Chapter 51 Amy
I can see I’m not going to get anywhere; Flynn has shut down, lips pressed together. Then he’s fussing again over my eye, tactics I’ve started to recognize more clearly in the last few weeks. He is the master of detracting attention away from topics he doesn’t want to discuss.
My head is swimming, eye stinging from the punch and miserable with my fight with Laura. She, of course, just thought I was Flynn only making things worse, calling Amy a coward for sending her boyfriend in to fight her corner.
I think again of the words she levelled: Like I haven’t worked out what you really think about this wedding. I know what she’s getting at, that I think the whole thing is over-the-top, but that’s no longer true. My worry that she is pulling away from me has made me mean-spirited. I should never have made her feel guilty for all the trappings. I want her to have an incredible wedding, I want her to have her dream day.
Now Flynn is keeping things from me.
‘Fine, don’t tell me. Fuck,’ I say, a hand up to my eye. ‘This really hurts. Can you get me some ice for it?’
I knew he’d oblige; he always wants to look after me. When I got tendonitis last month he bought ice packs for the house and was constantly checking on the elevation of my leg. I get a pang at that thought: him placing another cushion underneath me, his concerned face as he brought me hot Ribena like I was sick.
He immediately agrees.
‘I’ll meet you in our room,’ I say. ‘I just need to find Laura.’
He doesn’t question me, and again confusion washes over me. Flynn is a straight-shooter. He never holds back things he thinks clients should know, never twists the truth to secure work. A client overpaid him for her daughter’s sixteenth and Flynn had immediately returned the money, when she had just wanted to tip him for a great night.
The moment he leaves I set off for the hotel. If Flynn won’t tell me anything, then I’m going to use my Flynn disguise to finally find out. And I get lucky, watching Tanya and Eddie in the foyer, Tanya waving her hands around, clearly annoyed. Eddie, his massive frame drooping as he lets her, dolefully taking the stairs two at a time as she continues to lecture to his back.
‘You could have let me handle it, Eddie, you didn’t need to hit him.’
How many times have women thought that very same thing, I muse. Men charging in trying to fix something only to escalate things, when we were happy to sort it.
I push aside the feeling of female solidarity and step forward as Eddie disappears around the top of the stairs. She yelps as I reach for her, ‘Can we talk?’
‘Flynn, seriously, I’ll scream. I’ll … Eddie’ll be back soo—’
‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ I say, exasperated, realizing that in my manly frame I’m a threat. That thought stuns me for a second. ‘I just want to ask you about Charlie.’
The mention of the name makes her stop, then she seems to consider something before giving me a quick nod.
She motions to the open door off the foyer. ‘In here,’ she says, glancing back up the stairs. ‘I don’t want Eddie to see us.’
I follow her into a large, book-lined room full of lamps and hunting pictures and endless shelves, a sliding ladder from floor to ceiling so that you can reach the highest books. It smells of furniture polish and old paper. Fringed lamps on occasional tables give the whole room a soft light and I want to sink into one of the two teal velvet winged armchairs, close my eyes and forget everything about the last twenty-four hours.
Do I really want to know what she might tell me?
‘So,’ Tanya says, pulling the sleeves of her top down over her hands, ‘what do you want to know, Flynn?’
‘Just … how is … he doing?’ I plump for.
Tanya’s face creases. ‘Are you taking the piss right now, Flynn?’ She goes to leave the room. ‘Tonight’s been bad enou—’
How have I already got this wrong? My voice rises, ‘Sorry, no, I’m not taking the piss, I really want to know.’
Tanya speaks quickly, words released with a huff, ‘Charlie is fine, she’s doing great.’
‘She …’ So Charlie isn’t a man. I had assumed that maybe Charlie was someone Tanya had cheated on Flynn with, or a friend or, I’m not sure what. My brain is in a spin with this information, eye throbbing as I try to order my thoughts.
‘… She’s just joined playgroup for three mornings a week and she’s already made lots of friends.’
Charlie wasn’t a he. Charlie wasn’t an adult. Charlie is a child: a little girl.
‘That’s, that’s good to hear,’ I say, realizing Tanya is waiting for something. My head is still tangled.
‘Look, Flynn, I know you told me you didn’t want to hear about her, and I get that, but she’s doing well. We’re doing well.’ Tanya’s face softens as she speaks, pulling out her mobile. ‘Here,’ she says, thrusting her mobile in my direction. ‘That’s her dressed up for World Book Day. She wanted to go as an Alien in Underpants. She loved it.’
Why would Flynn want to know about a small girl?
My world tilts as I wordlessly take the phone and stare at the screen, completely baffled. A grinning blonde child wearing space pyjamas with tiny pants over them is grinning at the screen. Tanya is a mother to this child. Charlie. And judging from this photo, Charlie is no more than three years old.
‘I never sent you this, but …’ Tanya takes the phone back and scrolls backwards, my brain still not making sense of what I’m seeing and hearing. Tanya has a daughter. But why is that relevant to Flynn? Why does he not want to talk about her?
Then it hits me, and I start to feel the walls of the room close in on me, the shelves of books swimming.
As she hands over the phone I almost don’t dare look down. I know this is a moment that is going to change everything.
And yet I can’t not look.
I look at the screen in my hand. At the tiny, bundled up newborn, crisp white blanket, a tiny face peeking out of a burrito-shape, and then my eyes are drawn to the person in the hospital chair holding her, the person with the widest smile on his face as he looks at the camera, completely content, cradling the child.
‘I didn’t know whether you would want the picture, so I never sent it.’
I can’t help scrolling back a couple of photos, the same child in Tanya’s arms, nestled into her hospital gown, her face make-up free, glowing, and then both their faces squeezed together, newborn Charlie pressed up between them.
I hand back the phone feeling nausea swirl inside me. This can’t be real. And yet, Flynn’s insisted on not dwelling on the past, urging me to live in the present, not to grill him about past relationships … What a fool I am.
The entire world blurs.
Flynn has a daughter. A daughter he has never mentioned.
Flynn is a dad.
‘Here you are …’ Flynn, triumphant, holding up a plastic bag filled with ice cubes, voice faltering on the final word as he takes in who I am talking to, my expression.
‘Hi Amy,’ Tanya says brightly. ‘I’m really sorry about earlier, with Eddie. Flynn and I were just fixing that …’
I don’t say anything, I can’t. I just stare at Flynn, who of course looks like a concerned me, his bag of ice dripping on the Persian carpet of the library as, pale-faced, he waits.
‘Flynn, shall we go up?’ he says in a strained voice.
But I’m too quick for him, pushing quickly past him and out of the room: away from Tanya, Flynn and the enormous secret that has just blown up my world. Taking the staircase three steps at a time, relishing the fact my legs are long and I can move quickly. I stumble at the top, grab the banister as my eye throbs, making my vision blur.
I ignore Flynn’s call from the foyer as I race along the first-floor corridor towards our bedroom. But of course, that’s where he’ll look, so I change course at the last moment. I can’t believe this.
Flynn is a dad.