Chapter 35
MEGAN
It’s not fair that someone’s secrets come out after they’ve died because you can’t yell at them.
Not that my dad was ever a good person to yell at, he was much too dignified.
It would be like yelling at an owl: pointless and the only one left feeling stupid is you.
But still, if he were here, I’d yell at him anyway.
I’d shout at him for lying to me and for making me feel so stupid when I loved him so much and I’d demand to know why he wouldn’t trust me with this information, why he would keep a part of him hidden from me, an important part of him.
My head hurts. It throbs from anger and hurt and lack of sleep and the pure torment of missing someone who I’m not sure I ever really knew.
Nico held me the night of the fireworks like he’d never let me go.
That’s one good thing that’s come out of this.
I know that I’m making the right decision to do everything in my power to turn this whirlwind romance into a real relationship, if Nico will let me.
I think he will. He has seen me at my absolute worst, having guided me back to the chateau that night and steered me into the private rooms that he occupies on the second floor and then witnessed me rant and sob and collapse onto his floor, hugging my knees to my chest, curled up as small as possible in the hope I’d disappear and this pain I was feeling would disappear with me.
And then he came over and sat down beside me on the floor, pulled me into him and held me.
He didn’t say anything, he just held me close and kissed my head and somewhere inside of me a tiny glimmer of hope encouraged me to not give up on myself or this shitty world quite yet because he was in it.
I didn’t get much sleep that night because my brain wouldn’t shut down.
There were too many questions and too much anger swirling around in it to allow it to rest. Dad cheated on Mum.
He cheated on her. When she left us, I hated her for so many reasons and when she got in a new relationship real fast and then married the next guy, I decided that it was highly likely she’d had an affair at some point in her married life with Dad.
It made sense. Clearly, she didn’t love him because she’d walked out on him.
She’d given up without a fight. You don’t do that if you love someone, I figured.
So, if the love had already waned by then, then chances are, in the past, a flirtation might have been acted upon.
I remember telling my teenage friends she’d probably cheated on my dad and they’d been like, ‘God, that’s so shit, your poor dad, he’s so nice,’ and I’d nodded, my stomach twisting with fury at her.
I’d made up an entire narrative and believed it for fifteen years.
And she’d let me. He’d let me. They had both let me live a lie.
Did they not care about the devastating consequences of doing so?
Did they brush them off as a sacrifice they had to make to keep the truth hidden?
How could the dad I knew be so willing to let someone else take the blame for what he did?
I looked up to him. I wanted to be like him, as good a person as him.
He comforted me when I cancelled my wedding, he listened when I talked about the heartbreak, he knew what Dominic had done.
The same thing as him. The actions of a coward, someone so afraid to break away from what they know that they willingly humiliate and betray someone they’re supposed to love, whilst convincing themselves it’s for the greater good that they keep it secret.
I didn’t want to hurt you.
It’s the classic line, isn’t it. That’s why the lie is constructed and the betrayal safeguarded, so that no one gets hurt. What a load of bullshit. The cheating is bad but the lie is worse. It’s the lie that makes you feel like a fool, even when the pain of the cheating fades.
Yes, it was a shock. When Mum told me what happened, I was, admittedly, shocked.
I couldn’t put the person I knew together with this new person I was being told about, a person who had the capability of cheating on my mum and never talking about it ever again.
He may have spent a lot of time and energy encouraging me to rebuild my relationship with Mum, but he never let on that there was a reason why she left us and that it was him and his actions.
I was also shocked that he cheated on her with Mathieu.
Dad never spoke about his dating life. I tried to get him excited about it, but he was reluctant to dwell on it, as though he’d resigned himself to love one person forever and that person had given up on him.
I thought that person was Mum. I thought it was crushingly sad that he probably loved her so much that he’d rather stay friends with her after all she put him through than cut her out of his life and move on.
I knew that he’d been on dates, had some flings, but he never told me about any of them.
I will never know who he saw, whether it was women or men.
He never trusted me with that information.
Fuck, that hurts. It’s like a piercing stab over and over when I think that he didn’t trust me to know who he really was and to love him just the same.
Did he think I would have the same opinions as his strict parents and his narrow-minded brothers?
