Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
Frank and Aiden are sitting on the same side of the table when I go down for breakfast, with a couple of coffees in front of them.
‘How was she last night?’ Aiden asks before I’ve barely sat down.
He still looks exhausted, like he might have had the same sleepless night as I did.
‘Well, she’s not very bloody good, is she.’ I can barely bring myself to look this boy in the eye.
‘Coffee?’ Frank chirps.
When I don’t respond, he pours me some from a big pot.
I stare out of the window. During the night, all I could think was this is all my fault. I was the one who encouraged her to do a study term in America; Rupert thought it cost too much. I was determined to help her have what she wanted, as though by doing so I’d win the favourite parent award. It’s like I was using her to redress some unarticulated balance between Rupert and me; one that probably only I was aware of. And look at the price we’ve paid.
‘You need to tell me what happened,’ I say to Aiden. ‘All of it.’
He looks like he barely has energy to sit upright in a chair, let alone have the conversation. As he wipes a hand across his mouth in a gesture of anguish, I can’t help but note his fit arms and upper body, the even-toned complexion – the damn eyelashes – and I completely understand how Harriet could be so taken in by appearances. How she would falsify feelings. How she would desire everything she saw this person representing. And how other girls would, too.
‘Let me help you,’ I say. ‘You cheated on her. And I’m probably going to kill you.’
Frank says, ‘Whoa! That’s a bit extreme! Maybe you need to hear what Aiden has to say first, rather than put words in his mouth.’
He sends me daggers. I’ve never seen him so riled; it’s like we’ve suddenly gone onto different teams and we’re each in it to win it.
‘I don’t know why you’d conclude that, Moira.’ Aiden looks bewildered. ‘There’s no other girl.’
I’m about to speak but Frank says, ‘Aiden’s not that guy.’
I roll my eyes far back in my head. ‘ Every guy is that guy.’
He rolls his now.
‘It had nothing to do with any other girl,’ Aiden asserts. ‘I’m not like that. That’s not how I conduct myself.’ He says it like the very idea is some sort of affront. Clearly, he’s a very fine actor.
‘Well,’ I say. ‘That’s not what Harriet told me.’
His dark eyebrows draw together again and he shoots a glance at his dad. ‘She said I had someone else?’
‘Yes.’ My heart hammers. ‘She… didn’t exactly use those words… But…’ I can’t help but note in my peripheral vision that Frank is watching me with an expression that says, Uh-oh! This is about to go Moira-shaped.
Fortunately, the waiter appears and asks us if we’d like to order breakfast. He lists what’s on offer – Greek yogurt and honey, omelettes, pitarakia , which he says are hot pies made from mizithra cheese… I stop listening after that. Frank orders for us.
‘You were busy explaining,’ I say to Aiden.
After a very uncomfortable intermission, he says, ‘I contacted her dad.’
My head whips back. ‘What?’
‘I found his email and I wrote to him. Despite knowing she didn’t want him to know about us, or about her plan to maybe continue studying in America, despite knowing she kinda hates him right now. I did it anyway.’
Rupert’s attempts to get in contact – WhatsApp! Now it all makes sense. My eyes slide from Aiden’s face to Frank’s. ‘Back up,’ I tell him. ‘You contacted her dad?’ It wouldn’t be hard. Rupert is very findable online and, even if you didn’t know he was Harriet’s father, you would after you saw his picture. The same blue eyes, the infectious little bunny smile. ‘But why?’
Aiden wipes a hand over his face. ‘Look, I know he’s not a great guy. I don’t really know what he did, but…’ His cheeks redden again. ‘Okay, that’s not entirely true; I know a bit about what happened. But he’s still Harriet’s father. I didn’t think it was right to keep something like this from him – that his only daughter was seriously considering finishing her studies in the US, because of me… that we might live together, even get married…’ He meets me directly in the eye. ‘It felt wrong to me.’
‘So you took it upon yourself to meddle in a family matter that had absolutely nothing to do with you?’
He’s already shaking his head. ‘No. That wasn’t my…’ He says it uncertainly, as though he’s only just this minute gaining perspective on his own actions. ‘The way I saw it was, Harriet isn’t going to hate her dad forever, and if I do end up being part of the family, I guess I just didn’t want it to start out this way.’ He drags a hand over his mouth again. ‘I just wanted to say, hey, hi… I’m Aiden Lewis and I’m the guy who’s in love with your daughter, and I care that, whichever way we move forward, we just kind of do it properly.’
He holds my eyes with an almost admirable intestinal fortitude. ‘Plus, I thought that, maybe in a strange way it might help get some communication going between them. She’s really suffering because of all this. Despite her maybe telling you she hates him, and her blocking his calls and everything, it’s hurting her very much. Because she doesn’t hate him…’ He searches my face, and then his dad’s. ‘She wants to be there for you, Moira. If you’re not talking to him, then she’s not talking to him. That’s the way she is. She’s loyal. But, well, it’s killing her.’
I’m not sure I’m loving how Aiden is reeling off my daughter’s personality traits – as though I don’t know them. ‘So I believe that’s the very definition of meddling,’ I say.
