Chapter 3 #2
“You’re ‘wake,” she pronounces, her tongue not always able to twist itself around her vocabulary. “Will you read this?”
Her head retreats to make room for a book. A big book on reptiles. I recoil a little at being confronted with the image of a venomous snake, its tongue flicked out, its beady eyes malevolent, this early in the morning.
“Give me a minute,” I breathe. “Mummy needs a cup of tea before her reading brain can function.”
“Okay,” she agrees, flopping back on my pillows. She opens the book before she adds, “Be quick.”
I smile almost certain she’s echoing her teacher’s words.
Sliding out of my bed, I head for the kitchen and bathroom in that order.
By the time I return, Effie’s head is bent as she concentrates on the pictures and what she can puzzle out of the text.
Her reading is quite advanced for a girl of four and a half.
I’d like to take the credit but it’s all Effie.
She’s been going to nursery since she was two.
Somehow along the way, she picked up reading.
She scoots over as I climb back into bed, placing my hot tea safely on the bedside cabinet, away from her.
As soon as I’ve settled my legs under the covers, she’s back, snuggling into my side and thrusting her book into my hands.
I’ve got to admit; these are some of my favourite moments.
It's not often I get to cuddle my daughter.
“Read,” she instructs.
“Please?” I remind.
“Please?” She copies my tone and inflection. Effie doesn’t mean to be rude, but when she’s focused on something, it overtakes everything else.
“The Big Book of Reptiles (and Amphibians),” I begin. The book has a school library stamp, which explains why I don’t recognise it.
“What’s a fiban?” she asks. And so it starts.
Reading to Effie is always slow, usually with a question every other sentence.
But when I hear her stomach rumble, I call a halt.
We’ve barely made it three pages in. She may have a healthy appetite when she eats but she’s quite capable of forgetting mealtimes altogether when she’s down an Effie-shaped rabbit hole.
As I set a bowl of Weetabix in front of her and a cup of milk for her to dunk the dry biscuits (it makes me shudder too), she asks, “If we can’t have a puppy, can we have a snake? You don’t have to walk a snake.”
I suppress another shudder. I don’t want to pass on my own prejudices to Effie. If she likes snakes, so be it. Hard as I try, I struggle to think of a reasonable reason for rejecting her request. In the end, I go with the unreasonable.
“People should only have pets they love. And although you love snakes, I don’t.”
“Why not?” she asks. “They eat mice. You wouldn’t have to worry about mices anymore.”
“One mouse, two mice. Never mices.” The correction is automatic. “Because when I was your age, Grandpa and Grandma lived somewhere with snakes that would kill you if they bit you.”
“Did you see someone get bit and die?” Her eyes are wide.
“No, I never saw anyone get bitten. But ever since, I find it hard to relax around snakes.”
“And Daddy,” she says. “You don’t r’lax round Daddy.”
I recognise my own words. It’s always a mistake to assume Effie isn’t listening. And she has the memory of an elephant.
“It’s a Daddy Day today,” she reminds me between bites of Weetabix, her mind leaping, making connections I can’t always follow.
“It is indeed,” I keep my tone neutral. He has access visits every other Sunday from ten o’clock to four in the afternoon.
But he seldom arrives before midday, if he comes at all.
Each Daddy Day we just have to wait to find out if the one-armed bandit that is Effie’s father will hit the jackpot or not.
I’ve tried not telling Effie when he’s due, leaving it to be a surprise when he arrives.
But Effie is not a girl who likes surprises.
She needs to know how her day is going to go.
When Mike actually turned up, she refused to go with him.
Effie had a meltdown at the prospect of being forced to go, while Mike screamed at me, claiming I was turning his kid against him.
Now she’s at school and understands about calendars, she can work it out for herself.
We wait together when Mike is due and I watch her little soul being crushed on the days he doesn’t come.
The thing that gets us both is the randomness.
