Be Careful What You Wish For (6 page)

 

A
long the banks of the River Avon a small group of art students are huddled round wooden easels. Before them rolls the Shropshire countryside, the layers of sky, fields and river the focus for their tubes of oil paint and brush-stuffed jam jars. This class is part of a summer-school programme run by Bath’s local art college and the students have travelled from Texas to take advantage of it. They’re being taught by Lionel, a robust, bearded man in his early sixties, who looks as if he’s travelled there in a time machine from the French impressionist era. Wearing a paint-splattered smock, a neckerchief, and a beret angled sideways over thick, black curls worthy of a man half his age, he’s striding round the class bellowing enthusiasm and advice.

‘Fabulous use of the magenta, Sandy.’

A large-chested woman beams and continues daubing vigorously.

‘Spot-on sketching, George Junior,’ he growls, slapping the tiny shoulder of an elderly man in Bermuda shorts. ‘Now let’s see what you can do with the real stuff.’ He snatches the pencil out of George Junior’s fingers and replaces it with a horsehair paintbrush.

‘Lionel!’

My voice catches my father by surprise and he swings round, smock billowing round him like a parachute. Waving at him from the wooden stile where I’ve been perched for the last five minutes, watching him proudly, I feel my heart tug. I’m very much my father’s daughter. Living in London I don’t get to spend as much time with him as I’d like, especially not now that he’s getting older, and I miss him. A wide smile stretches across my face and I yell even louder, ‘Lionel, it’s me!’

Lionel peers down into his half-moon glasses and smiles back as he recognises the figure in a red T-shirt and cut-off denim shorts as his only daughter. ‘Heather, darling,’ he bellows, abandoning his students and striding over to greet me. ‘What a wonderful surprise!’ Throwing his arms round my shoulders he pulls me into a bear hug. ‘Why didn’t you let me know you were coming? Or did you, and I’ve forgotten?’ He rolls his eyes dramatically. ‘My memory’s getting worse. Rosemary fears I’m going senile,’ he confides, then laughs uproariously.

As he clucks and coos over me, I ignore his reference to my stepmother. ‘I’m sorry, it was a last-minute decision. Brian gave me the day off and I just got my car back from the garage so I thought I’d come and see you.’

Well, it’s partly true. Yes, it wasn’t until I’d woken up this morning that I decided I needed to escape London for the day. And, yes, I had really wanted to see my dad. But not calling beforehand? That was deliberate. I hadn’t wanted to let Rosemary know I was coming. If I had, she would have made some excuse about them having a prior engagement, or tell me she had one of her migraines, or suggest that perhaps another weekend might be better. This way, she can’t spoil things – but then again she did that when she married Dad.

‘Marvellous, marvellous,’ beams Lionel, releasing me from his embrace and turning to his students, most of whom are watching our reunion with interest. ‘Everyone, I’d like to introduce my beautiful daughter, Heather.’

‘Howdy,’ they chorus, in a strong Texas drawl.

I smile sheepishly. Dad is always showing me off like some prized possession: he even keeps a photograph of me in his wallet, which he insists on pulling out in front of complete strangers – embarrassing enough, without the fact it’s a school picture of me at thirteen with braces and a custard-dip fringe.

‘She’s a photographer,’ he continues proudly.

‘Wow,’ come the gasps of admiration.

Oh, no. I steel myself for the inevitable questions about supermodels and fashion shoots for
Vogue.
I always feel like such a disappointment when I have to admit the truth. People want to hear about exotic locations and the size of Kate Moss’s thighs, not someone-they’ve-never-heard-of’s wedding at Brixton town hall.

But, thankfully, I’m saved by my father’s appetite. Digging out his fob-watch from the pocket of his voluminous corduroys, he flicks open the brass cover. ‘Well, that’s about it for today, everyone,’ he declares. ‘It’s twelve thirty on the nose. Time for a spot of lunch.’

Lunch is back at the house. An imposing Regency building torn straight from the pages of a Jane Austen novel, it stands high on a hill in the centre of Bath, offering spectacular views of the town and surrounding villages. Built from honey-coloured stone, it boasts large sash windows that look out on to the walled garden filled with rosebushes, a gazebo and one of those vast lawns that have been mown into immaculate stripes. By anyone’s standards, it’s a truly beautiful house.

