CHAPTER ONE
‘Hey, Anika, listen to this.’
‘Go on?’ I smiled over at Dad, who was sitting at the kitchen table ploughing through a bowl of healthy bran flakes and flicking through one of my glossy magazines.
‘It says here the root of all unattractiveness is neediness. While the root of all attractiveness is non-neediness .’
I paused in my frantic search for my water bottle to think about this. (I had a job interview and I’d have to leave for the bus in the next ten seconds or risk being late.)
‘What are you saying, Dad? That the reason my fiancé dumped me was because I was too needy?’ I grinned because I knew that of course he didn’t mean that. Dad hated Loathsome Les as much as I did. Possibly even more.
‘No, of course not.’ Hesitating, he shrugged.
‘The problem with Les was that he turned you into a different person, that’s all.
He whittled away at your self-esteem until eventually he had you doing and saying the things you thought would make him happy.
You weren’t your lovely, bright, confident self anymore. ’
I nodded. ‘Looking back, I was forever seeking his approval but never getting it, and never likely to get it, either,’ I said gloomily. ‘He was so subtly controlling but I couldn’t see it at the time.’
‘Anyway, that’s all in the past now,’ said Dad cheerily.
‘You don’t need someone who wants to turn you into his idea of perfection.
’ He threw the magazine aside and stood up rather gingerly, a protective hand to the base of his spine.
‘You’re perfect exactly as you are. You don’t need to change for anyone.
You just need to realise it, that’s all. ’
‘You’re biased, Dad. I’m definitely not perfect.’
‘I’m not saying you are. No one’s perfect.’ He grinned. ‘Not even me.’
I chuckled. ‘Look, much as I’m enjoying this dissection of my personality, I’m going to be late if I don’t go now.’
‘Which is why I’m giving you a lift.’ Dad headed for the door. ‘You don’t want to be late for this interview.’
‘But it’s your morning for volunteering at the charity shop, isn’t it?’
‘Er, no. I’ve switched days. There’s... something I need to do this morning.’
‘Ooh, very mysterious. Tell me more.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s not that mysterious. I’m seeing the physio for my back.’
‘Oh, right. You didn’t mention it.’
‘Didn’t I? Well, anyway, if you’re going to get to this interview on time, we’d better make a move.’ Grabbing his car keys and sunglasses – the sun was blazing in a clear blue sky that August morning – he nodded in the direction of the door. ‘Come on. Let’s go.’
I filled my water bottle and dashed out after him.
‘Got everything?’ he asked, as I slipped into the passenger seat.
Nodding, I smiled at him, feeling that familiar rush of love. We’d always been close, Dad and I, but our bond had become even stronger since we’d lost Mum five years earlier. In our darkest times, it had felt like it was the two of us against the world. Sometimes, it still felt like that...
‘Okay. Next stop Guildford.’ He put the car into gear and we set off.
On the drive over, Dad sank into silence and when I looked over, I glimpsed the deep worry crevice between his eyebrows. I knew he was stressed about our finances and so was I.
Mum was a solicitor. She’d loved her work and had always been happy to be the main breadwinner.
Dad had been running a successful gardening business, employing a handful of people, when they met.
But once I was on the way, they’d decided he would stay at home and look after me until I started school.
I can still remember the fun we used to have – snatches of happy memories – baking cakes and biscuits and splodging on icing in all the shades of the rainbow.
.. Dad getting covered in flour deliberately to make me laugh, then the frantic sweeping up before Mum arrived home.
Not that she would have minded – she happily joined in with the baking chaos at weekends – but the element of excitement at being all ready by the time she got back from work just added to the fun.
Dad would pop my chef’s hat on my head and hang a folded tea towel over my arm, and he’d solemnly hand me the plate containing the day’s home-baked offering so that I could present it to Mum with a flourish when she walked through the front door.
When Dad started up his gardening business again, he fitted his working day around school hours, so he was usually at home waiting for me with a snack when I arrived back ravenous.
Mum and Dad were opposites, really.
She was a city girl at heart, loving the buzz of a solicitor’s life, lunches out, going to the theatre, the opera and the ballet.
