2
Maeve
I HAD A CONDITION.
It was called ‘Never Getting Over Anything,’ and as it turned out…it was clinical.
Mum loved to point out that it was a quality I got from my father. But it was the way she said it, like she was displeased about yet another thing I’d gotten from him. It wasn’t like she was the one who’d picked him out or anything. No, in her mind, I was responsible for the things my father did.
It’s because he isn’t around to be blamed, and she sees you an extension of him.
Mr. Wilson’s—my school counsellor—voice echoed in my brain, and I resisted rolling my eyes, focusing on the road ahead of me.
It hadn’t mattered that, over the years, I’d come to understand his words held a truer meaning than I’d wanted to believe at thirteen.
Mum had only ever seen me as an extension of the man who left her after promising he wouldn’t—her words, not mine—and never, not once, as an extension of herself.
Even as a child, I’d grown sick of hearing “You’re just like your father” whenever I did something she didn’t like, despite having no real sense of who my father was in his everyday life.
When I’d tried to mirror her instead, copying her habits and behaviour, she had only looked at me with sharp eyes before turning away, as if I were something easier to ignore than understand.
Eventually, I’d grown tired of trying to please someone who had never wanted to be pleased.
I liked to think it had started when my school counsellor first said those words to me.
Or maybe at fourteen, when my therapist told me, “She might be carrying unresolved feelings about your father, and without him there, those feelings could be directed at you in ways that feel personal.” It had sounded a lot like what Mr. Wilson had said, only wrapped in careful language that wouldn’t get her into trouble.
I had preferred Mr. Wilson’s bluntness. Still, it hadn’t been enough to make me stop trying.
Instead, I’d marched into his office and told him that the year I’d spent on his waiting list had been a waste of everyone’s time.
Even at eighteen, I’d tried one last time to please them both, choosing a degree I knew would make each of my parents happy.
But, unfortunately for me, my mother had decided to rip that bandage off four years later.
It hadn't just been the day I'd graduated, or the night of my graduation party.
If it had only been that, I'd like to think I would've eventually got over her announcing that she was marrying her long-term boyfriend; James, and was three months pregnant...
during a speech that was supposed to be about me.
But there was something about her choosing that day, which also happened to be my twenty-first birthday, that made it land differently.
More than that, it had been the first birthday, the first real milestone in my life, where both my parents had been there.
Which meant her timing hadn't felt careless.
It had felt deliberate, like a slap I hadn't seen coming but somehow should have.
As a kid, I’d split my life into fragments, milestones, school breaks, holidays, always with one parent missing.
Sometimes both. By twenty-one, I thought we’d at least learned how to honour the small routines that mattered.
Instead, Mum had let me believe that this one day, the one I’d told her mattered, actually meant something to her too.
It hadn’t.
I’d known she’d done it to flaunt it in front of my father, but even when he spent the rest of the evening ignoring her, she hadn’t taken a single minute to say anything to me.
I hadn’t been expecting an apology. No. By then, I’d learned not to expect those from her.
But I had expected her version of something close to it, the conversation that always seemed to follow, with the same rehearsed and predictable words.
I’d replayed it in my head a thousand times that day, mentally preparing, or maybe just bracing for impact.
‘Did you have to do it then?’
‘Yes. Everyone from our circle was there. Holding a whole new event just to make a two-minute announcement would’ve been a waste of time and money.’
But it never came.
The truth was, she wasn’t stingy. She came from money. She had money. And time. She’d quit her job when she started dating James, who was, unsurprisingly, a tycoon.
Still, the silence that followed, that night and in the days after, had acted like its own kind of balm. Not the kind that healed, but the kind that numbed just enough to make things bearable.
She simply didn’t care, and I needed to get on board with that.
On the days I managed to, I reminded myself that at least one of my parents hadn’t completely exonerated me from their life.
After I refused to reach out to my mother unless she extended a hand first, days slipped into months.
