Chapter Thirty-Seven
‘It’s like one of those long-lost-family TV shows,’ Mel said, blowing her nose so loudly I was glad we were the only ones in the waiting room.
‘You’re not crying again, are you?’ I asked, amazed that the story of discovering Henry was my father still made her teary every single time we spoke about it.
‘It’s my hormones,’ Mel said, which was her go-to reply to everything these days. She lifted the water bottle to her lips and took another enormous swig. ‘I swear if they don’t call us soon, my bladder is literally going to explode . . . and it won’t be pretty.’
She checked her watch for what had to be the tenth time in the last five minutes. ‘And if Steve doesn’t get here soon, he’s going to miss our appointment, for which I will literally kill him.’
‘I had no idea pregnancy would bring out such a dark side of your personality,’ I teased, trying to distract her from her currently missing husband. ‘It’s all exploding body parts and homicide with you these days.’
Mel snorted into her water bottle.
‘Steve will be here soon,’ I reassured her. ‘He’s probably just got held up in traffic. We’ll ask them to wait if he hasn’t arrived when they call us in.’
I’d been incredibly touched when Mel had asked if I’d like to go with them for the private 4D pregnancy scan. ‘This one is just for fun,’ she’d told me, reaching for my hand and squeezing it warmly. ‘And I’d really love you to be there when we see his or her face for the first time.’
Mel gave her watch one last scowl.
‘Tell me again what happened after you realised Henry was your dad. I love that bit.’
I shook my head, but in a loving rather than despairing way. Mel’s expanding waistline made it hard to deny her anything, something she wasn’t above exploiting.
‘Well, for several minutes I couldn’t say anything at all . . .’
‘You’re my father, aren’t you?’
The silence stretched, until reality felt gossamer thin. I kept grappling for the right words, but they were as slippery as eels, slithering away before I could formulate a sentence.
And then, while I was still reeling from the revelation, something powerful barrelled through the debris of my memory. Something so immense, so shocking, that if I hadn’t been sitting down, it would have knocked me over in its wake.
‘Oh my God, we’ve had this conversation before.’
It wasn’t a question; it was an accusation. The lightning was a capricious thief and sometimes it threw back the memories it had stolen from me with absolutely no warning. This was one of those times.
‘I found you by her grave, the day after the funeral.’ My voice sounded shrill and strident in the quiet beauty of the rose garden.
I smacked my hand against my forehead in a way I didn’t think people did in real life. Henry’s watery gaze locked with mine, full of regret but also, strangely, with relief.
I closed my eyes as the past unfolded behind them . . .
I’d gone back to work the day after the funeral, because it had always been my sanctuary.
But I’d closed the office early and found myself driving to the cemetery.
Without a headstone the grave hadn’t been easy to find, but eventually I located the neat raw rectangle of flattened soil covered by the flowers I’d asked the funeral director to leave. Mum had always liked flowers.
I must have stood there for half an hour as the sky grew darker and swirling specks of snow began to fall.
It was freezing and desolate and I remember thinking how cold Mum must be, lying there in the icy ground.
Acting on impulse, I removed my coat and shrugged out of the thick cardigan I was wearing beneath it.
I laid it gently onto the earth that covered her.
‘Here you go, Mum,’ I said, my voice threatening to break.
I strode back to the car park, not sure if the swirling snow or my tears were the reason it was so hard to see.
Beside my vehicle once more, I delved into my coat pocket for my keys, only to find it empty.
I checked the other pocket. Nothing. Damn it.
They must have fallen out when I’d taken my coat off.
Snow stung my cheeks like a thousand tiny needles as I hurried back to the graveside to search for my lost car keys.
With my head bowed against the falling snow, I was close to the plot before I noticed someone else was now there.
I blinked icy crystals from my lashes, unable to believe what I was seeing.
A man was kneeling on the snow-speckled ground beside my mother’s grave .
. . and cradled in his hands was my cardigan.
Anger like I’d never known before coursed through me. What was this stranger doing? The film of snow on the ground muffled the sound of my heels on the pathway, masking my approach.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, sounding very British, the way I always did when I was furious.
Perhaps the ‘thief’ was a homeless person, who needed the warmth of my cardigan even more than my mother did.