I hear Frank mutter a very quiet, ‘Give him a break,’ which I choose to ignore.
Aiden visibly swallows down his gumption. ‘I know it was wrong what I did. But if anything, I thought I was being honourable.’
Honourable? What twenty-two-year-old kid bangs on about honour? I’m the guy who’s in love with your daughter… Does Gen Z even talk this way? It all feels a little 1940s. But then I realise it’s exactly because he’s got old-fashioned values that Harriet fell for him. She was never going to tolerate a bloke who couldn’t show up for his dates.
Then, as though it needs any adding, he says, ‘Harriet definitely didn’t see it that way, though.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘I expect she didn’t.’
I glance at Frank who is carefully monitoring me.
‘It’s not particularly admirable that you disregarded Harriet’s wishes,’ I say to Aiden. ‘But I’m very glad there wasn’t another girl.’
I can almost feel Frank thinking, Are you going to do the right thing and let it rest now? Or are you going to be Moira and gnaw on his flesh until you penetrate bone? Then I just find it plain odd that I can read his thoughts at all.
Something else occurs to me. ‘How did she end up being out all night, though? I don’t understand.’ Then it lands. ‘Ah… Of course. You told her.’
He takes another quick sip of his coffee. ‘I did. Keeping it from her felt wrong in the end.’ He clears his throat. ‘She was furious. I’ve never seen anything like it. She stormed out…’ He shakes his head, clearly reliving the memory. ‘I went looking for her. I searched all over. I went back to the hotel a few times in case she’d gone back. The next thing I knew it was three in the morning. And then I was freaking out.’
I gawk at him – at Frank too, who swiftly looks at the tabletop. ‘Why didn’t you call me?’ I ask.
He looks momentarily exasperated. ‘I thought you were a world away in LA. What were you going to do from all that distance? The only purpose letting you know would serve would be to make you worry.’
‘Of course I’d have worried!’ I stare at the warm cheese pies that have just arrived and are giving off an appetising smell, if only I felt like eating. ‘But I would have done something. I’d have called the police. A young woman out wandering a strange country in the middle of the night… Why did you think that was okay?’
Frank finally speaks. ‘He didn’t say it was okay.’
‘I don’t know,’ Aiden answers me. ‘All her stuff was here. I knew she’d have to come back at some point. I didn’t really think?—’
‘Exactly. You didn’t think. I mean, when were you going to contact the police? At noon the next day? When was an alarm bell going to go off in your head?’
Frank holds up the palm of his hand. ‘Okay, maybe we’re done with the Spanish Inquisition for now.’
‘Spanish Inquisition?’ I shoot him daggers, my pulse flicking hard in my temple.
‘You’re right,’ Aiden says. ‘I should have done something. When she came back, she was coughing pretty badly. I made her some hot food. But it just seemed to get worse real fast. I googled the symptoms and said, look, I think we need to take you to the hospital.’
‘And the rest is history!’ Frank chimes in, like he’s officially had enough.
‘What’s your problem?’ I’m surprised how savagely I turn on him. ‘This is my child in the hospital, not yours. Do you really think I have no right to ask how she got there?’
He doesn’t immediately respond, just holds my eyes, wordlessly, for a spell or two. Then he says, ‘I understand that part. And I get why you’re upset. But you don’t need to attack my son. It was hardly all his fault.’
I play this back. The words, plus the scathing tone. ‘Except for the fact that it was your son’s actions that started all this!’ I can’t believe how insensitive he’s being. Aiden sits there so obviously uncomfortable with us talking like he’s not there.
‘I think he’s made the point that he’s sorry,’ Frank says. ‘He should have respected her wishes about her father. But he didn’t make her run off and stay out half the night in the cold. You can’t pin the pneumonia on him.’ He throws up his hands and says a spiky, ‘Sorry!’
My jaw practically drops to the ground. When I recover, I unleash my sarcasm on him. ‘Wow. You make a great point. No one could have said it worse. So, thanks for that.’
I look away, sharply out of the window.
When my heart stops thrashing and I can say it calmly, I say to Aiden, ‘Harriet might wear her emotions on her sleeve at times, but she’s not a drama queen. All her life this has been what she does when she’s hurt or angry. She disappears.’ As a kid she’d hide in the small cupboard behind her dad’s desk. We’d pretend to look everywhere for her – everywhere except there – to let her have her secret little space. As a teenager, when friendship dramas or exam pressure got too much, she’d take off into town and could be gone a whole day, yet she never came home with any purchases; she’d just been wandering around, finding her balance again. ‘Disappearing is how she works through things. You don’t know this about her because you don’t know her.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Aiden says again.
Franks holds up the palm of his hand. ‘Son, you’ve said sorry enough. Moira has more than made her point. This stops here.’
Great. Now I’m being refereed. Or parented.
I’m sure this is not one of my finer moments. I’m sure there’s a better way to behave. But I stand up sharply, my chair scraping along the ground.
Frank says, ‘Where are you going?’
And I say, ‘Oh, fuck off.’