By the time I took a part-time job at the Lancashire Cricket County Club while finishing my post-grad, it had only cemented what our relationship had become, something I’d never quite imagined, but somehow wasn’t surprised by.
Even then, my relationship with my father consisted of scattered check-ins and the occasional Christmas he tried to include me in, usually once any sense of obligation had worn thin, and always depending on his relationship status and his schedule.
Still, it was something.
But I was sure that was all about to change.
At least, in the next forty minutes.
Glancing at the sat-nav again, the urge to switch lanes tempted me once more.
All it would have taken was one turn, and I could have gone to Heathrow instead.
Maybe I would have bought a ticket to a place where no one knew me, or my father.
A place where they associated the word cricket with insects.
I could go to Sweden.
The thought flashed in my head like a bulb switching on. Admittedly, it was probably screwed on to the wrong connection, but for a minute I let myself entertain the idea.
At how easy it would be.
I'd only needed to call Matt and take him up on his offer to join the CHL, the Champions Hockey League.
Years ago, he'd made the offer to bring me into the EIHL, but back then that hadn’t been enough, because I hadn't wanted to leave my best friend.
Now, I was desperate enough to leave the country that the change felt less like a leap and more like an exit.
And also, this time I knew Samyra would at least understand.
Granted, I would have had to beg Matt to teach me the basics of ice hockey so I wouldn't walk into the job completely clueless.
He would give me endless shit for not learning a single thing during all the times he'd forced me to watch his games when I'd crashed at his place as a kid.
And at some point, I knew I would have to remind him that the only reason I'd ever let him put those games on while we hung out was so I could quietly spend time with his older brother.
Because even though Felix was supposed to keep an eye on us, he'd only ever paid attention when it gave him the chance to point out Matt's mistakes. Wins, on the other hand, would barely have earned more than a passing glance.
Looking back, it was easy to conclude that Felix Slater only cared about the sport he loved, and the fact that it was cruel to only spend time with his younger brother when he was reminding him of his weak game play, but Matt never cared.
He devoured Felix’s words like they were scripture.
And did the same, even now. I guess both brothers would say it was justified, now that both had gained so much in that sport.
Continue on the M4 to arrive at your destination.
SPERM DONOR’S HOUSE.
The robotic voice faded as I drove straight on, past the left turn into Heathrow, and with it, my chance to take the road to a new life slipped away.
I wasn’t a runner.
I reminded myself, gripping the steering wheel tighter. In fact, I hated running.
Metaphorically and physically.
And, I wasn’t a planner, and the fact that I’d already run through the entire scenario in my head only made me trust the idea less.
I just wished the pit in my stomach didn’t make it feel like it was my last resort anyway.
FIFTY SEVEN MINUTES LATER, I was pulling up to my father’s house.
The estate rose around me in quiet grandeur, all polished stone and careful silence—almost like it was some movie set.
There had been a time it was simply home.
I’d been too young to remember it that way myself, barely a toddler then, but from the pieces I’d put together from fading photographs and the fragments of memory my father chose to share…
it had been a cluster of happy moments. Though, over the years it had become a symbol of obligation instead.
Filled with memories that were scheduled, rather than created.
I was already five minutes late, and if you had the displeasure to know my father—you’d know that he always made a fuss about it. Still, all I could do was stare at the front door.
I’d even left earlier than what I was supposed to, just to make sure I didn’t give him another thing to fuss about, but my plan hadn’t worked.
This was exactly why I wasn’t a planner.
Plans meant expectations, and therefore the unbidden anxiety that came with the chance of not doing exactly as planned, and then disappointments that followed them.
At least, if I had left when I had to, and arrived late, I would’ve cared marginally less than I did in that moment.
On regular days, I didn’t consider myself to be an anxious person—avoiding the plans helped that—but my father just triggered some unearthed issues.
Social Media, and the self acclaimed professionals liked to frame them as daddy issues, but between the mommy issues, and the lack of interest I carried around, I liked to call them: ‘The aftermath of being a child of two teenagers who wanted me…until they didn’t. ’