Chapter 28
It was Sunday afternoon and that meant one thing – Mum was in the kitchen making a roast and Dad was in the shed ‘pottering’.
That’s a word that usually conjures up images of compost and gardening gloves, fixing things or hand-carving toy soldiers.
In reality, Dad’s ‘shed’ was quite a large construction with its own electricity, a TV and a wall-mounted bottle opener over a table topped with hundreds of resin-covered bottle caps. A man cave in all but name.
Mum let me in and took me through to the kitchen.
Sunday-dinner preparations were in full swing; the Paxo was rehydrating, Aunt Bessie’s frozen roasties were cooking in the oven along with a slightly alien-autopsy-looking roasting bag full of chicken, bulging onions and carrots.
Mum picked up the jar of Bisto and started measuring it into a Pyrex jug.
‘Dad in the shed?’ I asked, despite already knowing the answer. It was mostly a precursor to me escaping out there to talk to him. But first I had to appease the gatekeeper – would I be allowed to pass or would I have to sacrifice half an hour, or make an offering of laying the table?
‘As per,’ she sighed. ‘You can take him out a cup of tea, if you like.’
Permission granted.
It was weirdly nostalgic, nudging the frozen jam roly-poly out of the way to get at the kettle, making Dad a tea in his favourite mug.
All at once I could have been fourteen again with maths homework to do before tomorrow, and a heap of ‘heatless curler’ technology crammed on top of my head, an acne face mask smeared over my skin.
‘That was nice of Richard taking us out for lunch yesterday,’ Mum said, while I stirred sugar into Dad’s tea. ‘How are things going with you two now?’
‘Oh, you know… the same as they were before,’ I said truthfully, hoping she’d hear what she wanted to without me having to lie.
The thing was, even before the cheating, things hadn’t been perfect, or even good.
I just hadn’t let myself see it and, by extension, hadn’t let my family see it either. But now my eyes were wide open.
I still had no idea what to do about Richard.
By taking him back, I’d really muddied the waters and made things even more complicated.
But I still couldn’t find it in myself to fully let go of the years we’d spent together and the future I’d imagined with him.
I just wasn’t sure if I wanted him in that future, which was all kinds of messed up.
I needed some extra perspective and, hopefully, Dad would deliver.
As long as I could keep him in the shed and not allow him to nip out to the pub to escape. I contemplated hiding his car keys.
‘Tell him there’s no pigs in blankets,’ Mum called after me as I let myself out of the back door. ‘They didn’t defrost in time and I don’t want him to get his hopes up and sulk!’
Outside I picked my way down the garden, past the extravagant barbecue and the bar, both now covered over for autumn with matching hedge-pattern tarpaulins.
Dad’s shed was right at the bottom, screened from the rest of the barren garden by a fake-ivy-covered trellis, which stood out against the grey stone and gravel.
I went up to the metal door and knocked on it.
‘Enter!’
Inside, Dad was sitting in his recliner, space heater plugged in beside him and the TV showing a live football match. He looked surprised to see me, then clocked the tea and perked up.
‘All right, Tabby? You staying for lunch?’
‘No, I’m very full of brunch actually,’ I said, and settled into the second recliner, usually reserved for Dad’s friend Terry. ‘I just popped by for a chat.’
At the word ‘chat’ Dad started to look uneasy. I watched his eyes dart to the door and decided to press on before he could come up with an excuse to leave.
‘I talked to Mum the other day and she told me something about when the two of you first got together… that you were also sort of seeing somebody else?’
I wasn’t going to come out and say ‘sleeping with’ not to my dad.
It was hard enough knowing that he’d done it even once, to get me.
That he’d had not one but two women was unthinkable.
Especially just then, sitting in his man shed and seeing him in his West Ham slippers and ‘Number One Dad’ T-shirt.
A shirt, by the way, that I hadn’t bought him, he must have found it on sale and not bothered to read it.
As with the ‘World’s Best Sister-in-Law’ mug he’d inexplicably bought himself.
‘Ah… right,’ he said, still looking longingly at the door. ‘Well… that is true.’
I’d assumed as much. Mum was keen on Richard and me staying together, but not so keen that she’d just make a story like that up. But it was good to have confirmation.
‘But she forgave you,’ I prompted.
‘She did, yeah.’ Dad squirmed in his chair and glanced at the TV as if Gary Lineker could phase through the screen and come to his aid. ‘What’s this about, love?’
‘Richard cheated on me,’ I said quietly, and that at last got Dad to look at me.
‘I’ll wring his neck,’ he said, sitting up straight. ‘That little scrote.’
‘Dad!’ I couldn’t help the giggle that escaped me at the outraged look on his face. ‘You cheated too.’
‘But that’s different. You’re my daughter,’ he huffed.
‘No one bloody cheats on my Tabby – I always had a bad feeling about that tosser. Right – when are you moving out? I’ll borrow Terry’s van.
He won’t mind. He’s actually not legally allowed to drive since his last eye test. Bloody Asda opticians snitched on him. ’
‘I’m actually not sure we’re breaking up,’ I said, holding up my hands to calm down his tirade. ‘I mean, I did break up with him but what Mum told me… it sort of convinced me to give him another chance.’
‘… oh,’ Dad subsided slightly. ‘Well… that’s… your choice. Though I’m surprised your mum told you about all that – it’s ancient history now.’
‘She said it didn’t seem important any more,’ I confirmed. ‘But… I don’t know how to feel about Richard right now. I wanted to ask you how you managed to get Mum back. How you stayed loyal all this time. Basically, see if it would help me understand how to deal with this.’
I had the sudden, horrible thought that he might be about to admit to me that he hadn’t been faithful at all and had in fact been carrying on a years-long affair.