I, however, hate it. It belongs to Rosemary and, like its owner, it’s cold and unwelcoming. Before she and Dad were married, he was living in our cosy cottage in Cornwall, with its uneven walls, tiny porthole windows and thatched roof. Now its used only for holidays and family get-togethers – Rosemary complained it was too small for her furniture.

What she’d meant was that the house reminded her of my mother.

Lionel bought it when Mum was first diagnosed. Hoping that the warmer climate and sea air might do her good, he sold our house in Yorkshire and moved the whole family hundreds of miles south to Port Isaac. Ed and I were still children, and had hated being uprooted, leaving our friends, Leeds United football team and Fred, our pet gerbil, whom we’d buried in the back garden. Our mother, however, fell in love with the place and her happiness was infectious, changing our minds but never her diagnosis. She had died less than three years later.

‘So, how long are you staying?’

We’re all sitting round the kitchen table. There’s my dad, me and my stepmother, who’d greeted my appearance with the customary tight-lipped kiss on the cheek, then complained that they probably wouldn’t have enough food as she hadn’t been to the supermarket. ‘I wasn’t expecting guests.’ She’d smiled woodenly, barely keeping the accusation out of her voice.

I turn to my father who’s cutting himself a large slice of Brie, his meaty hands gripping the cheese knife like a saw.

‘Just for the day,’ I say. ‘I’ve got to be back in London by tonight.’

‘Tonight?’ Disappointment clouds his face.

‘Oh, what a shame,’ coos Rosemary.

She doesn’t fool me. I know she’s delighted.

‘Aha, I get it!’ His face springs back up again and Lionel pounds his fist on the table. ‘You’ve got a date with a young chap.’

‘Not exactly,’ I admit, plucking a few grapes from the bunch on the cheeseboard and popping them into my mouth one by one.

‘Not still mooning over that scoundrel, are you?’

‘His name’s Daniel,’ I remind him calmly. It’s only now, a year later, that I can even say his name without that awful breathless sensation, as if I’ve dived into the deep end of a swimming-pool and I’m trying to swim up to the surface. ‘And, no, that’s all in the past.’

OK, so I sent him that text last week I remember shamefully, but I was drunk so it didn’t count.

‘When do we get to meet your new fella, then?’

‘Lionel,’
I gasp, suddenly feeling about thirteen again. Back then he would pick me up from the youth club and quiz me about boys as we walked back to our tiny slate-roofed cottage by the harbour. It was just after Mum had died, and suddenly he was taking me through puberty, first boyfriends, sex education. It had been a learning process for both of us.

Lionel had never been a hands-on dad – when we were little my brother and I had learned quickly that he answered to Lionel rather than Daddy, although when he was in his studio, painting, he went for days without answering to anyone – so it had been something of an eye-opener for him to become a single parent. This was a man who’d never changed a nappy but was having to buy sanitary towels for his teenage daughter.

Somehow we got through it. As he told me when, in tears, I’d barricaded myself into the bathroom with my first trainer bra, if we could get through losing a wife and a mother, we could get through anything.

Including this lunch.

‘I’ve been too busy working to have a boyfriend.’

‘Heather’s what they call “a career woman”,’ notes Rosemary, squeezing lemon on her smoked salmon and draping a piece over a Ryvita. I watch her taking a careful nibble. Although there’s not an ounce of flesh on her bones, Rosemary’s forever watching her figure. Presumably in case it should disappear.

‘Your boss keeping your nose to the grindstone, hey?’ mumbles Lionel through a bite of Brie.

‘Something like that,’ I say vaguely, deciding not to mention the possibility of losing my job. I don’t want to worry him – or give Rosemary some more ammunition against me. If I hear one more time about Annabel, her daughter who’s only a year older than me but is happily married to Miles, ‘a high-flyer’ in the City, and has two adorable children, a loft conversion and a French-speaking nanny, I’ll . . . Well, I don’t know what I’ll do but I’m sure I’ll do something.

Glancing at my stepmother, who’s patting her pale yellow hair, which she’s put up, as always, into an immaculate chignon, I can’t help wondering what it would be like if Mum was still alive so that I could talk to her about my worries and get her advice. Ask her for a hug.

‘Oh, I love weddings!’ I’m distracted from my thoughts by Rosemary clasping her hands girlishly. ‘I do envy you, your job must be so romantic.’

