Chapter 33 #2
‘Is this true?’ Nico asks his uncle, even though he surely knows I wouldn’t make up a lie like this one for no reason and not with an audience. Still, it’s a natural question.
Mathieu nods, his eyes downcast.
‘No, I don’t believe you. Dad wouldn’t have an affair, he wouldn’t do that,’ Megan says, her eyes gleaming with tears as my heart lurches with sadness at her desperately clinging to the person she knew. ‘It was you who left us. You were the one who walked out on your family. Not him. You broke us.’
‘Megan,’ I begin, steeling myself for such comments, ‘I understand you’re upset.’
‘Upset? I’m not upset! I’m angry,’ she spits, recoiling from me as I take a misjudged step towards her. ‘You’ve been lying to me for years! You both have. You and Dad. He lied about—’ she throws her hands up ‘—everything!’
‘Not everything,’ I counter, ready to defend him as much as I’ll defend myself. ‘Your father loved you more than you can ever know and all he wanted to do was protect you.’
‘Protect me from what? I can’t . . . I can’t believe this.
Oh my god.’ She runs her fingers through her hair.
Nico reaches out to touch her elbow but she flinches even from him.
‘He lied to me. My whole life.’ She clasps a hand over her mouth, muttering to herself, ‘Why? Why wouldn’t he tell me? Why did he lie?’
‘I know this is a lot,’ I say carefully, taking another tentative step forward.
‘But what’s important is that he never lied about how much you meant to him.
Your relationship with your father, none of that was a lie.
We both made mistakes, but you were what really mattered.
That was what always brought us back together. ’
She brings her eyes up to meet mine, bewildered.
‘Megan, I know you’ll need time to get your head around this, but please remember that he loved you more than anything,’ I croak, the overbearing emotion making my voice thick, my head scrambling to put words in the right way that might mean something to her.
‘I didn’t know him,’ she responds, her face crumbling.
Clutching her stomach, she turns to walk away and I rush to follow her, reaching out to grab her wrist but she shakes free of my grasp.
‘Megan, please, talk to me,’ I beg.
‘Why should I?’ she counters, turning to face me and adding quietly but firmly so I know she means every word, ‘I don’t trust you. And I don’t want to see you. Please, please leave me alone.’
I stand helplessly, watching her disappear into the crowd as the last fireworks of the festival blaze up through the darkness, turning the night sky into a vibrant, glittering spectacle of colours that fade, leaving behind clouds of smoke drifting away on the breeze until they vanish completely.
***
1999: Twenty-seven years ago
On the train on the way home from a wonderful lunch with Henry’s old friends, Megan sits next to me, her little hands pressed against the window as she watches the world rush past in a blur.
I’ve been away for a few days in Manchester and then Liverpool at book panel events but joined Henry and Megan at the restaurant in Covent Garden where Megan squealed with excitement at seeing me.
She jumped down from her chair to run over to me, tripping over one of the legs and banging her knee, instantly bursting into tears.
‘Daddy,’ she said through sobs, holding her arms out to him instead.
Henry and I have both had a fantastic time at lunch. I received plenty of laughs in response to witty tales from my events, and, although she got a bit bored at the end, and the knee bashing aside, Megan seemed to enjoy it, too. She’s tired now, it’s been a long day.
Henry and I talk about how well everyone seemed and eventually Megan tires of the window and sits back, her head slowly dropping to rest on my arm.
As her eyes droop and she snuggles closer, we come towards our stop.
Henry has the bags from my trip, so I pick up Megan and, in her tiredness, she doesn’t protest that it’s me carrying her and not her dad.
She wraps her legs around me like a koala bear and turns her head to rest her cheek on my shoulder, her breathing getting heavier.
We get off the train and walk along the platform.
‘She’s asleep,’ Henry observes as we come through the ticket barriers.
I hold her to me, one hand pressed against her back as it expands and shrinks with every heavy breath, my jawline brushing against the back of her head.
‘We should wake her up,’ he advises. ‘It’s too late for her to nap. She won’t go down as easy tonight if she stays asleep now.’
‘Let her be a little while longer,’ I say, clinging to her as tightly as she clings to me. ‘It’s been a big day for her, all this travelling.’
I’m gradually realising that I’m too selfish and unreliable to be a very good mother and it’s easier to let Henry take the reins on parenthood so I don’t fuck it all up too soon.
But in this moment as I carry my little girl home in my arms, safe, exhausted and content, I feel, however temporarily, like I’m doing something right.
As I often do on these occasions, I wonder why I don’t chase this feeling more.
Soon, when we’re home and the moment has passed and she’s in bed being read books by her father while I hold for my agent on the phone, desperate to know if we’ve had any news on the offer from my German publisher that was being discussed, I’ll remember it’s because I don’t deserve it.