I didn’t want to know that and, frankly, if Mum found out, she’d probably cremate Dad on his own massive American barbecue and mix his ashes in with the gravel.
‘Well…’ Dad started, then stopped, apparently hunting for the right words. He looked at me quizzically as if I’d asked him to explain the offside rule. ‘We sort of just… moved on.’
Very helpful.
‘But what changed afterwards? What did you do?’ I asked, trying to herd him towards some specifics.
‘I can’t really say that much did change,’ Dad shrugged.
The TV emitted a roar of crowd noise and his head snapped round, having missed a goal entirely. He huffed.
‘Nothing changed?’ I asked, surprised. ‘At all?’
Dad turned back to me and sighed. ‘Tabby… it was all very different back then. We didn’t do all this talking stuff.
I was drunk, I made a mistake and I regretted it.
Your mum accepted my apology – and a few weeks of grovelling with flowers and chocolates – and we moved on.
She knew that I wished it had never happened and that if Margaret and I hadn’t been drunk, it wouldn’t have. ’
‘Margaret?’ I didn’t so much say the name as dry-heave it. That’s the trouble with living in a small town, you know everyone. And I only knew one Margaret. ‘You slept with Margaret… from the hospice shop?’
Dad turned the same shade of maroon as his slippers. ‘It was a long time ago! She used to be quite a looker.’
My bellyful of brunch churned around inside me.
Ugh! That was so not a mental image I ever wanted to have.
Dad and Margaret. Even back when I’d been in primary and she was the school receptionist, she’d had a tiny little cat-bum mouth all pursed up and mean, and wicked red talons which she filed endlessly.
I couldn’t imagine her attracting a wasp, let alone my dad.
‘As I said,’ Dad continued, still flushed with embarrassment.
‘It was a house party, I’d just been paid and I was very, very drunk.
I couldn’t remember my own name, let alone that I was head over heels for your mother.
Margaret was hitting the advocaat pretty hard and, the minute we sobered up, I realised what I’d done and…
honestly, I could have slapped myself into next week.
I was that mortified, that scared I’d lose your mother… I had to tell her right away.’
‘You… told her?’ I was shocked. Mum hadn’t mentioned that. Come to think of it, I’d just sort of assumed that she’d found out from one of her legion of girlfriends.
‘Of course!’ Dad looked as surprised as I was that this detail hadn’t made it into the retelling.
‘I went straight round from dossing in the back room of that house. Stinking of beer, crying, I was a mess.’ He was flustered.
Clearly, he hadn’t wanted to admit as much.
‘As soon as she answered the door, it all came out.’
‘You just blurted out that you’d cheated?’
‘No, I threw up in her Mum’s peonies,’ Dad said, with a rueful half-smile. ‘But the second thing I did was tell her what happened. She slammed the door in my face, then opened it again to tell me… well, let’s just say the air was pretty blue.’
‘And then what?’ I leant on the arm of my recliner, enthralled.
‘Well, then she went to tell her parents what happened and her dad, bloody hell, he was terrifying.’
‘Grandpa Steve?’ I laughed.
‘Your Grandpa Steve was my Mr Groats,’ Dad said darkly. ‘That man never forgave me for that – or for the time I leant against his Morris Minor.’
I chuckled, and Dad laughed guiltily. ‘Bless ’im…
grumpy old arse. Anyway, by the time Mr and Mrs Groats came outside to shout at me, I was hosing out the peonies – which I think got me a little leeway.
But they chased me off and I ended up sending a letter instead.
Which I think went over well… she agreed to see me anyway, and then, I apologised again and told her that I didn’t deserve her, that I regretted that night more than anything else in my life and that, if I got a second chance with her, I wouldn’t need a third, because I’d never risk hurting her again. ’
‘Awww, Dad.’ I reached over and patted his arm. He looked quite bleary-eyed and I wondered if he was going to cry – something I’d only seen him do twice. Once when Granny Grey died and once when he put a full tank of petrol in our diesel car while we were on holiday in Wales.
‘Ah, pssshht!’ Dad waved me off, still very pink about the cheeks. ‘I was a soppy idiot about your mum. Still am. But she took me back and I didn’t drink again until the night we got engaged. Just to prove to her I was serious.’
I thought of Richard and his apologies. He’d told me that the other woman, the one I’d caught him with, meant nothing.
Less than nothing. I’d even said back to him that he’d thrown me away for nothing.
He hadn’t been drunk on a night out. He’d been sober, in the middle of the day, in our home.
Dad had done everything he could to make it up to Mum but, most importantly, he’d given her space.
He’d sent a letter and waited for her to reach out.
Richard had kept hanging around, waiting like a vulture for me to be defenceless.
Worst of all, Dad had promised to never risk losing Mum again, and had stayed sober for a year and a half. Richard was lying to me again less than a week after I took him back.
‘Tabby?’
I looked up and found Dad looking at me seriously.
‘It’s up to you if you want to take Richard back.
Not me and not your mum. I know she’s… very keen to see you married and everything, but it’s up to you.
She only wants it so much because she thinks that’ll make you happy.
That’s all we want really – for you to be happy. ’
‘And you’ll be okay with him if I do take him back?’ I asked.
‘If Richard makes you happy, that’s all I need to know,’ Dad said.
The TV resounded with cheers and cries of ‘GOAL! but Dad didn’t glance its way. He squeezed my hand.
‘Do what makes you happy – and we’ll both be happy for you.’
I leant over for an awkward armchair hug, and Dad patted my back firmly, like he was trying to make me cough up a Starburst that had gone down the wrong pipe.
‘Now, are you sure you won’t stay for lunch?’ Dad asked.
That reminded me. ‘No, I really can’t fit a whole roast right now. By the way, Mum said to tell you there are no pigs in blankets.’
Dad inhaled sharply. ‘Bollocks!’