And maybe it was the warmth emanating from his hands, or his choice of words, but before I knew it I’d shuffled to the edge of the platform, closed my eyes and felt my stomach give way and my heart leap into my mouth in a way I hadn’t experienced for a long, long time. A quarter of the way across the zipwire, I screamed a high-pitched scream that seemed to bounce off the trees and echo in my ears. But it wasn’t a cry of fear, it was pure unadulterated joy.

Then I stepped back and waited as Kieran swung across. In the distance and suspended in the air as he swung at speed towards me, he looked like the same person I knew eight years ago: a twenty-five-year-old guy with no fear and no regrets and who I loved because he was brave enough to take on the world his way – and gave
me
the confidence to do the same.

The following week, I was back. To see Loni and Cal, I told myself. But I couldn’t kid myself any longer. After just two meetings, I needed to see Kieran as desperately as I’d needed to run away from my wedding six months before. I’d gone back in time, to a point in my life when I didn’t care about the future or the past; I was living only for the moment, every single moment that I shared with Kieran, like I was all those years ago. I didn’t care that my dad had left me, only that I’d found Kieran. I was happy to throw everything away for him, to travel the coast with him and watch him surf and cave, bungee-jump and tomb-stone, do all those things he and Elliot and his groups of friends loved. It absolutely petrified me to watch him throw himself from cliffs and bridges, quarries and harbour walls, but I wanted to be with him, so I supported him. I just didn’t tell anyone what he was doing. I still remember Loni’s words when she first met Kieran.

‘I understand the attraction but please be careful, darling. I’ll always support you, whatever path in life you choose. Just don’t be led too far down someone else’s.’

I hear the sound of tyres on gravel and glancing back at Loni’s empty house and with a pounding heart, I take a deep breath and prepare to take the leap once more with Kieran.

Chapter 44

‘So what are we doing today?’ I ask Kieran, biting my lip and tapping my fingers on my knees as we pootle along the country road behind a tractor, ‘Green Day’ seeping through the van’s old speakers, reminding me of Elliot who used to sing all the lyrics to ‘When September Ends’ at the top of his voice. I really want us to overtake the slow-moving vehicle, to feel the wind in my hair and that rush of adrenalin that I’ve grown used to feeling when I am with Kieran. He, however, seems perfectly content to just amble along in second gear.

I’m trying really hard not to think too much about the fact that Kieran hasn’t shown any interest at all in kissing me since that time late at night in front of Loni’s house. His eyes haven’t lingered on my lips, his mouth hasn’t once hovered that tiny bit too close to mine. In fact, whilst it seems that the intimacy, the honesty and the friendship have grown equally between us over the last few weeks, the sexual tension has plateaued. I want – no I need him to kiss me so I know just what we’re doing here.

‘What do you want to do?’ Kieran asks now with a friendly smile.

There’s a beat while an answer pops into my mind that I know I would never say.

‘It should be something involving a leap, right?’ Kieran continues. ‘Although I take it you’re not ready to jump out of a plane yet, huh?’

‘Definitely not!’ I exclaim. ‘You may have got me swinging like a monkey through the trees, but I won’t do that.’

‘No you won’t do that!’ Kieran sings in a cheesy rock voice and laughs. I can’t help but think of the first line of that song title.

Would I do anything for love? Do I love him?

Kieran glances at me. I pull my Parka tighter around my body and nestle my mouth in the collar. After an Indian summer the temperature is beginning to drop. Winter is on its way. A new season before a brand-new year . . .

‘So, how about trying to find your dad?’ The words are thrown out carelessly. It feels like they have tied a noose around my neck, tightening so much I can’t breathe.

He brakes suddenly as the tractor in front indicates a right turn and he instinctively puts his arm across my body as I find myself flung forward. I grip the dashboard tightly. My knuckles are white as if I’m about to jump myself and Kieran slowly removes his arm. He looks at me and places his hand lightly on my leg. I look at it, because I can’t look at him. I feel like if I do, he will see everything I’m feeling illuminated in my eyes.

We’ve talked a lot about ourselves over the course of our last few meetings. More than we ever did when we were together. Back then it was all fun and thrills: the future, not the past. We knew a little of each other, but we wanted to live in the present. But this time, I’ve told him more about my dad, my lifelong feelings of loss and abandonment, about my complex relationship with Loni, and my inability to make decisions or commit to anything since Elliot died. He in turn has told me more about his childhood being pushed from pillar to post, first the foster home and then the care homes, how it was always just him and Elliot and how he’s never got over losing him. He’s also told me about the naval rescue operations he’s been involved in, how he served in the Iraq War in 2008, about his inability to commit to relationships, and his complete apathy at discovering his father was still alive and living in Ireland.

‘Bea,’ he says softly. ‘You say you’ve always wanted to know your dad. But as far as I can tell you’ve always been waiting for him to come and find you. So why not take your life into your own hands now and try to find him?’

‘Because . . .’ I stop and try again. My voice is shaking. ‘Because . . .’ I can’t finish. I don’t have a reason other than what the small seven-year-old girl inside my head is screaming:
Because it’s his job to find me; he’s the one that left!

‘I know you think that it’s his move,’ Kieran says. ‘But you’ve been waiting for that move for over twenty years. And you know what they say, the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.’

‘I – I . . .’ I stutter. He is way too close to the bone.

Kieran pulls up onto a grassy verge, cuts the engine and turns to look at me. ‘I know exactly how you feel, Bea; I mean, me and you, we’re just the same. You think you’re defined by what you have lost in your life and that’s exactly how I felt when I lost Elliot. But I’ve learned that the only way to change that is to take charge of the future.’ He takes my hand and squeezes it. ‘I did that when I joined the Navy. How about you do the same by trying to find your dad?’

