Chapter 15
ANDREA
Reading contracts on the train was knocking her sick. Or had she been feeling sick before getting on the train, when the smell of coffee in the station had made her stomach turn? For sure, the motion of the train speeding along the tracks now was making her feel worse.
Andrea tucked the documents into her bag and opted instead to look out of the window at the sun bouncing off the multitude of buildings as she crossed from New York City into New Jersey.
It had been a good while since she’d ventured to New Jersey, her dad’s hometown.
Hannah still lived a few blocks away. Still as close as when Andrea and Hannah had walked Sofia to school.
That was how it was when they were kids.
Hannah was always with Andrea, even on days when they’d fallen out over something and nothing, and Andrea was always watching out for Sofia.
Some things don’t change, she thought. The sun was beating down on her skin through the train windows, too powerful for the air-conditioning onboard.
Though she was wearing thin jeans and a loose-fitting T-shirt, she was feeling the heat.
She slipped the wide neck of her top off one shoulder and sipped the cool ginger ale she had picked up in the station.
The relative quiet of New Jersey struck her as soon as she waved off the train.
Putting her sunglasses in position, she headed for the place she used to call home.
For a moment, it occurred to her that she could drop in on Hannah whilst she was here, but given they hadn’t been getting along well of late, adding a sixth day of seeing each other in a week was probably a bad idea.
In fact, Andrea and Hannah hadn’t been getting along particularly well since Hannah came back to Stellar from maternity leave.
Some of that, she suspected, was due to Hannah’s tiredness and being strapped for cash.
And the problem with having your best friend working for you was that you still needed them to do their job, regardless of whether TJ had colic, Jackson had a sickness bug, Luke was taking teenager hormone-related tantrums and Rod was sporting his usual selfish persona.
But that wasn’t all of it. Though blaming Hannah for their fallouts would be easy – and her big mouth was certainly to blame for the most recent argument – Andrea knew that some of it was down to her own guilt.
Her affair with Hunter had started when Hannah was heavily pregnant and preoccupied.
Maybe if Hannah had been around and not on maternity leave, it would never have happened or gone on for as long as it had.
Once she was caught up in it, Hunter became like a drug to Andrea. A symbol of her defiance for once.
Hannah’s return to the office and finding out about the affair made the shame of what she was doing real. She knew that Hannah hadn’t forced her into having an affair but she couldn’t help feeling like her friend could have stopped it in the first place.
Maybe Hannah was right. Maybe Andrea had slept with Hunter because there was no chance of it ever going anywhere. Or perhaps… Andrea had been lonely without Hannah around, with Sofia more concerned with Jay and Sanfia these days.
But she didn’t need people. People needed her. Andrea wasn’t dependent on anyone. She never would be – she remembered how much it hurt as an eight-year-old girl to lose the one person she’d truly depended on. It hurt too much.
Before she knew it, Andrea had battled with her thoughts all the way to the porch of her father’s home. She knocked but entered without waiting for a response.
‘Dad?’ she called, moving inside the dated terrace. ‘Jimmy?’
By habit, she flicked through the mail she’d picked up from the floor to make sure there was nothing he wasn’t on top of.
She ran her finger along the stair rail, checking for dust as she kicked off her sandshoes and headed along the hallway toward the kitchen, dipping her head into the lounge – no sign of Jimmy – and the dining room – no sign of Jimmy.
The kitchen was in worse shape. The countertops were cluttered with things that hadn’t been put away – a loaf of bread, a chopping board and knife, a block of cheese. Dishes were scattered around the sink, unwashed.
Instinctively, she started to run the hot tap and fill the sink with soapy water. Admittedly, she’d seen the place in a shoddier state than this. The superficial mess aside, the place seemed clean enough and the walls looked like they had enjoyed a refresh of pale yellow paint.
The toilet chain flushed upstairs, then Jimmy appeared in his usual attire – stonewash jeans and a lumberjack-style shirt.
‘You don’t have to clean those,’ he said, putting away the food items from the side. ‘I thought we could have coffee in the yard, since the weather’s good for it.’
Coffee. Just the mention of it made that sickly feeling come back. ‘I’m off coffee but I’ll take tea.’
Jimmy set about making tea as Andrea finished up the dishes and they settled into the small yard, sitting around an old rickety table and chairs.