But I rapidly revised that opinion when the figure on the ground finally realised he was no longer alone.
He jumped guiltily to his feet and turned to face me.
He was old and distinguished-looking, with silvery white hair.
Dressed in an expensive wool coat, with a scarf that looked like cashmere around his neck, he certainly didn’t appear homeless.
I was so busy cataloguing his appearance it took longer than it should have done for me to notice the man was crying.
The realisation knocked my anger off the boil, and I cleared my throat, trying to remember the manners the woman who lay between us had instilled in me.
‘Do you mind if I ask what exactly it is you’re doing?’
The old man’s eyes were fixed on my face in a way that made me uncomfortable.
‘I’m talking to the woman I loved,’ he said unguardedly.
I took a step backwards, unsure if I’d made a colossal mistake and had returned to the wrong grave. Except that was my cardigan right there in his hands. One of us might be at the wrong graveside, but it certainly wasn’t me.
‘I’m sorry, but I think you must be at the wrong plot. This is my mother’s grave. Elizabeth Harker. I’m sure she isn’t the person you’re looking for.’
The old man stared at me for a long moment. He looked weary and worried at the same time. He cleared his throat several times before speaking.
‘Actually, she is,’ he said carefully, before turning what I’d thought was an innocent mistake into a live grenade. ‘Your mother was the love of my life; the woman I should have married, but who I stupidly walked away from.’
For several moments I just stood there, staring back at him in horror and disbelief, shaking my head in denial.
‘I’m afraid you’ve made a terrible mistake. This is my mother’s plot, and she is most definitely not the Elizabeth Harker you are looking for.’
Whatever reaction I’d been expecting, it wasn’t to see his features soften as he studied my face.
‘You look just like her.’
My mouth opened and closed. For the first time in my life, I fully understood the expression lost for words.
The man took advantage of my silence and took a step towards me.
‘Your mother is the person I came here to see. And you, of course.’
‘Me? Why do you want to see me?’ My voice, when I finally found it, sounded about an octave higher than usual.
‘Because you are my daughter.’
The words hung in the air, and I was back to shaking my head again, but there was something in his voice that cut through any hope that this man was lying.
‘You?’ I said, my voice quivering with emotion. ‘You’re the man who walked away from us thirty-five years ago? Who abandoned us for someone else, someone better?’
The man flinched from my words as though they were knives.
‘It was never like that.’
‘Then how was it?’ I spat back before shaking my head vehemently. ‘Do you know what, I don’t care. You’re over three decades too late. You didn’t want either of us back then and we don’t want you now.’
The old man staggered backwards as though I’d struck him, and for a moment the red mist cleared enough for me to realise I wasn’t acting rationally. Grief and shock were making me behave totally out of character, but I was too far down that road to detour now.
‘Whatever it is you’re looking for – redemption, forgiveness, or a family reunion, it isn’t going to happen.
Not now. Not ever.’ I’d spent so much of my life longing to know my father, and yet when the moment finally arrived, all I felt was incandescent rage.
I spun on my heel and began walking away in angry, scissor-sharp steps.
The man called out to my retreating back. ‘I see now this is all too soon. Your grief is still too raw. Please believe me, I never intended for you to find out like this, Ellie.’
I swirled back to face him.
‘Don’t you dare call me by my name. That was a right you gave up a long time ago.’
‘Ellie?’
Henry’s voice was tentative as it pulled me out of the memory. He’d been crying in the past and was doing so again now.
‘You remember,’ he said sadly.
For a moment my vision blurred and doubled, superimposing the stranger in the winter coat in the snowy cemetery over the man I knew and cared for. Henry. My friend. My father.
‘All these months. All those conversations. You’ve had a thousand opportunities to tell me who you really were. But you never did.’
‘I couldn’t.’
My expression hardened. ‘Why not? Didn’t I deserve the truth? Were you ever going to tell me?’
‘Of course I was. I just needed more time.’
‘Not good enough, Henry. You had months.’
His head bowed. He looked as though he’d aged twenty years since he opened the door to me earlier.
‘You’re absolutely right. The truth is, I was scared. It had gone so badly the first time. And your parting words made it perfectly clear you never wanted to see me again.’