He’ll turn up six times on the trot, and she begins to think it’s fixed and then he’ll no-show.
No message, no explanation, just no Mike.
I offered to cut his access to one Sunday a month, in the hope it might be more achievable, but Mike’s always had a victim complex, and my suggestion didn’t go down well.
There was another polemic about mothers who poison their kids against their fathers.
I gave in, not because of Mike’s tantrum but the realisation that if he missed a couple of sessions, it could be months before Effie saw her father.
And unfortunately, all the research suggests a bad parent is better than no parent.
After breakfast, I sneak off to message Mike:
I’ll have Effie ready for your visit at ten. Please let me know if you can’t make it.
But an hour later, it’s still showing as unread.
We do some chores and as a reward, I read Effie a few more pages of the reptile book.
Suffice to say, her interest in snakes far exceeds mine.
Secretly I hope this enthusiasm will be short-lived.
Some of her interests endure; most don’t.
All are intense, most are factual (Thomas the Tank Engine is a rarity).
On the upside, it makes buying presents easy.
I’m rescued by a video call from my parents.
It’s often scheduled on a Sunday, just before Mike is likely to arrive.
In the rare event he turns up, Effie can blow them kisses and depart, but if he doesn’t, they happily distract her for a while.
Today, Effie tells them all about her reptile book and finds a shared fan in my father, who recalls his own childhood love of herpetology.
In nature, Effie is so unlike me and completely unlike Mike; I sometimes wonder where she got her genes.
Then I see her interacting with my father and I go, “Oh, yeah.”
When the doorbell sounds, Effie’s head whips around, her eyes alight. She calls out a hurried goodbye to her grandparents and disconnects the call before running to the door. She’s still not tall enough to reach the lock, so she has to wait until I get there, her little foot tapping.
But outside is a delivery driver, hoping I’ll take my supermarket order early as he’s in the area.
He’s pre-empted my agreement by unloading several crates.
Effie’s mouth drops and she retreats. She’s not keen on strangers.
While I haul my shopping to the kitchen area, she sits back down on the sofa, picking up the reptile book she’d been showing off to her grandpa.
She’ll be telling Mike all about it as soon as he arrives, although I doubt he’ll be interested.
Mike likes footie, booze and sex. There is zero overlap with his daughter’s love of penguins, bridges, dolphins, Egyptian mummies, and now, snakes.
Either Effie finds it impossible to fake enjoyment of football or it has never occurred to her to do so, but her disinterest is plain.
Mike similarly shows little interest in Effie’s enthusiasms but he’s an adult (supposedly), while she’s a child.
She’s quiet as I put our groceries away.
She doesn’t ask for treats as I bundle her lunchbox chocolate bars into a cupboard.
Nor does she share chirpy comments on the pictures in her book or ask for help on a word she can’t puzzle out.
I surreptitiously send Mike two more messages and shut myself in the loo to call him, but the call goes unanswered.
Time ticks by toward lunch; Effie stays on the sofa while I move about preparing food. Still no Mike.
This will be the third visit in a row he’ll have missed.
The first he cancelled. Fair enough. But the last was a no-show, which is where this one is rapidly heading.
I put Effie’s sandwich on the table along with mine and we sit and eat while I make chitchat about her call with my parents to keep her distracted.
Only when we’ve finished eating do I glance at my phone and say, “I don’t think Daddy’s going to make it today. ”
Effie’s bottom lip trembles but she bites it.
I see her thumb rubbing up and down her forefinger, the only other sign of her distress.
She holds still while minutes pass. I let her have the space she needs.
I know my daughter. I don’t offer false explanations or excuses or, even worse, hope.
And I don’t force her into a hug, which comforts me more than her.
Finally, she turns to me with those large, luminescent blue eyes, the only physical trait she got from her father, and says, “He’s not a very good daddy, is he?”
And I can only regret once more the choices in my life that made Mike her dad. “No, sweetheart,” I say. “Sometimes he’s not.”