Did he think I’d think differently of him?
That the truth about his feelings would jar with the person I saw him as?
The only thing that jars is that he was able to lie to me for so long.
I was so cross with him the whole night and when I woke up yesterday, it hadn’t ebbed.
I then couldn’t stop thinking about the misery he must have suffered.
How guilty he must have felt and how stressful it must have been to construct so many lies to hide your true self away all that time.
Had Mum been miserable too all this time?
Had she suffered to protect Dad and to shield me, too?
Did I mean so little to her that she was able to be like, ‘You know what Henry, it’s cool, I’ll take one for the team here, let Megan blame me for everything and I’ll just take a step back from parenting duties, it’s not like we’re that close anyway’?
I don’t want to think that it went like that, not after everything she and I have been through the past week, but I can’t seem to understand another way.
I knew she’d be looking for me yesterday, but I didn’t want to see her.
Not yet. I was trying to collect myself and I knew that if I spoke to Mum, I’d fall apart.
And I don’t want to fall apart. This year has seen too much of that and I’m scared if it keeps happening I won’t be able to come back together again.
Everyone closest to me has lied to me. I don’t know where I go from here.
The door opens and Nico comes in holding a steaming mug of coffee in one hand and a plate with a fresh croissant on it in the other. Sitting cross-legged on his bed in his T-shirt where he left me, I smile gratefully at him as he passes me the mug.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asks, balancing the plate on top of the sheets.
‘I’m fine,’ I lie, but you know, it’s what you say.
‘Did you get some sleep last night?’
‘More than the night before. Thanks for letting me stay here, Nico.’
He shrugs. ‘You can always stay here.’
‘How’s everything downstairs?’
‘Quiet. A lot of the guests who were here for the festival have left now.’
I nod, taking a sip of coffee. ‘Did you see my mum?’
‘No,’ he says gently. ‘She left for the airport already.’
Lowering my eyes, I grasp my mug tightly in my hands.
He glances over at the box of ashes and the letter he returned with after bumping into her yesterday in reception.
He told me she’d been waiting for me there.
I felt a stab of guilt that I hadn’t shown up when it was meant to be the day we scattered the ashes, but I couldn’t say goodbye to Dad when I still had too many questions to ask him.
Not that he’s able to answer them. Even seeing my mum’s name written in his handwriting across the envelope makes me too upset to speak.
I feel that I can’t send him off when I’m angry at him, but I worry now that the anger will always linger.
And then I get even more angry at him for doing this to me.
My phone vibrates on the bedside table making me jump.
I groan at the sight of my boss’s name, but I have to pick up because he already tried calling me twice yesterday and I ignored him. Reluctantly reaching over to pick it up, I answer.
‘Hi, Cameron,’ I say downcast, too tired to be perky.
‘Fucking finally,’ he huffs. ‘When do you not answer your phone?’
‘Sorry, I’m still in France and—’
‘Look, you have a meeting in fifteen minutes with the panel of partners who’ve made a decision on your position,’ he cuts in impatiently. ‘The Zoom link is in your inbox.’
‘W-what?’ I stammer, confused, pulling the phone from my ear to check the time. ‘I thought they’d come to a decision next week.’
‘It’s been made earlier than planned. I have to go, this prick from the Hong Kong office is doing my fucking head in. Just be online in fifteen minutes. And you’re back today, right?’
‘Actually, I—’
‘You’ve got a lot of catching up to do, Megan, and if I’m honest, a bit of explaining to do, too.
You’ve really dropped the fucking ball here and your client has decided to come to me since they’re not getting any responses from you.
Do you think I have time to sort out your messes, too?
Get it together. I’m not saying anything but if you’re made partner it’s based on your past performance, right, not the one you’ve been giving the last few days. ’
‘Cameron, I’ve been here because my dad—’
‘Shit, he’s calling me again. Right, see you on the call in fifteen.’
He hangs up.
‘What was that?’ Nico asks, frowning.
‘It was my boss calling to say I have to be on a meeting in fifteen minutes. You know that interview I mentioned about becoming a partner? The panel have made a decision.’