‘New parasol?’ Andrea asked, noting the replacement for the rusty green and white striped version that had adorned the table for the last decade.
‘The old one wouldn’t open so it left me no choice.’
Andrea smiled behind her cup of tea. Jimmy hated parting with things. He was a stickler for habits, just like Sofia. Which, incidentally, was the reason she had made the trip out to her dad.
‘So, you’re working back at the studio,’ Andrea said, moving directly to the point of her visit.
‘I’m helping out, yeah. It’s not like I had much of a choice,’ Jimmy said.
Andrea scoffed. ‘Great, let’s start with a dig about me moving to XM Music Group, huh?’ Would he ever let it drop?
Jimmy scratched his head and visibly lowered his shoulders from around his ears, making Andrea realise that she, too, had been uptight. ‘Let’s not fight, Andi.’
‘Then let’s not make smart remarks at each other, Dad.’
‘Deal. It was a shot and I apologise for it.’
Andrea nodded her acceptance. ‘So Jay is what, drinking, taking drugs, both?’
‘I think both. You know what Sofia’s like, she won’t badmouth him. I take what she says, add a multiplier and think I’ll come close to the truth. What I do know is that they’re in a bad way. Jay is definitely back to drinking and god knows what else.’
‘And the bruise on her eye?’
Jimmy shrugged. ‘She said it was an accident, cleaning up milk or suchlike.’
‘Do you believe her?’
Jimmy sipped his coffee and squinted as he raised his face to the direction of the sun. ‘Whether I do or don’t, I could believe that he’d hurt her. He’s a piece of work, whether he’s drinking or not. The way he speaks to my girl…’
And it came to her, tumbling like black thunder clouds rolling down a hill, her being a little girl stuck at the bottom, waiting to be hit. Guilt.
Sofia was her little sister. The one person she was supposed to protect, and she’d walked out on her and Sanfia Records to go to XM Music Group.
It had been as much about giving Jay and Sofia a shot at making things work between them as an advancement of Andrea’s career, but had she done the right thing?
Was a chance to work what Sofia had really needed, or had she needed to see that Jay was a manipulative leech, whether he was on a bender or not?
‘I tried to tell her a thousand times, Dad. He was bad news when she first met him and I told her that. I told her before she got married but she thought I was… jealous.’ She scoffed.
‘Sofia wants the fairy tale – the career, the husband, kids. If Jay is her fairy tale, it’s her choice. She’s stubborn as an ox.’
No, she couldn’t keep feeling guilty about her move.
If she had her way, Andrea would still be producing, even if that meant for less money.
The reality was, Sofia wanted to fend for herself.
She wanted to build a life with Jay, start a family.
And Andrea and Jay just couldn’t get along.
She’d left Sanfia Records to give them a chance at being happy and to salvage her relationship with her sister.
Not that anyone else, Jimmy included, saw the move in that way.
‘Yeah, well, she married him and she’s loyal to the bone,’ Jimmy said.
She’s loyal. ‘God, you’re incredible. You see nothing but her, do you?
She did marry him, Dad, and she is loyal.
’ Andrea stood, anger making her legs lively.
‘But, you know, maybe she’s loyal to a drunk because she never had to see what living with one is like.
How… how soul-destroying it is to see your own father stumbling home, fumbling with his keys in the lock, bouncing off walls, bringing women home to screw them in the lounge.
Maybe she doesn’t know because she was kept locked in her bedroom, in a crib or wrapped in a duvet, with the sound of her mom’s music playing her to sleep through the stereo.
‘I’ve done everything my whole life for her and for you, yet you throw the one thing in my face that you don’t like. Yes, I left Sanfia. Yes, I’ve left my sister with a drunk. But he was an asshole with or without the drink and she wants to be there. She chose that life.’
Feeling her eyes sting, Andrea walked to the bottom of the yard, where she instantly felt shitty about calling out her dad on those years after their mom died.
He’d got sober, for them, that was what she had to remember.
In his shoes, if she’d lost the love of her life, how would she have reacted?
She didn’t know and she would never let herself be in that position to find out.
She sensed Jimmy come up behind her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
She took a breath. ‘Me too.’
Both facing each other, they said more in the look they shared than either of them could say in words. He was her father. He had done his best in a shitty situation.
‘I don’t know how to help her if she won’t leave him, Dad.’