Chapter 19 #2
“What’re ye doing here? Fuck, you’re tall.” I can hear the slur in his speech.
“I was in the area,” I manage to answer him. “And I hoped we’d be able to talk.”
He laughs. “Course we can. But not here. This isn’t the kind of place my daughter oughta hang around in. I know somewhere nearby. We can get something to eat. You hungry? It’s on me, Biscuit.”
I’m not hungry. My stomach is a tiny ball of fear, and it shrinks even more as my dad turns to one of the women in a group a few meters away. “Lou, I’ll be back later to clear up.”
All she says is “Aye, right . . .” with a dismissive wave. Her eyes run over me, and I feel kind of dirty.
I stand there in silence as my dad grabs his jacket and points to the door.
“What d’ye think of the gig?” he asks, once we’re outside. There are still a few people standing around by the doors, but nobody pays any attention to us.
“It was great,” I say, because I have to say something.
My dad laughs. “Loada fuckin’ bores. But hey, this is Glasgow. Lousy shitehole.”
I say nothing. Why doesn’t he ask what I’m even doing here? Why I’m not at home. In Frankfurt. With Mum. There’s no way he can know that I’m at school here. Isn’t he interested?
I spot Henry across the road, leaning on a wall. Our eyes meet, and I feel him scanning my face for signs that everything’s OK. So I give a slight nod. I’d like to tell him where we’re going, but I don’t even know. I can only hope that Henry will follow us. I seriously hope so.
“Oh, fuck,” says my father. “Got a light?”
“No, I . . . I don’t smoke.”
His eyes slide over to me. “What a good girl! You really are Laura’s daughter, aren’t you?”
I don’t know if he’s expecting an answer. He sounds more American than I remember him. I suppose that’s not surprising, considering how long he lived in California. Somehow he sounded friendlier with a Scottish accent, but maybe that’s just my imagination.
I wait as he talks to a group coming toward us. Two young men just give him a skeptical look and walk on without a word, but a woman stops and gives him a light and a cigarette too.
My dad mumbles his thanks as we move on again. He drags on the filter and blows the smoke out into the night. “So where’s the wee friend who was with you just now?”
So he did notice us come in, then. We were the youngest people in that pub by a long way, so maybe that was why we stood out to him, even if he didn’t recognize his own daughter standing right in front of him.
“He’s waiting nearby.” And then I decide just to tell him about Henry and my life. “His name’s Henry, and we know each other from school. I’m on a year abroad at Dunbridge Academy.”
I think it’s the first time he’s properly looked at me. “You’re at that posh dump?” He laughs a deep, droning laugh, and I want to put my hands over my ears. “God, did she actually send you there? Your mother’s insane.”
“I wanted to come here.” To find you. Which is turning out to have been the biggest mistake of my life.
“Aye, sure, wanted to.” He grins and nods to one side.
I follow him toward the little bar, which looks a bit more welcoming than the pub from earlier, at least. My dad drops the cigarette onto the street, and I suddenly remember Mr. Ringling had once mentioned during garden duty how many liters of groundwater are polluted by a single dropped cigarette butt.
I say nothing as he stubs it out with the sole of his worn-out leather boot, then we walk in.
It’s brighter in here than in the pub, and the air smells of greasy food instead of beer and sweat.
“Hey, Joe,” he says to the man behind the bar as he orders something to eat, which I don’t follow. I don’t understand anything anymore. What’s going on. Why I’m here and not at the school. With Henry. Anywhere I can carry on living with the illusion that my dad is the man I remember.
“How did you even find me?” he asks as he sits down opposite me at one of the little round tables.
“From a friend.” I get the sense that he’s not really bothered about how I came by the information. “She’s from Glasgow and heard that you were performing.”
“Intriguing,” he says, leaning back a little way as the bartender brings over two beers.
I hesitate as he puts them down in front of us.
Two thoughts are running through my head.
The alcohol ban at school and the question of why he didn’t ask what I’d like to drink.
But I don’t have the nerve to say anything when he raises his glass invitingly.
So I follow suit. I clink glasses with my dad, but I want to run. My legs are tingling the way they always tingle when I can hardly bear to sit still. I want to run, as fast and as far away as possible. But I’m here now. I’m sitting with him. None of this makes any sense.
“So what did you want to talk about, then?”
For a moment, I’m not sure that I’ve heard properly.