Taken aback by this uncharacteristic compliment, I’m unsure what to say. Rosemary and I don’t
do
compliments: our conversation consists of a form of jousting, each trying to knock the other off balance. It’s exhausting. Sometimes I wish we could just make small-talk about
EastEnders
or discuss the new duvet cover she’s bought, like Jess does with her mum. But, then, Rosemary isn’t my mum.

I look at her sadly, my throat tight. And she never will be.

‘Er . . . well, not really,’ I begin hesitantly. ‘I’m there to take the photographs, and when you’ve done as many weddings as I have, one is very much like another.’

‘Not when it’s your own,’ she says pointedly, looking at Lionel like a lovestruck new bride.

I squirm. It really annoys me when Rosemary gets all soppy around Lionel. ‘No, maybe not,’ I agree reluctantly. To agree with Rosemary is usually tantamount to defeat, but this time I change my mind. Maybe I’ve been wrong about her all this time. Maybe, like Lionel says, she really does want to be friends.

‘Never mind, dear.’ Reaching over for the wine, she pats my arm. ‘It’ll be your turn one day.’

It’s not as if she meant that in a bitchy way, she was just trying to be nice, right?

‘More wine anyone?’ she finishes topping up her glass and holds the bottle aloft.

‘Mmm, yes, that would be fabulous.’ Lionel beams.

‘Actually I’m single out of choice, not necessity,’ I point out casually. ‘Plenty of men ask me out on dates.’

‘I’m sure they do, a pretty girl like you,’ agrees Rosemary, much to my surprise. So, she really is trying to be nice. Obviously it’s just me being paranoid. ‘Though it was different in my day. If you weren’t married by the time you were thirty, you were considered on old maid.’

Ouch. See what happens when I let my guard down? She goes right for the jugular.

‘Oh, but it’s different now, my love,’ replies Lionel, helping himself to potato salad and several slices of ham in ignorance of the Third World War that’s currently being waged across the table between his wife and his daughter. ‘Times have changed. Heather’s probably beating them off like flies, hmm?’ He gazes at me adoringly. As far as Lionel’s concerned, I’m the most beautiful, talented, intelligent woman that’s ever walked on this planet.

‘OK, so perhaps “plenty” is a
slight
exaggeration,’ I admit, guilted out by Lionel’s devotion. ‘But that’s not the point.’

‘It’s not?’ pipes up Rosemary, resting her hand on Lionel’s. To anyone else that would appear to be an act of affection, but to me it looks like possession. I don’t know why she doesn’t wear a sign round her neck saying, ‘Hands off, he’s mine.’

‘No, it’s not the point at all,’ I repeat emphatically. ‘The point is . . .’ I begin, and then stop. Because, you see, I’m not sure what the point
is
any more. Realising I have no hope of winning this argument I look at Rosemary’s face flushed with victory, and I surrender.

For the time being.

After lunch, we go outside and have Pimm’s on the lawn and a game of chess. A keen player Lionel has built a giant chessboard on the patio and when Rosemary goes inside to lie down – ‘It’s the heat, so incredibly tiring’ – he and I pace round the board, carrying the four-foot-high polystyrene pieces on to different-coloured squares, trying to put each other in check-mate. As father and daughter we’re the best of friends; as chess opponents we’re sworn enemies.

‘Check-mate,’ I announce triumphantly, setting down my bishop.

Lionel bites down hard on the stem of his pipe. ‘Poppycock!’

I fold my arms and watch as he stomps round the pieces, forehead furrowed in concentration.

‘So, do you admit defeat?’ I tease.

‘Never!’ he roars. Running his fingers through his unruly curls, he continues pacing. ‘That can’t be.’

‘Yes, it can.’ This is a well-rehearsed routine. Whenever I win a game my father’s reaction is, first, disbelief, then disagreement, and finally, ‘Good Lord, how did you manage that?’

He’s stopped circling and is standing, hands on hips, his face incredulous.

‘I had a good teacher,’ I reply, as I always do.

‘Aah, you’re too kind,’ he mutters, patting my shoulder affectionately. ‘I was a terrible player until I met your mother. Did I ever tell you about the first time we played chess?’

‘You were both eighteen and in your first year at Cambridge.’ I know this story off by heart.

‘That’s right,’ nods Lionel, reminiscing. ‘A tutor had organised a chess tournament with one of the ladies’ colleges and I nearly didn’t go as it clashed with auditions for a play I wanted to be in.’