‘Oh. Wow.’ He does his best to read what I’m feeling from my expression but I wish him luck because I’m not sure how I’m feeling myself. ‘That sounds like good news.’
‘Hm.’
‘This is what you wanted. What you’ve worked for.’
‘Yeah. It is.’
‘They’d be stupid if they didn’t give you this promotion.’
‘They would.’
‘You want to borrow a shirt? Or I can go back to your room to get your clothes if you’d like?’ he offers.
I’m staring at the box of ashes that Mum gave Nico to give to me and the letter propped up against it. I frown at it.
‘Why did she give you the letter?’ I blurt out.
He follows my eyeline and shrugs. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I get why she gave you the ashes because she knows I still need to scatter them, but why would she give you the letter? We already know what it says. That day in the office, she said that Dad had written the same thing he’d written to me.
To listen to you and carry out the tasks and then we’d get the house. That’s what she said, wasn’t it?’
He looks uncertain. ‘I can’t remember.’
‘Surely, she’d want to keep that letter. She wouldn’t give it away. It’s Dad’s last letter to her and she’s been banging on about how much she . . .’
I muster the courage to crawl off the bed and grab the envelope, pulling out the letter that came with the same pamphlet I got of the house. Dad’s handwriting is so bad I have to squint at it to read it properly.
To my dear Dawn,
I hope you are pleased with the rather elaborate purchase I’ve made in our daughter’s name.
At least be grateful I didn’t buy her that pony she always wanted.
She’d have had to keep it at yours since she simply doesn’t have the space, so you’re welcome.
I hope she’ll be happy with her Collioure home but please do ask her not to paint the shutters.
It should always be the pretty, blue-shuttered house you can see from the boat.
Humour me and throw yourself into this quest I’m sending you on together.
I’m only hoping to create moments that might not have been created otherwise.
That’s, I think, the hardest part of all this.
Knowing I will miss so many still to come.
But I was fortunate to share an abundance with you, never enough, but more than I might have hoped for – thank you for letting me be a part of your ever-enchanting world, Dawn.
I would write something moving, like how I’ll be there with you every step of the journey, but you know that already because the two of us, we’re part of Megan.
When she really laughs, she laughs just like you, you know.
Hearing that laugh from either of you was, I know now, the greatest joy and honour of my life.
Always your darling, my darling,
Henry
I read through the letter twice and then lower it, my brain scrabbling its way through the thoughts spiralling around it like an unpredictable tornado.
‘Wait, the house . . . the house is for me,’ I say to Nico.
‘What?’ he says, understandably confused since I’ve given him no context.
‘It says here the house is for me. Not for both of us, for me. He talks about it being a purchase in my name, not in both of our names. In this letter to Mum, he talks about it being “her house”, not “your house” as in it’s my house.’
He stares at me wide-eyed. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Why would she stay here and do all these things when she wasn’t getting the house?’ I ask, waving the letter in the air. ‘The whole time she made me believe that we had to do all these tasks so that both of us would get the dream house. That was the deal.’
‘So the house is yours, but not hers?’ Nico checks.
‘Yes.’
‘Oh. That’s nice.’
‘Nice?’ I start pacing around the room, Nico’s eyes following me the whole time. ‘It doesn’t make any sense! Why would she stay and do all these activities together when there was nothing in it for her at the end?’
‘Maybe she didn’t see it that way.’
I stop abruptly and then I close my eyes as a fog of nonsense and folly begins to lift and I can focus on what matters.
What it all comes down to. My eyes flashing open, I pick up a pair of Nico’s pyjama bottoms lying on the floor and pull them on, tightening the drawstring round my waist and tying it in a bow before grabbing my phone and my sandals.
‘What are you doing?’ he asks as I bluster around his room.
‘I have to go.’
‘Go where? Don’t you have a Zoom meeting?’
‘I’ll have to rearrange.’
‘Megan, what’s going on?’ he says, leaping to his feet as I race to the door.
‘I have to go to the airport.’
‘Why?’
‘Why do you think?’ I cry, grabbing the door handle and yanking it open.
‘Megan, wait!’ he says, picking up his car keys from the side table and grinning widely at me. ‘I’ll drive you.’