Does he really mean that? We haven’t seen each other for years, and he asks what I want to talk about.
There’s so much I’d like to say to him. Can’t he guess?
Doesn’t he think he owes me an explanation?
Not even an apology—no, I’m not expecting that, but an explanation would be in order, wouldn’t it?
A reason, something that will let me stop making assumptions and overthinking everything.
“Why did you go?” My voice is quiet, and I hate how uncertain I sound. You can hear my hurt. How much I’m longing for him to look at me and say he’s sorry. That he’s missed me every day. Even if he’s lying.
But he just sighs, deep and long, before he leans forward and plants his elbows on the table.
“Emma, I’m sure you’re a clever lass,” he says, “but grown-up stuff is complicated, you know? I had to get out of there, out of everything in Germany. Nothing was working out. Your mother and me, we just kept fighting. I needed a break from everything. Back then, I thought it would just be a break, but then I got the chance of a deal with this record company in the States. Didn’t come to anything—the arseholes backed out at the last second, and I didn’t have the money for a flight home.
I’d been counting on the advance so, well, there I was, and I had to make the best of it.
New music, new inspiration, you know the kind of thing. ”
“But you could have got in touch,” I hear myself say. “I wrote to you. A little while ago.”
“Oh, those Facebook messages,” he exclaims. “Shit, I read them, yeah. Made me happy, seriously, Biscuit.”
I can’t move.
He read them. He read them himself, it wasn’t just some social-media guy, someone from his management who didn’t tell him about them, the way I’d always kidded myself so as to be less disappointed.
He’d got them, and it still didn’t seem worth the effort of answering me. Suddenly I wish I’d never mentioned it.
“You could have answered.” My voice is quiet, and so’s his sigh.
I’m getting on his nerves. Me. I’m his daughter and I’m getting on his nerves.
I can see it in his face. He takes another swig of beer without looking at me.
“I know, I know. I screwed up. All of it. But it wasn’t because of you.
I really wanted to come back but . . . What can I say?
Maybe you’ll understand when you’re older. ”
What can I say?
That he’s sorry. He could say that. But I just sit there in silence.
“Hey, don’t look at me like that, OK?” he says, and I jump. “You look so much like your mother. God, is she still the same?”
I don’t answer. I don’t want to ask him what he means by that.
“What does she do? Still the high-powered lawyer, God’s gift to the world? I bet you want to be like her one day, don’t you?”
He has to stop this. He can’t talk about Mum like that. He has no fucking right.
“She’s always busy,” I mutter woodenly. But she never left me in the lurch like you did.
“Busy. Of course she is.” He studies me more intently. I want to look away. “What about you? What are you into? D’you still play the piano?”
“I gave up.” When you left. Because there was no one to practice with me anymore.
“What? Really? Shit, that’s sad. You had real talent. Did your mother talk you out of it?”
“No,” I snap. “She didn’t.”
“Well, anyway. You could always start again. How old are you now? Fifteen?”
“Eighteen,” I whisper.
“Hm, I see, that’s a bit too late, really. But school’s more important, am I right?”
I say nothing, but he doesn’t seem to expect an answer.
“Wow, eighteen,” he murmurs as he reaches for his glass again. “I was around that age when I dropped out of school.”
“Why did you do that?” I ask, because I have to ask something. I can’t just sit here in silence the whole time. I’ve been waiting for this opportunity for too long.
“Why did I chuck it? Dunno. I couldn’t be arsed with the whole thing. That school, it’s a ridiculous place. I had a deal with this band, I could play for people. It was what I wanted.”
“Don’t you regret it?” I ask. “Not getting your A levels?”
Walking out on Mum?
Barely knowing me?
Turning into this?
“A levels, everyone always wants A levels . . . To do what? Go to university? God, no. I don’t regret it. There’s more to life than that, Biscuit.”
My fingers grip the cold, full glass and feel the condensation trickle beneath them.
“But tell me something about yourself. What kind of stuff d’you listen to?”
“Music, you mean?” I ask.
He laughs. “Yeah, what else?”
“I listen to pretty much anything.” I swallow. “I like indie and alternative, and more mainstream stuff too. Harry Styles, Taylor Swift, you know . . .”
He’s not even listening. I’m sure of that when he starts humming a tune. I fall silent as he shuts his eyes, and his head sways to and fro.