‘You’re right,’ I say at last. ‘I know you’re right. But I’m so scared, Kieran. I’m afraid of him not being alive, of him not wanting to see me, or me not liking what I find. I’ve built him up in my head until he’s almost become the missing half of me. At the moment, that half is made up of my good memories of him. But what if seeing him destroys them all?’

He glances out of the window and then gazes back at me, his eyes not just looking at me, but through me. ‘Surely it is better to know and be disappointed, than to never know and always wonder?’ Kieran says softly. I stare at him, unable to breathe. Is that why he came back? Because he wanted to know about us? Has he always wondered too . . .?

I force out some words just to break the intensity of the moment. ‘So what do I do? Where do I begin? I don’t know where in the world he might be . . .’

‘You should start by going to his last known address in this country.’

‘That would be the place he moved into when Loni kicked him out.’ I’ve always known this because I’d seen an address written on a box of belongings Loni had delivered the week after he’d gone. But he didn’t stay there long. Loni told me it was just a stopover before he left for good.

‘Where was that?’ Kieran asks now.

‘Cley-next-the-Sea.’

He starts up the engine, glances in his rear-view mirror and does a three-point turn. ‘Do you remember the address?’ he says over his shoulder.

‘What, wait – but we’re not doing this now, are we?’ I say, somewhat startled.

‘No time like the present,’ he says with a grin and I cling on to my seat, my heart thumping as he puts his foot down and we speed off.

Chapter 45

As we approach the small village of Cley-next-the Sea I find my mood dampening like the marshes that surround it. When Loni told me years ago that he’d stayed here briefly I found it hard to understand. The village is less than fifteen minutes from Holt; if he lived so close, why didn’t he come and visit us? Surely the reason he would have moved here was so he could still be an actively involved parent to me and Cal? But why move here temporarily, and then move away? It didn’t make sense then – or now.

I have so many questions, I realise. Questions I have put to the back of my mind for years because Loni has always made it clear that there was nothing more to know. She didn’t like being married to Dad, he was old and set in his ways. He fell in love with her spirit and sense of adventure but when they had kids he wanted her to be the archetypal stay-at-home mum. He hated her going out, didn’t like her friends, or her wild spirit. They battled on for a few years until finally she told him she wanted to go it alone. Then he moved out to a friend’s place before heading off into the sunset to make a new life for himself. End of story . . . Whenever I’d question it she’d tell me that he didn’t want to leave but she was adamant. That he tried living close by but couldn’t cope with seeing her make a new life for herself without him.

So I’ve just silently blamed her all these years for taking the decision out of his hands, for not giving us any other choice. And then I’ve waited for him to make the choice to come back.

I can’t believe I’ve been waiting all this time. Doing nothing. Letting other people’s decisions mould my life. It wasn’t even me who tried to find him when I got engaged, it was Adam.

Adam. His name pops into my mind and with it an explosion of memories and pain. Right now, I don’t know which is more painful. Being left, or leaving someone who loves you.

‘You OK?’ Kieran says. Small, grey, fast-moving clouds are sweeping across the marshy landscape like liquid mercury, the sails of the windmill marking the picturesque village like an X marks the spot on a treasure map. I can’t believe I’ve never thought to try this before. I mean, what if the clue to Dad’s whereabouts for the past twenty-three years have been here all along? I used to come to Cley a lot – there’s the Garden Centre on the Holt Road that I worked part-time at when I was seventeen after I dropped out of my A levels; I got all our plants for our garden from there. It gives me shivers to think I might have driven past the place that would have told me where Dad was.

I texted Loni on our way here, asking her for Dad’s old address in Cley, and she replied with it instantly. So quickly she clearly didn’t need to go hunting for an old address book. She must remember it off by heart. She texted again, moments later, unable to resist sending a follow-up:
Why do you need it, darling? Are you OK?
I haven’t replied. She’s always worried about me. It’s the curse of being a parent – particularly a parent of someone prone to depression. I’ll explain everything when I go home later. She has a right to know. Just as I have a right to know where my dad is.

After driving down the tiny high street, past a series of small shops, including Crabpot Bookshop, a cute little place selling second-hand books and where, I now suddenly remember, Dad used to buy a lot of his gardening books, we get to Beach Road and pull up in front of a small flint cottage, overlooking the marshes.

I look at the brightly painted front door, glance at Kieran who smiles and squeezes my leg. I try to disguise the shiver that travels through my body as I slide out of the van.

Walking up the overgrown path I feel like I’m treading in my father’s old footprints. Is that where he came with his suitcase of clothes, after leaving us? Will I find a clue here that will tell me where he’s been all these years and why he didn’t come back?

I knock on the front door; a tentative, apologetic rap, and then I wait. I look up at the cottage that appears in dire need of repair. Has it been neglected by just one owner over several decades? An owner who may know where my dad is.

I wait breathlessly and then, just as I’m about to give up, the door opens a tiny bit and an old man with small, inquisitive eyes gazes at me suspiciously through the crack.

I think I’m about to find out.

Chapter 46

‘So?’ Kieran says when I get back into the van half an hour later.

I don’t say anything for a moment. I’m still recovering from the shock that this has been so easy. That finding some answers to my dad’s disappearance has been on my doorstep all along.

I nod and smile weakly. ‘You could say that.’

‘Holy shit, it wasn’t him, was it?’ he says, his mouth dropping open in shock.

‘No! God, I would have . . . I don’t know what I would have done. No, it was this sweet old guy in his late seventies who gave my dad a place to stay. He’s a priest at St Margaret’s Church in Cley. He said Dad had always been a good friend and came to him after he left us. Dad told him he knew he couldn’t be with us any more but that he didn’t want to be too far away either.’

‘How long did he stay?’ Kieran asks as he pulls onto the road.