And Dad... he was happiest in the countryside, pottering around in his garden, growing his vegetables, working as a landscape gardener – and later, when I came along, taking me on exciting foraging trips in the woods near our house.
My parents were very different and yet their differences always seemed like a strength to me – as if they were opposites who were two halves of the perfect whole.
There was a dramatic framed picture above their bed of two tango dancers in flamboyant red and black costumes – and below, in elaborate swirly letters, what I came to think of as a very fitting description of my parents’ relationship:
In the dance of love, opposites don’t just attract; they create a beautiful choreography.
It was fitting in that they worked well together as a couple – but also because of their big joint passion in life.
Dancing.
They’d first met at a garden centre when they’d found themselves reaching for the same beautifully-made garden trug.
(We still have it.) It was the last one on display and Dad had smiled and stepped back, indicating that it was hers.
They began talking and Dad told her that the trug had been made the traditional way – the way garden trugs had been made for centuries, from strips of willow and sweet chestnut.
Mum always said she’d felt a bit of a fraud because she only wanted the trug because she thought it would look lovely in the summerhouse she’d just had installed in her garden – whereas it was clear that Dad was a gardener and would be using the trug the way it was designed to be used.
So she’d insisted that Dad have it. He asked her if she’d like to go for a drink with him, she said yes and that was it.
In the early days of their relationship, they went to a tango class together and loved it, going every week and quickly becoming the star dancers.
Private dance tuition followed, during which they explored all that the ballroom had to offer – from graceful Viennese waltzes and energetic quicksteps to bright and breezy Charlestons and the dramatically intimate Argentine Tango.
The Latin dances were where they excelled and for five years, until I came along, they won so many cups and medals that they had to buy a special cabinet to display them!
Being first-time parents took over their world, which was what they’d wanted, but they never stopped dancing – even though it was now more likely to be at home in the kitchen in between eating dinner and washing the dishes.
Another of Mum’s big passions in life was classic cars and we’d have family outings to rallies and exhibitions during the summer months.
Her 1970 Triumph Trophy in gleaming red was her pride and joy.
Dad bought it for her to mark their twentieth wedding anniversary.
He must have been putting money away for literally years so he could surprise her and I remember her crying happy tears as she hugged him tightly and told him it was the perfect gift.
Dad and I clapped and cheered as she got behind the wheel and drove off for her first solo spin.
She truly loved that car, although later, the memories of her driving it would be tinged with heartache for Dad and I.
It had been a freak accident.
A tyre had blown as she was motoring along a country lane and she’d collided with a tree at speed. Death had been instant, the coroner had said, and I’d clung desperately to those words in the weeks, months and years that followed.
Mum’s precious Triumph had been gathering cobwebs ever since the accident and even now, I couldn’t bring myself to look at it. Neither could Dad. It was like an unspoken agreement we had, never to go into the garage.
I doubted we could even find the garage key now.
The car had refused to start after the tragedy. But Dad wouldn’t have wanted to drive it anyway. He’d locked the garage and we’d walked away.
I knew deep down that in pretending it wasn’t there, all we were doing was shrouding the car ever more tightly in its chilling cloak of grief and tragedy in our minds.
The sticking plaster theory would have to be employed sooner or later.
But I knew that neither Dad nor I were prepared to rip the plaster off any time soon. ..
I gave my head a little shake to dislodge my gloomy thoughts.
It was no use wallowing in the past. We had to keep moving forwards, Dad and I, even though it sometimes seemed impossible without Mum.
‘How’s your back?’ I asked him.
Lost in his own thoughts, he didn’t seem to hear me at first.
‘Dad?’
He turned, drumming up a hasty smile. ‘Oh, you know. Improving all the time.’
I nodded, knowing better than to enquire further.
Back in January, Dad had been removing some dead branches from a tree in our garden when he’d slipped and fallen, injuring his back.
At first, he’d dismissed the injury as superficial and tried to carry on working.
But after a few months of this, he was looking grey with pain and exhaustion, and it broke my heart to see him like that.
I tried to persuade him that taking a break from the business so he could heal properly would be best in the long run, and eventually he gave in to my gentle suggestions, although I knew it was the last thing he wanted to do.